Stevivor saw Sea of Thieves at this year’s E3 and said a lot of promising things about Rare’s upcoming pirate simulator — but even then, I didn’t rate the title very highly.
How wrong I was.
After ridiculing E3 coverage and dismissing it as a bunch of streamers yelling, laughing and screaming as their own gameplay screens showed actions of little interest, I now find myself uploading a YouTube video that (sadly doesn’t capture) my in-game yelling, laughing and screaming as my accompanying video shows action like “holding a board” and “drinking from a cup”.
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Gotta love that post-Gamescom drinking voice, eh? Sorry. Seems the capture wanted to flicker a bit to match the quality of my voice too.
At any rate, Sea of Thieves was nothing short of brilliant when I finally got to give it a crack. At least, it sure was with four other Australian journalists who knew each other well enough to crack jokes while attempting to work together to bring down opposing ships. Actions in the Gamescom demo we tried were limited — and a bit mundane — but as we raised and re-positioned sails and patched damage accrued as we went alongside enemy boats, I had a massive smile on my face.
Things often went wrong — not with the game itself, but because of our motley crew of pirates. I drank too much grog, climbed the ship’s Crow’s Nest and then proceeded to fall off immediately afterward. Someone kept lowering our ship’s anchor during combat, basically making us a sitting duck when we needed to be mobile. We were dysfunctional, and our glee came from that very fact.
Without proper access to pirate combat, and a remaining sense of vagueness about content beyond sailing and drinking, I’m still left to wonder if Sea of Thieves will prove to be as fun in its second hour as in the first I’d just experienced. Moreover, I’m extremely worried how it will play with randoms. This could be one you’ll need to lock in a committed crew with before you decide to set sail.
Sea of Thieves will be released in early 2017 on Xbox One and Windows 10.
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