Unlike certain mouse-loving film companies, developer Octane Games knows that pirates were assholes.

In a hands-off demo of an early build of the studio's historically-accurate swashbuckler Raven's Cry at PAX East this weekend, Writer/Producer Adam Kennedy and publisher TopWare’s PR & Community Director Jake DiGennaro demonstrated the moral choices players will see when the game comes out this fall, very few of which fall into the tired "save the puppy/eat the puppy" dichotomy.

According to DiGennaro, Raven's Cry has neither a visible nor hidden moral scale to reduce outcomes to a number or ticks on a bar; the developers are more focused on encouraging players to rely on instinct to do what they feel is right in a particular situation regardless of concerns like unlocking a good or evil ending.

It's a good thing, too, because none of the choices I saw during the demo were particularly nice.

In one interrogation sequence, anti-hero protagonist Christopher Raven entered a shady bar and approached a guy for information. Two choices came up: Knife and Pistol. Kennedy chose Knife, and Raven produced a blade and slammed it through the informant's hand, nailing it to the table. I learned later that the Pistol option prompts Raven to threaten to shoot his target’s balls off unless he gives up the name Raven wants; I suppose that’s the nicer of the two, but not by much.

"It's more like 'bad cop, worse cop,'" Kennedy offered.

When it came time to end the conversation, two more options arose: Door and Lantern. The Lantern option meant just what I’d expect: Raven throws a lantern at the snitch and leaves him burning and screaming on the floor.

“Does Door mean you just leave?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kennedy said. “It’s the more boring option.”

"Does he leave the knife in?"

"Yes."

DiGennaro assured me that not all the choices will be between badass and super-badass; players will also be able to perform genuinely good deeds. Octane is not trying to make Christopher Raven into an irredeemable ass-kicking machine like God of War’s Kratos, nor are they limiting themselves to the black-and-white choices of games like Knights of the Old Republic or Infamous. They want the world of Raven’s Cry to be gray, and they want gamers to follow their instincts instead of rigid story branches stretching inexorably to Ending A or B.

It’s an ambitious goal, and if they can pull it off, this will be a game to look out for when it comes out this fall on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.