The Secret World: My Impressions
I think it was about a year ago that I first saw this game, and it was this great CG trailer that got me interested right away. After this video, though, it became quiet around this game, I searched all over the internet trying to find new footage and details about the game, yet I found nothing of any significance. I’m really glad that period is over because for a month or two now this game has come back up on my radar and a lot of cool details and videos have emerged. So read on for my first written impressions on this game.
The Secret World is an innovative MMO set to be released on PC and XBOX 360, there are no details on a PS3 version yet. It’s a game made by Funcom, set in a modern world full with conspiracies. In this modern world people start to receive special powers which they use to kill these monsters that suddenly pop up. The game has three factions, the Templars, the Dragons and the Illuminati. Each faction has it’s own ideals and story.
When you start the game you will have to choose one of these factions, something that has to be kept in mind though is that these factions are not comparable to classes in other MMOs. And that’s exactly one of the fields in which The Secret World tries to innovate. The game does not work with classes, at least, all of the skills are free to use by everyone, but you can create your own classes which you can swap whenever you want. This does create a challenge in balancing out the game, but that’s something we won’t be able to experience before the game comes out. This idea of playing the way you want is a great feature and it fits the setting of the world.
The story is also a place where Funcom wants to innovate the MMO genre, most MMO’s feature stories but none of them actually immerse the player into that story. The Secret World however does. It’s immersing the player using cut scenes and missions that not only work alongside the story but mission that actually tell the story. This is something that I haven’t seen before in an MMO, and it’s something that’s a welcome improvement to the genre.
Other cool features are found in the missions, you have these multiplayer missions that make you fight the other factions and they’ve even added deathmatch like modes. I’m glad they added PVP because it’s something a lot of MMOs I played missed but it’s something I love about multiplayer games. Another one is this amazing new mission type that let’s the player solve puzzles by giving them clues, and to solve those clues you need to actually use Google to find out what they mean and how they relate to the game. It’s great how this game has merged it’s storytelling with it gameplay, for example by making you search the internet, like a researcher trying to uncover a conspiracy.
Graphics wise I hope they still are going to improve the game, because the cut scenes look framed well but the characters don’t look alive, their mouths don’t move that well and overall the animations could use some work. Now I understand this game is still in development and this game is supposed to be an MMO, and MMOs usually look like crap, but come on there must be a way that we can improve the graphics of MMOs in this day and age.
Overall though I’m really attracted to this game and it looks really promising, the story’s great and the gameplay is really intuitive, but please fix the graphical bottleneck, because right now it doesn’t look that bad graphics wise but some of the animation in the cut scenes are just horrible, and all that while the art direction is superb. I just can’t wait to unravel The Secret World’s secrets.
