Let me be clear, because I don’t even think I can wait until after an intro paragraph to make this point: Despite what you may think, the comparison in my title and this piece is not meant to be an insult.
You may not remember it at this point, but even when No Man’s Sky was at its worst, a very much incomplete game with all sorts of issues, I was one of its most public defenders. As simplistic and shallow as it was, there was something about it I found soothing and relaxing, and I think it’s been cool to see how the game has evolved in time, and how a niche community has formed around it, doing neat things like cataloging the galaxy, its planets and plant and animal life.
And yet, I really do think that Sea of Thieves seems like the closest equivalent to No Man’s Sky, based on how I think it will be received at launch, and how it will exist going forward.
Sea of Thieves will be able to avoid No Man’s Sky’s biggest issue, the fact that it felt like the game’s creator and studio overpromised, borderline lied, about the features and functionality of the game. I don’t think Rare has really overpromised anything about Sea of Thieves, though I do think it will run into similar issues to NMS at launch.
Everyone has been saying that there’s going to be a lot more to the game than what we’ve seen in the betas so far, but honestly, with open betas taking place with just a week to go until launch, we are very much seeing a lot of the game, and I don’t think there are multiple layers of complexity that are going to be sprung on us at launch.
As such, I do think that a certain portion of players will find the game shallow. A whole ocean to explore, but pretty rudimentary systems to explore it with, quests for chests and treasure that yield at best, incredibly minor upgrades and cosmetics. A feedback loop reminiscent of No Man’s Sky “mine materials so you can hold more materials and mine materials faster,” though possibly even less coherent than that. The Sea of Thieves quests are more interesting (NMS didn’t even have them until later updates), but I do worry about the feedback loop turning many players off after a few hours, like it did for me.
And yet, I do think there’s going to be a subset of players that really, really love this game. I’ve already seen them, the ones who love streaming it, or playing with friends and doing all sorts of wacky PvP hijinks. The kind who will comment on this article without reading it and say I’m bashing Microsoft again. But they are the community that can make Sea of Thieves a hit for Xbox. Not a sky-high, platinum sales hit, but a solid title that’s enjoyable, and worth investing time into.
I also believe in Rare’s ability to support this game after launch. There’s a lot of talk about games as service as a way to sell microtransactions, but it’s also used to simply make the game better. After No Man’s Sky’s initial missteps, Hello Games did the work to make sure that the game was twice as good as it was at launch, with free DLC and updates that totally transformed the game. While Sea of Thieves may not find itself in the same depth of hole at the start, I do think that Rare is really going to commit to this game, and the Sea of Thieves we see in a week will probably be half the game it is a year from now after more features and content are added. For better or worse, that’s just how games like these usually work these days.
I do think Sea of Thieves is going to be divisive. Possibly one of the most divisive titles of the year, given how out of the box its concept is, and that’s it’s a precious Xbox exclusive in an era when Microsoft desperately needs those to be hits, and Sony fans often root for them to fail.
Sea of Thieves will be helped by streamers, and a release window where it’s competing against Far Cry 5, the ongoing Fortnite monster, and not much else, so that should benefit it. Personally, I haven’t managed to find my groove with this game yet across a few betas, so I’m not thinking I’m going to be one of its biggest defenders at launch, but again, perhaps the full retail version will be transformative. But with a week to go, I think we’ve seen the gist of it, and it’s going to produce a pretty controversial title.
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