This weekend, the Gamespot ExtraLife stream closed out on a game of Sid Meier's Pirates! Reminded of how much I loved that game, I began replaying it for the 5th time in a decade. It's one of my favorite games of all time, up with the likes of Deus Ex and Chrono Trigger, which ain't bad for a game that consists solely of minigames. But that description sells it short. The key is it combines simple minigames with an extremely malleable open world that is easy to influence and change.

Pirates! is set in the 17th-century Carribean, when the colonies of the great European empires were duking it out and privateering flourished. Note I said privateering instead of piracy; instead of being a lone wolf, the game encourages you to work for 1 (or more) of the 4 empires against their enemies. Each empire has several ports in the region, which are where you repair your ship, hire more crew, sell your stolen goods, and woo the governor's daughter. Each of these ports has 2 traits, Wealth and Defense, graded on a scale of 1 to 4. Wealth determines what goods and prices each port has, while Defense determines how hard it is to raid a town. Each port can also switch hands to a different empire if you raid it while its Defense is weak enough. You have a vested interest in ensuring your patron's ports are strong and your enemies' ports are weak. The tools the game gives you to influence this include:

• Escorting ships carrying soldiers or immigrants.
• Destroying ships carrying soldiers or immigrants.
• Convincing a group of immigrants to settle in a certain port.
• Escorting a new governor to a port.
• Convincing pirates or natives to raid a port.
• Destroying a raid before it reaches a port.
• Destroying an invasion ship before it reaches a port.
• Attacking the port yourself.

These also happen without your interference, and you'll pass by such ships regularly in your travels. This is how most players are introduced to the system: you pass by a pirate ship heading to St. Kitts to raid, or a sloop carrying a new governor to Guadalupe. At first it seems like a nice bit of flavor, until you actually see one of them dock at their destination. The pirate raid drops a port's Defense or Wealth, while the governor increases a port's Wealth, and since each port's Wealth & Defense are visible on the play area, you notice they changed. You've just learned the special ships actually factor into the mechanics, and it's relevant whether or not the special ships reach their destination. Now you're purposely taking out certain ships and defending others. Then you realize you can dock at native villages or pirate havens and convince them to raid specific ports to soften them up for your own attack, or escort a ship carrying a declaration of war to make two nations start fighting. Soon you're inciting wars to get rewarded for conquering a port after softening it up with native raids. All of this gives the open world a malleability you rarely see in games like GTA or AC; the only AAA game I recall that even came close to it is Shadow of Mordor.

None of it's mandatory, or even alluded to. You can play an entire game without utilizing it, but learning how to use it gives you new tools, new goals, and lets you (try to) mold the Caribbean as you see fit using just a few symbols and mechanics, whether it's making a prosperous, heavily-guarded home port, establishing a friendly port in the midst of Spanish waters, or conquering the entire region for your empire.