Sea Of Thieves’ Storms Are So Incredibly Realistic They’ll Make You Seasick

07/11/2017 09:07 pm EDT

From The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, there's been plenty of games that let you play as a pirate and sail the high seas, so what sets Microsoft and Rare's upcoming Sea of Thieves apart? Well, to some degree, it will be the game's sense of realism. Yes, the game's characters have a cartoony look, but Rare is sinking a ton of detail into some of the game's other aspects, like storms.

Sea of Thieves' storms are intense affairs that look amazing, and will be a real challenge to navigate. Here's how the game's art team describes them:

"It's dark, and there's big waves, but there's also all this spray and wind that's constantly blowing at you. You can see the wind affecting the direction of the rain. You get this real sense of riding up the waves and crashing down. The way that the ship handles is different inside the storm. The currents of the storm will drag the wheel around.

The deck actually gets wet, and it will start to drip below deck. It's actually a proper fluid simulation, with water seeping through the planks on the deck. Even below decks you be safe. You'll feel it rocking around and all this water sloshing around, and you can still hear it, too."

I feel queasy already! There will also be a tactical aspect to storms…

"We always wanted storms to be a thing a crew to look at. It's a big, physical thing in the world. You can understand where it is, how big it is, and decide as a crew 'Do we want to go through this, or go around it?'"

While we're at it, here's another recent Sea of Thieves developer video about resources.

And here's one about the game's Voyage System.

Sea of Thieves sails exclusively onto the Xbox One in early 2018.

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