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Those who know me will know I’m not a huge fan of MMOs, nor actually have the time to give them their due. So, I’m somewhat thankful one of my new guest writers, Brett Maddux, has put together his initial thoughts on Bioware and Lucasarts’ latest Star Wars title, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Enjoy, and may the Force be with you!

I’ve only scratched the surface of Star Wars: The Old Republic (TOR), so this will hardly be an all encompassing review. That said, what I’ve seen has been brilliant.

From the starting cinematic – played the first time you sign in – TOR has the feel of being a great Star Wars film. If you’ve followed the making of the game, chances are you’ve seen that opening sequence, with the four character types available on the Republic’s side, being witness to the first attack of the Sith Empire (thought long defeated) against Republic space. As well as featuring some great action scenes and showing off several abilities that characters will gain as they level up, it is this conflict – the Sith Empire versus the Republic – that players will chose a side to support when building their characters (How many Sith Empires have there been in the history of the SW galaxy, Jeez! – Andy).

After making this choice for your first character, there will be another short movie, before you even select which class to play. Each side has a different one, and it is designed to both show a little of each of that faction’s classes in action – but also gives a better idea of where the people of that side are coming from. Each is, again, wonderful to watch, and certainly gets one in the mood to slide into the Star Wars universe and be a part of the ongoing war.

So when you select which class, you should have at least a little idea of what each one can eventually do, even without researching all the spoilers and write-ups that occupy the web. Each side has four classes to chose from – two force users and two that rely on technology instead. While I have not explored all eight classes, there did appear to be similarities between the four of both sides. One force user is much more of a warrior and focused on the lightsabre, where the other has more Force powers. With the tech-focused classes, one usually makes use of cover to set up more powerful attacks, where the other is able to wear heavier armour. There are also different factors that limit (and so, one assumes, helps balance) the different classes as well.

A Kodak moment?

A bounty hunter’s attacks, for example, all generate heat which – in a long battle – may mean the character has to take a few seconds to dump off excess heat and cool down before the more powerful attacks can be used again. The Imperial Agent has to set himself up in cover (not too hard, usually) before he can access many attack powers, and another class has to use basic attacks to build up power to make the more damaging lightsabre attacks. So certainly, some classes may fit different players styles of gaming better than others. Each class can be one of a number of races, although some gamers may be slightly disappointed by the fact that all of the aliens are fairly close to human in appearance. (Aw! I wanted to play as a Sullustian – the mouse like thing that flies the Falcon into the Death Star! Would make a great Dark Jedi – Andy)

While there are plenty of selections to personalise whichever race you end up playing, if you were hoping to play a Wookiee Jedi or a Trandoshan bounty hunter, you will – as of the opening setup – be disappointed. Which is not to say that these more unusual looking races are not scattered through the setting – and sometimes are even available as companions. After character creation, the game itself still has the feel of immersing you in a movie. Each class has its own opening storyline, and each side has two opening planets that these shorelines begin on. These worlds are wonderfully designed, feeling like solid alien worlds. Even the classes sharing the same starting planet have individual encounters that the other storyline does not share, as well as plenty of encounters that are not class specific.

Class-specific, and occasionally other missions, sometimes have areas that only the individual with the quest can access. This is handled by green and red tinted screens that cover some entrances to buildings or parts of buildings. If you are on the quest that occurs in that area, the field will be green and you can pass into it to have a small, private instance generated to move through the encounter. This is a great way of preventing pileups at locations where thirty bounty hunters are parked in a room waiting for the next copy of “Smuggler Joe” to spawn. Talking with NPCs to get information, even in public areas, makes use of clear, well constructed cutscenes that only include the party or individual, maintaining the illusion that the game is very much focused on your character and the others he travels with.

Bounty hunters. We don’t need their scum.

Wipe them out. All of them.

You can waste time with your friends when your chores are done…

If there’s a bright centre to the universe….

You weak-minded fool. He’s using an old Jedi mind trick…

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for…

You’ll pay the price for your lack of vision!

You get that one, I’ll get these two!

In conversations where the whole party is involved, the game does a great job of selecting different individuals to give each response, rather than it always being the person who selected a response first. The voice acting is great and the personality that comes through with some of the lines is wonderful. While you can always pick the general direction your response takes, the words spoken by the character are usually more colourful. This makes it easier to pick the kind of response you want to make, but keeps your persona in character better through the scenes. Your smuggler is just always going to be a little sarcastic, I think. (She’ll make .5 past lightspeed…. – Andy).

At certain times there will be choices that have will affect which side of the Force you will fall on, Light or Dark. Before you start assuming that all Republic characters will be Light side heroes and all the Empire Dark side villains, this does not seem to be the case. The rewards for developing towards one side or the other are that certain items will become available only to those with a certain ranking of Light or Dark. As far as I can tell – again, i’m only level ten or so and only just barely off the first planet – there’s no harm in being a Light–Side Sith or a Dark Side Jedi (Heretic! – Andy). It could be that there are later quests that take different paths, but I don’t know.

As you get around level eight, your quests should include you getting your first companion. These are basically sidekick characters that – if you are playing solo or in a small group – will join your adventures and support you. The first one you get will be determined by your class, and the three I am aware of make nice supplements to the classes, shoring up weaknesses. As you get out into the galaxy, you can evidently get more companions and they can be sent out to do side adventures that seem to involve the crafting system. I only just got the quest to learn about the skills that one could teach a companion and to pick a few. It looked like an interesting system, but I have yet to see how it works properly.

The storyline I battled through was interesting and helped create and sustain the feel of not only being in the universe of Sith and Jedi, but also of being in the galaxy as it went to war.

If the later quests are as good as the early ones, then the game is going to be devouring players attention for quite some time.

Brett Maddux

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