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Some thoughts on "The Secret World"
Jun. 18th, 2012 03:13 pmOkay, "The Secret World" (hereafter abbreviated as TSW) is the upcoming MMORPG from Funcom.
A couple up-front things.
1) This is NOT a game for kids. That NOT is in big gold letters signed by the Pope (riffing on Yahtzee here). Many cutscenes contain swearing, and not just a shit or a damn. The mighty F-bomb is dropped. A lot. Honestly, I'm surprised the more British NPCs haven't said "Cunts, the lot of them." or something similar.
2) No, really, this is NOT a game for kids. Besides the swearing, there's at least one obviously homosexual NPC, a "you don't get to see it" oral sex scene, and probably worse. And that's just in the faction starting zones and initial gameplay zone. So needless to say, there's almost certainly going to be complaints from parents who didn't bother paying attention to what little Skippy wanted to buy & play.
TSW is a modern-day MMO. By modern-day, I mean taking place roughly now-ish. Instead of magical barriers and wards, and wizards in towers, you have machine guns, and laser grids and snipers. Mind you, you also have the magical barriers and wards, but I still haven't seen any wizards in towers. But when your character can resolve combat with a number of shotgun blasts, or bursts of automatic fire, well, it plays a bit different than a fantasy MMO.
When you create your character, you have your choice of one of three factions: The Templars, the Illuminati, or the Dragons.
The Templars, despite the name, are NOT the Knights Templar. Yes, the Templar cross is used as the faction icon, and yes, they go out into the dark places of the world and fight evil, but that's about the limit of the similarities. They're based out of London, not France or Malta or wherever. They are not 100% Christian, and you're not required to be either. What they are (or what they come across as) are organized, militaristic, and focused on stopping evil. (And the other two factions if they get in the way.)
The Illuminati, despite the name, are NOT the Bavarian Illuminati. For one thing, they're based in New York City. They are about control and power, and why not have fun while doing it? The tagline for them is "Sex, Drugs and Rockefeller." Also, they're very Darwinian, in that if you can't or won't rise to the top, they will happily replace your ass with someone who will. (Although that appears to be more of a role-playing idea, rather then a "you have failed X missions in Y days. Re-roll a new character.) While they go out into the dark places of the world and fight 'evil', they do so more out of a "hey, that's my populace you're turning into zombies!" mindset rather than an "evil must be stopped" thing.
The Dragons, despite the name (hey, look, a pattern) are NOT dragons. They do not turn into scaly, reptilian beasts what fly around and breathe fire. They are, however, Asian-themed, very inscrutable, and believe in the mantra of 'creating chaos to bring about order'. Based out of Seoul, these are the guys and gals who, according to the other two groups, do all kinds of shit with no apparent rhyme or reason, and yet, they seem to be able to get what they need out of it more often then not. One of the early NPCs actually cites the butterfly 'chaos theory' in a cutscene, and that gives a decent early idea of what they're up to. Also note, the Dragon recruiting segment contains the aforementioned oral sex. They go out into the dark places of the world mostly because the Templars and the Illuminati are already out there and they love fucking with those two groups.
Note, you can play a mighty whitey as part of the Dragons, or you can look like a homeless bum and be part of the Illuminati. What you look like has absolutely zero bearing on what you can do. In other words, your character's outfit does FUCK ALL game-wise. Make 'em look how you want.
You might also note that I have mentioned sweet FA about what powers each faction gets. That's because there are no "faction defined" powers. There are also no levels. Or classes (well, sorta no classes.)
As you gain experience (by killing things and finishing missions), you earn AP (ability points) and SP (skill points). You spend the ability points in learning (duh) abilities. These can be anything from more powerful uses of assault rifles, to better sword techniques, to hurling around bolts of lightning and fire. But the only restrictions on what powers you know are (a) what you want to focus on (b) you have to buy the powers in order (to buy funky lighting power 4, you have to buy funky lightning powers 1, 2 and 3 first), and (c) you can only have active (hotbarred) 7 active powers and 7 passive powers at a time. (Although since the passive powers are passive they're not really on a hotbar.)
You can swap out powers whenever you're not in combat.
Skill points are spend on (duh again) skills. There are skills for each of the nine weapon types (blades, hammers, fists, pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, elemental magic, chaos magic and blood magic), which are further broken down into sub-skills for "offense" and "defense/utility", which are raised independently of one another. There are also skills for the three types of gear (occult talismans, major talismans, and minor talismans).
Improving a skill gives you a little bonus of some sort AND lets you equip better gear. If you can't equip a piece of gear, it will tell you why.
What abilities (active and passive) you equip will determine what you can do, and sort of what 'class' you are. Hammers, for example, lends itself to the tanking role more than anything else, while Elemental magic lends itself more to ranged DPS. You can mix and match abilities from different ability types to build hybrid characters and there does seem to be some interesting synergies showing up already. (Elemental/Shotgun is popular, for one.) Please note, that to use ANY abilities from a power type, you need to have a weapon of that type equipped. In other words, you need a shotgun in one of your two weapon equipment slots to use shotgun attacks. That should make sense, but you'd be surprised how many people overlooked that in the beta weekend.
More later... leaving the apartment now.
A couple up-front things.
1) This is NOT a game for kids. That NOT is in big gold letters signed by the Pope (riffing on Yahtzee here). Many cutscenes contain swearing, and not just a shit or a damn. The mighty F-bomb is dropped. A lot. Honestly, I'm surprised the more British NPCs haven't said "Cunts, the lot of them." or something similar.
2) No, really, this is NOT a game for kids. Besides the swearing, there's at least one obviously homosexual NPC, a "you don't get to see it" oral sex scene, and probably worse. And that's just in the faction starting zones and initial gameplay zone. So needless to say, there's almost certainly going to be complaints from parents who didn't bother paying attention to what little Skippy wanted to buy & play.
TSW is a modern-day MMO. By modern-day, I mean taking place roughly now-ish. Instead of magical barriers and wards, and wizards in towers, you have machine guns, and laser grids and snipers. Mind you, you also have the magical barriers and wards, but I still haven't seen any wizards in towers. But when your character can resolve combat with a number of shotgun blasts, or bursts of automatic fire, well, it plays a bit different than a fantasy MMO.
When you create your character, you have your choice of one of three factions: The Templars, the Illuminati, or the Dragons.
The Templars, despite the name, are NOT the Knights Templar. Yes, the Templar cross is used as the faction icon, and yes, they go out into the dark places of the world and fight evil, but that's about the limit of the similarities. They're based out of London, not France or Malta or wherever. They are not 100% Christian, and you're not required to be either. What they are (or what they come across as) are organized, militaristic, and focused on stopping evil. (And the other two factions if they get in the way.)
The Illuminati, despite the name, are NOT the Bavarian Illuminati. For one thing, they're based in New York City. They are about control and power, and why not have fun while doing it? The tagline for them is "Sex, Drugs and Rockefeller." Also, they're very Darwinian, in that if you can't or won't rise to the top, they will happily replace your ass with someone who will. (Although that appears to be more of a role-playing idea, rather then a "you have failed X missions in Y days. Re-roll a new character.) While they go out into the dark places of the world and fight 'evil', they do so more out of a "hey, that's my populace you're turning into zombies!" mindset rather than an "evil must be stopped" thing.
The Dragons, despite the name (hey, look, a pattern) are NOT dragons. They do not turn into scaly, reptilian beasts what fly around and breathe fire. They are, however, Asian-themed, very inscrutable, and believe in the mantra of 'creating chaos to bring about order'. Based out of Seoul, these are the guys and gals who, according to the other two groups, do all kinds of shit with no apparent rhyme or reason, and yet, they seem to be able to get what they need out of it more often then not. One of the early NPCs actually cites the butterfly 'chaos theory' in a cutscene, and that gives a decent early idea of what they're up to. Also note, the Dragon recruiting segment contains the aforementioned oral sex. They go out into the dark places of the world mostly because the Templars and the Illuminati are already out there and they love fucking with those two groups.
Note, you can play a mighty whitey as part of the Dragons, or you can look like a homeless bum and be part of the Illuminati. What you look like has absolutely zero bearing on what you can do. In other words, your character's outfit does FUCK ALL game-wise. Make 'em look how you want.
You might also note that I have mentioned sweet FA about what powers each faction gets. That's because there are no "faction defined" powers. There are also no levels. Or classes (well, sorta no classes.)
As you gain experience (by killing things and finishing missions), you earn AP (ability points) and SP (skill points). You spend the ability points in learning (duh) abilities. These can be anything from more powerful uses of assault rifles, to better sword techniques, to hurling around bolts of lightning and fire. But the only restrictions on what powers you know are (a) what you want to focus on (b) you have to buy the powers in order (to buy funky lighting power 4, you have to buy funky lightning powers 1, 2 and 3 first), and (c) you can only have active (hotbarred) 7 active powers and 7 passive powers at a time. (Although since the passive powers are passive they're not really on a hotbar.)
You can swap out powers whenever you're not in combat.
Skill points are spend on (duh again) skills. There are skills for each of the nine weapon types (blades, hammers, fists, pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, elemental magic, chaos magic and blood magic), which are further broken down into sub-skills for "offense" and "defense/utility", which are raised independently of one another. There are also skills for the three types of gear (occult talismans, major talismans, and minor talismans).
Improving a skill gives you a little bonus of some sort AND lets you equip better gear. If you can't equip a piece of gear, it will tell you why.
What abilities (active and passive) you equip will determine what you can do, and sort of what 'class' you are. Hammers, for example, lends itself to the tanking role more than anything else, while Elemental magic lends itself more to ranged DPS. You can mix and match abilities from different ability types to build hybrid characters and there does seem to be some interesting synergies showing up already. (Elemental/Shotgun is popular, for one.) Please note, that to use ANY abilities from a power type, you need to have a weapon of that type equipped. In other words, you need a shotgun in one of your two weapon equipment slots to use shotgun attacks. That should make sense, but you'd be surprised how many people overlooked that in the beta weekend.
More later... leaving the apartment now.