SWTOR: An Opinion

It seems hardly fair to call this a "review", since the only access I've had to the game has been beta testing for a little more than a month.  Likewise, there have been plenty of "impressions" already put out there, and I didn't want to repeat that when I sat down and committed to digital ink what I thought of Bioware's entry into the MMO market proper. I say proper, because you cannot tell me Neverwinter Nights wasn't massive, multiplayer, and online, not to mention a really great moment in D&D's digital history and roleplaying online in general.

Therefore, let the record show that this is simply an "opinion" of The Old Republic, its potential, its gestation, and its impending birth into a world of fans angrily clamoring for The Second Coming of the MMO, Star Wars, or Both.

Be warned:  I sense spoilers in the Force after the jump...



Baby Steps
My time beta testing has been limited to the first ten levels or so of every class, minus the Jedi Consular partly because of time reasons (I got busy, and weekend testers lagged up the servers so much it was nigh unplayable) and partly because it's the class I think I'm most likely to play at launch.  Playing the starting levels from each planet gave me a great overall view of what compliments and concerns are going to flood message boards the first month or so after launch.

The biggest concern: a very anemic class selection.  There's something Bioware has gotten very good at doing, and that's the illusion of choice.  Even the biggest, best-est video game RPGs out there have a finite number of choices and a finite amount of time to craft answers to those choices and program scenarios for the variations those answers create.

So the first thing I noticed was that, while it may seem like there are eight total classes to pick from spread across two factions, there are really only four classes to pick from.  Each class's powers are mirror images of its counterpart from the other faction, with special effects swapped around to make them feel more "Sith" or "Republic".  Even though the Imperial Agent feels like a sniper and the Smuggler plays like a seat-of-the-pants run and gunner, they both start with a burst shot and a charged shot, gain a grenade and portable cover, and have the option to become a healer/DPSer, or just a dedicated DPSer once they hit level 10.  Even their talent trees (call them what you will, they're basically the same talent trees that have cluttered MMOs for as long as I can remember) have the exact same mechanics built into them, just with different names and graphics attached.

This could hurt replay value down the road, since alt-aholics like me will quickly run out of options for a fresh experience.  Why roll a Sith Warrior when my Jedi Knight does the exact same thing, down to the same talent build?

The mechanics themselves are very reminiscent of WoW, which I found to be a mixed bag.  The different resource management systems are easy to pick up, but when I reached level 10 and looked at the talent trees, I literally groaned.  There's a reason WoW is getting rid of talent trees, and to see another title using them just when Blizzard has nearly shed them entirely is a little disheartening.

The Plot Twist
That's where Bioware is counting on the biggest innovation they have going for them: tailor-made, fully-voiced stories for each and every class.  While mechanically my Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight felt the same by the time I left their starting worlds and ran my first Flashpoint (the TOR equivalent of WoW's dungeons), from a roleplaying perspective they couldn't have been more different.  My Jedi was a shining example of everything his Order held dear, forgiving to a fault and avoiding conflict through diplomacy when at all possible.  My Warrior was the polar opposite; cruel and obsessed with power, a sadist that enjoyed making others suffer as he used their backs to climb his way to the top of the Korriban training rolls.

Each class has an overarching story attached to it, with the individual planets acting kind of like TV seasons: at the end of each was a resolution, but also a cliffhanger or a recurring villain beckoning you to keep playing on the next planet just to see where the story led from there.  And there is some excellent writing going on here, better than I've ever seen in an MMO: when Bioware says they want to make it feel like you're playing through your own personal Star Wars movie, they're not kidding.

The Sith Inquisitor I tested begins by stepping off a transport on Korriban with several other pupils.  One of them, a pureblood Sith, elbows him as he passes and sneers.  That small gesture plants the seeds of a rivalry that played out over ten levels as I fought to usurp him as the favored pupil at the Academy, and crush his master for showing him favoritism over me.

Meanwhile, the Republic Trooper begins as a rookie assigned to the decorated Havoc Squad, filled with some of the most well-known war heroes from the with the Sith Empire.  You fight to prove you've earned your place there among the Republic's best, only to be betrayed and left for dead by the time you finish the starting planet.  Out of all the beginning stories I've played through, the Trooper's was by far the one that shocked me the most, and made me hungry to keep playing so I could see what happened next.

Plus, the Trooper's first companion is voiced by Timothy Omundson, who plays Lassiter on the TV show "Psych".  Having Lassie browbeat the Trooper as a Cathar sergeant is fantastic.

The Opinion

The Old Republic, like most MMOs, will be different things to different people.  Personally, I'm an old-school Star Wars fan who loves a good story better than nit-picking about class homogenization, so I'm looking forward to playing it.  I can absolutely see myself playing one of every character just to see their story through to the end.

That's where the illusion of choice causes me to question just how much content that actually is.  Bioware has said each class has multiple "ending" options to their storylines and followers, but practically there's no way they could have created the amount of content fans think they have.  Instead of a true branching story tree, what you're most likely to see is a closed circuit, where there are only one or two outcomes but multiple ways to get to them based on how "good" or "evil" you want your character to act.  You may get a contextual response (shades of "You're alright!" to "What a jerk!"), but it will inevitably steer the conversation back to a single or limited selections of conclusions.  It's already been demonstrated in Dragon Age and Mass Effect: you may act like a Renegade to the Illusive Man, but he's still going to give you a ship and a crew and talk you into going after that Reaper.

So, if you care about story as much as I do, this is going to be a fun game as long as the story lasts.  Because once that story runs out, all that's left is the gameplay and mechanics, and from what I've seen the individual class gameplay isn't going to satisfy gamers who are used to a dizzying array of choices to keep them logging in day after day, week after week until the next content patch.

May the Force be with us all...