Review — Sea of Thieves: The Art of Piracy

Arr, matey. Sea of Thieves, the swashbuckling live service game from Microsoft, now has an art book. Published by Titan Books, it comes with over two-hundred pages of colorful renders and interesting concepts all about the game. Time to dive in and see just what Sea of Thieves: The Art of Piracy has to offer.

Content Guide

There is no language and no obscene pictures inside the artbook.

Review

The big, pretty hardcover feels like a treasure in and of itself. Images on the pages within are crafted to feel like more than an ordinary picture book. There’s loads of concept images of characters, environments, weapons, and items that show their early design and how they turned out. The book goes as far as organizing all the content into years, beginning with 2018 and all the way up to Present Day as they call it (which is actually 2023). For each year, there’s a beginning paragraph describing the development progress from the eye of the developer in three distinct sections: Character, Cosmetics, and Enemies.

Each page has something nice to show. Readers get to see the background of a concept sketch, with the final product next to or in front of it, on the same page, or spread across two pages. They also get the pleasure of seeing behind the scenes of what else the developers wanted to include or change with little snippets of text.

The color and presentation has already been talked about, but it can’t be overstated. This book is beautiful. Every picture is of the utmost highest resolution, and the colors are bold and striking. The amount of space they give for enemies and such gives the book a feel of a pleasant journey down memory lane. Even some pages feel loaded with more than others, but never crowded.

That’s all that can be said for an art book. There’s plenty to see, and much to remember in all the years of Sea of Thieves. I personally enjoyed seeing how the quests developed and progressed over time. If there is an avid Sea of Thieves fan out there, this is a good piece to add to their collection.