No island exploration?

[EldritchNexus]

So I noticed while I was playing Caribbean Tales that I wasn't able to leave through the city gates leading further into the island. This happened on two ports on different islands. At first, I thought I was having trouble figuring out the controls or perhaps I hadn't unlocked that feature in the game yet. But since I looked around the internet on various walkthroughs, guides, and the manual but found absolutely nothing to suggest that you could explore the rest of the island, I concluded that there isn't a way to explore the rest of the island.

I wonder why Akella did that? Sea Dogs didn't let you explore the island either, but you could in Pirates of the Caribbean (Sea Dogs II). And since Caribbean Tales is technically the third game in this series, it's strange that they went back to restricting all travel on dry land to just the ports. I liked exploring the island for treasure, taking in the scenery, and also using the other shores as a means of taking shortcuts or sneaking into hostile ports. At least they eventually brought the island exploration back in City of Abandoned Ships and To Each His Own.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I concluded that there isn't a way to explore the rest of the island.

Correct.
I wouldn't know why they did that; but I definitely know that they did.

My suspicion is that development on Sea Dogs II was NOT smooth and it ended up being split into two projects: PotC and AoP:CT.
And neither game ended up living to its intended heights.
It prossibly messed up Akella's structure so much that they never made a whole game with the same group ever since.

It seems to me that after Caribbean Tales, the team members just scattered to the four winds.
"City of Abandoned Ships" was made by the Seaward.Ru modding team, while "To Each His Own" was Blackmark Studios, which started also as another modding group.

Basically that gives CoAS and TEHO a similar status as our "New Horizons": mods that pretty much became new games in their own rights.
With the difference that CoAS and TEHO were built from the CT base, where NH remained based on that original "Sea Dogs II".

I wonder if @Volodymyr might be able to confirm some of these suspicions of mine...

If I recall, there ARE mods for AoP:CT that DO open up land exploration.
For example: Age of Pirates: Historical Immersion Supermod
Or: Mod Release - Dialog Camera, Quests Fix, Larger Text, Time Fix, and Other Patches

Maybe @The Nameless Pirate could confirm? He knows those other games better than I do.
Maybe he also has some idea of how those mods compare?

Also, what is this again?
AoP: Historical Immersion Mod v5.0 (Standalone) for Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales
And how can it be a "standalone"?