The Weird Microsoft Game That Has Me Excited For The Xbox Series X Showcase - Forbes

Seas of Thieves

Credit: Rare

Tomorrow, the slow, slow drip of next-gen reveals continues, with Microsoft set for an Xbox Series X first-party showcase that it hopes will give it a shot in the arm after the somewhat lackluster third-party showcase. It serves, in some ways, as a coming-out party for the Xbox Series X, but it’s also one of the first times that we’re really going to get to see at least some of the fruits of Microsoft’s studio acquisition spree. And when I think about the future of this company’s first-party development, there’s one title that gets me excited about what’s coming down the pike.

It’s Sea of Thieves.

Sea of Thieves is a deeply strange game. In it, you and a bunch of friends do your best to manage a pirate ship in as “realistic” a fashion as makes sense: you have to trim the sails, turn the wheel, operate the cannons, etc: there is no “accelerate” button, only a bunch of interlocking system. There is no practical progression, and the only rewards that carry over from session to session are cosmetic. It is entirely possible and even likely that you will walk away from a two hour session with no rewards at all, because you’ll get ganked by some overeager teenagers at the last moment. You can drink grog and play instruments, something with no in-game value but which players do all the time anyways. There is an achievement for vomiting into a bucket and throwing it at someone. It is, at its best, a simulation of hanging out with your friends and operating a pirate ship while you’re at it.

Whenever I play this game, one thought sticks in my head: someone greenlit this game. And not a weird indie developer, either. Representatives of one of the largest companies on Earth saw this game and said: go for it. It is not a small indie production or some strange experiment: it is a full-on game with the resources of a major company behind it.

It’s done well, too: after a rocky launch and a whole lot of updates, it continues to improve and is now at 15 million players, buoyed by a successful Steam release. It’s wild, it’s fun, and there’s not really anything else like it on the market.

It’s difficult to imagine that Microsoft will be able to stand toe-to-toe with Sony on the sort of games that have defined the PlayStation for something like a decade now. These are graphically lavish, first-person narrative titles ranging from God of War to The Last of Us Part 2, Horizon Zero Dawn and the Uncharted series. These represent a particular kind of game that Sony’s first party studios have gotten so good at making that they’re near-peerless, not all that different from the way that no company but Nintendo can really make Nintendo games.

I assume that Microsoft Studios is trying to make some games like these too, and we’ll see what happens. Gears 5 was a solid single-player experience, after all. But I am much more interested in more experiences as strange as Sea of Thieves coming out, and I really hope we get some.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2020/07/22/the-weird-microsoft-game-that-has-me-excited-for-the-xbox-series-x-showcase/

2020-07-22 15:10:00Z
CAIiEAjma_3VVabuk0TMOpnjEqAqFQgEKg0IACoGCAowrqkBMKBFMMGBAg

Bagikan Berita Ini