We've heard rumors and tales about the game for years, now we've finally taken a look inside. What have we found? Read on to find out!

To facilitate this sort of combat experience, The Secret World team has really tried its best to create a truly open world for players to explore. Each of the area maps found in the game is what they described as “open world” and within each of the areas – while players aren’t busy destroying monsters – players will have the opportunity to delve into mini-dungeons or mini-instances that the designers have built into the game in places where they do want the players to feel alone. In those instances, Ragnar described how the designers might play with sounds, destructibles, or various other elements of the play field to elicit a particular emotion from the player.

The mini-dungeons won’t necessarily be just for groups either; the developers at the TSW demo stated that players could technically play through the entire story behind the game on their own, but it would be easier if they brought friends along. That said, they didn’t mention whether that meant all of the end-game content was solo friendly, and we anticipate that more will be revealed about the later PvE elements of the game eventually.

Shifting gears a bit, it’s important to note just how vital the itemization will be in The Secret World. From the very start of their presentation, Ragnar was quick to point out that, while there may not be the standard style of classes or leveling in TSW there is in other games, the title’s progression system is really based around this idea of “gearing up.” Rather than having to purchase new abilities of higher power each level, the abilities themselves enhance with the gear that a character wears and equips, thus focusing the progression path on the equipment rather than on the abilities a character buys.

All in all, the presentation the ZAM staff received from The Secret World team was fantastic, but there were a few areas that we wished we could have some more of. For starters, the demo town that Funcom prepared was certainly an interesting locale, but the focus on zombies really confused a lot of individuals who weren’t necessarily up to speed with the TSW lore. The game – from what has been released in previous snippets of information – is not *just* about zombies or the undead. This is a game more about the occult and the struggles of the various cabals to eke out an existence in their torn world. Therefore, seeing more of the supernatural elements and the PvP combat would have been a nice change…. that and we’re all getting tired of zombies.

With those future visions still dancing in our heads, we can’t wait to see what’s next for The Secret World. The game itself looks to be shaping up quite well, and we honestly can’t wait to jump in and give the title a spin. Hopefully next time we see the game we can actually get some hands-on time and see what the title has to offer!