The Agency: An Interview with SOE

We infiltrate Sony Online Entertainment to discover its PS3- and PC-bound project - potentially, a shooter like no other.

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In a nod to EVE Online's passive experience system, by which an avatar can hit the books in the player's absence, some Operative tasks can be carried out while you're offline. "So you might get the schematics to make the super golden gun, and you'll put an operative on making it for you," O'Hara elaborates. "And he'll go off in real-time, and he'll call you on your cell phone or send you a text in real life saying "Hey, it's been two weeks, your gun's done, so you might want to jump back into the game." Or he might work on advancement for your character when you're not online, or help you work with other players - if you're in a guild and you want to craft the super weapon, you each might have to put a couple of operatives on.

"If I get my own operatives, I've got my own agency effectively. We've got an operative screen - you might have collected a hundred different people who work for you. Anyone like Moneypenny or James Bond who's giving you tactical support, or Q-type characters who are making things for you. So it's crafting, it's offline advancement, and it's actual in-game moments that can help you get through missions, whether by setting up a distraction for you, or it might be an off-screen sniper that helps you through some difficult gunfire - if you've set him up to do that beforehand."

Acquiring these Operatives and making use of their skills will help you scale the heights of the game's reward system, as will getting together with like minds, though O'Hara is quick to emphasise that you aren't obliged to team up. He provides an example in the form of the four pillars Sophie, Rex and James are busy defending from explosive-wielding maniacs. "If you're able to save all four pillars you'll get the gold reward for this mission. That gives you the best reward and bragging rights, essentially.

"If you're only able to save one pillar, you'll get the bronze reward, which means you can proceed through the story. So if I'm here all by myself, I can get the bronze in any story mission. So you'll never feel like "Oh, I have to get in a group in order to advance my character or get to the next bit of story." However if you have a group, or you're very skilled, or you have a lot of extra equipment that you've gotten over time, then you might be able to handle this by yourself - put gun turrets down at key locations, that sort of thing. So hopefully players will want to group with other players but not feel like they have to, and also replay a lot of missions to get a better result."

Few players measure accomplishment purely in material terms, of course: what's the good of winning if you can't flaunt it? The inclusion of climatic "agency moments" - grand-standing opportunities, in short - should lend even cooperative missions a touch of narcissistic rivalry. "At the end of some of our bigger missions we'll have things called "agency moments," and that's where you'll get to be the star of your own little cinematic," O'Hara explains. "You might be competing with your fellow player to be the star. The first player that gets to it gets to kick off the cinematic, which could be just a static cinematic or it could be a mash-button puzzle." It's a thoroughly frivolous addition, but probably one that will prove compulsive for many players: we can well imagine a dedicated variation on the online shooter meme "kill-stealer" coming into being when The Agency hits the market.

As to when that will be, O'Hara keeps mum, revealing only that SOE Seattle is aiming for a simultaneous launch on PC and PS3. He's not sure whether The Agency will walk the Higher Path of download distribution either, though he suspects it won't at first: "I know we will probably require disc, just for initial install. Most of our games do that - EverQuest II launched on discs only then after a couple of years it moved to digital."

According to Lead Designer Hal Milton, however, the game won't be seen or heard till certain "small" trade events next summer. By then, pending further changes to Sony's hysterical release schedule, we should have got to grips with PlayStation Home, the firm's other grand assault on the broadband community future. Like that much-delayed title, The Agency has a lot to prove - not least that beneath this avalanche of skills, classes and outfits there lurks a core of running and gunning to rival the Battlefields, Gears of Wars and Resistances of this world. The broad strokes of SOE Seattle's offering are, however, rather dazzling, taking the concepts that make COD4 and co so addictive and fleshing them out to MMORPG proportions. If the developer can achieve similar results with the minutiae, this could well be the Next Big Thing online.

The Agency is down for release on PC and PS3.

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