When we took a deep breath and released Sea of Thieves’ second trailer into the online currents back in 2016, backed by the atmospheric arrangement and vocals of ‘We Shall Sail Together’, any dream of numbers in the millions seemed too distant to even consider.
Seven years later, including five since launch, we’ve watched well over 30 million players set sail - but we’ve never lost track of the song that accompanied our early cinematic showing. The full-length version of ‘We Shall Sail Together’ with an additional verse was released shortly after its truncated trailer debut, and it’s since resurfaced in numerous other ways and places including, as Robin mentions in the celebratory video below, unlocking the in-game Pirate Legend Hideout. It’s also a staple of our ever-growing official downloadable soundtrack, where crucially it’s just passed the milestone of being streamed 10 million times on Spotify alone.
To mark this occasion, we descended on the in-house audio department and encouraged the Sea of Thieves soundtrack maestro himself, Rare’s Music Director Robin Beanland, to chat about how the track came to life and break down the component parts to show how it all fits together.
Writer Chris Allcock, who still works on Sea of Thieves and authored the official novels Athena's Fortune and Heart of Fire, provided ‘We Shall Sail Together’ lyrics for Anna Hon to sing back in those mist-wreathed pre-launch days. He retains strong memories of what the song was striving to embody:
“We knew that the first time the world was going to be hearing this song was during the Xbox presentation as a game trailer – and traditionally in trailers, if there’s a narrator or similar character talking, their purpose is to get across what the core of what the game is about.
“In our case, the lyrics needed to do something similar, so with the visuals taking care of conveying gameplay moments like fighting a Kraken and battling skeletons, we decided to really focus on the idea of the crew bond being a key part of the game and that if you do ‘sail together’ and work as a group, you’ll ultimately succeed.
“I think it also helped to deal with any misconceptions that playing as a pirate meant you’d eventually stab your crewmates in the back and take all the treasure, which obviously was not how the game was going to work – likewise, the phrase ‘sons and daughters’ was placed early on to let players know that everyone was going to be welcome on the waves.”
As we continue to welcome pirates of all stripes and stances into our sandbox, we’d like to once again thank all those bold souls who sail with us as we hit these heartwarming heights together. Hold your course, there’s still so much more to be seen and heard...