Sea of Thieves went a bit Mary Celeste over the holidays, but this week, Rare has resurfaced with an outline of content through the end of 2022.
“With Seasonal updates still forming the skeleton for Sea of Thieves, one of our main goals for 2022 is to flesh out our pirate world and make it feel more dynamic,” the studio says. “Stories, whether they’re the ones we tell or those that our players create themselves, are at the very heart of Sea of Thieves, so we want to inspire new tales of derring-do and comradery.”
“Enter Adventures and Mysteries: these story-focused events are designed to complement Seasons, providing regular narrative-driven content for players to dig into alongside the other gameplay features brought in by our Seasonal content drops. Adventures are time-limited, arriving on a roughly monthly schedule and running for 2-3 weeks, with each one forming a chapter within an overarching narrative. Accompanying cinematics will help set up the story, and a finale Adventure will cap off each narrative arc. Our first Adventure, ‘Shrouded Islands’, is currently set for release on February 17th. Set your pocket watches now! Mysteries will run alongside Adventures and remain part of the world for longer, relying on the community to solve clues and riddles both inside and outside the game to move the story forward. These will play their own part in making the world of Sea of Thieves feel richer than ever before, and while the subjects of these Mysteries could be anything, we can tell you that the first one will see players attempting to solve a murder.”
Rare further notes it’s working on fresh seasons – season six begins in March and includes what the studio is calling sea forts – for its 25 million total players. Unfortunately, it’s also sunsetting the game’s arena mode, saying maintaining it is unsustainable as it wasn’t as successful as the team had hoped.
