If You Can't Say Something Nice... : Secret World Legends

So, after yesterday's hostile report, here's something a tad more positive. Well, kinda...

I played Secret World Legends again this morning. I picked up where I left off, at the start of Kingsmouth. It was daylight for once and I could see what I was doing for the first time. That helped.

It may be my memory playing tricks but I think Funcom may have toned down the fog somewhat. I first noticed it after I finished throwing body parts on Norma's bonfire. I could see clear to the far side of town. I'm fairly sure that's new.

Blue all the way to Canada.

Out in the shallows of Kingsmouth's hip-deep harbor I looked back to shore. Once again, the fog appeared to have lifted. The revamp hasn't really dialed down the oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere of the starting zone - just as well, seeing it's the whole point of the place - but being able to see a bit further than the end of the street does help to keep that claustrophobia where it belongs - in the narrative.

Something that very definitely has changed is the pacing. I started the morning's session at Level 4 and finished Level 9. I played for around three hours and things fairly zipped along.

The narrative flow of the main quest is largely unchanged as far as I can see, although it's a long time since I last followed it. What's very different indeed is the degree of direction it gives.

She must have ticked the "No Publicity" box.

The main quest-line has prompts that weren't there before. Explanations of what you have to do and where you have to do it. Ambiguities have been excised. Everything seems clearer, more focused, more linear.

My intention was to follow the plot and I very nearly managed it. I didn't take a single, optional side-quest. As I was sprinting along, though, the game occasionally decided to give me one anyway.

There's a new mechanic whereby you can trigger a mission just by entering an area. It's disconcerting when it happens. A computerized voice pipes up unprompted, like some sister of Siri or Cortana, informing you that you've accepted whatever mission it may be. Then it's auto-added to your to-do list without so much as a by-your-leave.

I saw complaints in chat about it. It does seem incongruous. It's never explained, this voice. Is it your Faction? Is it some rogue New England A.I.? Are you having a psychotic episode? Or is it just another example of Funcom no longer caring enough about their own I.P. even to pay lip service to lore or logic?

Another immersion-crushing innovation that makes no sense whatsoever.
Bonus points for using a completely inappropriate visual style as well.

Whatever. I just speed-read the instructions and killed whatever I was told to kill. Killing things in Kingsmouth is easy!

Yes, let's talk about combat. I gave myself a little test at the beginning: I was going to try and do everything using only the basic left mouse button attack. For a while it looked as though it might work but it proved to be over-ambitious. They've made things easier but not that much.

At first it was simple enough to mow down at-level zombies by the pack using just LMB although if I ran from group to group I would eventually run out of anima or whatever it is that powers Chaos Magic. Then I had to fire the pistols a few times to get my mojo back.

Surprisingly good dental work for a zombie.

Other than that it was easy-peasy until I ran into Suzie's Diner to grab a lore honeycomb. Suzie herself was there behind the counter. I have all names off but I could tell right away she was no ordinary zombie. She was about eight feet tall. She was also Level 8 and I was level 4.

That was my first death. I only died once more, also doing something stupid. I came back at Level 7, having upgraded some of my gear. That time it was Suzie on the floor.

As has been noted elsewhere, the quondam "rare spawns" from TSW are nowhere near as rare in SWL. I killed Suzie, Father Appleby, Mr Freezie and at least one more that I didn't recognize.

Apart from that first run-in with Suzie they were all easy, even under level as I was. In fact I killed Mr Freezie while I was playing in first person with the UI off. I didn't even know it was him until I stopped and re-opened the UI about ten minutes later and all the Achievement messages and rewards the game had held pending popped up, one after another.

Airburst!

That tells you a lot about how easy the game is now, at least at these levels. I'd been messing about with the controls while taking screenshots and I'd managed somehow to get myself wedged in first person, so I decided to switch off the UI altogether and run about taking, yes, more screenshots.

Naturally I aggroed some zombies. They were quickly dispatched with a few mouse-clicks. It occurred to me then that the one big advantage an Action RPG control system has over the regular MMO version is that you can just hammer the mouse buttons. You don't need to look at anything but the screen. You don't need a UI. All that clutter we call "the game"? Forget it!

So I ran around for a good while just killing things and taking yet more screenshots. You can get some great fight pics that way plus you get to see what the mobs look like. It's refreshing.

See how I blew the one on the right's head right off?

All the "Nameds" dropped a loot bag with a green-quality item. Once or twice a random zombie did, too. Apart from that there was no loot at all. Given that every mob in TSW is a virtual loot pinata this is one heck of a change. I've certainly not had any inventory or storage issues so far.

The upgrade system relies on a constant flow of items to throw into the maw of the crafting window. That absence of drops might become an issue, later. I've heard it said that the end-game will be a continual grind to get fodder to fortify your gear, a grind that Funcom hope to help you mitigate via a Subscription or the Cash Shop or both.

I doubt it'll be my problem. I'm not headed for end-game.

On the other hand, I am feeling a little more optimistic about maybe - just maybe - completing the main quest at last. It was too hard for me before but it comes with trainer wheels now, as I discovered for myself.

Come back when you're bigger, little girl.

I was merrily trucking along through the story. I'd hacked Dr Bannerman's computer. That seemed easier than I remembered,  which, when I checked, turned out to be because it is now easier than I remembered. The quest no longer expects you to know who wrote "The Four Seasons" or even to google it. There's a CD of the thing just lying there. In case you still don't twig, a nearby note explicitly explains that the Doctor loves Vivaldi.

With the data from the Doc's files I went looking for the Creeds. I found Derrick dead and, close by, the green footprints of his brother, leading to a manhole. I was going to follow them but the at that point the game put a friendly hand on my shoulder and said "I don't think you're quite ready for this - why don't you go level up a bit?"

As far as the system was concerned I was seriously under-leveled for the next stage. I was Level 9. The quest requires Level 12. As someone who perennially goes into quests both under-level and under-prepared I probably need this kind of intervention.

Any fight you can walk away from, right?

Like everything else in the revamp it seems to be designed to protect the player from any nasty surprises. That seems amusingly ironic. Whether it's feasible to make a casual-friendly, unchallenging MMO out of pre-existing content in which things happen that will likely give you nightmares for weeks, I'm really not sure but Funcom seem determined to give it a try.

All the same, I would be lying if I said I didn't have fun this morning. It was pretty mindless fun, sure, but it was only when my Bagpuss talking alarm clock started up (yes, really) that I realized I'd been playing for three hours straight.

This is the thing with Secret World legends. It's not that it isn't fun. Or that it can't be fun. It's that it's not The Secret World.

In the original version the fractured, scattered, elusive nature of the quests complemented the enigmatic, elliptical, gnomic narrative. The frequent, lengthy cut scenes, the digressions into character and family history, the monologues and soliloquies and, above all, your own, silent protagonist, all came together with the slow, thoughtful, puzzling gameplay to create a tapestry of wonder and mystery.

Oh! Baron Saturday!

In this revamp a straightforward, linear "personal story" combines with a highly simplified talent tree and much accelerated combat to produce what is probably quite a decent Action RPG, if looked at objectively. If a half-decent ARPG is what you want then this will fit the bill.

How much of the magic remains is the question. It may be that, for players who never stumbled and crept through the shadow-world of the elder game, this new world, too, will shimmer with an eldritch fascination. Or perhaps it will appear as two movies, projected on the same screen, flickering out of sync, each struggling to overwrite the other.

Almost all the time I played the general chat channel reflected this dichotomy. Discussion scrolled so fast it was hard to follow. Few were happy with everything, few thought nothing had merit. The tenor of the conversation was uncomfortable, disgruntled, edgy. Exactly, in fact, the tenor of general chat back in 2012 when I played the game at launch.

Anyone remember corpse art in EQ?

So, perhaps nothing much has changed after all. The big revamp has altered enough to annoy almost everyone who loved the game, but there were never enough of those to keep the lights on anyway. At the same time it may not have done nearly enough to satisfy all those who wanted to like The secret World but couldn't, or who never even pretended to want to like it in the first place.

The real stumbling block may, in the end, turn out to be the underlying premise itself. Even watered down as it now is, this is still an odd, difficult world, in which concepts and systems that do not easily fit together are made to try. The smoother and more fluid the mechanics and the quest flow, the more convincing the animations, the shorter the TTK, the harder it becomes to appreciate those things that made the game stand out from the crowd.

Time will tell. If I had to bet I'd guess that once the flurry of interest fades Secret World Legends will find itself with not that many more players than The Secret World used to have. Whether Funcom will be able to monetize them more efficiently is another matter. By all accounts they could hardly do worse.

Did I hear you say something about my hat?

I will most likely carry on, for a while. Until it gets difficult. Or slow. Or tedious. I'd like to get to the end of the story arc one day. I'd like to see the dungeons. I'm not not having fun.

Then again, maybe, in a week or two, I'll already have stopped logging in, will have moved on to something else. If so, I suspect I won't be the only one.