The Secret World gameplay video shows PC Gamer running around Kingsmouth

It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t do anything that Champions hasn’t done already.

looks boring.

@1

It has far better voice acting, environment design and music but the mechanics is pretty much the same.

I think the stand out thing is the puzzles.

What continues to get me though about this game is that I don’t know how I’m supposed to take it, because the game itself appears to have no dignity. That’s a weird thing to say until you’ve been exposed to it as much as I have. It’s filled with conspiracy theories, but at the same time it’s black & white, morally contrasted, and almost… immature in its approach.

There’s one trailer which insisted that “EVERY CONSPIRACY IS TRUE!” and I was very amused by that, I got a good laugh out of it because some of them were just a little on the silly side. But then I understood that I was supposed to take it seriously, I was supposed to find it thrilling, but it just didn’t have that affect. And then it hits you with impossible scenarios in game, like a zombie town that no one’s ever noticed. And it’s very vague about how no one notices these things, you don’t even have Men in Black style cover-ups.

There’s supposed to be all this stuff going on in the world that no one notices, and… it’s either because reasons or because it’s funny. And it makes me tweak a bit because I’m not sure if that’s poor writing, or I’m just not understanding what Ragnar is trying to do with it. After the impeccable adventure games he was responsible for (most notably The Longest Journey), this by comparison seems…

I don’t want to be too hard on it. I guess it’s just not for me. Maybe it’s for conspiracy nuts who can take this so seriously without asking too many questions. But the moment you analyse anything in The Secret World, it falls apart. That’s my beef with it. I just like a good story, but… to put it kindly, there’s not one on offer, here.

—

I mean, consider Vampire: The Masquerade by comparison. You have The Masquerade which is designed to keep mortals from learning of vampires, and the werewolves have something very similar (merely seeing a werewolf causes a person to go into shock, this can result in lost memories, or in worst case scenarios, insanity or anterograde amnesia). It’s all about keeping it away from the eyes of people, and even the shady factions of the game don’t want the human military and whatnot involved. It’s all on the down low.

But in the Secret World, you just have this huge war going on in Egypt that no one knows about. Somehow no one’s managed to see that, or catch footage of it. But the modern world doesn’t work that way. Perhaps if they’d set this in the ’50s, it would have made more sense. But these days… we’re just too connected, information would get out there in one form or another, and people are just too damned clever.

It’s just a silly premise, I can’t come to grips with it.

It’s almost like they don’t care about the story.

But… Ragnar.

I’m very conflicted about this.

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But, you know, then again… the British faction is called The Templars, and the Asian faction is called The Dragons.

So maybe I should just listen to my gut here.

@3 I don’t really see why that would be worth mentioning though.

The voice acting is well below AAA, and the dialogue is cringeworthy. I don’t know that the cutscenes add anything to the game either, I just want to grab my quest and get on with it.

If what you’re offering is still just ultra simplistic gameplay around utilitarian quests, then a drawn out presentation like that just doesn’t make sense to me.

An ordinary ham and cheese sandwich served on a silver platter is still just an ordinary ham and cheese sandwich.

I like how that it is not class based but skill based so it allows you to have control over your character. What never worked for Champions was the everything around the mechanics; the setting, the voice acting, the over all story. Then to top it off the quests were very grindy and simple go kill or go get these items and while this game does have staple MMO mechanics they make the game pretty interesting. I am enjoying the game for what it is, maybe when the game is F2P like AOC I will pick it up and play it but with going to school,working and already pretty focused on TOR I just don’t have the free time to play this game. I am liking it for the Beta weekend.

No MMO dev is trying to do new stuff they use what is expected out of the genre and just try different settings and fluff around the mechanics even GW2 does this. MMOs are a very expensive thing that doesn’t allow too much innovation because of the cost so all these developers just stick with what works and streamline those systems.

Critically I think it’s gonna end up in broken record territory once you finish grinding and admiring the beautiful setpieces.

That’s really the best thing about it, the graphics and the scenery.

To me what made Champions a good game was the fact that it was a big sandbox. Go where you want, do what you want. You tailored everything to suit your own preference, and the zones were big and varied enough to at least make the grinding tolerable.

I think the same thing goes for The Secret World, even though it’s more restricted. People are likely to buy it and enjoy it for a time, but it won’t have any real staying power.

I don’t recall whether they’re going sub or F2P, but I don’t think F2P will be very far off either way.

I agree with you for the most part the game is very pretty even AOC had nice looking environment. It was their system engineering and the gameplay outside of the tutorial area that was a total buzz kill.