The Secret World Preview
Funcom talks about, but doesn't show, its next big project.
April 7, 2009 - It's usually pretty hard to demo a game when you don't have it with you, but Funcom's Ragnar Tornquist made a go of it at GDC last month as he gave us a briefing on The Secret World. This is a game that Funcom has been working on for years, with early design work starting up around 2002. Production was put on hold so Funcom could work on Dreamfall and then Age of Conan, but now The Secret World is back on the front burner. The last we had heard of it was in 2007, when the Norwegian company merely confirmed the game's existence.
The Secret World has had a couple of names in developing, including Cabal, which is a reference to the kind of game it's going to be. Funcom is going away from swords and sorcery and anything that might seem typical fantasy. Instead, this is a game that's set in the "real world" with cities like London, New York, and Seoul. But there's also an undercurrent of something paranormal that's lurking in the shadows. Ragnar showed me a cool internal concept video that the team used for inspiration and direction; it basically referenced everything from vampires to the Merovingians to Stonehenge to the Titans. Those may not be in this game, but Funcom is looking to tap the ideas that lurk in the shadows of our minds.
[ign]905880&downloadURL=http://pcmovies.ign.com/pc/video/article/970/970236/secretworld_trl_cg1_040609_flvlowwide.flv[/ign]
Ragnar did show me some other Secret World videos that will be distributed to the public (one of which can be seen above, though there's a longer version he showed me that you'll have to wait to see.) The gist of the videos goes something like this: a normal human in the real world is going about everyday tasks when they suddenly encounter something completely supernatural or paranormal. Then the gloves come off. This is a game that's going to be centered heavily on combat. It's also interesting because it's an MMO that will not have rigid classes or even experience levels. Instead, you can amass different abilities into you character and, if you want, you can respec your character at any time. Instead of creating a new character from scratch, just take your existing character and modify abilities as needed.
This all goes into the idea of taking out the grind, which is the need to go around in MMO games and kill a bunch of random creatures for hours on end in order to accumulate enough experience in order to advance to the next higher experience level. However, the grind is also a reason why you can play an MMO for weeks or months on end; how Funcom is going to get rid of grind has yet to be seen. However, another advantage of getting rid of it is that you don't need to worry about "catching up" to your friends so you can adventure with them. In most MMOs, if your friends are high level and you're low level, you can't keep up with them. That, according to Ragnar, isn't a problem here.
So what is this secret world in the game? According to Ragnar, it's not a parallel universe or alternate reality. "It just happens to be the world that most of us ignore."
The backstory stretches 100 million years into the past and interweaves the mysteries of history. In this game world, players are human beings with latent powers who are being "activated" to battle the creatures that are emerging from the dark places. The lack of a class system and a flexible skill systems means you can create the kind of character that you want. Combat is going to be dynamic and interactive; you won't be telling your character to attack a target then sitting back and watching things unfold from there. Instead, you'll be engaged in the moment.
![[IMG]](http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/970/970417/the-secret-world-20090407105439819-000.jpg)
What's going on here?
Interestingly, The Secret World was one of the very first MMOs to be approved for the Xbox 360, according to Ragnar. Aside from Square Enix's Final Fantasy XI, there haven't been any MMOs on the Xbox 360 to date, which is partially due to Microsoft going back-and-forth on the matter. "They really want an MMO on their platform," Ragnar said, "but I'm not sure they know how to do it." Of course, Funcom has said Age of Conan is coming to the 360, and Ragnar said they still had a small team working on it. The issue was that a lot of the focus has been on bulking up the PC version of the game; shortly after its launch, players complained about a lack of much high-level content. However, it's worth noting that Ragnar described Age of Conan as very much a PC MMO with a PC interface that must be adapted to the 360. The Secret World, on the other hand, is being designed as a cross-platform game, though he was adamant that Funcom won't compromise the PC version. He said that the PC version will still look better than the Xbox 360 game, and it will be easier to do things such as chat in the PC game.
This is also a big budget project. Ragnar said that the game currently has a voice cast of more than 100 actors, and that they've recorded in cities around the globe, including New York and London. This sounds similar to Funcom's adventure game Dreamfall, which had a stellar voice cast that was also assembled from around the globe.
For what it's worth, The Secret World sounds promising, but it's hard to gauge how close Funcom is to delivering on these goals since the game wasn't at the demonstration. Needless to say, the big question now is when will we actually get to see it? Funcom will show it sometime this year, but it could be at the E3 trade show in early June or it could be December 30, Ragnar joked. We'll just have to wait and see.
|
