Sea of Thieve’s is Microsoft’s next big 1st party title that will be coming out next week on March 20th, 2018. We’re giving you 12 reasons on why you should be truly excited for this game.
Sea of Thieves
is a shared-environment game. Right of the bat every pirate is spawned at a different Island outpost in the same shared world and that’s where the epic pirate journey begins for booty, glory and of course becoming legendary pirate. In most games you get into the main menu, press start and get introduced to a scripted tutorial area and after completing the tutorial section you finally start playing the real game after learning basic mechanics. Instead, Sea of Thieves is a game that leans more toward create-your-own-adventure style of gameplay without any kind of handholding or over-use of HUD elements and most importantly you are completely free to do what you want, how you want and best of all when you want.
In Sea of Thieves, the main gameplay loop revolves around the trading companies that players will come across in the world. At launch there will be three different trading companies that players can interact with to take on voyages and be rewarded with reputation ranks, gold, titles and cosmetic unlocks in return after turning in their treasure chests, animals or skulls to the appropriate trading company. The current three trading companies are the Gold Hoarders, the Merchant Alliance, and The Order of Souls.
The Gold Hoarders focus on you finding treasures for them across different islands and solve riddles that will lead you to more treasure, these riddles also get more complicated as you rank up with the Gold Hoarders. The Merchant Alliance will have you agree to a contract to capture specific types of animals and resources, such as chickens, pigs, gunpowder and so on that are scattered across the many islands of Sea of Thieves. You will be using animal cages to capture and deliver these animals to Islands Outposts by a certain time and date in the game. The Order of Souls act more like bounty hunters that will task you with kill specific captain skeletons with a given location in the world. Once you have found your bounty and slain it you will collect their skulls and return them to The Order of Souls for a reward. It has also been officially confirmed by Rare that there will be more trading companies coming in future major updates and DLC for Sea of Thieves, post-launch.
The end game of Sea of Thieves is all about becoming a pirate legend. You do that by ranking up with the three different trading companies previously mentioned and obtaining cosmetic items that make you look more badass than any other pirate in the world and that’s how you show your status. You get these cosmetic items by talking to the merchants at the Island Outposts, and you unlock some of the items for purchase by getting up higher in ranks with the appropriate trading company. Each trading company has a specific set of cosmetic items of their own that look unique and different from one another. So far there are four merchants in the game, one that sells you weapons, another one for clothing items and accessories, another sells equipment items such as shovels, buckets and musical instruments and a fourth merchant that sells you cosmetic accessories for your ship. Eventually, you will also gain access to your own pirate hideout with spooky ghostly pirates where you can dock your ship and take on legendary voyages that are vastly different from the regular voyages that you get from the trading companies.
Sea of Thieves
is not just a game filled with ships, water, and islands. It’s a game that’s full of personality, cutesy funny characters and awesome character designs that Rare is known for making. Speaking of character designs, Sea of Thieves boasts something called IPG which stands for an Infinite Pirate Generator that generates 8 different-looking pirates for you at the press of a button. This is Rare’s answer to their character creator system, Sea of Thieves does not have a full-on custom character creation system that gamers have been accustomed used to in MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or first-person shooters like Halo or Call of Duty.
Capturing animals for the Merchant, hunting for treasure for the Gold Hoarders and collecting skeleton skulls for The Order of Souls is not the only thing to do in Sea of Thieves. During your sea adventures, sometimes you will see a dark, scary-looking skull cloud in the sky with glowing green eyes that indicate that a fort has been taken over by skeletons. Every single pirate in the world of Sea of Thieves can see this skull cloud and decide if they want to venture into that fort and slay the ten waves of skeletons, including the skeleton captain at the end. Once the skeleton captain has been slain, he will drop a key that opens a secret vault that contains precious treasure. The cool thing is that this is where the majority of PvP content will happen in Sea of Thieves. Normally, players will start an alliance with other pirates to destroy the skeletons, but once the vault door opens all hell will break loose, shots will be fired, and everyone will be fighting to get the treasure to keep it for themselves and sail away into safety as fast as possible.
There is no real difficulty setting or actual stat changes in the game. Instead, the game allows you to play with up to a total of four players in a single crew using a big ship, called Galleon. Galleons are currently the biggest ships in the game. Each has eight cannons and three primary deck levels. However, it is very slow compared to the game’s small ship, which is called a Sloop. The Sloop is a much smaller ship with far less space, deck levels, and firepower, but it’s a lot faster (and way easier) to set sail as a solo player or a duo. Playing solo is a huge challenge in Sea of Thieves because you have to do everything on your own, but it can be extremely rewarding if you’re a pro legendary pirate and know what you’re doing. Stay tuned to our solo guide so you can become the best pirate in Sea of Thieves when the game launches next week.
With how popular games are as a service, Rare has already confirmed that there will be future content for Sea of Thieves, and that this content will be launched within three months of the game’s release. There will be minor patches that fix bugs and tweak gameplay balancing and so on. And of course, major updates that bring new content such as new trading companies, trading posts, and merchants that will keep players busy. Rare will also be introducing micro-transactions, including cosmetic companion pets, like monkeys or parrots, that you can take with you. Players who do not own the pets can still interact with them and pick them up and drop them next to the side of your ship, even if they haven’t spent a single dime. It will be very interesting to see how Sea of Thieves will survive in the world of current online games, and if it will be able to compete with other titles that are keeping a healthy player base for long periods of time. It’s safe to assume that the first few months of the game will be the deciding factor if the game is successful or not.
The world of Sea of Thieves is not just full of other player pirates and skeletons that roam different islands, and sharks that roam the deep waters, but it’s also filled with dark secrets, uncharted treasures, secret islands, and shipwrecks that are not displayed on the world map. And of course, most importantly, yes there is a Kraken in the game, but when and how it appears is a dark tale for another day.
Sea of Thieves
uses Epic’s well-optimized Unreal Engine 4, and the game runs at a beautiful 4K native resolution on the Xbox One X and a rock solid 30 FPS. Native 4K means that there is no dynamic scaling or any kind of checker-board rendering tricks. This is a pure 4K native title, similar to Forza Motorsport 7 and Forza Horizon 3 with it’s latest 4K update.
The Sea of Thieves graphical settings on the Xbox One X are exactly the same as the PC’s ultra settings, which are classified as “Mythical” in the game’s options, so you’re not losing out on any bells or whistles that the PC version on your Xbox One X, with the exception of the other 30 frames if you have an absolute beast of a rig to run that.
Did you know that Sea of Thieves is a Play-Anywhere title? What’s a Play-Anywhere title you ask? A Play-Anywhere titles mean that if you buy it digitally for Xbox One or PC, you will be able to play it on both platforms for the price of one – meaning that you’ve basically spent $60 for 2 copies of the game. If you don’t have access to your PC, fear not, the Xbox One has got you covered as well or vice versa.
Sea of Thieves
is also a Cross-Platform title, which means that you can play with players on Xbox Live across both platforms at the same time. Let’s say your friend owns a hardcore gaming rig and you’re a poor console peasant. Well, fear not poor console peasants, because now you may still be poor, but at least you can join in on the frantic sea battles and booty hunting with your very spoiled and very rich friends in Sea of Thieves on a Windows 10 PC.
Sea of Thieves
is being developed by Rare Studios, the developer responsible for many popular titles in the past, such as Donkey Kong Country, Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Viva Pinata and most recently (and unfortunately) the failed Kinect, due to pressure from Microsoft. Microsoft bought Rare on September 24, 2002, for $375 million. This is when a new dark age for Rare began.
Some would argue it was the worst age for Rare because Microsoft was forcing them to do things that they normally would not do, such as creating motion-controlled games for the Xbox 360’s Kinect. The Kinect titles were not very successful, fans were disappointed by Microsoft and Rare for basically ruining the company’s image and not letting Rare have their creative freedom like they did with Nintendo. Sea of Thieves is Rare’s first new IP after almost a decade of Kinect torture, and we’re hoping that Sea of Thieves will be a triumphant return for Rare.
And those are the 12 reasons on why you should be super excited for Sea of Thieves. Stay tuned to Gaming Instincts for our Sea of Thieves Reviews. So why are you excited about Sea of Thieves? Let us know in the comments below, see you soon guys!
Includes several titles.
Which was showcased at E3 2003.