Dark Days are coming. Are you prepared?

A very secretive game is slowly being revealed to us that is from Funcom. Current it’s called The Secret World being developed by Ragnar Tornquist. Tornquist was the developer of Anarchy Online, the Longest Journey and Dreamfall, is now putting full effort into a game that he’s been thinking about since 1997:

The concept has been bouncing around in my head for the better part of a decade now, and while this game isn’t the same game that I dreamed about in 1997 – or in ‘99, when we wrapped up The Longest Journey and I was pitching my next project – it’s definitely a close cousin.

The Secret World takes place in the modern world. Behind the shadows and cracks, in the darkness, and in the night is a hidden world of mythos, legend and demons. You play a character of your own design and choosing. Armed with guns, swords, explosives and magic you can get out in the world to defeat the rising darkness.

But that is not all you do. Players can focus on exploring, mysteries, puzzle solving but the details are still being held back; according to a recent interview with Tornquist from Massively:

What I can say is that while combat is a core focus, we really want other non-combat stuff in the game. We’re just not going to be talking about them as of yet. But there will be gameplay that isn’t all about fighting monsters or exploring. There will be other things that you will be able to do. … [A]lso and there will be other ways for people to play in the game, to participate in the game, that isn’t about traveling around the world. Exactly what that is, I can’t say as of yet. … I can’t speak much about [the Economy] now, but there will be ways for players to take part in the economy. Sorry for being so cryptic, but trying to keep this very focused and very narrow for now.

There isn’t much else you can find out about the game. There have been several articles posted with small tidbits of interviews recently from GDC 2009 but nothing with any detailed information. One thing to note however is that the game will be skill based versus class based. There will be no levels and there will be enough equipment and stats to keep the hardcore audience satisfied for a long while, theoretically.

From the Massively interview:

There’s tons of stuff for the hardcore MMO players, like the whole skill based system and the tweaking that you do to those types of systems with numbers and all the items we’ll have, and that will be a hardcore player’s dream.

What is more interesting is the community being lived out in the Official Forums. A viral campaign was started a while ago with mysterious friends and other characters that offered up puzzles for the community to solve. After solving these puzzles that involved many different areas of actually mythology and legend you were lead to different web sites that does a good job of creating hype and continuing the story of the game world as secret as it still is. Take a look at the most recent event.

The whole development team has done a great job creating an aura of mystery and secretiveness. It creates a sense of being part of the “in-crowd”.

Stay tuned to the official page and the forums for more fun and updates.