Sea of Thieves Almost Went With an Entirely Different Approach, Including Dinosaurs

Tonight, Rare's Sea of Thieves will finally set sail, after spending quite a bit of time in development. Within its virtual world, players can team up together or take on one another on the high seas, fighting in ship battles or exploring islands for treasure.

But, as great as this pirate theme for the game is, it wasn't always Rare's original vision. In fact, according to studio head Craig Duncan, the team had other ideas entirely for the project – one that even went as far as to revolve around dinosaurs.

Speaking with IGN, Duncan explained, "We had all these different themes. Vampires, dinosaurs, you name it." He noted that, eventually, the team decided against dinosaurs because they were already being heavily used with ARK: Survival Evolved.

The team took some time trying to decide on a shared experience with multiple players in cooperative and competitive fashion, and, after a while, pirates eventually clicked, and work on Sea of Thieves took off as a result.

"Everyone knows what a pirate is," said Duncan. "Put people on the ships, (give them a) fairly shared goal, we don't need to over-explain it…so that was definitely the 'a-ha' moment."

He concluded. "It wasn't vampires, thankfully." Although, hey, we could probably imagine a multiplayer vampire game where the goal is to suck the blood of several victims while beating out your fellow (and rival) players. Hey, Rare, maybe keep that idea on the backburner.

The game is expected to be a popular one for both Xbox One and Windows 10, especially considering that the original closed beta has managed to see over two million hours logged. (And that's not counting the other betas, either.)

And the pirating theme should definitely take off for them as well, even though the idea of running around as dinosaurs would've been cool as well. (Plus, there's Jurassic Park to consider, with the new Fallen Kingdom movie coming and all.)

The game's servers are expected to go live around midnight Eastern time tonight, so you won't have to wait too much longer to sail the seven seas and teach that Kraken a thing or two – or maybe just a few enemy pirates, if you want to start small.

Sea of Thieves releases tomorrow for Xbox One and Windows 10.