A Look At The Secret World's Hell Raised Instance

Written by: QuintLyn Bowers (@QuintLyn) | May 25, 2012 9:30 am

7 Comments

We’ve already been introduced to Hell in The Secret World. But considering the size of the place, you had to know there would be more.

It makes all kinds of sense that the portal to it would be room number 13 of Overlook Motel on Solomon Island.

This portal is the result of some occult tinkering executed by a gentleman named Theodore Wicker. Unfortunately, he didn’t decide to close the portal when he left. Years later, a war rages between the clans of Hell which results in it encroaching on the real world.

Massively’s Matt Daniel was given a tour of this part of Hell and from what he’s reported, it’s everything I’d expect from the home of the damned. In fact, once players pass through Wicker’s portal the first thing they see is a bleak landscape made up of human flesh.

As with the majority of the game, Funcom has decided to do things a little differently here. Rather than filling the instance with wave after wave of trash mobs, the development team elected to use as few as possible. What mobs they do have are designed to teach players what to expect from the bosses that will be encountered later.

Players will also run into a familiar face in the Raising Hell dungeon. Corroder — the stripe-faced demon that was seen in the “Milkshake Girl” trailer — is one of the creatures players will be battling.

I’m already dying to get into this dungeon and try it out. I’ve been wanting to slap stripey-face demon guy in the face with a sword since I first laid eyes on him — he’s very smug looking for a demon.

Luckily, I don’t have to wait long to do it.

Funcom has announced that the ‘Hell Raised’ instance will be one of the playable areas in the beta weekend starting June 15th.

A Look At The Secret World's Hell Raised Instance

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7BitBrian

Okay yea this place sounds cool. Instances seem so well done in this game. I know it’s all down to preference but this is mine. Even with all my gripes I still cannot wait to play this game, the fun and good override the gripes for me.
http://twitter.com/DaveyDiablo Davey Diablo

After playing the game for around 6 hours, the monotony of the combat and quests, as well as the lack of atmosphere and decent artwork made me feel I was in Hell.
Does that count?
- Old Ben
  
  The atmosphere is there in the landscape and “set design”, but kind of spoiled by the fact that there are 3 million zombies hanging around between any two points of interest. It’s a bit like comparing Alien and Aliens (the movies). The first one had atmosphere, the second one was like a shoot’em’up (where every bullet caused a plot hole…). But at least the combat was fun.
  
  Combat in TSW is indeed robotic and boring, and most of the quests are just “go here, kill 10 rats, now go there, kill 10 rats, now go there, kill 10 rats, now go there, kill 5 gray rats and 5 brown rats, now kill the big rat that spawns, now click the phone icon to get your reward”. Even when the quest is just “get to point X”, you have to follow the waypoints, you can’t figure out the final location and go there directly.
  
  Investigation quests are more interesting, but since the game doesn’t let you interact with 99% of the objects (and the 1% that you can interact with are outlined in bright red), it becomes kind of obvious, and the only way they found to make them harder is to fill them with red herrings (ex., tell you to visit a place called “X”, and then have 10 places called “X” in town).
  
  The writing and voice acting are excellent, though, so I hope they manage to improve the combat, add more interactive stuff, and make investigation quests that actually rely on logic rather than brute force to eliminate red herrings.
  - http://twitter.com/DaveyDiablo Davey Diablo
    
    Don’t get me wrong. I really wanted to like the game. And the very, very small amount of ARG stuff was nice. But everything else was pretty awful IMHO.
    
    FC seem to want a Lovecraftian feel, but everything looks too clean and not at all scary or atmospheric. And the character models and mob animations were atrocious.
    
    I really like your analogy regarding Alien/Aliens and also agree that the millions of zombies don’t help matters at all.
    
    I’d have to disagree about the VO though. To me, although some of it was good and humourous, some of it felt very stilted, and the mute player character left for some really awkward cinematics.
    
    I think that the biggest downfall, and probably the one that won’t get fixed is the combat. You have a limited amount of actions and get the feeling that this should be an action-based like GW2 or Tera. Instead, even with ranged weapons, you end up slogging it out with mobs in a barely interactive DPS race, with the occasional ‘avoid-the-big-hit’.
    
    Oh and the fact that’s it’s subscription and cash shop. Naff.
    - Old Ben
      
      I’ll take the mute character over a character that says things I disagree with any day. And I like how they make fun of that choice sometimes, with NPCs saying “you don’t talk much, do you?”. It worked for Gordon Freeman and IMO works fine in TSW.
      
      And I think the atmosphere is there, in certain places. The underground market in London, the Sheriff’s Office and some other parts of Kingsmouth, etc. The problem is that there are so many zombies in plain view that it spoils any sense of creepiness or danger. It’s almost like Serious Sam, but with boring combat.
      
      The lack of interactivity is also annoying. You can’t open doors, can’t turn on lights, can’t open drawers, can’t interact with most NPCs, can’t even go back into instanced rooms if you leave (ex., I clicked the exit before checking the top floor of Dr. Bannerman’s house, and the game wouldn’t let me go back in – did I lock the door and swallow the key…??).
      
      The game’s setting is begging for a sandbox approach with slow and layered gameplay, but instead we get a series of linear quests and a static world full of trash mobs.
      
      I’ll probably keep checking out the beta weekends, but I definitely won’t be paying a subscription for that.
Randy McRandom

I found the game pretty fun. It is different. Go into it knowing that. Combat has a different feel than SWTOR or WoW. I really enjoyed it. The number of skills are amazing and its fun trying all the different ones. Also as for voiceovers? Hands down better than swtor. They are funny and are voiced by some famous people if you listen closely. Also the environments are great. Again, I feel that everything is much more alive. Stepped into Hell and got halfway through but the feel was awesome. If you have ever read Sandman Slim, that is how you should picture this place.
Kagitaar

Her name is Mei Ling, if you were in the beta you met her during the flashback.

A Look At The Secret World's Hell Raised Instance

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