Sea of Thieves - The Power of Rare

I've been playing a lot of Rare's Sea of Thieves lately. The game has had a tough time of it, struggling to captivate people due to its unpolished nature, lack of content and rather steep price. But even though those are all valid problems, I want to highlight a few ways in which the game still has that Rare spark we've known since many console generations ago.

Jiggies and Jingles

During Rare's peak, they made several "collectathon" platformers like Banjo-Kazooie. One of the many ways in which these classics outperformed the competition was its soundtrack, and particularly, its sound design. Every single pick up has a distinctive sound to it.

Sea of Thieves' soundtrack usually stays in the background, but like in Banjo-Kazooie, Rare made sure that there are still distinctive sounds and jingles to each situation and achievement. At the start, you can do voyages for 3 main guilds. Each guild has a distinctive music track when you come close to one of its representatives, but it doesn't end there - each guild has a jingle for when you start one of their voyages, when you complete an objective within the voyage (like discovering a chest or defeating a skeleton captain) and when you sell an item to them. Some unique items, like the Chest of Sorrows or the Chest of 1000 Grogs, even have their own unique jingles as well.

And even in battles, there are unique musical flourishes for getting a hit on another player, getting a hit on a Kraken's tentacle (a very small jingle for landing a sniper shot, a slightly longer one for landing a cannonball shot) and getting a hit on the Megalodon. The list just goes on and on; Sea of Thieves' entire library of sound and music is a labour of love - and that famous 'Rare flair' is in more than just the jingles.

Environmental and Reactive Music

The Nintendo 64 was a breeding ground for all kinds of revolutionary and groundbreaking developments, not least of all in terms of game audio. Contextual musical changes weren't unheard of (take the added drums when riding Yoshi in Super Mario World), but Banjo-Kazooie and its sequel pioneered having radical seamless changes between various very different versions of the same theme. For example, Treasure Trove Cove has a theme for being above and underwater which it can smoothly transition between:

Sea of Thieves is a very different game; there are no levels with their own default themes that can subsequently be iterated upon. Rather, the whole world is open to you, and the music can transition to many themes to fit the situation. Like Banjo, you'll be treated to unique and beautifully relaxing music if you decide to explore the ocean beneath the waves and you'll hear a given company's musical theme if you approach their representative at an outpost. Like Ocarina of Time, another N64 classic, unique music plays when you encounter an enemy - and there are unique tracks depending on the kind of encounter. Are you fighting the megalodon at sea, or a cursed skeleton ship? Or are you fighting skeletons on the shore? There's a track for most any situation.

And with every new update, the game's already massive library of contextual jingles and tracks expands. In an update, The Hunter's Call was added to the game - an entirely new faction with its own jingles. With the Hunter's Call came the ability to fish, and fishing has its own music as well. It seems there is no brake on this train, or rather, ship - it's clear that Rare is committed to making Sea of Thieves' audio as absolutely perfect as it can be. If you needed any more proof that music is a high priority, note that any Sea of Thieves character comes with 4 instruments by default that they can play a few tunes on - with other players, too.

Eye Candy

When it comes to that 'Rare magic,' I think the music and sound comes to mind first. But their games have visuals to match; just as each collectible in Rare's classic collectathons had a distinctive sound, it also had a distinctive design. But a major difference between the games of yore and Sea of Thieves is that the items in Sea of Thieves don't have a unique utility (like the ability to fly or become invincible in Banjo); they just have a unique value and are meant for a specific faction. For example, the Gold Hoarders want treasure chests, and the Order of Souls wants skulls.

So rather than design the items based on their function, they're designed based on their associated faction and value. You can immediately tell by the look of an item which faction it's for and how valuable it is. Consider these two chests:

You don't need anyone to tell you which of these is more valuable, and that goes for the skulls too:

And this is just barely scratching the service, as each type of treasure has more tiers than I've shown, the Merchant Alliance has its own line of treasure, there are different types of enemies with clear visual cues and colours - the game's presentation is as splendid visually as it is in sound.

Conclusion

No one can deny that Sea of Thieves has had, and still has, its problems. But the Rareware we know and love is still clearly visible in the details. Their flair for giving every little thing its own distinctive sound, music and look has stayed alive to this very day and is one of the main attractions of Sea of Thieves on the whole. And they're still expanding on the game, so the amount of little details will only increase as time goes on.

Have you had any experiences with Sea of Thieves? Did you enjoy it, or did the game's shortcomings get in the way of your enjoyment? Please let me know!

Originally posted on my blog: https://arjenartdesign.blogspot.com/2019/08/sea-of-thieves-power-of-rare.html