Digging for information not treasure – Rare reveal what you really do in Sea of Thieves

“We kind of treat it like a shared-world adventure,” Timmins tells me. “Being out at sea with a crew, collecting treasure, encountering other players, that’s where the magic happens.” 

Playing the sport will contain crusing from island to island, exploring each land and sea, in search of treasure like all good pirates ought to. That should imply loot, then?

“Yes, it’s very much loot-driven. You definitely want to get the gold,” Timmins says. You’ll spend that gold on participant customisation components – “clothing, weapons, things like that” – which can be added to the sport quickly. “Over time, we’ll grow that into ships, figureheads, ship liveries… We just want you to be the pirate you want to be.”

Treasure maps, proven throughout this 12 months’s E3 briefing, are one technique of discovering treasure chests. Riddles are one other. Here, Timmins gestures to the ‘pirate wheel of emotions’ – a key design help – explaining Rare’s goal to evoke feelings throughout its full vary. Maps and riddles problem you to both observe environmental hints or suppose logically to seek out treasure, whereas combating PvE enemies like reanimated skeletons – or sharks, should you’re exploring a shipwreck – gives the type of rush you possibly can solely get from good old school swashbuckling. 

A dose of stress comes out of your incapability to struggle whereas carrying treasure chests. In these moments, you’ll must depend on your crewmates to guard you as you frantically haul your booty again to the ship. When you lastly make it – a second of reduction – you then have to think about the place to retailer your treasure: some chests have particular results, which means their location issues. “There’s chests that make you drunk, and ones that sink the ship – there’s one that cries, so you’re constantly having to bail [its tears] out of the ship.” That, and the pure pleasure of capturing your self out of a cannon (“certainly the funniest thing I’ve worked on,” Timmins laughs), ensures there’s no danger of the sport taking itself too significantly. 

Rivalry

Of course, should you come throughout a rival crew, they’re going to wish to steal your loot, so it’s greatest to not retailer it anyplace too apparent. 

You’ll run throughout different gamers seamlessly on this planet. You may not see them right away, however you would possibly hear them, due to a proximity chat function meaning close by gamers’ nattering can be audible. It’ll then be as much as you to determine whether or not to befriend or assault them. 

“You think ‘Do we fight? Do we run? Is that actually someone I’ve heard about?’” Timmins says. “In real life you have the Blackbeards, but in Sea of Thieves, those legends will be our players.” 

Out at sea, you would possibly recognise a figurehead, and know that ship means bother. Alternatively, you may type an alliance and tackle a PvE problem collectively.

“That freeform kind of gameplay comes from the player,” Timmins continues. “We’ve found that, at every play session we have on the show floor, everyone is walking away with different stories.” 

Over to you

Stories are central to Sea of Thieves, I’m studying – although the world “has got lore behind it,” most of its tales can be created by gamers’ actions. And, as the sport is in alpha now, these tales are already being written. “I could bore you with the amount of stories we’ve got from over the past year,” Timmins says. We’ll solely get the main points when Microsoft take the NDA off the alpha, however Timmins shares the broad strokes.

“We’re actually immortalising players, which is hilarious – the person who drunk the most grog has a plaque in the tavern,” he says. “It’s virtually as if the Blackbeards of previous have gotten actual Blackbeards, however in our recreation. The first individual to die in Sea of Thieves has their title carved into the ghost ship, which is the place you go if you die.

“When individuals speak about Destiny or Overwatch, they speak with their associates like ‘Ah, do you remember that time when…’ and it goes all the best way again to Halo. I keep in mind Goldeneye, and you understand, these video games had no story, however we got here out of it with tales, and I feel that’s a really highly effective factor to have.” 

How far might this go? Timmins is cautious to not overpromise so early in Sea of Thieves’ improvement, however the least we are able to anticipate are stay occasions of the sort we see in Destiny or Elite: Dangerous – the primary, involving a hunt for a brand new sort of treasure chest, was really operating at E3.

Is this ocean large enough for the 2 of us?

A pirate fantasy is a tantalising setting for tales like this. One of the explanations Sea of Thieves caught everybody’s eye is that few different video games have delivered that fantasy. There’s Black Flag – which in all probability helped to catalyse Sea of Thieves – however after that I’m struggling to call triple-A entries on this style from the final ten years. 

“We’ve talked about this a lot in the studio,” Timmins says. “I genuinely don’t know why it’s not been done before, but I’m sure we’ll start to see more of it now – or maybe variants of it.”

His prophecy comes true the day after we communicate, with Ubisoft’s announcement of Skull and Bones. They used virtually precisely the identical phrases as Rare to explain it, too: “the ultimate pirate fantasy.” I caught up with Timmins later within the week to get his ideas.

“I genuinely still haven’t seen the trailer,” Timmins says, “But from what I’ve heard, it sounds like it’s a very different perspective on [the pirate fantasy]. I think that’s nice. There’s a choice for players; which is the pirate game they always wanted? We’ve gone for The Goonies, Pirates of the Caribbean, maybe a bit of Wind Waker in there as well. It’s firing yourself out of cannons, it’s playing musical instruments, and tonally it’s very fun. We had some people playing yesterday, and they had tears coming down their cheeks – they were just in hysterics. We’re the quaint little British developer in the middle of the countryside, and this is what we see pirates being.”

A pirate story to final for years

Rare can be delivering on this fantasy for a while to return. Their plan is for Sea of Thieves to “last for years,” with fixed enhancements formed by the group. That type of declare is turning into increasingly widespread, however Timmins backs it up by mentioning tweaks to skeleton issue and the encounter price for different gamers’ ships among the many many modifications made by participant suggestions. “We’re now on our 95th game update, and we have the record for the most updates on any Xbox game ever. And this is a game that’s not even out yet.”

He nods at some paintings on the wall behind me – a dramatic image of a pirate ship in a storm-tossed sea. “When we came here last, year, this was still our logo,” he says. “We didn’t have ship liveries, we didn’t have figureheads, we didn’t have storms, seagulls, shipwrecks, sharks, guns, swords, or gold. This year, we’ve delivered all of those things, but there’s still things we haven’t delivered. What I love about that image is it’s an aspiration for where Sea of Thieves is going to go.”

The picture exhibits a ship enveloped by Kraken tentacles, hinting at some epic future bosses. It’s an thrilling thought, and speaks to Rare’s ambition for the sport. “Sea of Thieves will be at E3 next year showing off some new stuff,” Timmins guarantees, “and it’ll be [there] the year after that. We are in this for the long run.”