The Sea in Sea of Thieves
When the title of your game has the word ‘sea’ in it, you can expect that it’s, well, going to have a sea. Hopefully a cool sea that actually works. The sea in Sea of Thieves is actually pretty damn impressive. It actually does kind feel like an actual sea. And I feel like that is worth talking about.
When sailing, you can feel pretty much every wave. You splash up and down and even sideways. The boat rocks with the sea, depending on how harsh the sea is. You remain calm and steady in clear waters, which are generally near outposts. The open sea on the other hand crashes and splashes and rocks your ship back and forth. You can occasionally get air time if you are sailing in particularly harsh weather. Sailing in the storm increases the battering, and water starts to seep in.
That being said, the water onboard your ship isn’t as impressive. It’s pretty linear. The water level rises if you have lots of holes, then decreases as you bucket. Unlike the ocean outside, the water is pretty arbitrary. The water rises in stages and also leaves in stages as you bucket out all the water. It’s not until the ship sinks that the water outside matches the water inside. But no one likes that. Plus, for gameplay reasons, it does make fixing a sinking ship a bit simpler.
When a ship does sink though, I love how the sea reclaims it. Sometimes a ship will just disappear under the waves, but sometimes it flips upside down or disappears at an angle, giving a great view as it is consumed by the waves. However, while the ship sinks, loot comes to the surface. To make collecting loot easier to pick up, it is all lighter than water and floats to the surface so you can harpoon it. Most notably the barrels of a ship rise to the surface first, so you can take whatever cannonballs an enemy ship may have had. All loot, regardless of how heavy it might be, rises to the surface so you can harpoon it onto your ship. Or collect it by hand, if the waves are rough. Slowly slowly though, if you don’t collect it quickly enough, the loot starts to sink. You can reset this though by grabbing the loot and letting it go back to the surface.
Speaking if which, swimming in the sea is an odd one. In rough seas, the waves can batter you around. If you swim below the surface though, water acts how it would normally act in any other underwater game. You get your full six directions of movement, and travel in a three-dimensional space. But it’s still quite pretty, especially if you are exploring sunken ships. It’s almost as if everything is standing still, frozen in place. However, there is a bit of a speed difference while swimming. On the surface, you feel a lot slower than if you are swimming underwater. I don’t actually know if you are faster under the surface, but it is much easier to swim just below the waves. Especially if you are carrying loot, which slows you down even further.
Overall, the water physics in Sea of Thieves is pretty damn cool. It does feel like an actual sea, and damn does it look the part. Both calm seas and rough seas feel like actual water, and how ships float on said water act accordingly. It’s genuinely impressive and I haven’t really seen a game that looks as nice. Then again, the water has to be good. The game is called Sea of Thieves after all…