ony Online Entertainment’s upcoming game the Agency is full of “Why hasn’t anyone else thought of this,” gameplay concepts and ideas. As though the thought of playing an MMO shooter in a slick world of superspies and mercenaries isn’t cool enough, the game adds a collectible (and actually functional) Operative system and seemingly plenty to do between intrigue-filled missions. We spoke with lead designer Hal Milton about the game and got him to talk us through a mission, explain how the game got its start and describe how combat works. While he wasn’t ready to give up the goods on pricing yet, he gave would-be spies everywhere plenty to ponder between now and when the game is released.

Game Informer: You haven’t shown much of the game since it was unveiled last June—why did you go dark?

Milton: We wanted to let people know what we were working on. We’re working onto getting into alpha now, and we wanted to not just overload people constantly with every single image as we progress. We want to kind of hit people with bursts of stuff as we have new stuff to show. The last thing we want to do is just overload people with stuff that they’ve seen before over and over and over again. We want to keep surprising people as we move through development.

GI: Do you have any kind of vague release window for the game yet?

Milton: I think it’s highly speculative to say. As a designer, I’m one of those guys who’s not prone to saying, “We’re going to be out a this time at this date at this minute at this hour,” because things change, and the one thing we care about the most is making a quality game, not hitting a street date.

GI: How is the payment model going to work?

Milton: We have a number of things on the table. You know, there’s the velvet-rope approach, which is, “Hey, you can play the game for as long as you want, but if you want to keep going you have to show your commitment.” There are microtransactions, there’s a traditional subscription model. But really, this is relatively new ground. There have been several online console games, some with subscriptions, but we want to make sure there are players. The shooter space, with subscriptions, is not something that’s been delved into that often. The worst thing for our title would be if there weren’t players there playing it. Whatever model we come up with, it’s going to be the one that we think not only will players be able to get into the game, but they’re also going to accept and appreciate what value has been added to their subscription or for whatever payment model we’re devising.

Sony has a few games in development that are exploring alternate models. The most notable of which is FreeRealms, which is free to play and you can get a subscription to get enhanced content and other stuff. We’re examining that model and a couple of others. The design has been set up to support a variety of subscription models. It’s now just a matter of getting everyone to sign off and say which is the best plan. I’m not allowed to say much more on that, other than we’re going to do a bunch of diligent evaluation—ugh, it sounds so crappy when I say it that way, but it’s true—we’re actually exploring a bunch of different models. The core motivation behind all of this is that we want players to play the game. That’s the only thing that’s important to us. If we put barriers in the way of them playing our game, we’re failing on the fun factor side of things. We’re going to pick the right plan for our title.

GI: Can you talk us through a sample mission?

Milton: Our missions are structured to have lighter-weight challenges that take 10-15 minutes, and then we’ll have some that take 30 minutes plus and a limited number of our signature set pieces that take an hour plus. Say a player logs into the world. When they log into the world, they’re going to appear in one of our public spaces, most likely one of their faction’s field offices or the main HQ. When they log into the main HQ, they can check out what went on before they got there, and then they can manage what outfit and what specialty they want to be for that day. They can actually change that throughout the course of their play if they can reach the right areas.

So a character is going to go up and get contacted by one of the agents they’ve met in the past, or he’ll be able to talk to one of his agency’s NPCs or meet a contact that he’s been pointed out to in the world for the first time. They’re going to offer a mission. That mission can involve flying from Europe to Central America or vice versa, or East Asia. When they reach the main public space, they can then explore that main public space to either find the public mission that they took, or if it’s a private mission that they took, find the entrance to the private mission—a way into the mansion, a secret underground catacomb tunnel that takes you where the enemies have set up their safe house, etc.

Here’s a mission flow that I like: A character has been told to meet an NPC that’s located in a casino, because somewhere in that casino is a boss criminal and he’s got a bunch of intel in his office that could explain why a bunch of bodies have been showing up everywhere. So a character puts on an alias to get into a nightclub, because the fact of the matter is that nobody is going to let you into a club with an M-60 strapped to your back. He goes through his outfits and finds one that says “high-class nightclub”—a tuxedo. Or if he’s in ParaGON, he picks out a high-end club outfit. He puts it on, attaches some credentials to that, which enhances his alias’ rating, and he heads off to the nightclub. Entering the nightclub with his alias, he’s also got underneath that alias whatever specialty outfit he’s put on. It’s that whole example of the guy sneaking through the back tunnel, stripping off his tuxedo, being in his combat outfit and moving forward. He enters the casino, talks to this NPC who says, “The elevator is in the back. The guards take shifts from there, and you’ll be able to get into it if you walk away.” He walks to the back, sees a guard walk away, hits the elevator and gets transported into the upper levels of the club, which are actually a private instance for that character. He then changes out of his club outfit, and he’s wearing his stealth-ops or assassin outfit. He moves through the area and comes across a group of guards who spot him. He then has to resort to gunplay, shooting them down, and manages to get into the main boss’ office. In that office is a safe, he cracks the safe, gets the intel and all of a sudden a ton of guys burst through the door toward him. At the window, there’s now an agency-moment icon. Agency moments are moments that, based on you, your party, what specialty you are or what stuff you have, will appear and let you do cool things, smart bombs, escapes, acrobatics, etc. He hits the agency moment, his character breaks through the window and ziplines his way down to the street. He’s now effectively completed his mission. He’s now back into the public space. We used the cinematic of him ziplining down to the street to transition him from being in a private space back into the public space. Now, he can open up his PDA, hit his mission journal and let his contacts know he’s finished it, or he can go back to the main field officer at HQ and turn it in for a reward that way.