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Size matters on the Sea of Thieves, but when you're up to your berringed earlobes in pirate gold, cunning is king. Earlier this week myself and three other buccaneers spent an hour chasing a single, wily captain in the game's closed beta. Our target led us a merry dance, steering his nimble sloop in amongst the looming rock spires by the aptly named Shipwreck Bay, but eventually he made a break for the open sea, and with the wind behind us and our galleon's sails at full spread, we quickly closed the distance.I remember standing on our bowsprit - the long bit that sticks out of the front of the ship, yes, I did just Google it, what am I, Francis Drake? - training my musket scope on the sloop's cabin and spying no less than five chests, brimming with the accursed wealth of the seven seas. Delicious plunder! I checked my ammunition, readying myself to leap across the gap, and our galleon promptly blew up. The other captain had dropped into the waves as we drew alongside, boarded us unnoticed and detonated a barrel of gunpowder in our hold. As he told me subsequently aboard the Ferry of the Damned, the game's eldritch respawn lobby, "I was waiting for just the right moment."
Taking other people's stuff, and to hell with any hand-wringing about "fair play": this, for me, is the real heart of Rare's lovely new game, the place where its gorgeous ocean sandbox, sunny 90s platformer ambience and persistent online elements come into focus. It's been interesting to follow the discussion around Sea of Thieves since the beta went live, a discussion that has shifted from scorn over the initial netcode wobbles to giddy tales of ramming actions and corrosive, blood-red tides on the edge of the map.
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