Developer: Bioware
Publisher: EA
Genre: MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing
Game)
Platforms: PC
It’s been difficult to avoid Star Wars since the release
of the original movie back in 1977. The simple fantasy/sci-fi story of a farm
boy facing an evil dark lord to become a galactic hero while accompanied by a
roguish smuggler and a sassy princess coupled with one of the best plot twists
ever executed are still a joy and wonder to watch today, even if we do have to
acknowledge the prequel trilogy’s existance.
With that particular area of the series canon stuffed to
the brim with movie, book and game stories which range from the brilliant (Dark
Forces and Episode I Racer) to the utterly pointless (The Force Unleashed 2),
Bioware opted to try something different when they threw their hat in the Star
Wars ring with the original Knights of the Old Republic. Set thousands of years
before the films (though to be honest not much has changed), you can explore
the galaxy as the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic continue to plot
against each other while pretending there’s a peace.
The Old Republic, the third of the ‘Old Republic’ games
is an online game in the vein of World of Warcraft to the point of wondering if
Bioware did any original thinking at all (or more likely EA didn’t let them).
Anyone who’s played Blizzard’s behemoth will immediately feel right at home to
the point of wondering if someone’s just slapped a new coat of Star Wars themed
paint on their normal game.

Standard questing, again, is very much like WoW and most
other MMOs (though I suppose WoW wasn’t the first to give you these sorts of
quests), consisting pretty much exclusively of killing X number of Y enemies in
Z location or collect X number of Y item from Z location/enemies. Disguising
the monotony somewhat is SWTOR’s main gimmick, full voice acting of contacts
and player characters. NPCs (Non player characters) will vocalize their quests
in various quality voices (ranging from well-acted to badly acted to odd alien
languages which in one case sounds like the voice actor’s gargling himself to
death) and your own character will be able to respond to them at certain points
in the conversation with a few different remarks like you can with other
Bioware games. Choices here can affect your light side/dark side alignment
(clearly flagged) but if you’re having a conversation while on a team, each
player makes their choice of response and a virtual dice is thrown to determine
who gets to speak. Thankfully, that doesn’t affect your own light/dark choices
so even while your teammate is doing something kindly you can still get your
dark points for thinking of all the devious things you would have done.


There’s a lot of bad things I have to say about SWTOR,
including the clumsy movement that more occasionally then I’d like leaves you
stuck on geometry or unable to climb small ridge, the lack of level or team
scaling, waiting for mobs or pickups to respawn if someone got to it first, the
fact maps are in some cases simply too big and take ages to run around if you
haven’t found a taxi, fairly regular crashes (though if you get disconnected
while in a team your place is reserved for a while, giving you chance to
return) and the utterly pointless space battles, but for some reason the game
is compelling to play and with friends it can be quite a bit of fun.
With the game currently being F2P (Free to Play) with the
usual cash shop for equipment if you can’t be bothered to play the game for it,
that compulsion might just help it keep a few players and maybe get a few
subscriptions in the face of all its flaws (and better games getting shut down).
However, for an alleged $200 million budget, this should have been far better
than it is. If you want to get a good look at an entertainment industry
stagnating, have a look at this and consider that it’s aping an 8 year old game
because it’s popular when better examples have been available for just as long,
if not longer.
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