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If the recent dungeon I slayed my way through is any indication, these instanced experiences exemplify The Secret World's unique mix of fantasy and reality. My shotgun-wielding Templar journeyed back in time through a mystical vision, slaying a demonically-powered Mayan army that was invading the north east coast of New England and fighting alongside viking allies. Did you read that sentence? If it sounds utterly ludicrous that's because, well, it is.The Secret World takes ideas, civilizations and religions many of us have a vague familiarity with and adapts them into a twisting and turning narrative. Thanks to its well-done in-game cut-scenes, which, like Star Wars: The Old Republic have voiced actors and great, rapidly changing camera angles, it's easy to get more wrapped up in The Secret World's plot than you would in a normal MMO. The writing, as pointed out in one of our most recent previews, is also quite charming and often funny. My chief complaint about the way Funcom tells its story so far is that, with all the attention to framing shots and taking the time to record voice acting, no one ever gave your character a voice. All the narrative portions appear one-sided, dictating the plot to you rather than making you feel like you're an active participant.The impressive storytelling helps The Secret World feel like a high-production value title, but part of the reason its world feels so immersive is due to the focus on atmosphere. In a evil infested New England fog rolls through the lightly-wooded environments, while off in the distance you can see a theme park that's juxtaposed against the magic and mysticism around you. The team at Funcom has managed to design a world that combines pistols, swords, spells and monsters in a way that both looks pretty and feels...kind of natural. There's a certain sense of camp to the characters you talk to, sure, but fighting giant insects in Egypt one moment, then slaying zombies in a town that looks familiar feels almost plausible. It's just fantastical enough to intrigue, without taking it to places that feels outright silly.The craft and time put into developing the universe of The Secret World is obvious if you can be convinced to try it, but for experienced players the complaint I hear time and time again regarding the prospect of starting a new MMO is, “It's not like it'll play any different.” Having fought my way through a pretty epic dungeon in The Secret World, I feel that this could be a game that challenges that assertion.Plenty of quests will doubtlessly involve collecting untold numbers of things for a quest giver, or slaying X amount of an enemy to yield a chunk of experience, but dungeons in The Secret World take the typically boring chunks out. When my party dropped into an instance to duke it out against the aforementioned Mayans, we didn't have to slog through legions of lesser enemies to reach a really cool boss encounter. Instead, Funcom designed the dungeon so every encounter puts you toe-to-toe with a boss. In between fights you're given chunks of story, and can gaze upon highly detailed battlefields and haunting coastlines that set the tone, but every fight is meant to be interesting, not to droll on as you attempt to reach the next boss.Quickly jumping between bosses changes up the pace of The Secret World's dungeons, but they capitalize on this sense of momentum by making each fight more than a simple mash-your-spell-buttons affair. Plenty of other MMOs have well-designed bosses, but in my time with World of WarCraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic, it wasn't uncommon to fight one cool boss, followed by two others that mostly boiled down to mashing buttons and spamming heals to make sure we won a war of attrition. In The Secret World, every boss in the dungeon went through multiple stages, telegraphing their attacks and challenging the entire party so we had to constantly shift position, communicate and adapt our tactics to what was going on each moment. It was quite possibly the most exciting half hour I've spent with an MMO dungeon in years.The bits and pieces I've talked about make up only a few components of what The Secret World has to offer ( you can read more about its cool take on skills in our previous coverage ), but if you're at all intrigued you can check out its fast-paced dungeons and crazy stories for yourself when it releases on July 3rd.