In Sea of Thieves, developer Rare's new first-person pirate simulator for Xbox and Windows, you can get drunk.
When you get drunk, playing either of your two musical instruments produces a warbling, out-of-tune melody. Get a whole drunken crew of four together, all playing instruments (which automatically sync to the same song if they're in close proximity), and you can create your very own shitshow orchestra.
Sea of Thieves delivers a gaming experience that is unlike most of the other popular games out there in 2018. There's no slow grind of leveling up. No elaborate skill tree of upgrades to unlock. No involved story mode. Nary a loot box in sight (except for all the buried treasure).
To put this another way: There's no hook. No work to do. The game doesn't pull your invisible strings the way most modern games do, using elaborate systems or shiny baubles to keep you engaged. It relies instead on something much more primitive.
Fun.
Sea of Thieves banks on its ability to provide players with a fun time. Up to four players can connect online and crew a ship of their own, with all the baggage that accompanies such an endeavor. It's a cooperative process that involves splitting duties up around navigation, helm, sails, and lookout.
Moving a full-rigged sailing ship from A to B requires lots of cooperation. The person who's steering can't also be down in the map room or up in the crow's nest; someone else needs to do that, communicating regularly, in order to stay on course.
It's the same with the ship's speed. There are three masts worth of sails to attend to, and it takes effort to raise them or lower them, and to re-angle them to catch more of the wind. It's more than enough to occupy all of one person's time (if not two) during a voyage.
Sea of Thieves' freeform design chucks the idea of a central story out completely, focusing instead of giving players a platform through which they can live out their pirate fantasies. Three different "quest-givers" offer their own, unique opportunities for work, from hunting for undead pirates or buried treasure to gathering livestock for local traders.
Completing jobs does "level up" your standing with one quest-giver or another, but that climb only leads to tougher and more lucrative jobs. The goal of doing all this stuff, obviously (because, pirates), is to amass a giant pile of gold that you can spend on purely cosmetic enhancements for your wardrobe, gear, and ship.
The game's real rewards, however, lie in the moment-to-moment action that drives your own, personal high seas pirate adventure. Crewing up with three friends and setting out on a Sea of Thieves voyage redefines the notion of hanging out. It's not the same as teaming up for, say, a Call of Duty match.
There are lots of quieter moments where everyone knows what they're doing and what the plan is, so they're free to talk and enjoy one another's company. Presumably in a way that reflects each player's own idea of living the pirate's life.
Games like Final Fantasy or Dark Souls are RPGs, the Video Game Genre. But Sea of Thieves is a proper role-playing game. It asks you to think and act like a pirate (in-game only, please). There's a performative aspect to the experience; you don't have to say stuff like "Yarrrr matey!" and "Shiver me timbers!" ... but it's a whole lot more enjoyable when you do.
Rare seemingly has big plans to treat Sea of Thieves as a living platform, something that can continue to grow and encompass new experiences over time. And that's great, make no mistake. The world is beautiful and rich with promise. There's plenty of room to grow.
But there's already a rock-solid foundation here. Sea of Thieves sets out to deliver a particular experience, and it nails that perfectly. That drunken shitshow orchestra you can kick off might seem like chaos, but really, it's the game working exactly as intended.
