And the cinematic trailer for Sea of Thieves does promise quite a bit more than what Rare was able to show today. Treasure hunting on land and under the sea, combat between ships using both cannons, pistols, and swords, adventuring on islands into hidden places, and encountering both enemy pirates and supernatural fiends like skeletons. And sprinkled throughout the trailer is gold, treasure chests, and the struggle to control such riches. And that's all layered under the social experience that's at the heart of Sea of Thiev

It may arguably be Microsoft's best E3 conference of this generation as they not only introduced a sleeker and tenacious console, but games and release dates that fans were anticipating. Check out the recap of today's announcements be

For now, though, Rare will continue with the development of Sea of Thieves in preparation for its forthcoming launch. There's plenty to do, and Rare seems like they're adding new ideas as fast as they can come up with them. The studio just revealed how players can now get sick and vomit into a bucket, then use the bucket as a weapon against friends (or alli

One caveat should be considered with this data dive. The assets pulled are not officially announced, and could, therefore, be cut content or take on a much different role in the final game, especially when a beta is usually never the same version of the game that's released when a game is launc

This isn't the first time that Rare has talked about cross-play for Sea of Thieves , however. Earlier this year, when Rare first activated the closed alpha on PC, the team decided to try out cross-play just to see how it felt. Executive Producer Joe Neate called the experience "magical," explaining that it led him to question why any game would split player bases. But questions about balance and fairness prevented Rare from making it official straight away, however the more the studio considered cross-play, the more it realized there was no good reason not to include

Ship customization seems to be another thing unearthed by the data-pirates. The files found seem to imply the ability to customize a ship's cannons, capstan (pirate talk for 'anchor holder'), livery, mast, and the captain's wheel. There are additional sections as well, listed under 'Ship misc' is a harpoon

If you've ever wanted to glaze over a truly beautifully crafted MMO, you can definitely do so with Perl Abyss and Kakao Games' Black Desert Online , which is headed to consoles sometime early next y

The relative lack of gameplay shown compared to ways players can interact in basic ways was intentional, however. Rare would later state that the game is still mid-development on many gameplay systems, but that the team is so excited to show the game that everyone wants to show what's reasonable. For example mouse click the next article island adventuring, the customization features, and most important perhaps -- the loot, are still in-development systems. Those features will be shown as soon as they're ready, as Rare intends to be as transparent as can be going forw

The reason this change in creative directors is such a big deal is because the company we once fell in love with as a whole no longer existed at this point in time. Everyone who had worked on the classic smash hits such as Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, Donkey Kong Country and many, many others throughout their seven years with Nintendo had left the company and were replaced by a whole new group. Rare, as it stands today, has no members of the original creative team behind their ingenious games left on their roster. Much like when Star Wars was bought by Disney, a whole new creative team is now behind those films; George Lucas and his new ideas have been tossed out never to be heard from again. Meaning that Rare as we knew it is truly dead.

Now the current occupation of creative team members in the company rely on one thing and one thing alone to sell their games: nostalgia. The current Rare as we know it relies heavily on gamer's nostalgia of IPs of gaming’s past. It's no coincidence that Rare Replay (an amazing collection of old Rare Games) was released during the same time Microsoft was announcing that Rare was going to be making more "Traditional" games again. Don’t be confused; even though Rare Replay was released on Xbox and marketed as Rare titles, these are in no way a reflection on the current company. The majority of the games seen in Rare Replay were done by employees that no longer exist at the company.

"One of the things we’re very aware of is the need for the balancing to be right. After running some recent tests, we found that PC players were 4.5% more efficient at killing skeletons than Xbox players, and this feels close enough that it’s something we’ll continue to monitor. However, PvP between platforms, or more importantly device input, is the big focus point for us as a Design team, and already we’ve been working closely with the Game Experience team to change the way the guns work to be better balanced for cross play. We’ve put in a bunch of telemetry around this, and with the change to guns it’s made them feel tonally so much more fitting, as previously they felt more like laser weapons than ancient plundered-and-pillaged gunpowder-driven blunderbuss