Swords, Sorcery and Shotguns: The Secret World

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Ulthanon
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Swords, Sorcery and Shotguns: The Secret World

Postby Ulthanon » Mon Aug 06, 2012 8:35 am

Aloha.
Some of you may have had this misfortune of listening to me foam at the mouth about a game I stumbled onto this past weekend. Thanks to a heads-up from Zalbuu, I was able to play a free weekend's worth of The Secret World, a modern-set MMO based around classical secret societies combatting a rise of Lovecraftian horror across the world. I highly encourage people to check it out (unfortunately the free period is now over), but for those who can't hop over to their website at thesecretworld.com, I'll give you the skinny.

Plot- Essentially, shit's getting real all over the world. All the stuff that most people consider to be legends -the Bogeyman, zombies, Hell, etc- is getting its act together and starting to make even the average person sit up and take notice. At the same time, people all over are finding themselves with strange new powers (powers, I might add, that seem to be granted by bees- more on that in a second). To prevent them from blowing themselves up with these new powers, three secret societies are deputizing anyone visited by the aforementioned bees: The Illuminati, the Templars, and the Dragons.

Gameplay- There are elements any MMO vet will recognize, such as binding your abilities to numerical hotkeys, gaining abilities and so forth. The thing about this game is that there are no levels or classes. You complete missions and kill shit, you gain Ability Points (to purchase spells or attacks) and Skill Points (to access better gear). If you play long enough, you'll eventually max out all your abilities and skills- but you can only ever have 7 active abilities to choose from at once, and only 7 passives in the background. So you have to choose carefully. But, if you want to be a sword-wielding tank with a pechant for blood ritual-powered sorcery, go nuts. M16-toting healer? That's all you.

The game starts out slow with a few cutscenes; I didn't mind personally, but a heads-up would certainly help. I only played Templars but essentially it starts like this: You run around your capital city, learn combat through a dream-flashback zone, head off to your faction HQ to pick your gear/skills and get your first assignment, and then its off to foggy New England, where the town of Kingsmouth is under attack by the undead.

There are your standard quests: return X to Y; kill X of Y; collect X many rabid bear asses. These play out just like you’d expect. You can only have a few quests at a time. There’s also an over-arching storyline quest that absolutely cannot be attempted all in one go, which is fine, since the lore that develops from the smaller ones is totally worthwhile. These are all fine and good.

But then there’s the Investigation quests.
One such quest told me to decipher a series of three séance circles. No help in that, aside from a provided in-game book where some of the symbols are translated; I had to figure out not only what symbols meant what letters on my own, I had to figure out just what the hell I was supposed to write in this language. Another such mission had me dig through actual Bible verses to find codes, and solve riddles to find where in town I could even input these codes. Still another had me translate Morse code- no in-game Morse decoder, just “Here’s the transmission. Best of luck figuring it out.” These missions don’t come with minimap waypoints saying INVESTIGATE HERE!, you actually have to investigate. They are, to say the least, really fucking cool.

Atmosphere- The game tries to be scarier than it is, but it still manages a respectable level of creepy. As far as outright HOMIGOD sorts of moments, it has few; Minecraft is scarier. But the atmosphere is still well-crafted and slinking with foreboding. (While you might not get something popping out at you, I was always kind of expecting something to seep up from the ground at the corner of my vision).
There are a lot of weird things about the game- Agartha, for example, which is apparently a city or location in the Hollow Earth lexicon, is how you move rapidly across the world. It is also apparently from here that the bees I mentioned hail- I’m not sure how they go around giving you powers, but a lot of visual effects have a honeycomb theme. I’d bet even odds there’s a lot more to Agartha than just “it’s a portal hub”.

RP- You can actually go around and hunt for lore. Typically hidden in out of the way places, these snippits of information expand on various stories, and are usually written from the perspective of what I believe to be a collective bee consciousness. It’s also very intentionally written to be creepy and slightly disturbing. As far as actual “Forsooth!” RP, I didn’t see any, but I rolled on a standard server and I admittedly wasn’t looking for it.
There is no /dance emote.
But I imagine that on an RP server it’d be really easy to find some stories budding. The possibilities are really good for this one.

All in all, I like the game. It’s still only a month or two old, and so with that comes some bugs, but it’s not like The Old Republic or anything. I’m waiting a few days before I decide whether to buy it, because it might just be “zomg something new”, but I really think I might buy this one. I wanted to post this here to see who else might be interested. Thoughts?
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Yva
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Re: Swords, Sorcery and Shotguns: The Secret World

Postby Yva » Tue Aug 07, 2012 6:56 pm

It's a horror MMO. With . . . ninjas and like . . . syndicate.

It's very, very good.

Don't play a caster. No really. Just don't do it. (If you play a caster, you cannot solo the solo dungeon quests, and that makes you a sad panda.)

Otherwise? Fucking scary. Difficult. And I enjoy the fact that there are puzzle components to it as well as straight out "Kill" quests. The variation in gameplay makes me squee.
So if you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy and some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

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Ulthanon
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Re: Swords, Sorcery and Shotguns: The Secret World

Postby Ulthanon » Wed Aug 08, 2012 7:13 am

Uh, DEAREST of Yvas, which server are you on? :D
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