2, I don't understand this question. If a normal person can see and interact with these events would they not be able to be more successful if they had magic? Or were great with a pistol or knew how to use a katana?
Sure they're more powerfull - but why not send in the army as well? I mean, the apocalypse is about to hit, apparently. I don't understand what's the point of keeping it a secret at this point. Why not throw everything you got at it?
because if you throw everything at it, you expose the event to the rest of the world, hence lose the thought of Secret World. My theory is that Kingsmouth is under control, and used as a training grounds for new recruits
It seems that events like Kingsmouth happen in OUR world - right in front of everybody. These events have been happening for centuries, but nobody is aware of it, because the secret societies have kept it a secret.
Is that correct? Sounds incredibly far-fetched to me. Before playing the BWE, i though the secret world is actually sort of a parallel dimension (like in Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or the anime Gantz). I liked that idea much more, makes more sense to me and sounds more mysterious.
What i don't understand is:
1) How the heck is it possible to keep all of that a secret for such a long time? And why even bother to keep it a secret?
2) Why are the player's "magic" abilites so important, if normal persons can see and interact with those events as well?
I am not sure what the ingame explanation is. I can assume various reasons though:
- It's a parallel world, so not really "ours"
- magic just recently returned or erupted, a bit like in ShadowRun-reality
- the powers that be are REALLY much better with media control and manipulation than we think!
Personally I think it the 2nd is what I think is most likely, that the world just recently changed.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
It seems that events like Kingsmouth happen in OUR world - right in front of everybody. These events have been happening for centuries, but nobody is aware of it, because the secret societies have kept it a secret.
Is that correct? Sounds incredibly far-fetched to me. Before playing the BWE, i though the secret world is actually sort of a parallel dimension (like in Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or the anime Gantz). I liked that idea much more, makes more sense to me and sounds more mysterious.
What i don't understand is:
1) How the heck is it possible to keep all of that a secret for such a long time? And why even bother to keep it a secret?
2) Why are the player's "magic" abilites so important, if normal persons can see and interact with those events as well?
Kingsmouth is very odd.. The way the characters react to seeing zombies seems un-dramatic(?). I can assure you the rest of the gameplay is different. This may play like a parallel dimension, but I assume they think more along the matrix. Only the selected really know the truth.
far-fetched just seems ... well it seems like too far-fetched a question to be asking about a videogame.
the only thing any kind of fiction needs to be 'believable' is internal consistency.
Don't get me wrong - i agree with that of course, especially with the internal consistency.
That's why i would be fine with the explanation that the secret world is a parallel dimension, and only people with special abilities are able to notice it or even cross over into that dimension. Can't argure with that, it's a fool-proof setup. It's the setup that Ragnar Tornquist used for his Longest Journey stories, so i kinda expected TSW to be the same.
But if that stuff happens in our world... Trying to keep that a secret (f.e. that "earth is hollow" stuff) would be like trying to keep people from figuring out that earth isn't flat. Well, it didn't work. That's why this setup isn't really convinving for me.
But who knows... the game might come up with more explanations later on. Or maybe I just a few thinga wrong.
It seems that events like Kingsmouth happen in OUR world - right in front of everybody. These events have been happening for centuries, but nobody is aware of it, because the secret societies have kept it a secret.
Is that correct? Sounds incredibly far-fetched to me. Before playing the BWE, i though the secret world is actually sort of a parallel dimension (like in Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or the anime Gantz). I liked that idea much more, makes more sense to me and sounds more mysterious.
What i don't understand is:
1) How the heck is it possible to keep all of that a secret for such a long time? And why even bother to keep it a secret?
2) Why are the player's "magic" abilites so important, if normal persons can see and interact with those events as well?
In a genre populated by orcs, elves, dwarves, dragons, sorcerers, you find the setting for TSW far-fetched. Really?
Is that correct? Sounds incredibly far-fetched to me.
The question is, does it sound far-fetched:
a) because of moderate and possibly rational skepticism, or
b) an inability to suspend disbelief in the name of entertainment?
or
c) you have been brain-washed by the illuminati and don't know it
all of the above.
that is, if you don't want a black van parked outside your house for the next week.
"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play." Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
It seems that events like Kingsmouth happen in OUR world - right in front of everybody. These events have been happening for centuries, but nobody is aware of it, because the secret societies have kept it a secret.
Is that correct? Sounds incredibly far-fetched to me. Before playing the BWE, i though the secret world is actually sort of a parallel dimension (like in Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or the anime Gantz). I liked that idea much more, makes more sense to me and sounds more mysterious.
What i don't understand is:
1) How the heck is it possible to keep all of that a secret for such a long time? And why even bother to keep it a secret?
2) Why are the player's "magic" abilites so important, if normal persons can see and interact with those events as well?
In a genre populated by orcs, elves, dwarves, dragons, sorcerers, you find the setting for TSW far-fetched. Really?
Well I guess the question should reall add in "Too far fetched to be set in the 'real' world".
I guess in the end the answer boils down to all the fiction written in the vein. Things like HP Lovecraft, Dresden Files/urban fantasy, Hellboy and others.
I think the major difference here is that in Kingsmouth we have a very large event, that has basically killed an entire large town/small city. Its in military lockdown. On the news. Its a disaster and its known world wide by everybody.
In the fiction above while there are constantly incidents they either are in a very small town and only affect a few people or are in city and cloaked in the chaos that is part of a city and again do not directly affect the majority of people. Usually this is explained by people's natural tendecy to want things to conform to normal explanations and lack of any obvious proof (usually this is the part where the conspriacy comes in).
Funcom is basically sort of assuming you are already familiar with this idea. Kingsmouth is your introduction that all of this has been blown out of the water. We have not only a disaster but a persistent disaster none of the major conspiracies have been able to deal with and the entire world is watching and knows about it. Failure on a massive scale combined with other mysterious phenomenon.
The fact that the dominance of the last couple centuries of the "secret" has so spectacularly failed is meant to set the stage to imply that something truly earth shaking is happening. Its against precedent.
Is it farfetched to believe that Umbrella corporation is testing a virus to bring dead soldiers back to life? That the virus gets released due to corporate espionage and takes over Racoon City? That Umbrella is prepared to nuke the city and claim it was a meltdown at the local nuclear power plant?
All entertainment media is farfetched. Good always prevails (and wears white). Bad guys get their come-uppance. The loser will get the hot chick in the end.
Is it farfetched to believe that Umbrella corporation is testing a virus to bring dead soldiers back to life? That the virus gets released due to corporate espionage and takes over Racoon City? That Umbrella is prepared to nuke the city and claim it was a meltdown at the local nuclear power plant?
All entertainment media is farfetched. Good always prevails (and wears white). Bad guys get their come-uppance. The loser will get the hot chick in the end.
Everything in TSW is taken from old mythologies so I don't find it farfetched at all.
Maybe vampires and werewolves don't exist nowdays, but maybe these did exist in the past.
Something like Star Wars is farfetched, modern setting with everything take from mythologies from the past is certainly not farfetched
I'd use the ongoing environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico as an example of events with widespread effects that no one speaks about- talk about a media lock down. People getting sick from globs of crap being washed ashore. Whole pods of dolphins washing ashore dead in Florida.
You'd think there'd be at least US - wide outrage, but no... BP has nothing to do with it.
Or the birther movement, the anti-immunization movement - people believe whatever they're told to.
If you believe you were created by (insert any god you believe in), then how do you know your god didn't create life elsewhere?
If you believe you were created by a fluke chance of random whatever coming together then how come that cannot happen anywhere else?
Also reminds me of a friend at work who said her boyfriend could play one of the dance games as a ninja, but he could get past the ninja was wearing pink. I responed, he could get into playing a dancing ninja but not a dancing ninja wearing pink? We all just laughed.
It's a matter of taste. Logic and reason works for the world the story builds for itself. Within the world of The Secret World, what doesn't makes sense is only another mystery yet to be solved.
edit- oh and one of the conversations say that Kingsmouth 'dropped off the grid and you have to go through Agartha to reach it.'
BWE3 convinced me that the story is indeed too farfetched.
The Illuminati and their starting area took the cake. Everything felt so friggin random.
It feels like Ragnar didn't even try this time. He wrote a whole lot of character dialogue (monologue?) that is indeed pretty good and funny - but the actual plot is imo pretty incoherent, random, and slow. TSW certainly isn't on par with stuff like Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or Alan Wake...
It seems that events like Kingsmouth happen in OUR world - right in front of everybody. These events have been happening for centuries, but nobody is aware of it, because the secret societies have kept it a secret.Is that correct? Sounds incredibly far-fetched to me. Before playing the BWE, i though the secret world is actually sort of a parallel dimension (like in Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or the anime Gantz). I liked that idea much more, makes more sense to me and sounds more mysterious. What i don't understand is:1) How the heck is it possible to keep all of that a secret for such a long time? And why even bother to keep it a secret?2) Why are the player's "magic" abilites so important, if normal persons can see and interact with those events as well?
I dunno, I think it's the same as in series like Supernatural, the X-Files, Fringe and so on, where all kinds of weird shit happens everywhere, kinda like in TSW... yet the main population in all these series has no idea at all except for a very few.
BWE3 convinced me that the story is indeed too farfetched.
The Illuminati and their starting area took the cake. Everything felt so friggin random.
It feels like Ragnar didn't even try this time. He wrote a whole lot of character dialogue (monologue?) that is indeed pretty good and funny - but the actual plot is imo pretty incoherent, random, and slow. TSW certainly isn't on par with stuff like Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or Alan Wake...
I don't know where the story is going. I don't know how it will turn out, will it make sense, will everything come together, etc. They already said the storyline is like a puzzle where you put the pieces.
Not everything needs to make sense right from the start. Yes, teh story is random at the start, but that doesn't mean you won't come to understand it later on.
EDIT: Also, how can you judge a story only from the beginning? If you pay attention, in the very first cutscene, they talk about Orochi's attack on the subway in Tokyo. The flashback takesyou there and, again if pay attention, you learn that the Filth arrived on the bomb that exploded. Putting 2 and 2 together, it seems that Orochi brought the Filth here in that bomb and unleashed it. Also, the Darkness War which happened year ago is also connected to teh Filth, which is why they're central to the main plotline. How everything in the world ties together, that's what we have to find out.
At the same token outside of media can you say you have actually been to a place yourself and saw nothing happening? Like in terms fo that you have a lot of loop holes. Claim all you want but our media is in some degree controlled. Have you heard anything at all about the Iceland Revolution going on? I bet you haven't heard much about it. It is a big deal but considering where it is, its something governments fear of causing revolts and as such the media is censored quite a bit in mentioning it.
it's just sad that half the players here aren't even able to understand the difference between a fantasy setting and real-world setting...
It is just that the settings. I hope you never watch Supernatural because it is also set in todays world full of all kind of supernatural creatures. Please.
Meh lightning effect in those screens are no where over the top. You want to see over the top sparkles? try GW2.
I'm guessing that you didn't realize this was a thread about TSW and not GW2. Really, the difference is that no one claimed GW2 was "realistic." Someone did claim TSW was "realistic." He said that they didn't have "over the top sparkle effects." I played around with the elementalist build in TSW a bit and it definitely felt like it had "over the top sparkle effects."
Anyway, you can compare the game that calls itself realistic (TSW) with the one that calls itself fantasy (GW2) using these pics if you want to.
Meh lightning effect in those screens are no where over the top. You want to see over the top sparkles? try GW2.
I'm guessing that you didn't realize this was a thread about TSW and not GW2. Really, the difference is that no one claimed GW2 was "realistic." Someone did claim TSW was "realistic." He said that they didn't have "over the top sparkle effects." I played around with the elementalist build in TSW a bit and it definitely felt like it had "over the top sparkle effects."
Yes i know it is topic about TSW, and since we are talkign about over the top sparklign effects i just gave you an example of MMO which is actually over the top. No one is claiming TSW is realistic but that it is set in realistic modern world settings. Two different things.
Anyway, you can compare the game that calls itself realistic (TSW) with the one that calls itself fantasy (GW2) using these pics if you want to.
Yeah i still don't see how TSW is over the top. But then again it is very easy to show only screenshots which supports your agument.
It seems that events like Kingsmouth happen in OUR world - right in front of everybody. These events have been happening for centuries, but nobody is aware of it, because the secret societies have kept it a secret.
Is that correct? Sounds incredibly far-fetched to me. Before playing the BWE, i though the secret world is actually sort of a parallel dimension (like in Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or the anime Gantz). I liked that idea much more, makes more sense to me and sounds more mysterious.
What i don't understand is:
1) How the heck is it possible to keep all of that a secret for such a long time? And why even bother to keep it a secret?
2) Why are the player's "magic" abilites so important, if normal persons can see and interact with those events as well?
First do remeber that an event like Kingsmoth is not normal at all most are very isolated, able to be contained easily really, but the last time an event like this happened was back in the burning times i would say. Also it works off the herd mentality of human kind in that even many people that see somethign will fallow the herd, which allows the large societies to influence what is told to the wworld at large to keep the picture people see or think of in the design they choose. For why keeping it a secret it is about powwer as if you knew that the guy next door had vast amounts of power you might rebel out of fear, but by keeping this a secret they control the world and keep it seperated into two groups. Also people are much easier to control when they think their is no danger, and so keeping these thigns a secret well keeps people docile too making them manageable.
Where the magic powers/abilites are concearned it is kinda the fact that you are shown that the creatures (zombies, demons,a dn such), i mean in the begining of Kingsmoth you see a npc shoot a zombie in the head before he says that if you find out what makes them tick an how to stop it to let him know. WHich to me means they are like the actual living dead you can slow or imobilise them but killing them is much harder, and it is your powers that allow you to kill them makking you pretty important along with the others with these powers. Being able to interact with the events is not much as a person can hit keys on a keyboard, but it takes trained persoon to do thigns on the computer beyond certain things. Also to your magic is a gift from Gaia which makes you and others like you chosen people in the fight against the darkness, and so giving you alot of importance in ways, but without making any specific one of you a true chosen one.
Comments
because if you throw everything at it, you expose the event to the rest of the world, hence lose the thought of Secret World. My theory is that Kingsmouth is under control, and used as a training grounds for new recruits
I am not sure what the ingame explanation is. I can assume various reasons though:
- It's a parallel world, so not really "ours"
- magic just recently returned or erupted, a bit like in ShadowRun-reality
- the powers that be are REALLY much better with media control and manipulation than we think!
Personally I think it the 2nd is what I think is most likely, that the world just recently changed.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Kingsmouth is very odd.. The way the characters react to seeing zombies seems un-dramatic(?). I can assure you the rest of the gameplay is different. This may play like a parallel dimension, but I assume they think more along the matrix. Only the selected really know the truth.
Played - M59, EQOA, EQ, EQ2, PS, SWG[Favorite], DAoC, UO, RS, MXO, CoH/CoV, TR, FFXI, FoM, WoW, Eve, Rift, SWTOR, TSW.
Playing - PS2, AoW, GW2
Don't get me wrong - i agree with that of course, especially with the internal consistency.
That's why i would be fine with the explanation that the secret world is a parallel dimension, and only people with special abilities are able to notice it or even cross over into that dimension. Can't argure with that, it's a fool-proof setup. It's the setup that Ragnar Tornquist used for his Longest Journey stories, so i kinda expected TSW to be the same.
But if that stuff happens in our world... Trying to keep that a secret (f.e. that "earth is hollow" stuff) would be like trying to keep people from figuring out that earth isn't flat. Well, it didn't work. That's why this setup isn't really convinving for me.
But who knows... the game might come up with more explanations later on. Or maybe I just a few thinga wrong.
Hype train -> Reality
In a genre populated by orcs, elves, dwarves, dragons, sorcerers, you find the setting for TSW far-fetched. Really?
all of the above.
that is, if you don't want a black van parked outside your house for the next week.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Well I guess the question should reall add in "Too far fetched to be set in the 'real' world".
I guess in the end the answer boils down to all the fiction written in the vein. Things like HP Lovecraft, Dresden Files/urban fantasy, Hellboy and others.
I think the major difference here is that in Kingsmouth we have a very large event, that has basically killed an entire large town/small city. Its in military lockdown. On the news. Its a disaster and its known world wide by everybody.
In the fiction above while there are constantly incidents they either are in a very small town and only affect a few people or are in city and cloaked in the chaos that is part of a city and again do not directly affect the majority of people. Usually this is explained by people's natural tendecy to want things to conform to normal explanations and lack of any obvious proof (usually this is the part where the conspriacy comes in).
Funcom is basically sort of assuming you are already familiar with this idea. Kingsmouth is your introduction that all of this has been blown out of the water. We have not only a disaster but a persistent disaster none of the major conspiracies have been able to deal with and the entire world is watching and knows about it. Failure on a massive scale combined with other mysterious phenomenon.
The fact that the dominance of the last couple centuries of the "secret" has so spectacularly failed is meant to set the stage to imply that something truly earth shaking is happening. Its against precedent.
Is it farfetched to believe that Umbrella corporation is testing a virus to bring dead soldiers back to life? That the virus gets released due to corporate espionage and takes over Racoon City? That Umbrella is prepared to nuke the city and claim it was a meltdown at the local nuclear power plant?
All entertainment media is farfetched. Good always prevails (and wears white). Bad guys get their come-uppance. The loser will get the hot chick in the end.
Everything in TSW is taken from old mythologies so I don't find it farfetched at all.
Maybe vampires and werewolves don't exist nowdays, but maybe these did exist in the past.
Something like Star Wars is farfetched, modern setting with everything take from mythologies from the past is certainly not farfetched
--- Everything is true ---
I'd use the ongoing environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico as an example of events with widespread effects that no one speaks about- talk about a media lock down. People getting sick from globs of crap being washed ashore. Whole pods of dolphins washing ashore dead in Florida.
You'd think there'd be at least US - wide outrage, but no... BP has nothing to do with it.
Or the birther movement, the anti-immunization movement - people believe whatever they're told to.
Are we seriously Even discussing this
If you believe you were created by (insert any god you believe in), then how do you know your god didn't create life elsewhere?
If you believe you were created by a fluke chance of random whatever coming together then how come that cannot happen anywhere else?
Also reminds me of a friend at work who said her boyfriend could play one of the dance games as a ninja, but he could get past the ninja was wearing pink. I responed, he could get into playing a dancing ninja but not a dancing ninja wearing pink? We all just laughed.
It's a matter of taste. Logic and reason works for the world the story builds for itself. Within the world of The Secret World, what doesn't makes sense is only another mystery yet to be solved.
edit- oh and one of the conversations say that Kingsmouth 'dropped off the grid and you have to go through Agartha to reach it.'
* 2 weeks later... *
BWE3 convinced me that the story is indeed too farfetched.
The Illuminati and their starting area took the cake. Everything felt so friggin random.
It feels like Ragnar didn't even try this time. He wrote a whole lot of character dialogue (monologue?) that is indeed pretty good and funny - but the actual plot is imo pretty incoherent, random, and slow. TSW certainly isn't on par with stuff like Longest Journey, Dreamfall, or Alan Wake...
Hype train -> Reality
I dunno, I think it's the same as in series like Supernatural, the X-Files, Fringe and so on, where all kinds of weird shit happens everywhere, kinda like in TSW... yet the main population in all these series has no idea at all except for a very few.yes it needs more ridiculouslyt big swords, over the top sparkle effects and unwearable shoulder pads so as to be more "realistic"
maybe let players ride magical flying ponies that fart rainbows too.
it's just sad that half the players here aren't even able to understand the difference between a fantasy setting and real-world setting...
Hype train -> Reality
I don't know where the story is going. I don't know how it will turn out, will it make sense, will everything come together, etc. They already said the storyline is like a puzzle where you put the pieces.
Not everything needs to make sense right from the start. Yes, teh story is random at the start, but that doesn't mean you won't come to understand it later on.
EDIT: Also, how can you judge a story only from the beginning? If you pay attention, in the very first cutscene, they talk about Orochi's attack on the subway in Tokyo. The flashback takesyou there and, again if pay attention, you learn that the Filth arrived on the bomb that exploded. Putting 2 and 2 together, it seems that Orochi brought the Filth here in that bomb and unleashed it. Also, the Darkness War which happened year ago is also connected to teh Filth, which is why they're central to the main plotline. How everything in the world ties together, that's what we have to find out.
At the same token outside of media can you say you have actually been to a place yourself and saw nothing happening? Like in terms fo that you have a lot of loop holes. Claim all you want but our media is in some degree controlled. Have you heard anything at all about the Iceland Revolution going on? I bet you haven't heard much about it. It is a big deal but considering where it is, its something governments fear of causing revolts and as such the media is censored quite a bit in mentioning it.
It is just that the settings. I hope you never watch Supernatural because it is also set in todays world full of all kind of supernatural creatures. Please.
Do you think these are over the top sparkle effects or do they feel more like realism to you?
Meh lightning effect in those screens are no where over the top. You want to see over the top sparkles? try GW2.
I'm guessing that you didn't realize this was a thread about TSW and not GW2. Really, the difference is that no one claimed GW2 was "realistic." Someone did claim TSW was "realistic." He said that they didn't have "over the top sparkle effects." I played around with the elementalist build in TSW a bit and it definitely felt like it had "over the top sparkle effects."
Anyway, you can compare the game that calls itself realistic (TSW) with the one that calls itself fantasy (GW2) using these pics if you want to.
First do remeber that an event like Kingsmoth is not normal at all most are very isolated, able to be contained easily really, but the last time an event like this happened was back in the burning times i would say. Also it works off the herd mentality of human kind in that even many people that see somethign will fallow the herd, which allows the large societies to influence what is told to the wworld at large to keep the picture people see or think of in the design they choose. For why keeping it a secret it is about powwer as if you knew that the guy next door had vast amounts of power you might rebel out of fear, but by keeping this a secret they control the world and keep it seperated into two groups. Also people are much easier to control when they think their is no danger, and so keeping these thigns a secret well keeps people docile too making them manageable.
Where the magic powers/abilites are concearned it is kinda the fact that you are shown that the creatures (zombies, demons,a dn such), i mean in the begining of Kingsmoth you see a npc shoot a zombie in the head before he says that if you find out what makes them tick an how to stop it to let him know. WHich to me means they are like the actual living dead you can slow or imobilise them but killing them is much harder, and it is your powers that allow you to kill them makking you pretty important along with the others with these powers. Being able to interact with the events is not much as a person can hit keys on a keyboard, but it takes trained persoon to do thigns on the computer beyond certain things. Also to your magic is a gift from Gaia which makes you and others like you chosen people in the fight against the darkness, and so giving you alot of importance in ways, but without making any specific one of you a true chosen one.