Thinking about The Secret World
It's been many, many years since I last played The Secret World but, man, it did leave me with a strong impression of what it could've been as an offline ARPG. It breaks my heart to see Funcom so focused on MMO for decades, considering they have The Longest Journey in their catalogue and still publish — but don't develop anymore — great single-player games.
The strongest part of the game, in my opinion, came from the story and exploration, and how mysteries and side quests intertwined with different mechanics and folklore from different cultures. They were not shy of their inspirations, making open references in the world sometimes explicitly — like streets named after some famous authors, for example — and sometimes just nodding in your general direction while winking at you. The way everything melded together in a modern setting, though, was incredible, and to this day I've yet to find an RPG set in the modern world that feels just as cool and (arguably) cohesive as this one.
The premise is pretty simple: basically, every conspiracy theory is real and Earth is a battleground for secret societies, with the major three being the Illuminati (coded as Americans), the Templars (basically, Europeans), and the Dragon (headquartered in South Korea). The player chooses one of these three, each with its own ethos and story quests, and then is set out in the world to carry out objectives. The overall story revolves around the player getting magic powers and "awakening" to this new occult reality, where their job is to keep the occult hidden and clean up any mess.
The game, though, being an MMO, meant that everything looped on doing MMO stuff. While there was a ton of content to sift through, it quickly became a boring repetition unless you enjoyed the story and the writing. While some sections were better than others — I personally loved New England and Romania, disliked Egypt, never made it to Tokyo — they were all entertaining and had great characters. The whole game had an incredible ambiance that feels completely wasted as an MMO, with sections feeling like a horror game, others feeling like a detective-mystery one, and some like a prototypical magical super-hero. It was awesome.
And, really, I cannot express enough about how much interesting content this game had for the player to explore. Quests and sidequests weaved together with a very coherent vision of what the developers wanted to make. I mean, for fuck's sake, this game had enigmas that required the player to literally search encyclopedias for the answer. How many MMOs had the gall to do something like that?
But, being forced to do it online, in an (at the time) unoptimized engine, kinda killed the game for me. It is a great game to play alone, at your own pace, especially if you like to explore a modern fantasy take on different mythologies — though some of the tropes used are now more common than they were at the time.
Originally, the game was a "buy-to-play" and had RPG-like elements, with random loot and whatnot, but in 2017 — trying to revive the playerbase, I guess — it was relaunched as "Secret World Legends", a free-to-play version with streamlined progression, which killed a bit of the progression it had before for a boring upgrade-based system. It's not every game that allows you to mix different kinds of magic with different types of firearms and make combos using both, after all.
It's noticeable that I'm writing about it in the past tense, and that's because the last update on the game's blog was in 2022. I believe it's in maintenance mode nowadays, but it still has some loyal players having some fun. I don't think Funcom will shut down its servers any time soon, considering they still keep Anarchy Online — their first MMO, from 2001, and also pretty good — going and without any plans of closing it down too.
And that's the great tragedy of it all, in my opinion: if this was a completely packed "open-world" ARPG, it could've spun other games in the franchise (and they tried), or sequels, or other mixed media. The reality, though, is that this game is fated to be a quirky and forgotten MMO that few people played, and that's a complete waste of such a good concept.
I think people who have the patience for outdated battle mechanics and MMO bullshit can still have a great time with The Secret World, and playing with friends makes the experience a bit better, but I'd argue the game's prime has already passed. Just look at how awesome these trailers were, how much promise they had:
I mean, the game did deliver the "vibe" the marketing promises, but I can only imagine how it could've turned out if it were designed as an ARPG with co-op instead of an MMO.
