- YouTube
Did you know that it was inspired by open world zombie game DayZ?
In an interview with GamesTM in their 193 issue Rare’s Executive Producer Joe Neate talked about how he had been inspired from playing other player-driven games. Not only did he talk about the DayZ mod for Arma 2 but he also referenced how he had been inspired by EVE Online. here’s what he said in the interview:
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.
The stories were so compelling that it just pulled me into the game. I remember encountering a few people who didn’t kill me… But eventually I triggered a bunch of zombies who started to chase me, and I was like ‘oh s**t’. So I run up this church spire, all the way to the top; the zombies got stuck on the stairs because their pathfinding wasn’t very good and, after about an hour or so of being up in this church, I had managed to fight my way back to the bottom. It was such a relief, but then as I came to the door I could see this thing off in the distance…’What is that?’ I thought, but just when I realized that it was a guy lying down with a rifle aiming at me, I heard this click and then it was like ‘You died’ and I was like ‘F*****g hell’. But for me that was enough. I got this amazing, memorable story out of it. I knew that that permadeath might not be right for me, whether I wanted to start all over again and everything else, but it’s a game that has such memorable stories from player encounters – it was a massive inspiration for what Sea of Thieves would eventually become. That type of game has stuck with me ever since I played DayZ, ever since I read about it. I think it is, honestly, the one game that has inspired me the most in my career recently, because of the power of those player-created stories.
I think when you hear Joe talk about that you can see how that experience, that influence has found it’s way into the way Sea of Thieves plays. In the same way that players are dropped into this post apocalyptic world in DayZ, free to create their own stories and experiences as they see fit you are equally doing that in Sea of Thieves. You have the open seas at your disposal, a plethora of quests to dip into if you need some direction but you’re equally free to jump onto the helm of your own ship, sail around and create experiences with other players in a way that isn’t as punishing really as DayZ. It opens up the possibility not only for great experiences but equally for great stories, and especially nowadays players are looking for games that will give that to them more and more. I think the reason a lot of us got into DayZ was because we had heard a story or seen a video of someone who had been kidnapped and held to ransom by some maniac, or had gotten into a really intense firefight standoff. We got the game and played it because we equally wanted to have those experiences, because they were cool. Joe goes on to say this:
If I look at a game like EVE Online, it’s amazing. Everybody knows who the famous players are and that’s not necessarily game mechanics recognizing it. It’s videos and stories. I think now we’ve put the legends stuff in, we’ll see how it plays and see what are players asking for.
Are they asking for a system that allows them to put out bounties versus actually just going and finding out as they play or from who they’re playing with? Just doing it and finding it themselves, filming it and putting it online and then we as a team will reward and reflect it, whether it’s in a pirate newspaper or whatever it is.
And this experiential play style bleeds into the gameplay itself from what Joe says, Sea of Thieves isn’t a game that’s always wanting to hold your hand, it’s a game that you’ll learn, that you’ll get better at. I think that’s what will be cool when you end up playing a player who has hundreds of hours in the game rather than tens of hours, you’ll feel like you’re at sea with a seasoned pirate, someone who knows what they’re doing and has a few tricks up their sleeve. This is what Joe had to say and what they learned from developing games on the Kinect:
I think if things function the way you expect, you’re off to a winner already. It’s so fun when you come to shows and people put water in the bucket and we’ve seen a few times people bail it and just throw it away and the water is going back in the hull. Other games have taught them that it’s an abstracted mechanic and they’re like, ‘What do I do with the water?’ And my response – and I feel really bad every time I say it – is, ‘Well, what would you do in real life?’
You could draw parallels there [with Kinect], in that if you make it intuitive, make it believable, not realistic, I think that’s where we want to use that creative license and push in any direction. So long as it’s believable. Sails can be angled into the wind and the more they’re billowed the faster you go.
You don’t need to explain these things. People learn it and we’ve always seen that.
I can’t wait for Sea of Thieves to be released, and really I think Joe and the Dev team have really achieved what they set out to create. For me, I know the main reason I want to get the game isn’t necessarily because it’s pirates, isn’t because of its graphics even though the graphics are amazing…it’s because I want to get a ship with my friends, go out onto the open seas and just see what happens. I want to create stories and experiences with people in my community that we’ll look back and laugh at, gasp at, moments that will still make the hairs stand up on the backs of our necks years from now.
And I think Sea of Thieves might, just might, live up to that expectation. But what do you guys think? Let me know down in the comments below.
