@fllw3rb0y You need to go back and rewatch that video.
Here is a recap of what he actually said.
What we know:
- The ENTRANCE to the Sea of Thieves is in the real world. This is clear in the intro showing locations
- SOT is a strange place with a ring of fog known as the shroud. The shroud is highly corrosive to ships.
- The stars change the moment people enter. This is acknowledged in the lore within the Athena’s Fortune novel.
The problem:
If the game is set within the Golden Era of Pirating on Earth, why are the stars different and why are there mystical creatures to contend with?
Possible solutions
One: The shroud is a portal to another place (realm, dimension). Falcore dismisses this based on two things. First, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Second, there is a bright star in the north which he identifies as Polaris. He believes this suggests we are still on Earth, but different in some major ways.
Two: He then posits that we may be so far back in time that we are in a different part of the universe which would mean the stars are in different places. But he dismisses this because there are problems with the existence and state of Earth if we go back far enough to scramble the sky like we see in SoT.
Three: Falcore then imagines maybe we all died to arrive in SOT. He believes it would explain why we never stay dead, why the skies are different, and why we encounter the things that we do on our journeys. But he dismisses this because the Pirate Lord and Demarco have been able to travel back and forth between the real world and SoT.
His Recap
We cannot have changed location, we could not have travelled through time, and we are not dead.
His closing thoughts
SoT is a place of legends where we encounter things we would never expect on the other side of the shroud. He suggests it is a place where legends are born. He spends some time on this talking about real legends and their potential origins. He finishes the video by suggesting this may be why the game resonates with many of us.
That's all he covered in the video.
I know he likes to hypothesize about aspects of the game and how it all fits together. I would imagine it was never his intention for his video to be used to shut down discussion on this topic. And I think he was pretty enthusiastic about the Frozen Fangs concept art. He often ends his videos acknowledging that he could be completely wrong.
Let’s return to his reasons for dismissing the first solution; that we entered a portal to another place. 1) a bright sky in the north and 2) the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This is why he believes we are still on Earth. The truth is, neither of those two situations are unique to Earth. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west on Mercury, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. It is believed that they all did at one time but separate events may have knocked Venus and Uranus around. So, 75% of the planets in our solar system currently rotate similarly to Earth. Because of the way stars and planets form, it is likely that more than half of the planets out in the universe have a sun that rises in the east and sets in the west (these terms for direction actually do not really have an objective meaning). It is not a unique enough situation to state with any certainty that you are on Earth when you see this occur. This configuration happens a lot. One aspect about the day in SoT that is not like on Earth is that the Sun travels from precisely due east, passes directly overhead, and sets exactly due west every day. Because the Earth’s plane of rotation is tilted compared to its plane of orbit around the Sun this would not happen on Earth. On Earth we see the Sun shift more north and south as it traverses the sky. So we can’t just point to the general rise and set of the sun in SoT and say it is proof, while ignoring all the other information that does not match.
Next, a bright star in the north is not even the norm on Earth. It is the case right now but the Earth “wobbles” over time (known as precession). 5,000 years ago, Polaris would have been a poor choice compared to other stars for determining which way is north. The star we consider our North Star changes. We usually have one in the north that can guide us. This is possible because there is usually a star that appears stationary in the north sky of most any planet. This is because there are so many stars. In SoT, the star in the north is the brightest star in the night sky. That is not the currently case for our own sky. Polaris (“North Star”) is not even among the top ten visually brightest stars in our night sky (using apparent magnitude). It is currently ranked 49th. This alone would suggest the star in SoT’s northern night sky is not actually Polaris.
He also dismisses the idea that we may be on Earth but in a different time. First, he assumes we would have gone backwards in time. Granted, if you go too far forward, the Sun will grow to engulf Earth before it enters the final sequence of its own life. But just go forward one or two billion years. Also, there is no reason we have to rewind in time to a period before Earth existed. He made two huge assumptions there and I think he knew it as he was putting the video together.
We have to look at the totality of evidence and not just pick the parts that conform to our assumptions. With all that said, I see no reason to assume we remain in the Caribbean once we pass through the shroud. It doesn’t even seem like a stretch to think we are transported elsewhere. Look at how often we get transported in the game. Mermaids transporting us to our ships. Arriving on and leaving the Ferry of the Damned. Visiting the same portal to Athena’s Fortune from several different points on the map. We are actually warping all over the place!
No. The location of SoT has not actually been determined. Only the portal to it has been. I do not necessarily think we are on another planet. I am just questioning the assumption that we are still on Earth. Too many things have changed for that to be true. We are elsewhere once we pass through the shroud, so all bets are off on what regions and climates are possible. The people behind the lore and design of the game have not even adhered to the Caribbean-only mantra that some players have adopted. The Wilds and the Roar look nothing like the Caribbean.
