Watch the Sea of Thieves E3 2018 Trailer

Imposing some Order (of Souls) on the annual E3 chaos

The game might be out, but that doesn't mean we've run out of things to show you at big global gaming shows. We've been doing it for so long now that it'd feel wrong not to turn up and show something. Thankfully, the Sea of Thieves team is forging ahead with development on those next content updates coming down the line.

It's no secret that the next few months will address your hungering for post-Hungering Deep challenges, foes and features: first with the arrival of Cursed Sails in July, then sightings of Forsaken Shores in September.

So for our E3 2018 trailer we were faced with the need to strike a balance. Drop some huge hints without directly spoiling too much of what lies ahead, just like we were careful not to let slip the word 'megalodon' before the launch of The Hungering Deep. In trying to translate this to a form that would work within Sea of Thieves' world, we kept coming back to the shadowy seers of the Order of Souls. Surely they were the ones to give us a glimpse into the future?

Sea of Thieves: Official E3 2018 Trailer

Duration 1:58

There it is, a balance struck. Omens of fire and seabound skellies to tide you over until next month. We even asked our Lead Marketing Artist Paul Cunningham for a few words on how the trailer came together in those standard mad few weeks before the show kicked off:

"It began with a script treatment and placeholder voice acting that we timed out to some screenshots to represent our intent for the trailer. Using some concept art to show how the inky vision sequence would appear, we pulled together a rough animatic to be shared with the rest of the team here at Rare. Once we had signoff on the approach, we were able to start building our lead characters and working with our friends at RealtimeUK to assemble the finished trailer.

"The VO experts down at Side in London took our script and provided some spot-on final voice work for the Order of Souls representative, and the rest of the trailer – everything outside the inky vision – was completed using the game engine and in-game assets."

Hope you enjoyed what you saw of Sea of Thieves' future at this year's show, and if you're bursting to see more, the wait won't be too long. Until then, wave your hooks in the air and speculate like you just don't care by visiting any of the official channels below. If you're at E3, even better: turn up at our tavern and Meet the Devs!