Rare, the studio behind Sea of Thieves and Banjo-Kazooie, showed off a longer look at its upcoming project Everwild during Thursday’s Xbox Games Showcase. The latest trailer included more of its strange and beautiful world, but this is a cinematic trailer, so much of what players will be able to do in the game remains a mystery.
Our first look at Everwild came last November at Microsoft’s X019 Inside Xbox presentation. The brief teaser, also a cinematic one, showed some elements that appear again in the longer trailer: a society of what appear to be hunter-gatherers out exploring a world full of beautiful and sometimes frightening beasts. This trailer shows us more humans who appear to be part of this same society, wearing patterned cloaks and earthy tones. While these hunter-gatherers appear to be human, the world in which they live looks much more magical and unusual than ours.
It’s not yet clear what playing Everwild will feel like or entail. However, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty recently told Polygon, “At its heart, we love the idea of Sea of Thieves [and] players creating stories together. I think with Everwild, Louise [O’Connor] and her leadership team are really passionate about giving players a world that they can just lose themselves in — you know, a lot of nature feels magical. So the notion of, ‘What does it mean to nurture a world? What does it mean to be in nature?’”
The core gameplay loop of Everwild will remain a mystery for a little while longer, though. “Part of the reason we haven’t talked a lot about Everwild is because we’re still feeling a lot of these things out,” said Booty. “We’re still playing around with gameplay ideas.”
This new trailer makes Everwild look exploration-heavy, with multiple characters working together to explore the world around them, as well as dancing and appearing to conjure magic together.
Rare has not announced a release window for Everwild, but it will be available on the Xbox Series X, as well as Xbox Game Pass and Windows 10.
