Pirates of Black Cove Interview

The Examiner managed to catch up with Nitro Games' Brendon Neuwerth for an informative Q&A about Pirates of Black Cove, their interesting ground- and naval-based RTS that's getting a fairly large injection of RPG elements. In fact, a bit about them:
PCGE: Lets talk about the RPG elements. Your basic goal is to gain favor with three pirate factions, claim power, and destroy the bad pirates. Tell us about the story line. How much freedom do you give the player to 'steer the rudder' to their own destiny?

Newerth: There is a storyline for the player to follow, but no actual choices along the way. The player is not forced to do the storyline missions for one faction first and then hop on to other faction. There are some limits though, so that the player won't instantly go to the most powerful faction and start doing their missions. The player can still visit them but the leader of that faction is not that friendly and will instruct the player to get more reputation with the lesser factions first. The game has only one of ending (unless of course you die), which is to firstly unite the 3 factions to gain the strengths of each, defeat the bad pirates of black cove, and finally become the King.

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PCGE: Since this is a Pirate '˜fantasy' game, will there be magic and mythical monsters? What can you tell us about them? What kind of magic (if any) and what kind of monsters will we see?

Newerth: There will be mythical creatures, such as Kraken and magic will be around in some form or other. We also take elements of modern weaponry (homing rockets for example) which in today's world are quite old --but bang them into the 16th century and I bet they'd seem quite magical. Also in our game, grog magically heals you, and today medical studies have proven it actually kills you.