Sea of Thieves is Rare’s upcoming pirate-themed sandbox adventure game and it is set to release in early 2018. The game will place an emphasis on a player’s story and how players co-operatively make the game’s world come to life. In an article in GamesTM Issue 193 (via WCCFTECH) , Rare’s Executive Producer Joe Neate talked about how Dean Hall’s DayZ mod for ARMA 2 was a huge inspiration for him and how he looked at games.
He states, “I only ever played DayZ once, but that was enough. About five years ago I started playing DayZ after reading about it. I remember reading all of these stories and going ‘I need to play this game’; because these players had been given this world, this freedom, and they decided to do whatever felt right for them.” He then talks about his very unique and player-created moment that he gets to experience in the game. He goes on to state that this was a “massive inspiration for what Sea of Thieves would eventually become.”
Neate is also a fan of EVE Online and its approach to the sandbox genre which grants complete freedom to players and allows players to create their own legends and stories in the game’s world. Design Director Matt Chapman also spoke of the team’s work with the Kinect and how it had helped them in the creation of Sea of Thieves to make the game itself intuitive and believable.
Rare certainly seem to have a variety of inspirations and experiences that have gone into their new game and hopefully we’ll get to experience this for ourselves soon enough.