Trivia / Sea Dogs

• Celebrity Voice Actor: Pirates of the Caribbean featured Keira Knightley (who played Elizabeth Swann in the film series) as the game's narrator. This is one of the few things the game has in common with the films.
• Completely Different Title: The series is titled Corsairs in Akella's native Russia, and every installment in the series (including Pirates of the Caribbean and the two Age of Pirates games) is referred to by this name. It's likely that they had to change the Corsairs name outside of Russia due to the unrelated pirate-themed strategy game Corsairs: Conquest at Sea released by Microids in 1999. And since Bethesda still held the rights to the "Sea Dogs" name the later games had to be renamed as well.
• Dummied Out: The original English language Sea Dogs II logo is still buried among the texture files for Pirates of the Caribbean, and can easily be implemented back into the game with a simple text editor.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Pirates of the Caribbean, due to having Disney's brand slapped on it, hasn't been re-released digitally with the rest of the Sea Dogs games. And even worse, the Xbox 360 and later consoles aren't backwards compatible with its Xbox port. So your best bet will be to track down a physical copy of the game, and hopefully have an original Xbox if you're planning on playing the console port.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The first Sea Dogs was originally going to be a traditional Role-Playing Game with a nautical-themed setting instead of being a full-fledged pirate simulator. There were also going to be more fantasy elements present than what is implied in the final game. The sequels, such as Pirates of the Caribbean and City of Abandoned Ships, would properly introduce these fantasy elements.
• No Export for You: An unofficial installment of the series, titled Corsairs: Return of the Legend, was only released in Russia and the CIS, and has yet to receive an English translation.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: To Each His Own began as a third-party mod of City of Abandoned Ships before being receiving an official release as a standalone title.
• Production Posse: The first game features a number of regulars in Bethesda's cast at the time, such as Jonathan Bryce and Jeff Baker, who previously appeared in The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard. Pirates of the Caribbean featured Catherine Flye, who was previously in the cast of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind alongside Baker and Bryce, and also had Ralph Cosham, who would (along with the aforementioned three) also be cast in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and its expansions.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean also features music composed by Chip Ellinghaus and Grant Slawson, the same duo responsible for composing Bethesda's previous pirate-themed game The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard.
• Refitted for Sequel: Sea Dogs II was originally supposed to focus on the children of Nicolas Sharp from the original game before the game was changed to Pirates of the Caribbean. Caribbean Tales reuses the original concept.
• What Could Have Been: A PS2 port of Pirates of the Caribbean ended up being cancelled.
  • As shown in this early trailer for Sea Dogs II, the protagonist was originally named Blaze Devlin before being changed to Nathaniel Hawk when the game was renamed Pirates of the Caribbean. His original first name would be recycled for one of the two playable characters in Caribbean Tales.
  • Danielle Greene was originally going to be a main playable character in Pirates of the Caribbean, alongside Nathaniel Hawk.
  • When Sea Dogs II became Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney planned to change the playable protagonist to Captain Jack Sparrow from the films. However, they snagged the game too late in development to make such a drastic change. An official 3D model of Jack Sparrow remains unused in the data files of some updated Russian versions of the game.
  • Another Sea Dogs installment, a hack-and-slash action game titled Age of Pirates: Captain Blood and then simply Captain Blood was initially scheduled to be released in 2006 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox. Then the Xbox port was cancelled since the Xbox 360 was receiving more attention from developers. While the PC version was eventually leaked online and can be downloaded from various shady torrent websites, neither console port would see the light of day.