The battle royale concept has been popping up pretty much everywhere as of late, to the point where there’s really no major game or game series that would be entirely off the table of consideration (Uncharted Battle Royale anyone?). At first glance, Rare’s pirate-themed adventure game Sea of Thieves might not be high on your list of potential battle royale candidates, but it’s a prospect that Rare has nevertheless considered with some degree of seriousness.
During a recent interview with Game Informer, Sea of Thieves design director Mike Chapman and Rare studio head Craig Duncan were asked point blank whether they had considered introducing a battle royale mode to Sea of Thieves. Unsurprisingly, they said it’s a question they get asked a lot, and then they found a clever way of not answering directly by saying that Sea of Thieves is a game that will ultimately be shaped by player feedback.
Using the upcoming Cursed Sails expansion and its inclusion of AI-controlled Skeleton Ships as an example, Chapman and Duncan said that, originally, Rare didn’t want to add any sort of AI-controlled ships to the game. However, when the studio saw how much players wanted to fulfill the fantasy of battling a supernatural threat (like animated skeleton pirates) in ship-to-ship combat, it eased up on those prior convictions
“I think last year we said every sail on the horizon will always be a real player ship. Players started asking for skeleton ships, and we said, ‘Let’s give it to them’….I think there are so many examples of content in the game where we’re like, we always talk about the death mechanics and we turned it into the ghost ship. We put a Sea of Thieves spin on a familiar mechanic with new and interesting takes.”
Chapman then broached the battle royale topic by saying that, similar to the Skeleton Ships, if Sea of Thieves were to ever get a battle royale mode, it would most certainly have a unique spin to it:
“We see the battle royale thing, but I think there will be opportunities to do that kind of thing differently. It’s interesting where you can take PvP in the game, but we’d want to put a unique Sea of Thieves spin on it and do something completely surprising.”
Considering how Rare plans to deliver new content to Sea of Thieves every six to eight weeks, it’s not entirely unthinkable that a battle royale mode might one day come to the game. However, if such were to ever become the case, you can bet it would be very much in line with the jolly swashbuckling theme that Sea of Thieves already leans heavily on.