Sea of Thieves is, I think, a phenomenal story generator – and excels in delivering the kinds of unpredictable encounters that can so frequently turn a routine play session into a genuinely unforgettable one.
But it’s always struggled to tell its own tales, never really allowing players to get to know its world. Poke around enough, and, yes, you’ll find hints of long-gone civilisation, or the remnants of more recent adventures in gloomy corners – but these more intimate stories have always remained frustratingly out of reach, making for a setting that’s often felt lifeless away from the ocean, a beautiful staging ground for stories not yet told.
There’ve been attempts to remedy this; we’ve chased missing crews in the Devil’s Roar as part of the Forsaken Shores update, searched for an ancient menace at the behest of a crazed captain during the Hungering Deep, even traced the fate of an accursed weaponsmith-turned-bloodthirsty-undead-pirate during Cursed Sails. But, as fun as these were, bringing a sense of place and personality to the world, they were few and far between. And, worse, their limited-time nature meant that when they were gone, the slate was scrubbed clean.
Official Sea of Thieves Anniversary Update Announce Trailer Watch on YouTube
And that’s where Tall Tales – what you might call one half of Sea of Thieves’ enormously ambitious Anniversary Update, the other being the raucously entertaining competitive Arena Mode – comes in. It finally introduces something that many have been clamouring for since launch: crafted narrative adventures to complement the more free-form, anything-goes style of player-generated storytelling at Sea of Thieves’ core.