Funcom unveils The Secret World MMO for Xbox 360, PC

by Ludwig Kietzmann { May 11th 2007 at 10:30PM }

We always were rubbish at poetry.

Stunningly devoid of pointy ears, robots and glowing swords, Funcom's newly announced MMORPG, The Secret World, promises to take all things massive and multiplayer and thrust them into a contemporary setting. It sounds like a fish out of water story for the genre -- players themselves may even feel out of place after all those hours spent in World of Warcraft. The publisher aims to put players in realistic cities (on Earth) and have them uncover the game's sinister plot, eventually involving the eponymous secret world.

With the secret world (accessible through a magical wardrobe, no doubt) being filled with monsters and magic, the game will need to be unique in its presentation there, lest it fall into the pit of clichés its trying so hard to avoid. Thankfully, the leadership and proven storytelling prowess of The Longest Journey's Ragnar Tørnquist should guard against that happening. "We always wanted a different kind of online world, something scary and contemporary, something deeper and closer to our reality," says the game's producer and director. "Our goal now is to create a detailed world where players feel empowered and part of something big, something mystical and epic."

The Xbox 360 and PC game, which is currently in a "playable state", has not been given a release date yet.

[Thanks, HaloBreaker]

Tags: Dreamfall, Funcom, Ragnar Tornquist, RagnarTornquist, The Longest Journey, The Secret World, the-secret-world, TheLongestJourney, TheSecretWorld, World of Warcraft, WorldOfWarcraft, WoW

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Cune @ May 11th 2007 11:05PM

Anything but fantasy please.....

OrganicShadow @ May 12th 2007 12:25AM

Awesome to see something besides elves and orcs and crap. Odd how they still went with the "RPG" subgenre instead of just calling their game an "MMO" by itself as others have lately.

It should be mandatory though that they give a reason for making cross platform games for PC/360 and NOT PS3, if they aren't dev/published by the big M. What happened analysts? I thought you said this gen would be the big multiplatform generation because of the smaller power difference in the PS3 and 360? :smileythatsrollinghiseyes:

Sedeas @ May 12th 2007 12:14AM

Im knee-deep in the forums and the starting my personal effort to unravel some of it. The way that the pre-game info is being handled is brilliant. Okay, theres my 2 cents, Im going back into the trenches.

Digital Fox @ May 12th 2007 12:34AM

I can't say anything other than this game looks amazing. The teaser poster they put on the forums has Cthulu on it! Let's hope it actually makes it to the light of day, and survives it (unlike Vanguard).

Mikeawesome @ May 12th 2007 1:29AM

@Sedeas: I have to agree, I got so into the forums last night it's not funny. I'm afraid to go back, because I need to sleep tonight.

ill trooper @ May 12th 2007 1:27AM

I am almost scared to think of how awesome ( or even how disappointing ) this game could be. Please be the former.

I hope you can travel around to all of these cities. I'm getting shades of Gibson's book 'Pattern Recognition' from all of this, or even season 2 of 'Lost' when it seemed like a multinational corporation cover-up...

I'd like to see someone make a MMO of the book 'Diamond Age.'

Dustin @ May 12th 2007 1:28AM

I'd been wondering what Ragnar's been so hush-hush about. And all this time, I thought he was being coy about working on that age of conan game.

Woo! I swear, anything that mad viking touches is gold! Been waiting for an MMO to grace the 360. I wonder, are they going to run the access through xbox live? Hmmm..

Anyhow, his blog is fairly interesting, ragnartornquist-dawt-com. If you have time to kill.