Until now, Sea of Thieves has been a game about player-driven narratives, concerning the journey quite than the vacation spot. In an emergent open world, what you and your crew stand up to on the excessive seas – whether or not that’s battling a Kraken, taking up Skeleton Forts, or just ferrying livestock throughout the ocean – has shaped the core of the game’s story.
With the game’s upcoming Anniversary Update, nonetheless, that’s about to alter. Stories will nonetheless emerge as you haphazardly sail throughout the seas, however Rare is getting ready to launch a brand new narrative platform. Sea of Thieves design director Mike Chapman and Rare studio head Craig Duncan tells me that “from now on, we’ve got this frame to deliver story-based quests to the world.”
That body is Tall Tales, and the primary story it has to supply is Shores of Gold – a quintessential pirate journey that may see you exploring sunken ships, fixing hidden puzzles, and looking for a legendary island hidden within the fog past the Sea of Thieves.
After spending the previous yr build up the Adventure mode’s emergent world, Rare’s workforce now have sufficient instruments to construct one thing on high of that. “I think now we’ve got that richness in the world, we’re ticking that box by scratching away at the surface,” Chapman says. “It allows you to have that authored narrative, but the entire game’s going to get richer because the world’s been given its dues.”
It’s clear simply from spending time on the planet that the influence of Tall Tales might be felt lengthy after you’ve completed the story. Chapman says that, the place it is smart, new instruments you come throughout in Shores of Gold might be added to the remainder of the world. Traps positioned on a selected island may have an effect on your means to hunt for treasure, whereas Collector’s Chests that can be utilized to carry objects on the planet may merely wash up on the seaside to be found.
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Rare’s clearly gone additional than that, and Chapman and Duncan point out enchanted variations of your present equipment that may work together with the world in new methods, and add that they’ve “got Tales that showcase lanterns that reveal ghosts in the world.” The use of these objects might sound restricted in Shores of Gold, however the pair appear eager to discover them additional – “in the future we could tell a whole set of Tall Tales that are ghost stories.”
The world is begging for that roleplay, it is so immersive
While the brand new narrative is meant to be a part of an ongoing framework, Tall Tales are designed to play out in another way every time you are taking them on, so you’ll be able to replay them whereas ready for the subsequent story. While a couple of key particulars would be the similar each time, Chapman tells me that there are particular inputs which change recurrently. “The magic,” he says, “is in the sense that that authored tale, with all of its multiplicity of options, is set against the stage of a shared world.” The emergent nature of Sea of Thieves implies that each time you play a Tale, a storm might roll in as you’re looking for clues, or monsters might assault as you’re attempting to return to port. Everything’s meant to really feel distinctive to particular person gamers, simply because it does within the emergent world.
At their core, each Tall Tales and Anniversary’s different main addition, dedicated PvP mode Arena, “are just different ways to play that same core experience,” in response to Chapman. But Tall Tales is particularly about indulging the pirate fantasy that the game has all the time promised. “The world is begging for that roleplay – it’s so immersive. Even at launch, when you looked at our world, not only did it look like a Rare game, it looked like a world that you just wanted to get lost in and have adventures. Tall Tales is just indulging that side of it.”
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