The Secret World (TSW) is an upcoming horror, modern-day urban fantasy, Lovecraftian mythos-esque MMO by Funcom. The developers are best known for Anarchy Online and Age of Conan. As far as apologies go, TSW is a pretty good plea for forgiveness after Conan. Hold that thought, I know you're thinking it.
TSW is holding open beta weekends. You still have to register at Gamespot or something if you haven't preordered and still need a code, but it's pretty easy to get in if you're interested. I figured it was fair game to talk about it in our little community here, given the theme of the game. Which is basically shooting demons and zombies in the face with a shotgun, and then setting it on fire with your mind.
THE GOOD
For me, the initial draw to check out TSW was the setting. The user interface alone tells you a lot about this game - peek in the upper right hand corner, and there's signal bars for an imaginary cell phone. When I click to turn in a completed mission, it's an e-mail sent back to my boss at HQ. NPCs talk about Google and Oprah, compare the creatures I'm fighting to the Smurfs...
The hub cities exemplify this. The first open weekend showed off London, specifically the fictional neighbourhood where the Templars are based. Now, see, I lived in London for six years. And let me tell you, it's freakily accurate. Not perfect, but so very right. Those could be London streets. That's a perfect example of an older Underground station. There's huge attention to detail, and it shows. The tutorial mission takes you to Tokyo, and...well, look. I just visited Tokyo a few weeks ago. They got the subway signage right. Hell, they got the ticket machines right.
Of course, while I've lived in London, I've never jumped on the roof of a black cab while firing a shotgun wildly in the air, but hey. Could happen.
The other big draw for me is the combat system. The freeform character building is pretty sweet. In the weekend play alone, I started out as a shotgun/elemental magic guy, and quickly worked out a rough build where I'd spray 'em with my gun, let off a big debuffing cone blast, and then fireball or lightning things 'til dead. Then I started running into tougher enemies and needed some healing, so I found an assault rifle and went down the support medic-esque line. Because healing magic bullets are awesome.
The Skill Wheel UI is pretty damn glorious. It even has a search function. It's not altogether different from Guild Wars or even Champions Online, but TSW's implementation is solid, and you can even switch up in the field. Mind you, it can be...twitchy...if you manage to aggro something while in the middle of reslotting, as I found out. ("OH GOD I ONLY HAVE ONE WORKING ATTACK AHHhh thank the Lord it's the one that does damage while healing me.")
So, TSW is a well-thought out game. Not perfect, and I'll talk about flaws later - but they have considered things, and that shows in many areas.
Take the content. It's mostly open world stuff, but they do a lot to make it meaningful. For example, when I clicked on a phone book to look for an address, I got a window with phone book pages, and the business listing I wanted circled in red marker. When I examined a corpse, I got a window with the guy's driver's license. When interacting with the text-interface computer in the police station, the game gave me a window with an old-school basic menu and working text prompt.
Mission mechanics are the same way. An open world mission might have basic avoidance mechanics, like how I needed to stay out of line of sight from an airfield's guards. Instanced missions have slightly more complex booby traps to avoid, like tripwires and sensor cameras. It's not difficult, and the engine handles fine movement alright - but it's a nice touch in an MMO. It makes it feel like an adventure game hybrid.
THE BAD
Yet there are places where presentation suffers. NPCs are reasonably well-voiced and animated. But since your own character's a silent protagonist, they're just kind of standing there going derp through the whole thing. I can understand why they'd want to leave the player a blank slate, but the complete lack of facial expression is kind of freaky. Especially when an NPC is blatantly flirting.
Yes, I know it's an urban fantasy horror thing. That's not the right place to feel horror.
While I like the writing on balance, there's places where it comes off as trying too hard. Casual profanity. The cultural references are nice, but can appear forced. Chatting with NPCs outside cutscenes is a topic-based interaction, where you can click on a subject from a menu, and they'll talk about it. Multiple times, since most subject headers have several strings of dialogue. But the fact the conversation is in-effect one-sided can be slightly disjointing.
Then there's graphics and animations. The graphics are nice enough, I think - but let's not pretend they are cutting edge, and there's times where the textures can be really crappy. This is especially jarring when there's high rez textures for everything except, say, that wall map. Or that shirt, even.
The character creator has promise in terms of future flexibility...but right now, it's limited, and the lack of height options or even multiple body types is slightly irksome. We've been told there will be more cosmetic options and clothing available to start with the live release, versus beta, but right now there's not enough starting variation. I was almost tempted to make a female character solely because there were more hair and makeup (face overlays) and a little more clothing in the open beta.
Animations aren't always natural. The movement and combat is a little...floaty, sometimes jerky, I suppose you could say. Mind you, given that combat is very positional, very fluid, and players are supposed to move around...it's better that characters can shift around very fast and there's no weapon redraw, mechanically. Still, it's not the best game in motion.
There's clipping. Holster weapons with an assault rifle and shotgun equipped, and they clip into each other across the character's back. Go into elemental magic casting stance with a assault rifle as the alternate weapon, and your right arm clips into the rifle's carrying handle. It's things like this where the lack of polish shows. Mind you, I've never seen an MMO that hasn't had some kind of gear clipping - even SWTOR does. But TSW isn't any better in this respect.
THE UGLY
So, what's the verdict? Obviously I like the game, personally. The flaws are mostly cosmetic, and frankly to be expected in a game developed on a fairly low budget. This isn't a very costly title. I like the writing, for the most part. I love the theme and atmosphere. The basic mechanics seem fine, and the game appears stable.
At the same time, the MMO marketplace is a harsh one. GW2's coming out as well, and that's gonna get a lot of attention. The Funcom factor's a turn-off for many potential TSW players, based on Conan's history. I don't know. It's also a conventional subscription-based model, though there's the option for a lifetime sub. You and I both know that the industry's increasingly shaky on whether that pricing model still makes sense in today's market.
One headache for any MMO is quality content stream, and it's not certain how much and how often TSW will be able to add. The open world questing and contacts means that new content is going to be very zone based. The content that does exist seems extensive and elaborate. The fact that almost all content can be repeated (on a timer), and the system is essentially level-less means that there's fewer issues with 'nothing to do at endgame' - there's no endgame per-se, you just keep building more skill options for your character's deck. That could work in the game's favour, but it's hard to make an assessment.
Is TSW worth it? I think it is. I'm willing to pay for what the game is now, and I think it has potential to stretch further. I'd take a gamble on it, but of course your milage may vary. If it does, though...I'll still be over here shooting zombies in the face.
-- Acyl
TSW is holding open beta weekends. You still have to register at Gamespot or something if you haven't preordered and still need a code, but it's pretty easy to get in if you're interested. I figured it was fair game to talk about it in our little community here, given the theme of the game. Which is basically shooting demons and zombies in the face with a shotgun, and then setting it on fire with your mind.
THE GOOD
For me, the initial draw to check out TSW was the setting. The user interface alone tells you a lot about this game - peek in the upper right hand corner, and there's signal bars for an imaginary cell phone. When I click to turn in a completed mission, it's an e-mail sent back to my boss at HQ. NPCs talk about Google and Oprah, compare the creatures I'm fighting to the Smurfs...
The hub cities exemplify this. The first open weekend showed off London, specifically the fictional neighbourhood where the Templars are based. Now, see, I lived in London for six years. And let me tell you, it's freakily accurate. Not perfect, but so very right. Those could be London streets. That's a perfect example of an older Underground station. There's huge attention to detail, and it shows. The tutorial mission takes you to Tokyo, and...well, look. I just visited Tokyo a few weeks ago. They got the subway signage right. Hell, they got the ticket machines right.
Of course, while I've lived in London, I've never jumped on the roof of a black cab while firing a shotgun wildly in the air, but hey. Could happen.
The other big draw for me is the combat system. The freeform character building is pretty sweet. In the weekend play alone, I started out as a shotgun/elemental magic guy, and quickly worked out a rough build where I'd spray 'em with my gun, let off a big debuffing cone blast, and then fireball or lightning things 'til dead. Then I started running into tougher enemies and needed some healing, so I found an assault rifle and went down the support medic-esque line. Because healing magic bullets are awesome.
The Skill Wheel UI is pretty damn glorious. It even has a search function. It's not altogether different from Guild Wars or even Champions Online, but TSW's implementation is solid, and you can even switch up in the field. Mind you, it can be...twitchy...if you manage to aggro something while in the middle of reslotting, as I found out. ("OH GOD I ONLY HAVE ONE WORKING ATTACK AHHhh thank the Lord it's the one that does damage while healing me.")
So, TSW is a well-thought out game. Not perfect, and I'll talk about flaws later - but they have considered things, and that shows in many areas.
Take the content. It's mostly open world stuff, but they do a lot to make it meaningful. For example, when I clicked on a phone book to look for an address, I got a window with phone book pages, and the business listing I wanted circled in red marker. When I examined a corpse, I got a window with the guy's driver's license. When interacting with the text-interface computer in the police station, the game gave me a window with an old-school basic menu and working text prompt.
Mission mechanics are the same way. An open world mission might have basic avoidance mechanics, like how I needed to stay out of line of sight from an airfield's guards. Instanced missions have slightly more complex booby traps to avoid, like tripwires and sensor cameras. It's not difficult, and the engine handles fine movement alright - but it's a nice touch in an MMO. It makes it feel like an adventure game hybrid.
THE BAD
Yet there are places where presentation suffers. NPCs are reasonably well-voiced and animated. But since your own character's a silent protagonist, they're just kind of standing there going derp through the whole thing. I can understand why they'd want to leave the player a blank slate, but the complete lack of facial expression is kind of freaky. Especially when an NPC is blatantly flirting.
Yes, I know it's an urban fantasy horror thing. That's not the right place to feel horror.
While I like the writing on balance, there's places where it comes off as trying too hard. Casual profanity. The cultural references are nice, but can appear forced. Chatting with NPCs outside cutscenes is a topic-based interaction, where you can click on a subject from a menu, and they'll talk about it. Multiple times, since most subject headers have several strings of dialogue. But the fact the conversation is in-effect one-sided can be slightly disjointing.
Then there's graphics and animations. The graphics are nice enough, I think - but let's not pretend they are cutting edge, and there's times where the textures can be really crappy. This is especially jarring when there's high rez textures for everything except, say, that wall map. Or that shirt, even.
The character creator has promise in terms of future flexibility...but right now, it's limited, and the lack of height options or even multiple body types is slightly irksome. We've been told there will be more cosmetic options and clothing available to start with the live release, versus beta, but right now there's not enough starting variation. I was almost tempted to make a female character solely because there were more hair and makeup (face overlays) and a little more clothing in the open beta.
Animations aren't always natural. The movement and combat is a little...floaty, sometimes jerky, I suppose you could say. Mind you, given that combat is very positional, very fluid, and players are supposed to move around...it's better that characters can shift around very fast and there's no weapon redraw, mechanically. Still, it's not the best game in motion.
There's clipping. Holster weapons with an assault rifle and shotgun equipped, and they clip into each other across the character's back. Go into elemental magic casting stance with a assault rifle as the alternate weapon, and your right arm clips into the rifle's carrying handle. It's things like this where the lack of polish shows. Mind you, I've never seen an MMO that hasn't had some kind of gear clipping - even SWTOR does. But TSW isn't any better in this respect.
THE UGLY
So, what's the verdict? Obviously I like the game, personally. The flaws are mostly cosmetic, and frankly to be expected in a game developed on a fairly low budget. This isn't a very costly title. I like the writing, for the most part. I love the theme and atmosphere. The basic mechanics seem fine, and the game appears stable.
At the same time, the MMO marketplace is a harsh one. GW2's coming out as well, and that's gonna get a lot of attention. The Funcom factor's a turn-off for many potential TSW players, based on Conan's history. I don't know. It's also a conventional subscription-based model, though there's the option for a lifetime sub. You and I both know that the industry's increasingly shaky on whether that pricing model still makes sense in today's market.
One headache for any MMO is quality content stream, and it's not certain how much and how often TSW will be able to add. The open world questing and contacts means that new content is going to be very zone based. The content that does exist seems extensive and elaborate. The fact that almost all content can be repeated (on a timer), and the system is essentially level-less means that there's fewer issues with 'nothing to do at endgame' - there's no endgame per-se, you just keep building more skill options for your character's deck. That could work in the game's favour, but it's hard to make an assessment.
Is TSW worth it? I think it is. I'm willing to pay for what the game is now, and I think it has potential to stretch further. I'd take a gamble on it, but of course your milage may vary. If it does, though...I'll still be over here shooting zombies in the face.
-- Acyl