Sea of Thieves is a multiplayer open world game where you gather players to create a crew and go on adventures. This game has been on the gaming radar for two years and has a projected release of early 2018. Microsoft revealed new gameplay details during a lengthy video demo during their E3 2017 press event.
Developer: Rare
System: Xbox One, Windows 10
Release Date: Early 2018
The beginning of the video explains the world and hints at some of the adventures to be has over the sea, on land, or even underground. The most interesting feature that Rare showed off during the demo was the map system. Players have to use thematically appropriate treasure maps to find their adventures.
The gameplay shown in the demo shows a wide range of what one might encounter in the game. One of the first things that was shown were the skeleton enemies that can rise out of the ground to attack. These creatures explode when they are shot by your pistol. The demo showed a quest where players need to retrieve a chest and bring it back to their ship. The person holding the chest can’t fight without putting the chest down. This makes teamwork mandatory. Players need to protect their friends’ backs.
Combat isn’t all skeletons though. You can also fight other players in naval battles! This looks like one of the primary sources of player vs player action. We don’t know exactly how it will work yet, but it sure looks exciting!
ESRB Rating Concerns
Its worth noting that we don’t know how the game will be rated by the ESRB yet. There was a small spray of blood when pirates were injured. It was no worse that the battles with the characters in Horizon Zero Dawn though. Sea of Thieves is worth monitoring for more information as the release approaches. The fact that the game is an open world multiplayer almost automatically disqualifies it for young gamers. This may be one for older children (tweens and teens) with support from a parent to monitor the content other players may present. It is even possible that an M rating will be assigned (although it looks like that is unlikely based on what we’ve seen). We’ll obviously be providing more information as the game gets closer to release.
