BioWare’s E3 announcements this year for their upcoming sci-fi MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic focused on the addition of player-owned spaceships and PvP Warzones to the game. Neither of these was actually playable, but I did get my first chance to try the game for myself. As both a heavy MMO player and a Star Wars fan, I can happily say that it’s looking like The Old Republic will be able to provide satisfying content for both of those sides.
During my short demo, I chose to play as a bad-ass female bounty hunter with a pale white face and a penchant for powerful blasters. The demo began with a cutscene introducing me to a small crew that I could work with and giving me my first mission: I was to take part in something known as “the Great Hunt,” but in order to do so, I had to impress the people in charge by taking out a local mercenary.
Actually, it’s a bit incorrect to call this intro a cutscene. At several points throughout, my fully-voiced character had a choice of dialogue to respond to the NPCs. Though it wasn’t possible to refuse the mission in the end – sidequests can be passed up, but primary class quests cannot, from what I saw – I could make the characters I was interacting with a heck of a lot less friendly by acting like the cold-hearted bounty hunter that I was.
The way that The Old Republic handles story missions is quite interesting. Each zone in the game is split into two different types of areas: the bigger, open zones that we’re used to in MMOs, where you can run into tons of other people playing the games, and small instanced “story areas” that tie to you (or a member of your group) when you enter. Though these instanced spaces separate the experience a bit more than most MMOs, they also ensure a level of plot continuity that is generally absent in the genre. Now when you hunt down that special named enemy and kill him, he’ll remain dead any time you return to that area.
In true BioWare fashion, quests also give you the opportunity to decide whether you’re going to be a savior or a sinner. One NPC gave me a sidequest to find his brother, who had been captured by local rogues. After clearing out a nearby house full of the bad guys, one of them confronted me, giving me two options: kill the mercenary and rescue the brother or get a little extra money to go back and tell the quest-giver that his brother was killed. Unsurprisingly, I went with the latter choice for my uncaring character, earning her progress toward the dark side.
The actual gameplay used to fight those enemies was, unsurprisingly, more or less an exact clone of World of Warcraft. As a damage-focused class, I was able to tear through enemies quickly, but Old Republic also has the equivalent of healers and tanks. Like in WOW, combat consists of targeting an enemy and cycling through a list of available powers, each of which have cooldowns before they can be used again. My bounty hunter’s primary abilities included a barrage of assault rifle fire that could be used constantly and a quick rocket that knocked enemies back and provided light AOE damage to anyone else standing nearby but also was stuck with a longer cooldown. Some of the enemies dropped loot, including a couple nice armor upgrades and a shiny uncommon blaster that I equipped immediately.
The sum of The Old Republic’s parts is looking pretty stunning: the addictive, classic MMO gameplay of World of Warcraft, the dialogue, writing, and cutscenes of Mass Effect, and the much-loved Star Wars license. If it all comes together as well as it did during my short time with it, and if BioWare can create enough content to keep people playing, they have a surefire hit on their hands.
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