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The Agency Preview June 15, 2007 John JCal Callaham |
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Summary: Remember Mythica, the Microsoft MMO we were stoked about so many years ago? Those devs are baaack...
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 2 ) |
As the name of the game implies, The Agency is not going to be your typical fantasy themed title but one based (sort of) in the real world. The setting, however, is one in which the super spy organizations of movies like the James Bond flicks (pre-Daniel Craig) or TV shows like Alias exist. That means highly exaggerated characters, both on the hero and villain side, along with armed sports cars and exotic locales. The Agency will definitely not be in the same vein as UbiSoft's Splinter Cell series but will be filled with lots of over-the-top action and situations. In fact it looks like The Agency will actually mix spy action movies with the more hard hitting films of the Die Hard variety due to the two organizations that players can join in the game. One is the Bondian style group UNITE; they have the cool cars, the best clothes and a general smooth look to them. The other organization you can join is ParaGON; this is the place where the Bruce Willis types of "shoot first and never ask questions" can be happy to just blow away the bad guys and not worry about looking cool.
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The Agency looks like it will be less of a hard core game than any of the company's current offerings; there's lots of campy humor in the various characters and situations and having the game take place in the hyper-real world of the movie spy genre in theory will make the game appeal to to a wider audience. SOE Seattle also plans to make the game easy to play from the start; the plans is to eliminate the whole "killing rats" style of leveling up when a new player begins with The Agency; they plan to put players in the middle of a spy operation fright from the start. Of course you start out as a rather low level field agent but the developers have put in a rather interesting gameplay addition; while working for either organization you can actually build up your own operatives that work with you; the NPC helpers are the equivalent of James Bond's Q branch. They will help you get info on missions and bring you the high tech weapons and items you can request. SOE Seattle developers told us at the press event that these operatives will continue to work for your needs even if you aren't actually playing the game. Say you put in a request for a modified sports car with machine guns and oil slicks. You can give that assignment to one of your operatives. The next day, you get a call on your cell phone in the real world; it's your NPC operative letting you know that you car is ready to go when you sign onto the game again. Missions will have themes like assassinations, drug smuggling and the like. There will also be mini-games like car chases and even a way to play casino games (always a theme in nearly every James Bond movie). Skills are honed while on missions (there is no real class system in this game like in other MMOs) and even the clothing you wear can influence gameplay as each mission will require a different set of fashion accessories.
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The in-game trailer was just a taste of what SOE Seattle plan to bring to The Agency. One thing that was touched on in the press event was that at some point while playing the game players will have enough experience to actually form their own spy organization. The plan is for your agency to form alliances with other player's in-game organizations. This all leads into what the developers are currently calling "world domination" which sounds like it might imply a way for players to actually fight with others for control of the world. Unfortunately, SOE Seattle is keeping mum at the moment on the specifics of world domination so we will have to see if that will be as cool as it sounds.
Visually The Agency is pretty impressive; the art style looks quite a lot like the current looks of action comic books; not quite cartoony but not completely realistic either like the Splinter Cell series. The Agency is using the Unreal Engine 3 tools from Epic to help build the game (its the first time any internal Sony Online game has used Epic's Unreal Engine tech) which means that there should be no excuse for the game to look terrific. Another interesting features is that the game will be released for both the PS3 and PC platforms. When asked if there were plans for any cross-platform play between the two systems, the SOE Seattle said only that they will be looking into providing such a feature but offered no definite promise.
So will people embrace this new kind of MMO? It's certainly refreshing to hear about a game in this genre that doesn't take place in a sword and sorcery fantasy world and the idea of an action game that's easy to get into is also encouraging. However its also clear that the game is still quite a ways away from launching. Only time will tell if The Agency will be the kind of MMO that will finally bring action fans over to the genre. At the moment the game doesn't have a release date but it definitely won't be out in 2007. We hope to get more info about the game at next month's E3 and over the coming months.