The Secret World has kept our tester Schuhmann busy for the last few nights. In this test, he tells you whether a detour into the world of zombies, vampires, and dark conspiracies is worth it.
The first thing that immediately stands out in TSW is that it is simply different. There is no race selection and no class selection during character creation. You play as a human, as strange as that thought may be. The guy I choose as my avatar is running around as a pretty unkempt hipster.
He wakes up from a nasty dream, suddenly has superpowers, and a guy explains to him: “Congratulations, you are now one of the Illuminati. If you survive the first week, it will surely be cool.”
Until then, I admit, I wasn’t particularly impressed. A week earlier, I had checked out DC Universe Online and there, the intro shows half the Earth being destroyed in breathtaking quality by superheroes and supervillains.
However, I look up for the first time when I meet a quest NPC. He runs a laundry in New York. He claims his girlfriend is okay; at least he knows she was replaced by the Illuminati with a robot. When I ask him what this is all about, he explains to me:
“Psst! They are everywhere!”
The interlude is so excellently synchronized and written that I lean a little closer to the monitor and start to take the game seriously.
I admit, I haven’t heard much about The Secret World. And yet, the game has been on the market for a year and a half. Is it really possible that a game was released into the world that is truly great but simply did not generate any buzz, that was not hyped enough?
It’s not quite like that, but let’s proceed step by step.
Welcome to Zombieland
After a visit to the Illuminati (wonderfully insane, designed and very amusing), I complete a tutorial in a subway station in Tokyo. Apparently, a zombie plague has broken out. I silently wonder what the hell zombies have to do with the Illuminati, and find myself, after a brief detour into a kind of fantasy-steampunk hollow world, in a little village. It looks like it came straight out of a Stephen King novel.
Kingsmouth is the name of the place. The “ahead” under the name sign has been replaced with a “dead”. I take a deep breath, take two steps, and suddenly I’m in an episode of The Walking Dead. Zombies are congregating in clusters on the street, cars are abandoned, and I get the feeling of playing State of Decay again.
A few hours later in the game, I am deeply engaged in a wild survival war against the zombies. I hadn’t paid much attention to the skill system until then, and my character only carries two pistols because I apparently have always wanted to be like Neo in The Matrix deep down.
Kingsmouth, it turns out, is plagued by a veritable zombie horde. The villagers are a trigger-happy and grumpy bunch, pragmatically talking with a redneck accent about flattening everything again. The missions at the beginning are rustic. Primarily, it’s about killing zombies, reinforcing barricades, then killing even more zombies, searching for survivors, and while we’re at it, killing even more zombies.
I wonder: Why the hell wasn’t the game a hit?
I recently played State of Decay, a real hit game, and that wasn’t much better. And I have friends who sit in front of the LED TV during The Walking Dead and keep track of how many zombies they shot and how many they decapitated with a samurai sword! Yes, they discuss for hours where and with which weapons and friends they would barricade themselves when the inevitable zombies knock on the door!
Unique Quest System
Quickly I realize that I have done the quest system an injustice. Questing is not nearly as simple as in many other MMORPGs I know so far. Because the quests are modular. No one forces you to complete a specific quest. I can pick and choose – well, except for the story mission, which is mandatory.
A story quest serves as the red thread, leading from zone to zone. In addition, there are numerous individual quest givers who assign main quests. Usually, these quests have several steps and take surprisingly long. Only one of these quests can be advanced at a time. So, mass-accepting and mass-turning in tasks during a brisk trip from quest hub A to quest hub B until the zone is done is not possible.
One advantage of TSW: When the quest is completed, you don’t have to return to the NPC, but can conveniently handle it by phone. After all, TSW takes place in our time. Additionally, you can also complete three side quests simultaneously, but that’s not too wild.
What is interesting are the different types of missions. The normal combat quests are the familiar “go there and take out something” stories. However, there are also sabotage quests that give the game a completely different flavor. Now, it’s about sneaking through solo instances, sneaking past laser barriers, outsmarting motion detectors and control schemes, and doing everything to avoid getting blown up. The missions may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but they are known from solo games and certainly provide a change of pace in gameplay.
Like in a Dan Brown Novel
However, the missions marked with a green computer are really different (different!). They are serious.
Now, puzzles or little riddles aren’t anything special in MMORPGs. They are usually designed so that everyone can solve them. So, even completely clueless lemmings on Red Bull who haven’t slept for three days and whose attention span lies somewhere between a hummingbird and a desert gerbil. In The Secret World, it’s a bit different.
The puzzles have a quality like the stuff that Tom Hanks solves in the Dan Brown adaptations. So something like: “Hmm, this must be a reference to a Bible passage! But the Bible only has 5 books at that point, not 4! So it must be a reference to the Middle English verse epic Paradise Lost by Milton. Let me think if I can recite the passage from memory!” – Now some may think that I am exaggerating… No, I’m actually understating.
The only puzzles I could solve in-game without the use of a guide were the relatively simple mysteries of the main quests. I would have bitten my teeth on the puzzles of the specialist quests without Googling. I could have even gotten third and fourth teeth, and they would have also broken on the incredibly hard puzzles. Even when I read the solutions in the guide, I thought: How the hell did anyone ever come up with that? What alien intelligence thought this up? Were any Russian prodigies welded together into a think tank like in Minority Report, and did they come up with these crazy ideas?
I admit: I’m not used to having to really solve puzzles myself. Many years with MMORPGs fine-tuned for much younger games have softened me – at least that’s what I tell myself.
This feeling of being like Robert Langdon in a Dan Brown novel and waiting in vain for the director to tell me the genius solution text for the tricky problem was quite fascinating. However, it did scratch a bit at my ego.
The Skill System
The skill system in TSW is completely free. There are nine different weapon types into which points can be invested (3 melee weapons, 3 ranged weapons, and 3 spells), and there are also 3 different “armor” skills that run under talismans, which also occasionally need points so that you can wear armor pieces appropriate for your level.
The game really takes innovative paths here and sometimes leaves the player quite bewildered because they have no idea what to skill to become stronger. TSW does, however, provide some templates. They serve as suggestions for how to shape your character. If you cover all skills of a template, the game will also provide you with the appropriate outfit for it.
Oh, and while we’re on tips: Most modern MMORPGs use the “loot all” button as “V”; TSW uses “F” for that.
So why wasn’t the game a hit?
Yes, I’ve asked myself the same thing. I believe the game is definitely worth the one-time price, just to enjoy the missions and the atmosphere. However, the content does significantly decline at the endgame. Over time, everything becomes a bit slower and grindier. The fascination of the starting area wears off. Additionally, there’s not the motivation to always collect more items or compete as in other games.
Since the game is extremely story-based and takes new paths, it surprisingly doesn’t have the addictive potential of typical MMORPGs that primarily target the players’ hunting and collecting behavior. It often feels more like a really good novel that you don’t reread from the beginning in the end.
The game deserves significantly more success than it has received. Because Funcom, the operator, messed up the release pretty badly. The game launched with little fanfare against Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 – you don’t need to be a marketing genius to realize that this was not a brilliant idea.
Who should definitely check out this game?
- Friends of Vampire – The Masquerade, for example. They will be greatly attracted by the unusual ambiance with the mix of the craziest conspiracy theories, our world, and the supernatural. If you enjoyed a movie like Fletcher’s Visions or count Lovecraft and Stephen King among your favorite authors, you are in the right place. A pinch of Constantine is also included.
- Friends of really tricky puzzles and brain games. If someone has always wanted to show that they have what it takes to be Robert Langdon or Sherlock Holmes, this game is the right one. The puzzles are incredibly tricky, promoting extraordinary out-of-the-box thinking and a humanistic education, especially regarding crazy conspiracy theories. Fortunately, the puzzles are optional. Just engaging with them can make your IQ shoot up by at least 10 points.
- Friends of survival and zombie series. The long first chapter in the game could also serve as a backdrop for Day of the Dead, The Walking Dead, or one of the many other dead scenarios that fans of the genre enjoy (scenarios, if you know what I mean). However, with a hefty dose of tentacle Lovecraft. Atmospherically and especially in terms of voice acting, the game is far ahead.
- Friends of good single-player RPGs. For just under 25 euros, the game offers a great, long story with numerous quests and surprises. That’s perhaps 120, 150, or 200 hours of gameplay fun for 25 euros, which won’t run away from you. Well, you have to accept the typical grinding elements of MMORPG quests, which single-player games like to avoid.
The Secret World is the ideal game for gamers who think all MMORPGs are the same. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly the ideal game for MMORPG players.
My recommendation: There are still a few weeks until TESO comes out, and a few months until it starts with Wildstar or other games. There’s an incredible amount of game for little money waiting for any gamer who wants to pass the time until then.
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