The Secret World Review

Daydreamers like Walter Mitty would love The Secret World. Other MMORPGs may thrive on fantasy settings cobbled together from memories of JRR Tolkien or Lord Dunsany, but Funcom's new creation promises -- and delivers -- a world where mummies stir restlessly beneath Egyptian sands and gateways to Hell simmer in dirty roadside motel suites. Everything is true, we're told, from Lovecraftian curses on quaint New England villages to the existence of secret societies like the the Illuminati, and Funcom uses these truths to create a world that's more vivid than Azeroth or Telara. But daydreamers know all too well how rudely reality intrudes on their reveries. A lover's voice becomes a newscaster on television; a cathedral bell becomes the microwave beeper. Here, concepts that initially seem innovative reveal themselves as familiar features in disguise, and the most appealing settings sometimes succumb to the taint of the mundane.


Just One of the Gang

Still, The Secret World's innovation sometimes manifests itself in simple ways. For one, you're not some "chosen one" with the power to save the world single handedly -- you're merely a pixel in a larger picture, a foot soldier in one of three world-spanning secret societies: the Templars, the Illuminati, and the Dragon. It's apparent in the average bodies and hipster chic that you sift through in the character creation process, and it's driven home in the way a mysterious recruiter dismisses the superpowers you suddenly acquire as little more than convenient tools for his or her organization's ends. For the most part, the concept works -- the inclusion of realistic recreations of parts of London, New York, and Seoul as respective faction capital cities gives each faction its own sense of purpose and identity, which is a welcome touch, because every faction shares almost all of the rest of the content. Indeed, aside from faction-specific storylines, the differences between each side are purely cosmetic.

But what wonderful storylines they are! The Secret World abandons the standard reams of quest text that players love to skip over for fully voiced, animated cutscenes. Their success here proves that the concept still has some power, even after worries that Star Wars: The Old Republic had driven it into the ground. At their best, they bestow an extra degree of realism that's already apparent in the breathtaking attention to detail in the surrounding world. Visit a rotting mansion in the Blue Mountains, for instance, and you'll hear the graying owner prattle on about the ghosts she's had to live with. High atop a lighthouse overlooking a beach infested with Cthulhu-inspired horrors, you'll listen to the rants of quirky writer as he takes potshots at the zombies on the strand. "Listening" is the key word here, unfortunately. Rather than interacting, my character spent most scenes standing around listening to rants and pleas with an expression approaching confusion or annoyance. For all their excellent voice work, the remarkable monologues also tend toward self-indulgence; at times there wasn't even a clear connection between the monologue and whatever my Templar wound up doing.


Despite their colorful cinematic coatings, I still found plenty of "kill and fetch" quests; they're such a staple of the genre that ditching them would be like taking coins out of a Mario game. The difference is that killing and fetching doesn't dominate the experience as much as it does in other MMORPGs -- you have plenty of chances to undertake two different kinds of quests as well. Sabotage missions, for instance, usually entail sneaking past cameras and the occasional security guard -- in other words, the exact opposite of the murder sprees demanded by many of TSW's competitors. The variety is appreciated, but the concept occasionally seems contrived in the absence of some form of real stealth mechanics.

Far better are the investigation missions, which require you to hunt down clues so arcane that Funcom even built in a web browser for looking up solutions to them. The community's usually good about giving subtle hints in the designated chat channel if you're stumped, but just as frequently some spoilsport will blurt out a direct answer. You can turn off the channel at any time if you wish, of course, but then you're missing out on the cooperative experience the developers intended. Still, investigations are The Secret World's finest feature, and their appearance couldn't be more welcome in a genre that's often criticized for dumbing itself down. Their only drawback is the occasional bug, especially those that spring from interacting with quest objects. If the object's bugged, you may waste precious minutes thinking you just haven't figured out the trick or you're looking in the wrong place. The ability to switch to a different instance of a zone usually clears up the issue, but half the battle is realizing you're dealing with a bug in the first place.

Second Verse, Same as the First

In theory, the finest feature should be The Secret World's unique leveling system, or rather the lack thereof. Here you'll find no opportunity to type out a celebratory "ding" in guild chat (or "cabal chat," to use TSW's parlance) as you level. Instead, the experience you gain from completing quests and killing the nightmare spawn of Stephen King's imagination goes to putting points in weapon specialization, and the talents associated with those weapons. As a result, it's easy to get the impression that Funcom didn't remove the traditional leveling process so much as redesign it. That's not to say the system isn't versatile; given enough time, it's possible to learn every last skill and switch them out as the situation demands. Such a freeform design might be daunting for new MMORPG players who aren't used to the niceties of roles such as healers, tanks, and damage dealers, but fortunately Funcom provided convenient skill templates (or "decks") that help you ease into a role and reward you with a cool faction-specific outfit for completing them.


Yet that same air of reworking existing models extends to The Secret World's supposed lack of traditional gear, aside from weapons and assorted talismans. While it's true that items like chestpieces, shoes, and sunglasses are entirely cosmetic (thus allowing you to go into battle looking like Earl Hickey or Neo from The Matrix), the weapons and trinkets fill much the same role. Instead of standard item levels, gear has "quality levels," and the community uses these as a convenient shorthand for what would be called a regular level in a game like Rift or World of Warcraft. Crafting also feels different because it uses a modified version of the arrangement interface seen in non-MMORPG games like Minecraft and Terraria. It's a fun touch, but until you get used to it, you may find yourself consulting external sites for patterns (like in Minecraft and Terraria) if you don't feel like running back to the few places where you can find them in the game world.

They're hardly perfectly executed, but it's hard to argue that these concepts taken together don't mark a significant and welcome shift from the dated EverQuest template. That's less true of the combat, which is so traditional that it seems like an afterthought when compared to the ambitious ideas supporting the quests and skill system. My shotgun, for instance, always produced a satisfying roar -- The Secret World's sound design is magnificent for the most part -- but the rote animations seem uninspired after recent advancements in games like TERA and the Guild Wars 2 beta. No, The Secret World's combat gains its distinctiveness from its sheer challenges -- make more than one mistake on an average pull, and you'll die and find yourself making lengthy runs back to your corpse in spectral form. There's even a negligible durability penalty on your few items. It also excels in its unfailing drive to keep you moving: stand in one place for too long, for instance, and even some of the weakest enemies can smash you with devastating charge or area of effect attacks.


The glorification of movement particularly shines in the dungeons, which feature some of the most rewarding battles and settings of any MMORPG in recent years. There's no group-finder yet, and the mechanics still hinge on the trinity of tanks, healers, and damage-dealers (each of which you must design yourself in the absence of classes), but Funcom handles the concept with commendable flair. As early as the first instance, my heart raced as I hid behind stone columns in an attempt to escape the gaze of the tentacle-bearded Ur-Draug. In the Inferno dungeon, I fought off a demon who bathed the room in flame and summoned a massive amount of minions to her aid. Many developers keep such intense battles reserved for endgame content, but The Secret World showcases Funcom's obvious love of a good dungeon-crawl by keeping secondary enemies to a minimum and designing boss fights that remain fun after multiple playthroughs. There's not a single dungeon that I wouldn't mind running again.

For the Horde?

If only the same could be said of The Secret World's player-versus-player combat. There's no open-world PvP, presumably because of the idiotic (but all-too-human) thought of three powerful factions squabbling among themselves while extradimensional monstrosities cavort about the countryside. You only fight in the battlegrounds, and entering them automatically trades out your cosmetic gear for faction-specific uniforms that easily identify enemies in a world lacking green-skinned muscle-hulks and other fantasy standbys. There's a good dose of design variety in the three arenas available at launch, but each presents its own set of problems. The king-of-the-hill design of Stonehenge fosters suicidal area-of-effect bombardments, El Dorado encourages spawn camping, and the persistent battleground of Fusang Projects devolves into joining a swarm of your own faction members and overrunning bases controlled by the other factions. The associated chaos can be fun at times, but it never reaches the heights of TSW's rewarding PvE experiences.


The question remains, of course, as to whether all this is enough justify its monthly $15 subscription charges or the $200 lifetime subscription. Early reports look a little grim -- just over two weeks after launch, a vocal number of players on my server are already complaining that they've cleared all the harder elite and nightmare-mode dungeons that make up the current endgame. To be fair, "lairs" (or public dungeons that allow players to take down difficult objectives and summon bosses) somewhat make up for the temporary absence of a end-game raiding scene, and learning every ability and weapon skill requires a massive commitment that's designed to keep players busy. But much like BioWare, Funcom might be underestimating the number of subscribers who rush or skip content or getting to the endgame. The sad truth is that all that work on an immersive story and setting is lost on a disheartening amount of players.

The good news is that a recent announcement of upcoming content proves that Funcom at least intends to make good on the promise of frequent updates. I just worry that limitations of the combat will eventually overshadow the whole, and that the focus on a mere three regions will grow tiresome before long -- immersive and sprawling though they may be. There are also some missed opportunities to incorporate aspects of the real world in the faction cities. In between combat sessions, for instance, it'd be nice to pass the time with lightweight games at arcades with other players -- it'd certainly fit well with the existing cosmetic clothing store in London. Yet aside from vendors, the cities (in their current forms) are just showcases for non-interactive scenery. At their worst, they're boring, especially when New York and Seoul don't even have the vendor variety of London. Seoul often seems so empty that it might as well be Pyongyang after dark.


For all that, though, The Secret World succeeds as a thinking man's MMORPG. Many of its features demand intellectual prowess as well as the usual dose of combat mastery, and none of its competitors come close to matching its affection for the esoteric. It has its issues, to be sure, and all of the investigations and sabotage missions available won't stop a good amount of players from spending 20 minutes with its combat and dismissing it as a substandard World of Warcraft clone. That may be for the best. Much like Lord of the Rings Online, this is a game you play to savor the attention given to its world (beyond the cities) and the diverse cast of characters who inhabit it, and not so much for the challenges of its group content or the competitiveness of its PvP. Approached on those terms, there are few better MMORPGs on the market. Now The Secret World just needs to live up to Creative Director Ragnar Tornquist's promises of frequent and fulfilling updates, or risk shaking the thousands who share his visions into a reality of disappointment and boredom.

For now, I'm content to dream.


Spy Guy says: Considering a Templar is my boss, I think I'm obligated to at least give The Secret World a shot when I have some time. Maybe after the PvP issues gets touched up and more of that post-release content comes out, I'll take it for a spin.



Want to know how we came to this verdict? Click through the previous pages to read our early impressions.