It’s a project that set up its core vision from the very beginning and – through a wild prototyping phase, a full shift in game engine, the choppy waters of launch, and its enormous growth since – never lost sight of the unique game it wanted to be. Its developers were openly discussing features that would come to the game, years before they were playable, or sometimes even in development – not all of them even made it to the launch version, but almost every single one would eventually reach its pristine waters.Ĭelebrating its fifth anniversary today, Sea of Thieves is a very different and (excuse the pun) rarer kind of miracle.

Go back and read early interviews with the team at Rare, and you’ll realize this very quickly. Sea of Thieves does not share that story. Of those that make it through, many games – possibly most – will be released as something fundamentally different to how they were imagined in the first place. Many projects stop here, unable to fulfil their promise. The act of creating a game, particularly a modern AAA game, is a turbulent process – the industry is full of stories about an early idea that undergoes huge transformations: genres change, settings shift, mechanics are invented and dropped.

It will sound something like this: every game that reaches release is a minor miracle. If you listen to enough developers talk about how they made their games, you’ll hear a phrase pop up repeatedly. Stay to the end to learn about everything Rare has on offer for the game’s fifth anniversary.This retrospective includes never-before-told stories about the game’s creation.On the fifth anniversary of Sea of Thieves, we spoke to key members of the team to learn about the very first ideas that sparked this project.

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