The crew are below deck when the battle starts. Unbeknown to them, another galleon has drawn up alongside and is now pummelling their ship with cannon fire. They know they should race up and into their battle positions, they know this is the only way to defend their craft. But there’s a problem. They’re all drunk. And besides, this accordion rendition of Ride of the Valkyries isn’t going to finish itself.
Welcome to Sea of Thieves, a multiplayer pirate yarn that lead designer Mike Chapman brilliantly describes as a “shared world adventure game” ... or SWAG. Players take to their ships, form crews with their friends, and then head out onto the vast open ocean, searching for treasure-stuffed islands. There will be sea monsters to face, and a variety of journey quests to discover, some quick, some epic in scope. But there is no over-arching narrative; just a world to ransack.
It is also an inhabited world. The action takes place in shared servers so your crew will, once in a while, spot a ship occupied by other gamers. As in emergent open-world titles like DayZ, you’ll then need to make a decision: are they likely to be friendly? Is there a chance you could co-operate on an adventure, or do they look aggressive? All the ships in the game are highly customisable, both in terms of looks (interchangeable flags and figureheads) and abilities, with upgradeable cannons, hull style and sail size. So if one of your crew looks through a telescope and sees that the other craft is flying the Jolly Rodger and has a skeleton painted on its main sail, you know that someone should be ready to operate the guns.
In a sense then, Sea of Thieves is an online RPG combining elements of DayZ-style survival games with shooters such as The Division and Destiny. There are quests, there is progression and customisation, there will probably be larger raids; there is a commitment to support the game with subsequent DLC, though the financial model has not been explained.
The beauty and individuality of the game, however, is in the crew dynamics. While other online multiplayer games, especially shooters, provide the structure for team-based play, most players ignore their teammates in favour of improving their own kill/death ratios and gathering personal XP. In Sea of Thieves, the system is completely different, and completely geared toward co-operation. In order to move the boat, you need someone on the wheel, someone operating the sails, someone navigating – everyone gets a job, and they’re all essential. It’s a truly team-based experience.
According to Chapman, the idea came out of Rare’s highly iterative approach to game design. Ever since the studio’s beginnings in the mid-80s, founders Chris and Tim Stamper encouraged an experimental working practice in which prototypes were developed and toyed with, just to see what happened. The result was highly individual and innovative titles like Banjo Kazooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day, games that explored, but ultimately transcended, familiar genres.
“Rare prototypes a lot of stuff,” says Chapman. “Very early on with Sea of Thieves, we knew we’d developed a great sandbox, and from there we wanted something very intuitive, something with these emergent narratives. We wanted to make a Rare version of a pirate fantasy. We were also trying to make the most immersive co-operative game ever devised ...”
To many veterans of the glorious N64 era, the return of Rare as an explorative developer of luscious, offbeat adventures will be greeted with utter delight. For the last 10 years, the studio has been subsumed into Microsoft’s Kinect business, helping with the baseline technology and creating the Kinect Sports titles. But the motion-control technology has never been widely accepted, and when the Rare Replay compilation arrived in 2015, it reminded a lot of players about the company’s incredibly rich heritage. The few seconds of Sea of Thieves shown at E3 last year provided a tantilising promise that the Rare of Donkey Kong Country, Conker and Viva Pinata was back.
And it’s back in the truest sense. With its colourful, almost cartoonish visuals (devised by Viva Pinata art director Ryan Stevenson), Sea of Thieves looks like a somewhat traditional family-friendly adventure. But it isn’t. Like DayZ, like The Long Dark, like Rust, it’s more of a seamless, emergent survival experience, in which personal narratives are formed on the fly. “Our vision is of players creating these moments, these stories together,” says Chapman. “Your crew is your band. It’s almost like you against the world.”
An important part of this seems to be providing players with a lot of silly tools, just to experiment and have fun. Each ship is equipped with musical instruments, so any crew member can pick up an accordion or hurdy-gurdy and start playing a tune (via a simple interface – you don’t actually have to master the accordion). Each crew members starts out knowing only a handful of songs, but as you explore, you’ll unlock others to add to your repertoire. Brilliantly, if one crew member knows a particular song, others can pick up an instrument and join in, providing accompaniment. If you go on deck and play a song while another ship is nearby, that crew will be able to hear it.
Although there are a couple of familiar tunes (the trailer features a new take on Drunken Sailor), most of the songs are written by veteran Rare composer Robin Beanland. “We really wanted a wide range to accompany different emotions,” says producer Joe Neate. “If you’re feeling scared or entering a forbidding part of the world, then maybe you want to play an eerie, haunting shanty. Alternatively, maybe you want to play a upbeat, fun one to counter the game tone.”
Ostensibly, there’s no gameplay benefit to playing songs, just like there’s no benefit to going below deck and getting drunk on grog (which renders your character clumsy and uncontrollable for a short space of time). Partly it’s about building a sense of camaraderie within the crew, a necessary component in such an intensely co-operative design. But what Rare also wants to do is provide almost a theatrical imaginative space, somewhere players can have fun, improvise and make believe together. In this sense, there is perhaps more in common with creative titles such as Minecraft, where the impetus is on player activity rather than player progression. It’s fascinating and it’s brave, and these are incredibly welcome attributes in this era of identikit open-world adventures.
But of course, there will also be combat. When ships meet and cannons fire, there is genuine tension as players shout orders and scuttle about the craft, attempting to sail into the best position to fire on an opponent. If your ship is hit, it’s also possible to send a crew member down to board up holes in a damaged hull or even start sloshing out water with a bucket. Rare hasn’t completely finalised what happens if or when you sink, but the studio has said there’s no DayZ-style permadeath – you won’t forfeit everything. It’s likely sunken players will lose, say, their last haul of treasure before their galleon respawns somewhere safe on the map.
One question that emerged from E3 was whether players would be able to take part alone. Rare has said that it is currently prototyping smaller one or two person craft and has plans to allow a single-player approach to the game – its emphasis, though, is very much on the shared experience. Rare has also confirmed that there will be ports and taverns to visit, but hasn’t yet expanded on how this will work (although apparently there will be very few NPCs, mostly shop keepers and bar staff – everyone else you meet in the world is an actual human). One thing is certain, with its visual comedy and array of lighthearted player interactions, it’s going to be very big on YouTube.
At a packed Xbox showcase event, on the Monday night before E3, Sea of Thieves was the game people were clambering to play, it was the game people were talking about, it was the game that had us sharing stories and experiences. That seems to be exactly what Rare is going for and what, really, the Midlands-based developer has always excelled at. Player stories, player imagination. There has been room in every great Rare title for the individual to exert their character and curiosity into the experience.
This also feels like a regenerative project for Rare, a labour of love. Chapman is so incredibly enthusiastic about game, the ideas it contains and the prospect of people getting their hands on it. At one point during the demo on that Monday night, he stands watching as a group of new players awkwardly sail their ship out into the open water for the first time. It is night and the sea shimmers under the blueish moonlight. “If you look up there,” he says, “you can see the North Star. It’s actually in the right place. You can really navigate by it.”
It’s a little touch, something many players will never notice, but it’s there and it adds something to the world. This is how Rare makes video games.
Sea of Thieves is released on Xbox One and PC in 2017
