The Secret World becomes a little less secretive
hasn't even come out just yet, but for certain people FunCom's next project is the focal point. There has yet to be a massively game with a modern (alternate Earth-style) setting, where Lovecraftian horrors threaten to disembowel unprepared players.
Up until now the only game with this kind of promise -- The Secret World -- has been operating in near-silence while Age of Conan's release as crept up (and jumped back) over the past year.
With knowledge of the game barely a year old, we're left with a lot of room to wonder. So it's kind of nice to read an interview about the game with its product manager, vague as the information may be.
In terms of actual crunchy bits of knowledge, there isn't a whole feast to work with -- but we get some scraps. The overall gameplay is apparently a mix of combat, social aspects and questing. What we can gather from this basic information is that FunCom is aiming for a well-rounded MMO experience, which is never a bad idea. Expect to explore some familiar places such as New York City or London, tinged heavily with a shade of darkness. Not that London has ever been tinged with a dark, evil force before.
One of the last things The Secret World's product manager is questioned about deals with instanced vs streamed content. Unable to give an actual answer on the question, his response is, "We're not ready to go into too many details here, but I can promise you that we have some huge environments in the game."
This seems a little telling to us, but if an MMO has huge instanced environments that's not always such a bad thing. It does remove players from an immersive world - which we assume is a world FunCom is aiming for -- so our hope is that streaming content comes to be for The Secret world. Only time will loose the lips of knowing developers, however.
