Watch the premiere of Sea of Thieves gameplay

Rare's Sea of Thieves was finally on display at Microsoft's E3 presser. A new montage showed shark, ship battles, mer-people, skeletons with swords, hidden treasure—every sort of pirate-y thing you could think up. It's definitely setting out to fulfill a specific fantasy.

Next up was a short gameplay montage starring a few streamers, embedded above. The crew teamed up on a ship and proceeded to quickly get drunk on grog before piloting a ship through dangerous rock formations and engaging in a chaotic flanking ship battle on the open sea.

One player piloted the ship, others manned cannons, some called out enemy positions—it seems like a pretty cool way to hang out with friends.

During the battle, water filled the bottom of the boat, and one player attempted to patch the holes, alas, to no avail. Piloting one of those suckers quite literally requires all hands on deck. The montage capped off with one ship spearing another, cutting off before the catastrophic conclusion.

It's hard to say exactly what Sea of Thieves lets you do beyond piloting ships. I'm sure there's buried treasure to discover, but how exactly that comes about, and what kind of play that entails is still buried treasure itself.

James is stuck in an endless loop, playing the Dark Souls games on repeat until Elden Ring and Silksong set him free. He's a truffle pig for indie horror and weird FPS games too, seeking out games that actively hurt to play. Otherwise he's wandering Austin, identifying mushrooms and doodling grackles.