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The Secret World: Secrets... Revealed
In this article we look at the GDC presentation of Funcom's upcoming MMO, The Secret World, and unwrap the mysteries of the game's core design and story.
When I wrote my overview of the things that we saw at this year’s Game Developers Conference, there was one game that I couldn’t talk about. Information about The Secret World, Funcom’s new upcoming MMO, had been embargoed until this morning.
For those of you who don’t know the premise of the game, I’ll give you a quick overview:
Imagine that the world isn’t how we think it is. Imagine a world where monsters and demons, magic and curses, conspiracy theories and those who fight the darkness are all real. That’s the story behind The Secret World. These things actually exist all around us, and more and more people (players) are becoming aware of not only the darkness and strangeness around them, but also of powers inside of them that will help them to fight it.
It’s a popular theme: people fighting monstrous and even mythological forces of darkness to keep the world safe while the rest of us go on with our lives blissfully unaware. While the ideas behind the premise might be familiar to some, Funcom hopes to bring the dark, mysterious feelings to the game.
“We wanted to create a world that was our own, and yet still familiar to people,” Tørnquist said.
;)
The Secret World was actually conceived of during the late 90s, according to Game Director Ragnar Tørnquist, when he was thinking about why no one had tried to bring this popular story archetype into the world of MMORPGs.
“We don’t want this to feel like any other MMORPG because this is not Medieval Europe, this is not a feudal society,” he said, “Our society is not a class based society and that’s why our game doesn’t have classes…”
Deciding to move ahead with The Secret World as a classless, skill-based game not only gives players who have been asking developers for just this kind of design reason to celebrate, but also separates the game significantly from the company’s two other MMO titles, Anarchy Online and Age of Conan.
Though there may be significant differences in the design and the setting, the major thing that both TSW and AoC will share is a newer version Conan’s engine; a piece of technology that the team over at Funcom has had the opportunity to work on in a live setting and that has improved significantly as a result.
Heading back to the game’s core design, a classless system with no levels gives Funcom the opportunity to let the players come up with their own “classes”, crafting their characters into what they think they should be.
During the presentation, Ragnar talked about some of the elements that would be available to players: ranged weapons like shotguns or automatic rifles, daggers, swords, black magic, wiccan-style light magic, martial arts, and the like. The game will encourage players to re-invent themselves as well, experimenting with different combinations and learning new skills.
“We don’t want this game to be about grinding to level 70, we want you to jump in and start enjoying the game from day one.”
The director was also quick to point out that while they want people to be able to just jump in and have fun, there will still be character progression: characters who have been around for a while will have more options, more customization, more available skills, upgraded weapons and more.
;)
Tørnquist told us that while classes and the roles that they fill might be appropriate in a fantasy setting, they just don’t hold up in the real world, and a game that’s set in the real world needs to give players a more open sense of character.
The story, Tørnquist said, is an important part of the game, but the linear storyline isn’t the be all and end all of you experience. The game will also encourage exploration, travel and the like.
The game also promises a fast-paced combat system that is different from any other MMO, bringing magic, swords, guns and other weapons into the mix together.
Progression in the game, we are told, isn’t going to be restricted to killing monsters, exploration, talking to people, solving puzzles, bounty hunting, and a host of other options are intended to give players numerous flavours of gameplay to choose from.
Check out this exclusive interview with Ragnar about TSW behind the game’s first trailer:
| Ragnar Tørnquist on The Secret World We recently had the opportunity to talk to Ragnar Tørnquist about The Secret World, Funcom's upcoming fantasy horror MMORPG set in the modern day.
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You can learn more about The Secret World from our video interviews with Ragnar Tørnquist:
How is The Secret World Different?
| In this GDC interview, Secret World Director Ragnar Tørnquist discusses the similarities and differences between The Secret World and other Funcom MMO releases.
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Setting, Character Development and more!
| The Secret World Director Ragnar Tørnquist, talks about the game's modern setting, classless character development, and more.
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I'a Dagon I'a Hydra Cthulhu Fhtagn! This finally looks like a decent cthulhu-que uhm .. game. Iä Y’hanthlei! Iä Dagon, Iä Hydra! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
Sound interesting and we'll just have to wait and see how this game plays out.
Dear Funcom,
Just give it up.
Sincerely,
MMO Fans
Speak for yourself. I'm stoked about this one.
Speak for yourself. I'm stoked about this one.
Me too and if it sucks at release, oh well.
Lol, new reccord for flaming a new game?
And dont speak for MMO fans i love AoC
Lol, new reccord for flaming a new game?
And dont speak for MMO fans i love AoC
For some reason the hype for this game is making me want to go back to AoC. Is it a lot better now with DX10 and does it have more content for level progression? Like for solo and group.
They talk like this game setting is unique and hasn't been seen in settings like the World of Darkness, Supernatural, etc
Also, "..this is not a feudal society..." "... our society is not a class based society and that's why our game doesn't have classes..." Does he really not realize that game classes are different from society classes?
While this could be good, what i've heard so far doesn't impress me. I've also not had good experiences with Funcom, so I'll stay in the "believe it when i see it" crowd for now.
Personally I think the World of Darkness MMO from White Wolf / CCP has much more potential.
Yeah... I'm pretty sure he meant that we don't have classes in real life and so we shouldn't have them in the game either. Otherwise, I don't really see what one (economic classes) has to do with the other (classic MMO classes).
I have big hopes for this title and WoD is still very very far away. And as for AoC, it have stelar performance in dx9 atm, what meny games cant say atm like WO for example that got crapiest engine i used in very very long time. Dx10 still is bit tricky and still far from perfect performance, but it gives you a glimps of how impresive game looks then and no screenshot can realy give it justice :)
Just like every new game that has some decent money backing it...I will take the wait and see approach. No game ever lives up to its hype, however, that does not mean they are not worth playing. Expect the game to be overhyped and anywhere from about 60% to 80% as good as the hype machine tells you and you wont be dissappointed. With Funcoms reputation for me I will definately wait untill post release to think about buying one of their games unless i get in on some form of beta sneak peak situation.
The way most games go now a days you can get free access to most of them in some form before having to purchase them or put any money down in any case and I always try to try a game out before i buy it, unless I am really bored.
One Word
Funcom
and the erection I had about the idea of the game went limp when I saw Funcom is going to be designing it.
Right... like there is perfect mmo company out there that delivers 100% perfect mmo games that always lived to its hype and never had any bugs, mistakes and other crap.
Pff you should realy play more mmo games right after retial. No game is perfect and have it share of problems after that and neither wow nor Eq2 or Eve or whathever other mmo you can think of was without any faults when it was relised.
And there was never any mmo that lived even up to 80%of its hype :) Im happy if we even get 50% of what they say and rest is usualy implemented in next 6 months or so if everything works smooth :)
Have some realism instead of troling tss.
Right... like there is perfect mmo company out there that delivers 100% perfect mmo games that always lived to its hype and never had any bugs, mistakes and other crap.
Pff you should realy play more mmo games right after retial. No game is perfect and have it share of problems after that and neither wow nor Eq2 or Eve or whathever other mmo you can think of was without any faults when it was relised.
And there was never any mmo that lived even up to 80%of its hype :) Im happy if we even get 50% of what they say and rest is usualy implemented in next 6 months or so if everything works smooth :)
Have some realism instead of troling tss.
I played WoW, FFXI, EQ2, LOTRO, AOC, WAR the day of release and gave them all at least 3 months of play
Out of all those games Funcom produced the only game that made me hate the Developer with the very fiber of my being.
obviously were not perfect, but at least the games ran semi decent. AOC was a memory leak nightmare and I heard AO was even worse.
Yeah... I'm pretty sure he meant that we don't have classes in real life and so we shouldn't have them in the game either. Otherwise, I don't really see what one (economic classes) has to do with the other (classic MMO classes).
That is exactly what he meant. MMO classes. They don't fit in this game. Same with the level system. None in this game.
But I think Blurr was doing a poor attempt on trolling, as every sane person on this forum knows exactly what he meant in that interview.
I personally can't wait to see and hear more about this game.
It's about time this genre got more attention. And better yet. That the industry finally realises that class based, level based MMO's is a think from the past!
Longetivity = player freedom. Skill based. Do what you want to do. And change your skills whenever you want. Without having to recreate a new character and start all over again. Like is the case with level/class based MMO's.
Cheers
Well if you want to count who played what here is the list of games i played since beta ,then right to retial and then atleast 2-3 months after game was relised.
AnarchyOnline/Atlantica/UO/DAoC/Horizonz/EQ2/SWG/AC1&2/L2/SoR/WoW/TMO/Requiem/
GW/Lotr/CO/TcoS/Cabal/Tabula Rasa/Meridian 59/Vanguard/Shadowbane/Fury/SotW/Dreamlords/HGL/RoM/DDO/FFXI/Aoc/Eve/Warhammer Online/Manibogi and lots of f2p titles that i did not play that much like above titles neither i had had oportunity to play beta or since start compared to ones above.
To top that i was testing since alpha games from above titles like Eve/Tocs/WoW/Ac2/Lotro/DDO and few more.
But i agree that you might had realy bad rig to play at that point, however right now AoC runs like gold compared to most titles on market right now, even if you compare the performance to titles that are meny years on the market.
If i would mention company that realy got under my skin, that would be unquestionably Mythic with no official forum policy for a long time for WO, false promises and ignoring everyone to the point that you would want to stab someone out there for that. To this day they are ignoring major issues with the game fixing minior problems and ignoring ppl that have basic problems with the game stability/performance and more.
Atleast with Funcom Boasting and other things there was always open line of comunication betwean Devs and players and things are geting fixed steadily over time. With WO you cant say the same thing.
I loved AO, just returned to Conan and can't wait for this one. Plus the song is stuck in my head.
This looks really promising. Dare I hope it will be more sandbox then linear?
I'm glad to see that there's another game in the works that isn't trying to out-WoW WoW, but I must admit that I was very disappointed that it was coming from Funcom. Yeah, sure, every MMO has it's problems out of the gate, but Funcom seems to have turned poor game launches into an artform. And yes, I was there for AO's launch, if you want to call it a launch. And yes, I have a long list of games I've beta tested and played in retail, too -- I just don't feel the need to put it all here.
I'm glad people think that AoC is great now, but I've been bitten by Funcom too many times at this point. As promising as the game mechanics sound, they're just that -- promises. And Funcom has a history of tossing those around with reckless abandon. I don't think I'll be giving Funcom any more of my hard-earned dollars.
The big difference here is that the promisses about AO and AoC came out of the mouth of Gaute, who has been kicked ou.... left the company last year.
Ragnar Tornquist and his team are a completely different team than AO or AoC's team.
Difference with AO and AoC is that Ragnar has always delivered when it comes to his games (The Longest Journey and Dreamfall).
So I have a lot more faith and more hope with The Secret World and that they will do right this time.
Ragnar has been concepting and thus working on this game for over 10 years.
Cheers
Game looks good, but I simply do not trust Funcom. I'll definitely be taking the wait and see approach with this one. Let's hope the game that's sold matches the description on the box this time.
I am glad you guys are excited about this game. but it takes some serious faith to think that what is said will be even remotely delivered upon.
Their past, they have done nothing but dish out empty promises. There is absolutly no reason to think otherwise. So what they kicked out guate, he was just the sacrificial lamb to take the hit, to try to save their name. It seems some people on these boards actually beleive he was the SOLE reason behind the bad launches. Thats sad on your part if you believe that. There was many more than one person involved with the problems of AoC and AO.
This train wreck is going to be fun as hell to watch develope.
It's a good thing not everyone in the world is a pessimist or we would be in some serious hot water.
Seems that there is no middle of the road anymore. You are either riding this train or the guy on the sidelines giving the people riding the train the finger or shouting "I told you so!" while they writhe around on the ground after the derailment.
It's a good thing not everyone in the world is a pessimist or we would be in some serious hot water.
Seems that there is no middle of the road anymore. You are either riding this train or the guy on the sidelines giving the people riding the train the finger or shouting "I told you so!" while they writhe around on the ground after the derailment.
Pessimist? I prefer the term realist. A pessimist was back when AoC was about to launch and the good ole AO people were warning us about Funcom. Ok so one bad launch no biggie, they must have learned a thing or two! No way they could botch another launch, boy howdy were the optimists wrong. I know I was what you would call a fanatic AOC fanboy pre-launch. Defended everything. Wrote the AO people off as a pessimistic trolls, but you know what? 90% of what they said was true about Funcom. Its one thing to "troll" about poor game mechanics as it depends on the gamer if he/she will like it. Its quite another thing to warn about the company. Things just dont maracusloy (sp) get better when a company is involved. Thats why I will never defend SoE to the SoE haters, they have been burnt so they have a right to be mad. I personally have not been burnt by SoE but I will take heed in the future if they release an MMO that even slightly intrests me.
As for your train we "pessimist" are not giving you guys the finger, Its more like were laughing at you because we know whats at the end of the tracks, because we rode that train as well. Some of us rode it twice while most rode it once. Its the same train just different name.
Funcom is good about hyping up their games , ill give em that. TSW probably will be decent a year after release just like AoC. If you like paying for betas, Great! Funcom will give you the opertunity.
Interesting!
This is a straight rip off from the Swedish pen and paper role playing game "KULT" which was a fantastic RPG!
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kult_(rollspel)
I really hope they captured the feel as it my next best RPG to Shadowrun and AD&D (AD&D and Shadowrun sucked in the MMORPG/game versions)
So good luck with the design guys!
I still play anarchy online to this day, quit wow for the second time a few months back and resubbed my 3 ao accounts,
ao might have bad graphics but i think it works out nicely for a terraformed planet, good graphics can never cover for crap gameplay and ao is still fun after so many years.
I like age of conan to, maybe partly because i don't rush to max level in shortest possible time, my first ever AO char just recently dinged lvl 100 out of 220 and that agent was made back in mid 2001.
Sure funcom had some bad launches but at least they work on fixing stuff, i still can't get fear2 to run on my computer that ran fear and fear extraction point without any problems and fear 2 has been out what 2 months now?
Pessimist? I prefer the term realist. A pessimist was back when AoC was about to launch and the good ole AO people were warning us about Funcom. Ok so one bad launch no biggie, they must have learned a thing or two! No way they could botch another launch, boy howdy were the optimists wrong. I know I was what you would call a fanatic AOC fanboy pre-launch. Defended everything. Wrote the AO people off as a pessimistic trolls, but you know what? 90% of what they said was true about Funcom. Its one thing to "troll" about poor game mechanics as it depends on the gamer if he/she will like it. Its quite another thing to warn about the company. Things just dont maracusloy (sp) get better when a company is involved. Thats why I will never defend SoE to the SoE haters, they have been burnt so they have a right to be mad. I personally have not been burnt by SoE but I will take heed in the future if they release an MMO that even slightly intrests me.
As for your train we "pessimist" are not giving you guys the finger, Its more like were laughing at you because we know whats at the end of the tracks, because we rode that train as well. Some of us rode it twice while most rode it once. Its the same train just different name.
Funcom is good about hyping up their games , ill give em that. TSW probably will be decent a year after release just like AoC. If you like paying for betas, Great! Funcom will give you the opertunity.
Let me break this down for you:
Optimist: Oh this is going to be a great game I can hardly wait!
Pessimist: This game is going to blow goats, won't even touch it because of the developers.
Realist: Hmm, I know Funcom's track record. I will take the wait and see approach on this one.
See how that works? Claim to be whatever you want but a realist you are not.
Great. So when the REAL world of darkness MMO does come out, ignorant people (read: the masses) will think that Failcom invented the genre, and that World of Darkness is just a lame copy (like Warhammer/40k and Warcraft/Starcraft, blatant copies). I can't wait...
I'm not sure if I should be impressed, or if I'm supposed to pity you...
I'm not sure if I should be impressed, or if I'm supposed to pity you...
I vote for pity.
Most hyped I have been for an MMO in a loooong time. I really hope this game is as good as the concept sounds, I am really excited for it.
Right... like there is perfect mmo company out there that delivers 100% perfect mmo games that always lived to its hype and never had any bugs, mistakes and other crap.
Pff you should realy play more mmo games right after retial. No game is perfect and have it share of problems after that and neither wow nor Eq2 or Eve or whathever other mmo you can think of was without any faults when it was relised.
And there was never any mmo that lived even up to 80%of its hype :) Im happy if we even get 50% of what they say and rest is usualy implemented in next 6 months or so if everything works smooth :)
Have some realism instead of troling tss.
I've tried lot's of games at release too and I don't know if I can agree with your statement that no game has ever even lived up to 80 percent of the hype or not.I played coh which worked very well out of the gate with very few technical problems wow though a fair number of servers crapped out and supposedly some class or some such got axed I played on two servers that had quite few problems and those that did exist usually were fixed within a month or two.
Funcom deserves the reputation they have earned so please don't go trying to drag down the entire industry just to mark out for them.
I would love to see how they would plan to make the MMO out of Call. Most of the point when playing is to 1) Don't read anything made of skin, 2) Don't look at anything and 3) Run away. Otherwise you go crazy and/or eaten.
From a gamer's standpoint (not a roleplayers) WoD seems a much easier game to transition.
That said, I would anxiously await either and/or both, as to at least test them. I had hope for D&D but of the factors of it being placed in remote part of Eberon and it was D&D for computers, it kinda fell abit flat.