Sea of Thieves is a very pretty game

Normally, when I play Sea of Thieves, it’s really late at night. The crew I play with are all terrifying pirates that strike fear into both Sea of Thieves players and Team Fortress 2 players at the same time. They are all also people who live far away from me, in Canada and the US. So time zones, as you can imagine, are awful. Still, it’s worth staying up to play with them.

As the hours fly by, I get more and more tired, to the point that I can only just follow instructions. In order to try and stay conscious, I focus on two very different things. The first is scanning the horizon in search of potential threats. The second is just how pretty Sea of Thieves is. Sea of Thieves is genuinely a beautiful game.

Plenty of sunsets

Sea of Thieves is not a realistic game. It’s stylized very nicely, with an almost Team Fortress-like feel to it all. There’s no realism to be had here, not at all, but the theme is coherent and warm, drawing you in. Sunsets in particular are very nice, but so is the weather system. Sailing through a storm can be quite peaceful, until you need to bucket water out of your ship. I’m also a fan of the clouds and skyboxes. Clouds drift across the sky and occasionally take weird shapes, pointing you in the direction of a public event. And the styles we can have for our ships don’t stick out either.

What’s nicer though is that the game is still beautiful if you have everything on low settings. So you can keep the prettiness and also get more frames and all that too.

The water is amazing

The biggest thing for me is the water. We’re in a sea and it actually looks and feels like a sea. It’s large, blue and deep, but also quite varied. In one place, the sea might be fairly calm, but as you travel around, you can experience massive waves, thunder storms on the one hand and delicate, calm seas where the water is quietly lapping on beaches.

I mean, yeah, it’s a game about sailing on the seas, the water should be good, but it’s really good water.

Even the weird, ill-fitting cosmetics still somewhat fit.

The cosmetics in Sea of Thieves are incredibly varied. There’s all sorts, from your classic pirate gear to various costumes, eye patches and a getup that allows you to dress as Jack Sparrow. Honestly though, even the ugliest clothing does somehow fit the art style. They stick out like sore thumbs and are easy bait for snipers, but at least cosmetics are still kinda only just clinging on to the art style. Things aren’t Team Fortress 2 levels of bad. Yet.

The loading screens suck ass though

Of course, there’s a downside to all of this. Because it’s such a large map and a pretty one at that, Sea of Thieves takes a long time to load. It’s not so bad if you have an SSD, but console and normal hard drive users may have longer waiting times. For me, my waiting times are pretty damn long because I have a rather slow laptop. I wouldn’t even mind the long loading times if the loading screens were so insanely repetitive.

But once you’ve escaped the loading screen, you’re presented with such a pretty world, that was definitely worth the wait. Enjoy it while you can, before you get spotted…