January 8, 2008 - Even though SOE Seattle's The Agency is labeled an MMO, it seems to deviate quite dramatically from what you'd expect from a game in such a genre. It has all the persistent elements you'd expect in an MMO, namely gathering new skills, weapons, and items to make your character more effective, but bucks many conventions that make it stand out from the crowd. Though there are classes in the game, a player is never limited to one or the other. Instead, you just put on a set of clothing before entering into a mission to determine your class. Most dramatically different is the fact that the game is, as far as we can tell, a first-person shooter (though seemingly much more accessible than something like Planetside), there really isn't a skill bar, and the lowest level players can still kill high level players with a headshot.
Another interesting aspect is the entire game is soloable. You can group up, in fact grouping is encouraged since it yields better rewards, but you're never actually required to meet up with others. Beating a mission by yourself will likely yield a bronze medal, says SOE Seattle, which gives you access to more skills, gadgets, and operatives. In a group, however, you can get silver and gold medals, allowing access to more elite items.
Starting out players choose between U.N.I.T.E. and Paragon, the former of which is a slick James Bond-style spy outfit, the latter of which are rough mercenary types. Regardless of which side you pick, the key to developing your character and getting cool new items is gaining operatives; NPCs who you can order to build you things. Let's say you've unlocked a car-building operative. You can order him or her to start construction on an item, log out of the game, and still have the building process continue while offline. SOE Seattle's idea was to keep friends playing the game on as equal in their progression paths as possible, so if one friend has to duck out for a while they're not left in the dust when they finally return to the game world.
Another big focus is on UI. Since this game is being built for PS3 and PC, the traditional MMO skillbar setup just wouldn't work. You simply can't manage upwards of 100 icons with a controller. Instead the UI is being kept to a minimum, popping up only in contextually relevant situations. If a teammate falls during a mission and your medic-type character runs over, only when next to them will you receive a prompt to hit a button to perform a revive. The same goes for setting off environmental hazards for enemies like breaking apart steam pipes, or downing a glass of gin in the local U.N.I.T.E. headquarters.
To further streamline skill selection and activation, they're broken up into passive and active skills, both of which you'll have to determine before heading into a mission. This prevents a player from having to somehow cycle between tens of skills, instead just concentrating on a handful. Of these active skills, SOE Seattle said we can expect something like a brief burst of quick-firing, doing increased damage in a conical range in front of your character. Aside from skills, classes are differentiated by how many weapon and gadget slots they have available, with the more combat focused able to equip more armaments before a sortie and others having more room for strange gizmos (which apparently might even include exploding kittens).
In addition to their progressive-sounding large-scale ideas, SOE Seattle seems to be implementing plenty of quirky designs into smaller bits in the game. During the demo we were given, a character was wandering around a U.N.I.T.E. headquarters and suddenly stopped at a wall mounted monitor to play a game of Q-Bert. Yes, that Q-Bert. They said that mini-games like this would need to be played in order to access hidden messages, so you couldn't get that secret communiqué to get that quest until you beat Q-Bert's third level. Other examples were given concerning poker games, where you had to lose one million dollars in order to attract the attention of a quest-giver playing at the same table.
But back to the main action – this game really does seem like a first-person shooter. Instead of the trailer video we saw a while back at an SOE gamer's day event, the development team cut together an extended clip of real gameplay where three people embarked on a mission. The shooting takes place from first or third-person perspectives, which can be flipped between at will, and the abilities are just like you might expect with any other FPS: you go for a headshot. If that fails, you throw grenades.
But what about the enemies? If a game like this had the AI routines we see in other types of MMOs, well, it'd be pretty pointless. They'd just run straight at you and try to melee you to death. That's not the case here, though, as SOE Seattle states they've programmed foes to work together to mount defenses, dynamically alter the environment to create cover spots, like flipping over desks, and in general seem to act much more alive than your standard MMO opponent.
Then there's the PvP side of things, which takes place in areas separated from the game's main locales. In it you enter into capture-the-flag and team deathmatch type of modes against the opposing factions to reap rewards, and SOE Seattle is being careful to properly balance what can be won and used in PvP versus that in PvE. Also a possibility and joint missions where you and an enemy squad are trying to defeat the same set of NPC foes, though no real details about how this would work were available.
The mission we saw involved players meeting up near a U.N.I.T.E. safe house (which was hidden behind a flower shop front) and finding a gentlemen on the street to follow into an underground complex swarming with enemies. In order to tail him properly, you have to manage a green dot hovering above his head that turns red after he spots you or suspects you're being followed. Once underground, there were a few firefights within corridors, but things opened up in a courtyard area. Apparently the baddies were trying to destroy a structure by blasting out all its underground support beams. To beat the mission the team had to prevent bomb-carrying enemies from successfully planting and detonating their payloads on columns scattered throughout the area.
During the firefight the game looked remarkably slicks, with fluid animations for all the enemies and exaggerated but fitting death physics. At it's conclusion an Agency Moment popped up, which is basically a ring of light that when stepped into lets you perform a special action. In this case it detonated a series of crates that led to a truck trying to escape.
This is definitely a game to keep an eye on, even though it has no set release date and, as of now, no real pricing structure. The development team is currently wavering between subscription-based fees, a Guild Wars buy the expansion process, or a pay-per-item type of service (so basically it's still up in the air). It was also mentioned that PC and PS3 players on the same server would not be likely given the hassles of ensuring both version updates are properly synchronized.
ign.com
