Everwild is the new game from Rare, developers of Sea of Thieves. The game appears to take place in a beautiful natural landscape with multiple players tending the land and its animals and keeping balance in the wild.
Although Everwild appears to be a far more tranquil game than Sea of Thieves’ wacky pirate adventuring, there is a lot which the new game can take away from Rare’s last title. The lessons may not be 1-for-1 applicable, but there are key features and problems with Sea of Thieves which will need addressing for Everwild to work.
Questing Progression
Questing in Sea of Thieves is one of the best ways to accumulate gold, which is used for aesthetics upgrades to players ships and appearances. There are lots of different kinds of quests, but they can all be done by a player who has just entered the game as long as that player and their crew are coordinated enough. There’s no levelling or quest progression system between sessions.
This works well for Sea of Thieves by levelling the playing field. Gamers who get into Sea of Thieves now don’t need to worry about a huge gold-plated galleon coming their way any more than they need to worry about one made of wood – the only difference is that the former implies the players might have more experience. All gun, sword and cannon upgrades in Sea of Thieves are aesthetic and do the same damage, while ship speed is determined by type, which is selected at the start of each session.
While this is great for a combat-focused game like Sea of Thieves, Everwild’s quests will need to make sure they have a more genuine progression system. The trailer shows what appear to be player characters helping heal and guide animals, but unlike Sea of Thieves’ quests it should not be the case that players simply log in and run the same quests over and over again. The factor that still makes this exciting in Rare's Sea of Thieves is the possibility of other scurvy sea dogs sinking the player’s ship and stealing the treasure they accumulate, but a calmer game like Everwild will need to find a new way to keep things compelling by having quests progress and unlock the more the players play.
Rewards
Similarly, the game will need to find more satisfactory rewards that cosmetic ones like the rewards in Sea of Thieves. Sea of Thieves’ cosmetics work because it’s fun showing off to and even intimidating other players that crews are in competition with on the open ocean. Everwild will need to figure out a way to make its world feel more responsive to players if the main focus isn’t PvP.
There will need to be experiences which can only be unlocked with dedication in a game like Rare's Everwild which appears to be far more about how players interact with the game environment. One great take away from Sea of Thieves is the simplicity and clear logic of the game’s - granted - goofy rules. It doesn’t take long to understand all the aspects of the game and to simply find new fun ways to mess around with those rules.
Everwild will need to be similarly simple but with a far more slowly unfolding reward system, rewarding patience instead of the gung-ho attitude encouraged by Sea of Thieves. How similar the games are will be revealed as more details about Everwild’s gameplay are released.
Everwild will launch in 2021 for PC and Xbox Series X.