After getting a guided tour of The Secret World's premier dungeon at this year's Electronic Arts Studio Showcase, we were left with more questions than answers. To help shed some light on The Secret World's secrets, we caught up with Ragnar Tornquist, senior producer and creative director at developer Funcom (Age of Conan). Tornquist talked us through everything from character progression to social media integration to surviving in the massively multiplayer online marketplace. As for a release date, well, that's one secret we've yet to crack.
Check out this exclusive developer diary for The Secret World.
GameSpot: Making a massively multiplayer online game without leveling must be a challenge. In what ways will players feel a sense of progression, and how will experienced Secret World players prove their superiority to less-seasoned adventurers?
Ragnar Tornquist: Progression is vitally important in a role-playing game, and particularly in a massively multiplayer role-playing game. You're spending hundreds, potentially thousands, of hours in our game, and you want to feel that your character is growing and learning and becoming more powerful and versatile. Without levels, of course, we need other progression mechanics, and in The Secret World there are plenty.
First off, players will earn points in order to purchase powers. You get experience from everything you do: missions, PVP, monster slaying, crafting, lore, and achievements--everything. There are over five hundred completely unique powers in the game--at launch. We will add more postlaunch, and while you don't necessarily need all of these powers, the more you have, the more flexibility and choice you'll have. And The Secret World is all about choice. Powers are generally grouped by weapon type, and weapons have different properties, strengths and weaknesses, and unique characteristics. Having access to a wide variety of powers and, consequently, weapons makes you a more versatile and flexible player, and you'll be able to take on more of the content in the game. Players build decks consisting of seven active and seven passive powers, and the way these are combined and the interplay between both the active and passive powers is key to the role-playing and combat mechanics in The Secret World.
Secondly, gear--from loot, trading, crafting, rewards--is hugely important in our game. How you equip your character, and how you equip your character for a certain deck of powers, is crucial in having the optimal character build for any given situation. The player character has a number of slots, including magical amulets and trinkets, as well as occult implants called "chakras," that affect the player's stats, and a large portion of the character progression in the game comes from gear.
Clothing, of course, does not have stats--you can look the way you want to look, all the time--but since a lot of the clothing choices and outfits in the game are unlocked through missions and achievements, players will be able to show off their accomplishments by wearing these clothes; be it a stylish Soviet-era uniform gained by completing a dungeon, or a Stetson hat given as a reward for finishing a challenging mission, players can choose themselves what to brag about, how, and when.
In addition, players will increase in skill within weapon categories, meaning that someone who just starts out with a shotgun will not be as strong or versatile as someone who's been playing with a shotgun for dozens of hours. All players will also increase in rank within their secret societies, climbing the conspiratorial ladders from the basement up. These ranks open up new content and access to secrets, as well as things like vendors and unique items, and special missions that bring players deeper into the ancient mysteries and conspiracies of the secret world, and the ongoing conflict between the three factions.
There are other ways to progress--and to show off your progress--in The Secret World, and we'll reveal more as we get closer to launch.
GS: Music has always been an important part of Funcom's games. How is music being used to intensify the player experience in The Secret World?
RT: Both music and audio in general play a huge role in The Secret World, and we're benefiting from having a highly experienced audio director on our team (Simon Poole, who was responsible for Dreamfall: The Longest Journey) and a fantastic composer (Marc Canham) together with some very talented sound designers. Music in particular is being used as a tool to build atmosphere and tension, when needed. In fact, we've implemented a really powerful and unique combat music AI that analyzes the environment you're in, as well as every encounter with a monster, and modifies the music to fit the encounter.
Let's say you're moving through an area with a lot of roaming monsters. The AI will pick up on this and start what's called "tension music," creating an atmosphere of impending danger, which immediately segues into combat music--completely seamlessly--if you're spotted and attacked. During combat, if you're fighting a single undead creature, we might stick with low-intensity combat music, or perhaps even just sound effects, while battling a crowd of undead would up the tempo and intensity of the music. Fighting stronger bosses kicks the music up to a whole new level of intensity, and you'll really be able to tell when you're in trouble: the drums kick in, the volume rises, and your adrenaline with it. It's a really effective tool to illustrate game mechanics through music, and it's also an intriguing and original feature that I think players will appreciate.
In addition to the combat music, of course, we have tons of orchestral and contemporary music befitting each locale in the game--from New England to Egypt, from London to Seoul, from hellish dimensions to secret Soviet research facilities. Every location has a different sound to it, with unique music and effects that bring everything together.
