Questions by Tony "RadarX" Jones
Answers by Kevin O'Hara, Senior World Designer for The Agency
Set in a dangerous and sexy world of espionage, Sony Online Entertainments spy themed The Agency promises to bring players into a James Bond like world. With exotic locations, dynamic gameplay, and lots of guns, it could likely be one of the most action packed MMO games to date. Ten Ton Hammer had the opportunity to visit SOE Seattle and talk with Senior World Designer Kevin O'Hara who talked about what we can expect from the game.
Ten Ton Hammer: Tell us a little about who you are and what you do for The Agency.
Kevin O'Hara: My name is Kevin O'Hara and I'm a Senior World Designer. It really just makes me responsible for the story, the missions, and locations we go to on behalf of the Head Writer who is working on the overall story. My job is really to make sure what he is coming up with meshes with what the Level Designers are putting in the game, making the Agency a fun and exciting place to be.
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Taking the High Ground
Ten Ton Hammer: What do you feel The Agency is doing differently from every other MMO game in regards to world building?
Kevin O'Hara: As far as world building well I think we've said this many times that first and foremost we are a shooter game. So the level design really comes to the moment to moment gameplay. A lot of typical MMO's could rightfully lay down a terrain field, plop a bunch of spawners down, and that's their quests. You just go through the dangerous areas, you see your enemies, and you pick out which ones you want to approach and get in combat with them.
Our levels, as soon as you can see somebody they are essentially in range. If not to shoot at for them to react to you. So we really have to take into account what methods of movement you can use, like dodging, how you can use cover to your advantage, and how they can use cover to their advantage. How we can limit flow of the players? To get somewhere you might have to have to duck under this thing that slows you down which means you have to take cover and shoot before you go through. A lot of it is more environmental.
Ten Ton Hammer: So how do you go from actual concept to a playable level? Can you walk us through the process?
Kevin O'Hara: Well the first thing we do is try to determine where we're going to be in the world. A big desire of The Agency is to have the jet setting feel so you can go from one big city to another or remote locations that fit the spy genre. So our concept and artist folks would go through and figure out what places are interesting for us to go to. Then from there try and pare it down to what's possible and what kind of places we can use many of the same assets for.
The main reason why Prague is one of our main locations in Central Europe because the architecture you see in Prague is all over Europe. And if we can nail Prague, with some adjustments, we can make other cities that have their own flavor, their own sky boxes, and landmarks. But the average street doesn't have to be that much more work for the artists to lay down.
So that's a lot of the thinking about where we want to be. The next big step is working on the story guides to figure out what we want to be doing. And that really pulls things into play. We can have a really cool environment but if it doesn't fit into the Spy or the Mercenary genre, that should go on the C list of things to do.
Ten Ton Hammer: Are the levels going to have a more funneled experience or open environment?
Kevin O'Hara: A lot of what we want to do with the spy stuff is make it an urban environment which can be quite big but that doesn't mean you have vistas that go on for miles like you would in Antonica in EverQuest 2. Although you might see several street blocks which could seem like a long ways especially when it might be more than your gun range.
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Flashbang Out!
For the public spaces, you shouldn't feel you are that enclosed. There should be plenty of options, in different directions, to really explore a sizable portion of the city. From there you might find public space missions you are going through and there will be opportunities to go through instance space. That will be a little more enclosed and play to the first person shooter aspect of pulling you through a section (of gameplay) or interesting map to go through.
With that we want to make sure it's not just a completely linear experience, because it is an MMO game and people are going to want it to feel like it's a real world in some ways. And a lot of our designs have that in mind of "Here is the encounter, and here are a couple of different ways you can approach it from." And after you are done, here is the cool off area where you start prepping for the next encounter area you know scout it out or move to this door or get to the higher balcony to look down on the situation.
Ten Ton Hammer: What are you doing regarding the pacing of levels without disturbing the social system integrity?
Kevin O'Hara: Definitely in our game, the combat resolution is a lot faster than you'd find in a typical MMO game like World of Warcraft or EverQuest 2. Ours (speaking of combat) will be 15-20 seconds and in some cases headshots can get you through encounters fairly quickly. So pacing is important to us so we can have those cool balanced spots where you can regroup, get your bearings, and figure out what the next location problem is.
When you complete a mission we funnel you back to a very public space area like our U.N.I.T.E. field office where players are set up to get missions in one end and get there weapons in another end. We'll have a nice big open space to cross between and hopefully meet each other, socialize, and figure out what missions they need to do and who to invite to their group.
Stay Tuned for Part 2 of our interview with The Agency's Kevin O'Hara!
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our The Agency Game Page.
