Catherine Lovelace

_During E3 2017, DualShockers' staff writers Azario Lopez, Logan Moore, Tomas Franzese, and Noah Buttner went hands-on with Rare's upcoming Sea of Thieves. The four-person crew suited up and took to the open seas in hopes of finding treasure and excitement. What they discovered is that they might in fact be the worst pirates ever, but that didn't stop them from having an amazing time in this open-watery worl Yes, Days Gone is another zombie game, but its approach to the horde could put a unique spin on traditional third person action. Where most games tend to be about clearing out the entire enemy force, Days Gone seems to make that impossible. It’s a game where survival is not necessarily about bullets and accuracy, but tactics and speed. We still need to see more of the story to decide whether the game has more to it, but for an E3 experience, Days Gone took the familiar and made it fr Some prospective Sea of Thieves players may question the decision to include microtransactions, but Neate has an explanation for the business model. "Ultimately I have to look at the reality of running a game-as-service as a business," says the executive producer, adding that "My goal and everyone else's goal here is to have as many people as possible working on this, and just keep giving people reasons to return, reasons to have fun. We have to run that like a business, you need revenue coming [pullquote]You need each crew member to be controlling a different part of the ship. Someone needs to steer, another needs to watch for land from the crow’s nest, someone can man the cannons, and someone has to patch up the inevitable holes in the ship.[/pullqu Unlike past year's E3 events, this year's had a particular air of familiarity. Going into the even most gamers had a pretty good handle on what should be announced, and by and large the major publishers stuck to their scripts. There were some surprises, like the official reveal of the Xbox One Scorpio , but mostly it was the known quantities that impres Tomas: I was surprised by how involved and dynamic it all was. I took the role of captain, so I had to steer the ship towards our destination. My vision was impaired by the sails, but I knew the island we were heading to was Northwest, so I had to use the compass to aim the ship in direction. It’s a level of involvement you don’t often see in games, but it felt quite fitting for one with piraThere are definitely some major questions about Sea of Thieves, especially when you consider that Rare is not a studio that has ever put together an online game that feels truly cutting edge, but if everything hits, Microsoft's investment in this legendary studio could be totally worth it. The real goal here should be to find a way to make a charming, deep online version of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag , considering that may be the best pirate game we've ever received. As our Executive Producer, @JoeNineTee said in An Important Question for Joe and Gang, we’ve been talking about how best to respond to some of the big questions that we see on the forums. Fair to say, personal combat is an area that has lots of outstanding questions around how we’re planning to approach this in terms of the variety of weaponry and how this will feel to p A recent datamine of the game's files uncovered lots more Sea of Thieves content, including new enemies and animals such as parrots, pigs, and seagulls. The leak also pointed to lots of character and ship customization , from tattoos and eyepatches to a variety of ship hulls. With the game's microtransactions still a few months away, Rare is still working on the finer details but these datamined options do sound like the sort of cosmetic items that could be unlocked via microtransacti Speaking to IGN , Rare's executive producer Joe Neate confirmed that the first major post-launch Sea of thieves dlc|https://seaofthievesfans.com/ of Thieves update will introduce microtransactions. This update is expected around three months after Sea of Thieves ' launch and "anything in this area will not impact power or progression, and you'll always know what you're getting - so that means no loot crates," says Neate. Given the ongoing controversy surrounding pay to win loot boxes and the debate on whether or not loot boxes are gambling , many will be glad to hear that Sea of Thieves won't feature that mecha This cosmetic content will "either be on a shoulder, like a monkey, or like a cat on the ship" or even potions that change the appearance of the player character (e.g a potion that makes them look very old). Neate also suggests that Sea of Thieves players will be able to earn the currency to unlock this content through normal play. For example, players may be able to earn premium currency as a reward for completing high-level quests, or the content could even be found in the game world. Neate also says that anything available via microtransactions will provide "emotional value, not mechanical val