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. Join us for Part 2!
Ten Ton Hammer: When thinking about mission design, are you planning to have a more progressive series of missions or piece meal?
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Suppressing Fire!
Kevin O'Hara: There aren't too many details I can give about it right now. From my perspective it's very important to have an overarching story that all players can kind of talk about and have that water cooler experience. Especially with the spy genre, you want to have something people can really dig their teeth into and feel there is something bigger going on.
My intention is to have a story line which all players are going to have to play through much like any FPS game. There will be tons of side missions if you want to get more money for better weapons, rank up different types of outfits, or just spend time with friends. Story missions may say "Hey, in order to do take this mission you need to do a couple of other things in this area" and it's up to you which of those things you want to do.
Ten Ton Hammer: What is your ideal end game? Obviously you won't have giant raids with huge dragons to fight.
Kevin O'Hara: There are a couple of answers to that and the most obvious one that a lot of people would say is PvP. Making sure we have a lot of good challenges and different types of maps that players can invest their time in and climb leaderboards. We'll have some raid type encounters, it'll be analogous to what you see in the other MMO's but there won't be the big huge dragon that takes 40 people. There will be missions that are predictably hard that you'll need to get several groups together.
Other than that a lot of it is improving your score so you can play through the entire story mission and get Bronze level. This will be fairly easy. I want to make it so the casual FPS player that doesn't have superb twitch skills can progress through our game and not feel stymied.
If you want to get the gold results on the missions which giv additional rewards you are probably going to have play it through a couple of times. Either that or you'll have to go back later when you have better weapons or a bigger group.
Ten Ton Hammer: Will these levels scale in difficulty? Can you go back and do things later?
Kevin O'Hara:Well our difficulty curve is a little different than most MMO games. The most advanced player and the least advanced player will be able to compete in a PvP match or comparable PvE situation. Obviously the advanced player will have more options available to them like better weapons or more hit points. However, it's not as exponential as you'd see in other games so there will be plenty of opportunity for the advanced player to go back and replay missions which should be easier at that point. This will help them earn the better rating.
One of the games I really like is Star Wars: Lego where there is just plenty of opportunities to play through it over and over. You'll get to a point "Hey! A Bounty Hunter can use this! I'm not a Bounty Hunter!" so now I can go back later with my other character and unlock whatever it is.
Ten Ton Hammer: So is building replayibility into levels challenging?
Kevin O'Hara: I think because we're thinking about replayibility with every mission/map we make it's just ingrained in us now. We're going to make the big segue map and them make the extra rooms and tunnels to block off so players can come back later and play a different mission. So instead of kill the chief guy, you are going to collect intel on a different map.
One of the designers liken it to where you have a huge racing track and they section off the parts they don't want you to go into yet. That's not going to be all our maps, but it's just some of the concepts we're using for replayable spaces.
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Shot in the Back!
Ten Ton Hammer: What can players expect from The Agency in relation to story? What will you do to engage people into the environment?
Kevin O'Hara: I have a three tiered approach to this. First, there are shooter fans who aren't that concerned about story. If they want to play, I'm not going to force them to sit through 6 minutes of cut scenes or read six paragraphs just to know what they need to do. They'll get "This is your mission, go do this." You will also be able to talk to NPC's and that's where you'll get more information about what's going on and there will be cut scenes that provide more of a story background.
The third tier is the "Operative System" where they can just flood you with story information if you are interested in it. If you take a picture of the enemy lair and send it to your operatives and they'll send you back dossier report on it. If you like story, we really have some great writers working on it and they really want to try and get that espionage feel to it.
Ten Ton Hammer: As an FPS game, are you guys strictly ground level or will you explore different levels of buildings?
Kevin O'Hara:In level design we definitely want to have altitude to be a consideration. This doesn't mean you'll be flying around in Minicopters with free form flight or anything. When we are designing challenges I usually talk to the designers about how stealth guy can use a zipline up to a second story so he can get the head shots.
Elevation within reason is definitely something we're exploring. When you want to be PS3 as well as PC, any time you are on a console having too extreme of up and downs is kind of problematic for shooters.
Special thanks again to Kevin for taking the time to talk to us. Stay tuned to Ten Ton Hammer for more about The Agency.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our The Agency Game Page.
