Sea of Thieves' new video details the game's character and ship customization

By Asher Madan
published

You'll not only be able to change your appearance, but you can also modify your ship.

Sea of Thieves features a lot of ways to customize your character, but it doesn't end there. Aside from adding a flashy hat or eyepatch, Rare confirmed that players will be able to customize their ships. This feature will be available upon release, and gamers will be able to own their own ships eventually.

Rare's Ted Timmins said that it is really important for players to know what a sail on the horizon means. Ship customization shows a sense of stature in the world.

Sea of Thieves is an upcoming exploration-based pirate game from Rare. The developer is known for many famous franchises including Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, and GoldenEye. However, in recent years, the team focused on developing Kinect games for Xbox One and Xbox 360. This was a curious decision so when Phil Spencer became Head of Xbox in 2014, he assigned Rare a new project. Sea of Thieves is a shift for the developer and a concept the team hasn't tackled before.

The game has been delayed a few times but we finally have a concrete release date. As announced at The Game Awards 2017, Sea of Thieves is now scheduled to launch on March 20, 2018, across Xbox One and Windows 10. The game will also support Xbox Play Anywhere and native 4K resolution on Xbox One X.

Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!

Asher Madan
Asher Madan

Asher Madan handles gaming news for Windows Central. Before joining Windows Central in 2017, Asher worked for a number of different gaming outlets. He has a background in medical science and is passionate about all forms of entertainment, cooking, and antiquing.

13 Comments
  • Choosing a character from a very limited list is yet another major let down for me. It's funny listening to their excuses about not adding full player customization. How were games doing it 15 years ago? How are studios still doing it? We can all guess why they are doing this. Offer VERY limited option even though you paid for a full game and sell the rest through microtransactions. It's also funny how they are hyping the cosmetic aspect. They and other people have been using the "their microtransactions are just cosmetic" but the game is build up to be all about cosmetic items... For me, the beta already felt like a huge lifeless open world game with a lot of generated side quests, with poor mechanisms, average graphics, little to no attention to details, which depends on the gamer's friends for it to be "fun" and is filled with shops that sells stuff. 
    When I see this video, it just looks like they are already preparing to sell stuff.
  • Lmfao! Too much fanboyish troll. Tell that to the people that made the tests a success and had fun playing it. If u have no fun friends that's your problem not the game fault. But i guess since u used "we" that u speak for everyone.
  • Fanboy? lol I spent around 7-8 hours on this game. I'm speaking about my own experience. Any criticism or negative opinion is fanboyish troll?  Looks more like you just can't handle criticism against a company you worship.  So you need "fun friends" to enjoy this game? So, is this game so empty that it depends on how fun are your friends?  And I said "We can all guess". Because at this stage that's true. We can all guess what the strategy behind this is. For me, it's obvious.  Provide very limited options in your full price game and provide the rest through upcoming microtransactions. Can you imagine if they provided full character customization right from the start? How would they sell you stuff afterwards? Since you seem to know the answer why don't you answer instead of making classic damage controlling fanboy post?
  • It's not a limited list, it's randomly generated from hundreds of different parts. Reason being, they don't want any pirate to be the "default" model, like in ARK, and other games, where people don't bother customizing their characters. Also your assertions about microtransactions are baseless fearmongering.
  • I picked a character from a small selection and now I'm stuck with him. 
    The thing is why not then allow customization once you picked your character? Why make fun of customizing like picking the size of your nose? 
    Let's face it you start with a VERY limited choice. I've got around 1-2k of gold coins but that seem to get very little "stuff". Baseless fearmongering?
    I'm not the one, calling this full price game "a service". I'm not the one who included microtransactions and sort of hyping customization and getting "stuff". They are the ones providing very limited customization at the start. They are the ones using free2play economics. They are the one trying to make more and more money once the game is sold. How is it baseless when THEY are the one doing all this? The game is based on these cosmetic items. You go get a map at the start, go from point A to point B. Kill a couple of weak skeletons, get a chest, go back to point A and sell the chest for gold coins. Use that cash to buy cosmetic items.  Now I understand that this is a game that's suppose to be "fun" because you hang and good around with friends but let's not ignore what is being done here just because it's fun. Things deserves to be said...
  • Jez, do you know if you can change your pirate after you chose it? I couldn't do it in the last beta weekend
  • I couldn't either. It may come later or in the full game. Who really knows. Right now it's not possible. I just hope they actually let players customize their character instead of making fun of games that has character customization.  They will say that and then sell different hairstyles and beards.. smh
  • The characters are randomly generated. There's no default one in the final game. The beta was just a small slice of content found in the game.
  • I'm shock to see such a serious complaint about customizing a character when you actually have hundreds to choose from. I played the very limited beta many times, in groups and solo and it was a joyful experience either way, I completed dozens of maps, I fought people on the sea and on land, I made friends, I stole treasures (and boats to crash on islands), got my boat destroy by lighting, just to name a few. If the game was this fun with the limited content of the beta then I'm looking forward to the full release :]
  • Well it's a serious complain because they are asking full price as an entry fee to be able to play a game that uses free2play economics.
    When they first announced microtransactions, they were just like "it's only cosmetic". But here the whole game is based on these cosmetic items. So in that sense I think it was obvious why they don't have customization at the start. This game looks very rough, many little things like how chest and sword goes through ropes, masts, walls,.., graphics are average, there is no real voice acting or dialogues, no real stories. And they are asking the same price as games like the witcher, Zelda, Horizon... And on top of that they are basing their game on looking cool and cosmetics, while selling microtransactions of cosmetic items... I must have completed around 7-8 maps and after some time it just looked the same thing. Go there, fight few weak skeletons, get a chest, sell your chest. I've hardly met other people. Overall, I'm disappointed at what Rare produced. It's a big let down and for me they made bad business and anti-gaming decisions. But again time will tell if I was right...  I'm glad you liked it. I believe this is a niche title though, it's not for everyone. Personally the novelty wore off really quickly. I've spent few hours in it, I can't imagine spending 100s of hours playing this...
    But that's me. It's good that others are enjoying it..
  • I see your point. Personally I don't spend money on cosmetics, so I'm not worry about that and I have a gamepass so in my mind I know I'm getting the game from day one without paying the $60. Regarding the game itself (the part that really matters to me) we'll have to wait and see what the initial release brings to the table (we know rare has a lot of plans to evolve the game), how big is the world and how busy it is, only time will tell ;)
  • Isn't this game basically an MMO, and that's what every MMO has always done? Whether they be full price or free to play?
  • Love the fact the no 2 pirates will exactly ever look the same. Like every other Online game. They have these customise option, and yet 75% all use the same exact default model. Cannot wait to spill hundreds of more hours into this game. Not long people.