A Trip Into The Secret World. Part 1
A play-diary trip into Funcom's "everything is true" MMO.
Do you question the status quo? See patterns where no one else does? Do things that go bump in the night excite you? If you answered yes, The Secret World might be the game for you. It’s unlike any other MMORPG on the market, imagine a world where “everything is true.” Magic, myths, conspiracies and dark horrors all exist; the work of Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft is real, and the events of Fringe or The X-Files have become reality. Secret societies of supernatural heroes and shadowy corporations fight a hidden war against the dark, and each other, that’s quickly merging with the ordinary world.
Picking a society. It’s all about your society and the bigger picture, you’re not the lone hero, you’re part of an order fighting for the future of mankind. There are three: the Illuminati, the Templars and the Dragons. The beta limits you to the Templars, so that’s who I joined. These aren’t the Knights Templar of the history books; they’re an older society with roots in ancient Babylon, righteous, traditional, honour-bound, unaffiliated with any religion. They don’t just fight the war against evil, they are the war against evil, and they’re the least secretive of the three: their leaders joke you’ll find them in the yellow pages under “Crusaders.”
Into the dark. After a long cutscene detailing my transformation from lowly nobody into supernatural hero, a mysterious woman drops off an envelope and the journey begins. On the way to Templar Hall you talk to street prophets, pick up movement tips, soak up lore, and experience controllable flashbacks of someone else’s life as they were infected with “the filth”, a black, gooish lifeform that’s shaping up to be central to the story. Then comes the Crucible, the Templars’ weapons-training hall, and it’s the highlight so far: instead of whacking straw dummies with a wooden sword, you’re unloading rounds into chained-up demons, slicing them with swords, smashing them with hammers or burning them with magic, while an old training master verbally berates you. I went with the assault rifle.
From there it’s off to the Hollow Earth, an epic portal hub sitting outside normal time that teleports you thousands of miles instantly, and on to Solomon Island to investigate the town of Kingsmouth. The missions come in distinct flavours: stealthy Sabotage, guns-blazing Action, deeper Investigation, and Storyline. Every character is fully voiced and motion-captured, and it’s clear the developers are trying to engage players on an intellectual level. More to come in Part 2.