So yeah, what the hell is this? I said that it’d be mostly indie titles on my Tumblr but here’s an MMORPG produced by none other than the place where the dreams of game developers go to die itself: Electronic Arts.
EDIT: Okay, so it’s more Funcom’s deal than EA’s these days. Guess thats why it’s so damn good. Thanks for pointing that out Biomechanicaltomato.
Why on earth am I talking about this? Well, here’s the thing.
There are TWO games that I will forgive for being made by EA because they’re so fun, unique, exciting, well made, or just plain amazing that it overshadows the black spot on their hand.
One of these is Bioware’s MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic (which isn’t as good as Knights of the Old Republic, but is still a very well made game) and the other one is this one.
So what makes this game so amazing? Well, for me a big part of it is the setting, which is a modern day world where magic exists, big conspiracy groups like the Knights Templar and the Illuminati are real, as are creatures like werewolves, vampires, and even weirder shit.
(Pictured above: Weirder shit.)
In The Secret World you take the role of a young man/woman who has recently awakened to a power known as Anima, the ability to focus and project their very life energy. They are recruited by one of the big three conspiracies of the world:
- The Illuminati: A shadowy corporation that uses any means to turn a profit. Based out of New York City, their only goal is their bottom line and staying in power. The world will end when they SAY it ends!
- The Knights Templar: A tradition that goes back centuries, the Knights have protected humanity and saved souls since the days of Old England, but now find that they must focus on the bigger picture rather than picking and choosing who is worthy. They operate in the open in London.
- The Cult of the Dragon: A primarily Asian order. Japanese? Chinese? Does it matter to them? Probably not. They’re South Korean, Seoul to be specific. They’re agents of chaos. Terrorists of a sort, but of the kind you wouldn’t even consider terrorism. They won’t blow up buildings, but they might short out a single lightbulb, or cause a phone to not connect, or make a spark plug on a car not work… at just the right time, to cause just the right effects. They know how to make the dominoes fall where they want.
EDIT: Thanks to WildHaunt for catching that bit about the Dragon and Thessalian for correcting me on the goals of the Illuminati.
After you’re recruited you’re first sent to Maine where the dead seem rather eager to get up and about, perhaps they heard about the recent zombie movie craze and want to get in before its over. You then head to Egypt to try to prevent a maddened cult from tearing apart the country, followed by Romania with one of the rare times that the country is actually done WELL in a video game. They go more into the legends of the country, Vlad Tepes is a misunderstood anti-hero rather than, well, how he’s usually depicted, and so on.
The mythology of the game is one of it’s biggest draw’s for me. I’m a HUGE fan of Contemporary Fantasy in popular media. TV shows like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Supernatural, books like The Dresden Files and the works of authors like Kim Harrison and Simon R. Green, comic books like Hellblazer and The Sandman Chronicles, etc. This is quite possibly the only MMO that does anything like them except arguably D.C. Universe Online since some superheroes can use magic, but it does it ten times better than DC easy.
Another neat thing is how character classes and leveling works. The devs took the following steps:
1. Take the concept of character classes and leveling up.
2. Throw that shit out the window.
In The Secret World you don’t gain levels. You gain AP and SP, which you spend to unlock abilities and skill levels for your weapons.
There’s nine types of weaponry in the game, and you can equip up to two at a time.
Swords: A primarily defensive weapon, used to parry and block attacks as much as for offense. A good choice for new players.
Fist Weapons: Claws and such which are fast, but not especially strong on their own. They’re actually a healing weapon though, striking sparks on the claws can cauterize wounds.
Heavy Weapons: Big and burly, devastating shockwaves and stunning attacks, plus some good defensive powers. Sledgehammers, firemen’s axes, even bits of old rusty pipe make up this arsenal.
Pistols: Fast and frantic shootouts are what this weapon is about. Dual wielding a pair of handguns will give you some fast attacks as well as the power to summon little support drones. Also, no worries about running out of ammo, its not bullets you’re firing but your own Anima energy!
Shotgun: Quite groovy indeed. The shotgun is built for double-barrelled AoE damage. Short ranged but very powerful under the right conditions. Also good for knocking enemies silly.
Assault Rifle: A healing weapon if you can believe that. Not sure how it works. Its a bit slower than the other two due to it’s size, but very useful in the right hands.
Elementalism: This is the one you’d probably think of when you hear the word ‘magic’. Lightning bolts, fireballs, blasts of ice, and more are at your command with the power of Elementalism. No healing or defensive stuff here, its for blowing your enemies to bits before they can do the same to you.
Chaos: Less magic and more magically-enhanced-martial-arts, Chaos powers are a defensive school of magic and centered around keeping yourself alive under the worst assaults by tweaking probability so that your foes will always juuuuust barely miss you…
Blood: … FOR THE BLOOD GO- sorry, couldn’t resist. Blood is a nasty little school that focuses on diseases. Not super-strong with individual attacks, but your opponents will die twitching and vomiting as your magic eats them apart from the inside out over time. Also, it’s the healing magic school as you can create blood barriers to protect yourself.
As you unlock various abilities you can build “decks” of up to seven active and passive powers, mixing and matching until you find a playstyle that suits you. The game even helpfully provides several and offers you character outfits for the first time you activate one.
But you might think that’ll take an ungodly amount of monster killing to get it all unlocked, right? Well, thats the good news! Every quest in the game is repeatable. They just get a cooldown once they’re done. If you’re not doing so well where you are (i.e. getting your ass continually kicked in Tokyo like I am right now), go revisit a place you had a lot of fun going through and play it again Sam. You’ll build up AP and SP at a pretty speedy rate, as well as money and crafting materials.
As for the missions themselves, they’re split up into several types.
Story Missions which follow the main story of the game.
Main Missions which usually involve gunning down monsters, defending an area, or completing some specific goal.
Investigation missions, which I’ll go into greater detail on below.
And Side Missions, which are minor ones you can do alongside other missions for some bonus rewards.
Best part: No returning to the questgivers when you finish! Its a game set in the modern day remember? Cell phones exist! :D
But yes, the Investigation Missions. Well, let me ask you this: Are you one of those guys who complains that MMOs are too damn easy? That it’s just a faceroll fetchquest-a-palooza in games like WoW? Well, give The Secret World a shot, the investigation missions will wreck you.
For example, early on there’s a quest where you’re investigating Illuminati Secrets in Kingsmouth, and one of the early puzzles involves following the way a certain object on manhole covers is pointing to lead you to a clue that hints at “the seat of power” in Kingsmouth.
When you figure out that the “Seat of Power” is the city hall, you have to find a portrait of the Navigator inside. This portrait:
See that bit at the bottom? “Time is the province of Kings and Gods. The hands of time point to truths written by kings in the word of God. The path is open to the enlightened.”
Well, that will give you a three digit keycode to the lock on a door behind a specific building in the town where three relics of the Illuminati are stashed. So what do you do?
Well, the clocks in the room are what it means by Hands of Time, and they’re all frozen at ten past ten. As for Kings and Gods… well, how well do you know the Christian Bible?
No, really. What you need to do is fetch a copy of it if you own one or go online and look up Kings 10:10, which reads as follows: “And she gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.”
120 is the code for the door.
The investigation missions are ALWAYS things like this! One of them has you translating morse code on your own to find a set of co-ordinates, another has you looking up the real world ISBN number of a book for a computer password, a third has you go to a fake website for the Orochi Group (an in game corporation) so that you can find out which of their subsidiaries does something, and so on. No hints on the minimap, no direction finding tools, no nothing. You’re on your own sonny!
Its not just find key A and insert into slot B. It makes you actually think, investigate, and do research. It is incredibly difficult to do these without looking at a walkthrough and anyone who manages it has earned my respect.
Its worth warning you right now that this game is good and challenging. Go into some areas without a good solid build, decent gear, or an idea of how to fight the monsters you’ll be up against and it will tear you a new one and have you breaking your keyboard in half.
This game also has some deeply disturbing parts too. Its not a game for the faint hearted.
Child abuse, suicide cults, experimentation on humans, and more. The game has some laugh out loud funny bits, like when you meet a rather modern mummy in Egypt or a downright psychotic yakuza in Tokyo, but it’s got some spots that are pitch black dark and will really fuck with your mind.
There’s one bit early on involving a haunted amusement park that’s so fucked up and so out there that they even made a stand alone game based just around it!
Yeah, that freaking thing. It started out as an area in The Secret World, and its pretty damn disturbing in this game too. Not as much as it is in it’s own title, but if you played it and you liked it then this is why that game exists to begin with!
The park is just one example of the messed up side of this game though. You’ll see entire cities get turned into, well, what’s pictured above for one. There’s storylines about experimentation on small children, there’s another one about some of the horrible things that have been done to native Americans, and more. If that doesn’t sound hellish enough, you literally go to Hell at various points in the game.
Despite all that, I keep coming back to this. Its dark and gory in many spots, but it’s got enough levity in some areas and is just the right mix of challenging without being frustrating that I rank it among one of the best MMOs I’ve ever played in my life.
If you want a game that’s good and challenging, are into mythology, or want something that breaks the usual MMORPG mold that a lot of games fall into, I highly recommend this one, despite it being an EA game… or perhaps because of it. If it succeeds, maybe EA will realize that games like this are worth keeping going. Its not likely, but its possible.
The dead are rising, the filth is spreading, and the world is ending. If we’re going down we’re going down fighting. Are you?
http://www.thesecretworld.com/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/215280/
