New World’s episode of Amazon Prime Video’s Secret Level animated series is live today, so of course we sat down to watch it so you don’t have to – though in this case, it’s a breezy 15-minute watch, so we’re not sparing you much. In fact, you might even decide you’re missing out. It’s fun. But if you don’t care… spoilers ahead!
S1 E3 – New World: The Once and Future King opens much as New World itself does: watching a boat approach Aeternum and sink, like all the others. But of course, here, you’re not your character; you’re watching a swole himbo and would-be king (voiced by no less than Arnold Schwarzenegger) failson his way through Aeternum. In fact, our dopey, arrogant King Aelstrom is rescued by a courtier and then immediately murdered by Urda, the first person he meets, and you’ll probably agree he has it coming.
But if you read Amazon’s previews of this episode – or you’re familiar with MMORPGs at all – you already know that nobody really dies on Aeternum. Death is just a minor setback, even (or especially) for a clueless prince who kinda sucks at everything. So as King Failson challenges the actual king and is killed and rezzed five additional times, he eventually turns to dark magic, whereupon he is killed another four times (and more offscreen?) in his pursuit of something that can help him win. The key character turn comes when Aelstrom finally realizes a crown doesn’t make him a king, so he must earn it the long way. Fortunately, Aeternum gives him an eternity to try.
Final death count for King Failson: 10, or 11 if you consider washing up on the beach akin to a death.
We saw a bunch of negative reviews of Secret Level prior to the official release, so I personally didn’t have high hopes, but this episode is actually cute in the “amusing but not pee-myself-laughing-funny” sense, as long as you bear in mind that the animation makes it look, well, like a high-end video game cutscene. Not only was I eager to see King Failson get some comeuppance, Amazon actually did a decent job here of tying in some of the more absurd MMORPG mechanics to make the story tick, even if you don’t really play MMOs.
But if you actually have played New World, you know that several of these characters, including Aelstrom himself, are NPCs in the real game whom players encounter almost immediately, so the storyline fleshes out some backstory for the actual game world – another nice touch.
Do note that New World players can grab some freebies in honor of the release, as long as they have Prime: “Players of New World: Aeternum who are Prime members can log in today to claim the free in-game Aelstrom’s Cache from Prime Gaming, which includes the complete Corrupted King armor and Great Axe weapon skin.”
Eight episodes of Secret Level are available now on Amazon Prime Video.
