Secret World: the clothes make the toon

Posted by on July 17, 2012 in Game Diaries

To play Secret World, you have to buy the retail product, sign up for a recurring subscription fee, and subject yourself to the temptation of micropaying real world money for cool outfits. Fortunately, the last bit gets easier as you play.

After the jump, is it wise to wield a sharp weapon while wearing a hazmat suit?

Secret World’s customization is limited in some very disappointing ways. There’s only a single body type. Svelte, of course. All characters are in the typical young adult age bracket. Even then, the default faces and hairstyles are pretty limited. I frequently run into my doppleganger, and sometimes we’re even wearing the same thing.

Can you believe she showed up at the same quest I was doing and she wore that? I never. And if you think that’s bad, wait until you jump into the player vs. player.

You can spend your ingame money to buy a few additional clothes bits at the clothes store in your hub city. Don’t get your hopes up, though. Here you’ll find only the most basic variations of wanly colored slacks and jackets. What’s a girl gotta do to get a decent skirt and matching heels? Besides paying $1.99, I mean.

Fortunately, it turns out that Secret World knows its costume bits are limited. It takes advantage of this rarity to gradually dole out new bits and pieces as you play, which you might not care about if you were able to freely dress like the guys who obviously spent money in the real world money store. You can always tell those guys when you see them.

You get faction specific uniforms as you level up. Some achievements give you costume bits. For instance, my Innsmouth Academy hoodie is among my prized possessions, right next to my QL10 sword. Some quests give you appropriate costumes, like the hazmat suit I got after putting out a fire, or this bit of regional garb.

Which looks wonderfully absurd at the end of one quest, when you have to step into a CDC portable decontamination shower.

When you find something new in your “dressing room”, as it calls the screen where you pick what you’re wearing, it’s a minor cause for celebration. This wouldn’t be the case if new clothes were easier to come by. So while I don’t approve of a game microselling baubles when it’s also charging me a subscription fee, I’m glad to see Funcom also built caring about clothes into the gameplay.

Up next: nevermore
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  • Mercanis

    Ah, yes. Tom Chick and his librarian, Palin-ish characters (but really, who can blame you?). Someone should peruse the Qt3 archives and assemble a collection.

    I wonder if Tom would cave to microtransactions if the store included such items as “bookish skirt” and “bookish glasses”…

  • Jeckal

    Tom, you maybe interested to know that Funcom has realized (I.E. been complained to enough, and rightfully so, the customization of characters outside clothing is dreadful) that character customization is limited, and are adding a ton of new face/hair/details like wrinkles and tattoos to the game in late august, as well as a way to change your face in game for free so you don’t have to restart to get the new options.

  • Chris H.

    Wait, you have a QL10 sword and were hectoring me about a “need” roll on a QL6 one? (I mean, sure, that QL6 sword looks totally bitchin’, so I get it…)

  • Mirror for retards

    Tom Chick is a moron who drinks his own urine, news at 11;
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Chick

  • wut

    Well, at least it looks really good, despite the terrible resolution of the image and broken antialiasing (which seem to be PEBKAC and not the game’s fault).

  • thebigJ_A

    Palin? Ewww, gross! Seriously, no. Not to be shared.

  • tomchick

    I didn’t mean to sound like I was hectoring you. I just thought you might have rolled by accident since you weren’t using swords. It didn’t occur to me that people were using more than two weapons that early in the game. I’ve been spending all my points maxing out both lines on both weapons, which is probably a big waste of skill points.

    By the way, when I asked, I didn’t have my awesome QL10 sword yet. Someone from our party gave it to me after the instance from a stash of weapons he’d been carrying around.

  • tomchick

    Glad to hear this! I do feel like the character models are pretty chintzy overall. Lord, those weirdly jointed arms are a sight to behold. It’s like Funcom figured we’d be paying so much attention to the good looking word that we wouldn’t care if our avatars weren’t up to snuff. :)

  • tomchick

    Oh, look, Wikipedia page vandalism! I guess you guys aren’t satisfied with the comments section here. Fortunately, I can’t imagine anyone would ever read the Wikipedia entry for a dude who writes about videogames.

  • Jarenth

    I’m reading it right now.

    I didn’t know you were an actor once. I guess I just learned something new! Thanks, Angry Internet Commentor!

  • T

    Tom, I am sorry you have to put up with this kind of shit. Thanks for providing a reliable corner of the interent for entertaining and enjoyable news on the stuff that probably takes up too much of all of our lives.