art by Rydelfox

I rarely blog about games other than Fallout. However, this is one that I thought deserves a moment in the spotlight:

Allow me to start by saying that I do not, as a rule, enjoy MMORPGs. The Secret World is the exception to that rule, and I hope to illustrate how it merits that distinction. Truth be told, if The Secret World had been created as an FPS RPG in the style of the recent Fallout games or Skyrim, it would easily have been one of my favorite games of all time. Alternately, I can only wish they had kept the MMO-style combat system but created it as a single-player game in the vein of Dragon Age: Inquisition -- giving us a dynamic world where completion of quests have permanent consequences. But even with all the merits and flaws inherent to an MMO, The Secret World is still a rich and amazing RPG experience.

The Secret World is not a new game. In fact, it is just wrapping up its third anniversary celebration. I've been playing it since the beta. The game is admittedly graphically sub-par, but makes up for it with an intriguing and deeply layered world, rich storytelling and interesting quests. (Amusingly, I gave Tera a try at roughly the same time only to find it quite the opposite -- graphically wondrous but thematically bland and completely lacking in substance.) Below the break, I'll go into some detail (while striving to remain spoiler-free) about how the world and the game mechanics set it apart and make it worth a look.

The Secret World is currently "free to play" -- you have to buy the game but there is no subscription fee. Funcom makes it's money from sales of the game, DLCs, and the item store. However, do not let that last one alarm you. This game is not "pay to win"; nothing in the store is required to play the game and enjoy it fully (although you will eventually want to buy the "Issues" and "Sidestories" which are the game's version of DLCs). Rather, the store is full of vanity items. (I will admit, I have spent more real money on game-world clothing than is probably decent.)

The Secret World invites you into an alternative modern world, one where conspiracy theories are true and supernatural horror lurks in every shadow. When terrorists set off a paranormal explosion in Tokyo, it unleashes a supernatural plague, and the secret societies dedicated to protecting and/or controlling the world are sent scrambling. Dark forces see the event as an invitation or an opportunity. Things crawl out of the woodwork. Some have vile intentions; others are merely atrocity tourists, drawn to misery and suffering like bugs to a lamp. Barriers are strained and wards begin to break down in what is quickly turning into a cascade failure of every mechanism that protects our world from reality's nightmares.

The planet is not without its own supernatural immune system. And you have just become part of that -- an autonomous, sentient, supernatural antibody activated to fight back against the plague that is trying to devour the world. One of thousands. Of course, people with power tend to form communities through which they exercise that power. And one of the three most powerful of these secret societies has taken notice of your transformation and has sent someone to recruit you.

Brigadier Lethe gives a you the talk.

This is not a game you rush through to reach the endgame content. In The Secret World, the story is the experience. And the story is told beautifully. Every major quest begins with a cutscene to draw you into the story. And you can expect to encounter more of those (like the one above), as well as occasional solo instances where you learn things and have to face a situation alone, giving the experience a more personal feel. Noteworthy NPCs are all fully-realized and beautifully voice-acted. And they have additional dialogue trees that allow you to learn more about them and the world as they see it.

There is a lot of world-building in this game. Not only from the characters you meet, and documents you discover, but from the lore that you find scattered throughout the game. Lore appears as glowing "honeycomb" icons which unlock entries in your lore book. This lore is told from the in-character perspective of the hive-mind heart of Gaia's supernatural auto-immune system. (Eventually, once you reach infected Tokyo and start to experience the dreaded Black Signal, you will start finding a very different kind of lore... told from the perspective of the loathsome plague itself!)

Your character can only take on a limited number of quests at a time, so you are focused on what you are attempting to accomplish. Quests are structured with multiple tiers which play out like a little story. For example, one tier might require you to find a nearby phone book and look up the address of a local business. The next might require you to go to that location, fighting through monsters that are in your way. Another tier might have you gathering supplies, or sneaking past security cameras, or searching a computer for important files. With the exception of minor side missions, the quests strive to give a refreshing bit of variety within each mission. There's still a fair bit of "kill X number of Y", but the game developers made sure those missions have tiers that involve other things too.

There are multiple types of quests. As well as the main storyline and the plethora of little side missions (and, of course, dungeons), there are three major mission types: action, sabotage and investigation. Action missions are largely centered around combat. Sabotage missions have major sections that depend on stealth, requiring you to avoid enemies and traps. But the best missions of the game are the investigation missions! These missions put your mind to the test. You may be required to calculate logarithmic number progressions, solve cryptographic puzzles, translate languages (or even Morse code)! The game makes use of its modern setting; your character has a cell phone with an internet connection, and the game provides an in-game browser. Many missions require you to search websites (such as this one) created by Funcom for in-game people, locations or organizations in order to learn things ranging from the password for an operative's account to jury-rig options for a radio transmitter.

The headmaster of this academy is one of my favorite characters in the game!

The game takes you through some wonderfully-crafted settings: from a once-sleepy New England town to the supernatural warzone of Transylvania, from the burning deserts of Egypt to a paranormal-ravaged and quarantined Tokyo. My favorite zone is "the savage coast", which features the occult-steeped academy above, the horribly haunted and abandoned amusement park below, the lighthouse with its peculiar (and familiar) resident, the chilling Black House, and the small motel where hell is literally breaking loose. (Not to mention the zone holds the origin place of my cabal, the League of Monster Slayers!) The first dungeon sends you and a party of four others to investigate the wreckage of a cargo container vessel that may hold vital clues about the monstrous forces attacking Solomon Island.

You are a member of one of the three dominant secret societies in the world, rivals working in parallel against escalating hordes of mutual enemies. No matter what faction you choose, you can group up with anyone, play with anyone. Not only can you co-exist and work together with members of the other factions (outside of the isolated and queued PVP zones, of course), but you can join up with people from any of the servers. You don't have to worry if a friend of yours accidentally creates his or her character on a different server than you did. Your choice of server (or "dimension") will determine who you normally see wandering around, but The Secret World uses "single server technology" -- a giant array of clustered servers that allow you to meet-up with others across server dimensions.

When it comes to tabletop roleplaying games, I much prefer games (such as Exalted or Shadowrun) where you can freely use experience points (or their equivalent) to purchase new capabilities for your character, with more powerful abilities and higher-rated improvements costing incrementally more, over games (like Dungeons & Dragons or Dark Heresy) where your advancement is restricted by a class system. The Secret World emulates the former. There are no classes. Character development is free-form.

There are nine classes of basic weapons in the game, and characters may chose to wield any two of them at a given time. Each weapon has multiple ability trees that you can invest points into -- two basic and six advanced -- each with seven alternating active abilities (which must be triggered) and passive abilities (which are either always on or which activate automatically when conditions are met). You spend Ability Points to acquire these abilities, choosing from whichever tree you want, building your own custom set of seven Actives and seven Passives available to your character at a given moment. The costs for abilities within a tree increase the deeper you go, and the first ability on an advanced tree will cost more than the last ability on a basic one, but the experience needed to gain an Ability Point remains constant throughout the game. This means that unlike games with a class system with escalating experience gaps, you are never left with a long wait until the next time you can improve.

Some weapons offer abilities that are geared towards the classic roles of tank/dps/healing/support, but there are no restrictions on which two weapons you chose to use. Likewise, while all your current Actives have to be from trees for the weapons that you are using, your current Passives can be any that you have unlocked from anywhere on the wheel. With over 500 Abilities, this allows for a huge variety of designs. In addition, you can create multiple ability combinations and switch freely between them outside of combat. (I enjoy one configuration for solo adventuring while keeping a few others for running dungeons with friends or other special circumstances.) In fact, versatility is key in the later part of the game. While you can chose a favorite weapon combination and play style to focus on, once you reach Transylvania, you will find you have to adapt to your enemies by swapping between ability configurations. "Decks" offer suggested builds for people who find the Ability Wheel a bit overwhelming, and allow you to unlock fancy outfits by completing them.

Unlike some games where your armor gives you vital bonuses, often requiring you to dress more (or less) provocatively than you would wish to in order to be at your most effective, clothing in The Secret World is entirely a matter of personal preference. Instead, your character wears magical items called talismans which give bonuses to your various statistics. Talismans fall into the standard health-focused, damage-focused or healing-focused categories... but like abilities, you can mix and match these however you want to, starting with talismans you find or earn but eventually crafting your own. (For general adventuring, my character wears a combination of all three types, operating with a set of vampiric passive abilities that heal her when she hurts her opponents.)

The Secret World does not shy away from mature content. I am not merely talking about swear words or female monsters who don't bother to cover up for delicate American sensibilities... the stories in this game go to some very dark and disturbing places. Insanity, brainwashing, child abuse, human experimentation, cannibalism and other very human horrors fill this world.

The game focuses on character and story, even making dungeons a more intimate experience. Dungeons are limited to a single five-person team (even Raids have only ten people). Each dungeon has an interesting story that plays out as you travel through it. Each has its own lore. (I particularly enjoy the story behind "The Facility", an abandoned Soviet anima research facility.) There is very little in the way of "trash" between boss monsters in dungeons, and they mostly serve to introduce you to mechanics that you will have to deal with when you face your next major opponent. You are required to figure out how to fight each boss monster while dealing with any environmental factors or unique mechanics of the battle. You can't win through superior numbers.

New content (in the form of the previously-mentioned Issues and Sidestories) comes out irregularly, but is still being produced. In fact, last Friday, during an anniversary livestream, the game developers whispered in our ears many secrets regarding the upcoming Issue 12, which we may see (at least in part) as early as next month.

It looks like it will be terrifying. I may need to spend more time in the Crucible.