Star Wars: the Old Republic is just not working for me and besides Baldur’s Gate, I’ve never really found any Bioware games of interest. The latest trailer released demonstrates very sandy gameplay footage of Tatooine, where we follow a Sith sorcerer as he quests grumpily around the desert. The most striking thing for me is the horrendous HUD, a skill bar that’s jam packed (yet he only ever uses one lightning based skill) and a horrendous speeder that has about as much excitement as a Reliant Robin.
As for the combat? Well that hardly captures the feel of Star Wars. It all feels very old as Bioware have based their entire concept on World of Warcraft, a game that is now over seven years old.
I really think Bioware have missed a trick with this game (of gargantuan proportions) and more specifically by creating archetypes that fit into the tank, healer and spellcaster roles. It’s just so entirely at odds with everything Star Wars. All Jedi use lightsabers and force powers (dependent on their attunement) but to create classes solely revolving around melee or spell casting is ludicrous. You don’t see Yoda or Count Dooku deciding which path to specialise in, they do it all and the combat is glorious because of it. But to see a sorcerer wielding a lightsaber and never using it once makes you wonder what Bioware were ever thinking.
Yet again World of Warcraft has bled into a game so heavily that Bioware have ignored glaringly exciting possibilities at the expense of keeping to what we know.
Take a look at the intro cinematic and the walkthrough below.
Email the author of this post at lewisb@tap-repeatedly.com
Why bother with inovations when you can be generic copycat with “nicer graphics”.
It seems to me sorcerer has that lightsaber just for show wich is realy sad…
Funny how decisions about “your” story are decided by dice roll and not procentualy. This prety much means that if you want your own story to be as you wish it, you would either have to solo it entire time or be realy lucky with those rolls.
One more funny thing, In that trailer we see how SWtOR combat should realy feel and look like and how it is in reality. Far from it.
@Astalnar
Speaking as someone who has been following this game very closely…
“Funny how decisions about ‘your’ story are decided by dice roll and not procentualy. This prety much means that if you want your own story to be as you wish it, you would either have to solo it entire time or be realy lucky with those rolls.”
There are class quests and world quests in the game. Class quests are what you would think of as “your” story; they cover the personal story of your character and are unique to the class you rolled. Only you can make decisions that affect your class quests and personal story. What you saw in the Tatooine demo was a world quest shared by two players, so each of them got to roll on what to do with it. Neither of their personal stories were affected in anything but a momentary, superficial way.
If the walkthrough looked anything like the cinematic I think that this game would be worth buying.
You make some solid points there Lewis. Although Bioware did announce at E3 that they had scrapped the UI due to beta feedback, their use of “the trinity” in a universe that never before conformed to such constraints is a glaring misstep.
Admittedly, I lost my Star Wars buzz after being overloaded with Lucas’ whoring of the IP sometime in the late 1990s. So, though I was hopeful that Bioware would do something nice from a game standpoint, I never got completely on board with SW:ToR. The latest teasers and videos have pushed me away more than they have drawn me in.
As Kaden said, If the game looked as sexy as the CG trailer it would be mind blowing, even despite the WoW mimicry. After I saw those clips (along side Uncharted and Battlefield 3 clips) I just couldn’t find anything nice about the look of the actual game.
Still, I am sure that SW:ToR will be a financial success because there are Star Wars fans who love anything the license spits on. :p
I wish they had just made an updated KOTOR. I have no interest in MMOs. I don’t like them. But I can still find joy in the Star Wars universe and I love Bioware’s games. I can’t help it. “Dragon Age: Origins” and “Mass Effect 2” are easily two of my favorite games over the last 5 years or so.
Alas, I will just wait for “Mass Effect 3”.
I’m also still bitter that the plot of both previous KOTOR games had sort of a shared cliffhanger, and the solution was, “Hey, screw you guys, to find out what happens next you’ll need to buy another game AND pay a monthly fee!”
I’ve never really liked WoW much (it just bores me), and the number of WoW clones on the market has kept me from really adopting MMOs either. I played Guild Wars for a good while when it released and Star Trek Online for a bit, as well, until I decided the subscription was not worth it at the time (this was in the early days; I’ve wanted to get back to it since the advent of Featured Episodes and such). This just isn’t going to do it.
And on a final note, the Reliant Robin can be outrageously exciting. You know, if you don’t mind getting out and righting it every time you take a corner.
Hilariously bad and derivative. This once again proved that most trailers and just lies with pictures.
I’m currently enjoying Rift which is also derivative of WoW, but to see the Star Wars license bend the knee to the DPS/Tank/Healer roles makes braneb blleed. Yay. I can “summon” a “land speeder” and grind out kills against Sand People.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first game to use a Han Solo clone. I’m looking at YOU–Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western Loner Guy with the Millennium Falconesque ship. I was on board until I saw the ship which immediately caused an eye roll and a sigh.
I couldn’t agree more Jason. Rift has absolutely taken huge influence from WoW, but its so polished, knows exactly what it is with just enough innovation (and very enjoyable PVP) to keep you coming back.
Where SWTOR falls down is that it’s from a company that probably had thirty times the resources of Trion and it actually looks worse than Rift in every way.
I mean the speeder mount, I was lost for words and the whole class structure they’ve crowbarred in is horrendous.
I’ll be among the first to decry the whole tank/healer/damage dealer archetypes. I find them boring and contrary to the whole idea of being able to game how I want. However, the only game of which I’m aware that stayed outside that system was Asheron’s Call, which more or less was a commercial failure and remains virtually unknown outside its small market niche.
So like it or not, Lewis, I think we’re stuck. No large developer is going to risk the potential billions at stake on a gaming system that differs from what the market apparently wants (as demonstrated by the millions of subscriptions Blizzard has sold).
Rift makes some efforts to avoid the traditional archetypes but it still too reliant on Healers which makes for depressing play at the times, especially when soloing.
I think it is all entirely dependent on Guild Wars 2 and how successful it actually is in redefining the traditional.
If it works and is a success commercially others will follow.
I don’t think Rift totally depends on the trinity–I think players lump each class into one of the three for the sake of convenience when forming a party.
Each class in Rift has 8 potential sub-classes; the player chooses three. It’s possible to play a “tanking” rogue” or a DPS/healer combination. It’s unfair and untrue to say, “All successful modern MMOs use the trinity” when one tries to at least blue the lines a bit.
I made my mage to be a “healer” of sorts, but he also deals damage, sacrifices his life for mana, and also buffs his party members.
I believe most players use the trinity as a way to simplify a multitude of classes, sub-classes, and the dozens of possible combinations. When I form a party for a dungeon, I know I need someone to heal, so I yell, “LF Healer.”
Some will state that it’s the NEED for healing that creates the trinity, but I’m unclear on how one makes an MMORPG without a need for healing. I suppose you could make potions more effective and plentiful, but Diablo used the potion-chugger gameplay and I didn’t care for it.
Any MMO with combat will cause damage and by extension need healing of some sort. Rift managed to make a mage capable of healing while keeping him fit for other tasks.
Of course, we could make an MMO without combat and call it The Sims Online.