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Sea of Thieves
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Hands-on Preview: Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves, Rare’s shared adventure game, is the No Man’s Sky of E3 2016. It’s tickled our fancy, the idea has scope beyond our wildest imagination and we got to see a glimpse of gameplay footage – but we still don’t know how it will play, or what we’ll actually do.

Stevivor went hands-on with Sea of Thieves at E3, but we’re still none-the-wiser as to how the final game will play. The E3 build was a basic first look. Rare purposely kept the public demonstration light-hearted, hoping to see smiles and laughs as players got “drunk” together and clumsily attempted to sink an opposing vessel; or maybe that was just my incompetent crew.

We had musical instruments to start a shanty and chalices full of beer to get a little bit tipsy, while attempting to coordinate crewing a large ship. As weird as it sounds, I actually asked Rare if there’s any benefit to getting drunk; the response was “to have fun”. You’re not tougher or able to do anything a sober pirate cannot, but it’s a bit of a laugh if everyone is stumbling trying to board a ship, and that’s the point. It’s also why Rare didn’t bother showcasing combat yet; it could have, but wants Sea of Thieves to be associated with its fun, social persona. That doesn’t come across strongly through murder.

Sea of Thieves

As you would expect, a quick session on the E3 showroom floor didn’t go well. The captain, or at least the bloke at the wheel, couldn’t see where he was going because of the massive sails. The rest of us were providing muddled guidance, so naturally we veered directly into the only obstacle for miles, a small rock. Before we had time to correct that debacle, we came under attack from enemy fire. As a shared world, every other pirate you see is a human player. Rare wouldn’t tell us how many players will populate a single world, but said encounters this will be an uncommon occurrence; so don’t expect to see legions of ships coming at you on the horizon.

“It’s not about seeing this world full of ships,” said Rare Studio Head Craig Duncan. “We don’t want ships everywhere. If you go on an island to find treasure, we don’t want hundreds of people around. We’re not a virtual world. We want every time you see a sail on the horizon to be a moment.”

With almost every player scrambling for the cannons much too late, we were a severely malfunctioning unit and succumbed to critical damage that needed to be repaired immediately. Mending holes is as simple as slapping a piece of wood across the damaged area, but it proves difficult when hull is already flooded. In the commotion, a daft pirate fell off the ship and we had to go back to get her, leaving no chance for revenge. If we had followed the classic Top Gear mantra and left her behind, there is no fast travel to regroup – she would have been lost, eaten by sharks probably, and our crew would have been recruiting.

https://youtu.be/K7ueT7WiH1U

“People are going to have different motivations,” Lead Designer Mike Chapman told Stevivor. “Some people are going to look at the beautiful art style and just want to explore, pick a point on the horizon and explore this vast, seamless world. Some players will want to get involved in epic ship fights; some players will want to go on quests with their friends, or quests on their own or with people they’ve met online.

“Be the pirate you want to be; that’s a big thing for us.”

He really reiterated that how you play, and what you do, is completely player driven.

“There will be a range of goals in the game,” he continued, “and we’re not specifically talking about progression. There will be meaningful progression in those areas [ship and character customisation], but they’re not mutually exclusive. When your buddies are online you might ‘go and do this’ and when they’re not, you’ll go do something else. We’re creating this world and are going to hand it over to the players to let them do what they want.”

THE LONELY PIRATE

I pressed him further about what he meant by playing alone. Sea of Thieves is marketed not only as a multiplayer game, but as a “shared” adventure. That sounds great, but I know I won’t play for long if there’s no viable option to shun society.

“Even when you do play by yourself, you’re still going to be in that shared world. You could be standing on your own, look through a telescope and see a ship on the horizon with other players,” said Chapman. “But it’s the same mechanics, the same world, and we’ll create a ship that’s right for a small crew, one or two people; you’re not going to have the friends that have got your back, you’re not going to be able to shoot the cannons while you’ve got the wheel.

“You’re going to have to do a little bit more work, but it’ll make sense in the world. It’s not like we’re limiting players, it just makes sense: I’m a pirate on my own and I’ve got a small ship. Then I look at a big ship and I inherently understand the benefits of that. It’s a big ship, it naturally carries more cannons, more cargo; it can have more people on board. Logically it makes sense in our world.”

Sea of Thieves

“We’re not trying to restrict anything,” chimed in Duncan, while messing around with a ship on an Xbox One S. “Right now I’m taking this [large three mast] ship out on my own. This is a ship ultimately a crew size of 5 or 6 can sail. We understand players will play in different ways. Sometimes you’ll play with people you don’t know – we know playing with friends is awesome – we need to make it feel awesome when you meet new players or you want to do something on your own.

We didn’t see any quests or the smaller ships, but it sounds like single-player enthusiasts needn’t apply for passage. Perhaps you’ll be able to unlock Achievements and explore small islands alone, but until we see more of what quests entail, I’d suggest Sea of Thieves is a game that almost entirely has to be played with friends – playing exclusively with random online dwellers will be a gamble.

DON’T LOSE MY SHIP!

In most open world games vehicles are a dime a dozen. There’s no consequence for blowing up a plane in GTA or a car in Far Cry; just get another one. That doesn’t work in a game like Sea of Thieves, where the premise is dependant upon working together to find treasure and protect your ship.

“I don’t think there are really any parallels,” said Chapman. “I guess there are a lot of sandbox games out there, but in those games the balance of loss is… well there’s not a lot of loss in those games. For us, being part of this pirate world, we don’t want players to suffer so much loss they abandon their adventures, but you still want to conjure that emotion of being on the ship together.

Sea of Thieves

“We’re on the ship together, something’s happened that we didn’t expect, it’s sunk or been destroyed by a kraken, and you’ll feel that loss of the ship because the ship is like home. The crew has bonded together around this ship. We want players to feel that emotion, but we don’t want them to rage quit and never play the game again. So getting that balance of loss right has been one of the creative challenges,” said Chapman.

How you’ll replace a lost ship is yet to be finalised, but you’ll lose more than glory if it sinks amidst an epic treasure hunt.

“If you’ve been out on adventures and you’ve got treasure and your ship sinks that should feel more impactful than if you’ve just gone out on the start of your voyage,” said Duncan. “If you lose your ship in battle on the way to getting treasure, you’ll be less concerned about that.

We’ve probably got the best ship-to-ship combat that’s ever been built, so we want players to sink. If a cannonball goes through the side and water comes in it’s a cool moment, but we want you to accept your ship sunk, and want you to get out on another adventure.”

How that happens is what is yet to be finalised, but there are a few options Rare is considering.

“That might be you have to pay fee, or it might be you’re back at a port, we’ve got a number of options with that. There are a number of ways we can solve that.”

However, there will be no betrayals or mutinies. Rare experimented with the idea in an early build, and larger ships do have a brig and plank if they’re required, but found it was to the detriment of teamwork. Playing together for hours to discover treasure, only for one player to stab everyone in the back really sucked. So the bond of your crew is sacred and cannot be broken. Save the violence for enemy ships.

Sea of Thieves will be released in Q1 2017 for Xbox One and Windows 10.


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About the author

Ben Salter

Ben has been writing about games in a professional capacity since 2008. He even did it full-time for a while, but his mum never really understood what that meant. He's been part of the Stevivor team since 2016. You will find his work across all sections of the site (if you look hard enough). Gamertag / PSN ID: Gryllis.