Sea of Thieves
AN OCEAN OF SALTY GAMING TEARS.
WE’VE BEEN RUNNING up and down two flights of creaky stairs on this galley for the last 10 minutes. There’s a storm raging overhead and if somebody doesn’t drain the hold, one small bucket at a time, she’ll sink. Voice chat crackles: our mate is repeating something about “looking for three skulls facing east”, while another scans the horizon for sails from the crow’s nest. “Argh, I’ve just been struck by lightning!” he squawks a few seconds later. But we no longer care, as we continue to heave into our dizzying, soul-destroying bucketwork. We don’t know if we’re having fun.
Sea of Thieves is an open-world sharedadventure game from Microsoft Studios. Players — from both PC and Xbox One — assume the role of pirates in an online, flooded world in search of treasure, fame and a new pair of pants. There are three main factions players can run ‘voyages’ for — variations of the staple RPG fetch-quest. You’re given a ship — a small sloop for one or two players, or a large galleon for three or more — a compass and a heading. Navigating around the sea is fun the first few times you do it. Each ship features a map room where you plot course and get a compass direction. Navigating involves raising the anchor, checking wind direction and lowering/angling the sails. When the cartoon-piracy gets dangerous, ships come furnished with hefty cannons and players are equipped with a cutlass and hand-cannon. Combat is a simplistic hackand-slash affair, and any real fun is heavily reliant on the unpredictable nature of random encounters with other players. A simple voyage can take from 10 mins to more than an hour. Ideally, rewards should reflect that effort — but sadly, they don’t. Pirating earns you gold, which you can use to buy cosmetic appearances for your gear, but there’s no meaningful progression. The economy — and the will to continue playing — comes under scrutiny when it takes three gaming sessions to earn some fancier pants. There needs to be a more compelling reason to leave the pub you spawn into.