Why Sea of Thieves is First Person

An interesting thing to know about is why Sea of Thieves is first person. You might wonder how this perspective was chosen, and one of the developers as come out to describe part of the selection process for this. Believe it or not, it takes a lot of time and debate to choose just how a player will experience the various game worlds that are created.

For some context, the individual that released this information is Gregg Mayles, Creative Director at Rare. The studio Rare was the developer that created the game if you were wondering the connection. For additional context, Sea of Thieves is an open world pirate game where you work with friends or others online to battle other ships, collect loot and sail around. I mostly just have a pint and play music for my comrades quite honestly when I play it, all to their own.

Reasons Why First Person
Greater tactility of objects and the environment.
-They wanted players to have a highly tactile relationship with the world to increase their immersion into it.

-A first person perspective gives the greatest sense of tactility, especially important given the many and varied ways the player can interact with the world and its objects.

Reasons continued
Heightened intimacy of player to player interaction
-It was desired that players share adventures to together.
-A first person perspective gives a very intimate feeling between players, whereas third person creates a feeling of being an onlooker rather than being at the heart of the interaction.

(They use the map viewing as an example here, comparing how it feels to look at it in both perspectives.)

You 'feel' rather than 'look'
-They want players to feel a wide range of emotions

-The abscence of your character in first person promotes the sense of 'feeling', whereas seeing your character in third person changes this to a sense of 'looking'

Stronger Emotions
-They want players to experience strong emotions

-In third person you have to interpret emotions through an intermediary (your character) rather than experiencing them first hand, and along the way some of their emotion is lost.

That was definitely some interesting reasoning for why they chose this first person perspective for the game. It definitely explains the reasons well and you can see that info in the tweet linked below. You can also read our review of the game or check out the hub for further coverage of the title.

Mentioned Tweet
Read our Sea of Thieves Review
View our Sea of Thieves Hub