Far too many gigabytes of Rare-made pirate MMO nonetheless litter my laborious drive, reserved for an imagined day when Sea of Thieves‘s beautiful ocean shall be blessed with the vibrancy and selection it deserves. SOT achieved the peculiar duality of burning indelible ocean-faring pictures into my thoughts whereas being completely forgettable moment-to-moment, and the idea that it would blossom into one thing meatier presently feels extra like a fond daydream than a perception.
Newly-revealed full particulars on its first main replace, The Hungering Deep, sadly aren’t doing a lot to make that dream a actuality, however they do at the least supply a couple of hints on what SOT may and may but turn into.
In one respect, The Hungering Deep appears to be like set to double-down on what SOT arguably does on the expense of deeper raisons d’être, which is to supply an enormous sprawl of beauty decisions for its avatars and boats. Tattoos and scars are being added to the customisation menus, which a) is clearly enormously pirate-appropriate however b) the truth that I didn’t even discover their abscene prior to now maybe speaks volumes about their precise significance. Same goes for tweakable flag designs to your ship – was that actually not in there already?
It performs into the concept that SOT is about bombing round on the vast shader-glow sea, doing no matter and searching like no matter, which I’m completely on-board with in idea, however discovered more and more hole in apply. There’s solely so many occasions you possibly can stab equivalent skeletons or kidnap equivalent chickens earlier than the existential disaster hits. I’m undecided extra beauty choices was what SOT most urgently wanted, in different phrases.
On the opposite facet of the coin, I’m 100% delighted by the addition of drums and trumpets, as a crew of ne’er-do-wells gathering on deck to play sea-shanties to cross an extended, in any other case boring journey is absolutely the spotlight of the sport. More devices for that may be a joyful factor certainly, even when it doesn’t deal with the core issues.
Fortunately, there’s one other facet to The Hungering Deep, which is nearer to what SOT most urgently wants: an non-obligatory sense of goal and urgency. I’ll quote straight from the update details right here: “Join this time-limited adventure that leads from the outpost taverns to lonely, forgotten isles, piecing together the tale of Merrick the bard and his brush with hungering horror. Those who can find him and untangle his groggy recollection of events can join the hunt for his nemesis – and reap the rewards!”
Great, however… what we’d like is about 50 comparable quest chains, not only one “time-limited” possibility. I get that SOT needs to be extra like Elite: Dangerous than Pillars of Eternity 2, which is to say freeform participant encounters, battles and teams, versus be narrative-led adventures, however its fundamental infrastructure doesn’t presently present the pliability and selection wanted.
‘Course, I’m judging on particulars quite than first-hand expertise of The Hungering Deep, however its quest stuff presently scans as a bit too ephemeral to me. And bizarrely transitory too: they’ll be closing down the search after some time, although the brand new AI baddies and beauty collectibles added as a part of it can stay within the recreation afterwards.
The Hungering Deep is due on May 29, that being subsequent Tuesday. Ahead of that, this week has already seen a patch that introduces a couple of high quality of life enhancements, corresponding to per-weapon sensitivity choices, colourblindness toggles and simple ditching of undesirable quests. Further down the road are plans for anti-cheat measures and early testing of updates. More particulars on these are on this right here video devlog:
For extra on my conflicted emotions about Rare’s salty sea-dogging, right here’s my Sea of Thieves review.
