Keelhauled by Critics, ‘Raven’s Cry’ to Be Re-Released Under New Name

On January the Thirtieth, in the Two Thousand and Fifteenth Year of our Lord, 18th century piracy adventure Raven’s Cry set sail. It was pretty bad.

Now developer Reality Pump is ready to try swashing everyone’s buckles properly, with an update to the spectacular failure from earlier this year.

Playing Raven’s Cry at launch was an exercise in futility. When you could actually play the game, it was a festering swamp of game-breaking bugs and voice acting that sounded as if it was done in the back of a homeless DJ’s van. If you could get past the terrible script and worse scripting, the game at the core was… well, still really bad.

Reality Pump was immediately apologetic, promising continued development and protesting their lack of funds and time to finish the game properly. Throughout the following month, very marginal updates managed to fix things, inasmuch as sticking your finger in a dam would fix Hurricane Katrina. After that, things got pretty quiet. Still, the game remained on sale through the Steam client. The developers promised continued efforts to polish and refine the game into something actually playable, but signs of progress were absent.

Now, with the launch of a new website for the game, Reality Pump has decided on a new tack. Vendetta: Curse of the Raven’s Cry is a rebranding very similar to 2012’s disasterpiece The War Z‘s turn to Infestation: Survivor Stories. It is Raven’s Cry “as it was meant to be seen and played.” The game will be relaunched under the new name, but the developers have yet to get back with specifics on the timing.

Reality Pump is advertising a host of changes and improvements to the original title. Original quests will be expanded and enhanced, while new ones will be added. Both the trading and skill system are to receive significant improvement on the back of a more “dynamic” sailing option which will allow for time acceleration. Alchemy is being introduced as well, presumably so that your crew can get wasted enough to walk straight.

On the objectively bright side, videos and cutscenes are being revamped, and the English voice is being entirely redone. That’s an alert to all you clever YouTubers — your window for making hilarious videos with the existing assets is closing fast.

Follow Nate Church on Twitter @Get2Church.