Can someone say… franchise?

When Pandemic Legacy Season 1 was released last year, just the fact that it was called Season 1 hinted at the fact that Pandemic was going to turn into a franchise game. At the time, many people, including myself, figured that it’d be the Legacy version of the Pandemic game that would be franchised, rather than the whole Pandemic concept itself. But the release of Pandemic Iberia’s teaser trailer killed that theory and affirmed that it was actually Pandemic itself, that was going to be the franchise.

Speaking of the trailer, here it is:

From the trailer, Pandemic Iberia will drop players into the middle of the Revolutions of 1848, a point in time where the specter of disease threatens the Iberian peninsula. How much of a role the historical context will play within this game is anyone’s guess, but the trailer already shows images of a map, some event cards that reflect the technology during that era, and, of course, Pandemic’s all-too ubiquitous disease cubes.

You can’t discern a whole lot from what’s shown, but you can speculate over small bits of info. Do the cities with the anchor symbol have any in-game effects? Are those areas more susceptible to disease? After all, contaminated waterways are a big source for cholera outbreaks and who knows what diseases sailors carried from the New World or elsewhere? And what about the railroads? What role will they play in this game? There does seem to be a logistics component to the whole thing as well.

With all those uncertainties floating about, the only thing I can say for certain is that I’m curious to see how the historical time period works. The original Pandemic derived its strength from being an immersive game that made you feel like you were part of an international health organization trying to rein in plagues. Pandemic Iberia’s success will hinge upon being able to maintain that sense of urgency while making you feel like you’re in Spain/Portugal, trying to fend off against those infectious diseases.