Big Glowy Sword Fun Time

So The Old Republic has been out for awhile – technically a week, with another week of early access for early preorders, which means that I’ve had ample time to play the game – ample enough that I’ve hit 50 with my first character, though I still have a few more narrative beats to go before reaching the actual conclusion of her class narrative. Still, it’s given me more time than a weekend to sample the game and collect my thoughts together regarding what I think of it.

I’ve found that the obvious comparisson to World of Warcraft is quite interesting if you look at it in detail – many of the mechanics are designed very much the same way, but the intentions they’re used for and the results expected of them are all from a much different mindset which puts a much different spin on it. If you look closely at the seams there are a whole lot of clear differences in emphasis that really reflect upon the whole end result and permeates the two separate products.

For one, BioWare has tried to keep the progression curve sensible – they haven’t really succeeded because the level progression system is ultimately a very artificial and game-y construct whose very nature is to scale player power and player challenge with player progression and ensure players move forward at a pace dictated by the design. But they have tried, and I discovered that as the game progressed, enemies which were classed as Elite (golden) early on in the game, such as Sith Apprentices, slowly became Strong (silver) and eventually Normal enemies as I progressed; there has certainly been some effort put in to try and avoid the issue where your average untrained level 40 farmhand can utterly destroy your average level 20 hardened elite soldier without effort, but the system is still there because it’s part of the design. I understand why it’s there and that it’s part of the draw, but I can’t help but feel I’d much rather have seen them just increasing numbers than toughen up the same type of enemies.

This also crosses into the matter that the average battle in The Old Republic is actually generally more challenging than those in World of Warcraft – if you don’t pay attention, a Strong (silver) foe can actually cause quite a bit of harm, and they’re not all that uncommon. This is further underlined by the enemy balance being a little here and there, with some specific types of foes being significantly more difficult than others of their same difficulty class, and the game sometimes being inconsistent in just how large a challenge it’ll throw at you. There’s been occasions where a smaller, mid-planet battle has involved as much as one Elite and two Strong foes at once (where both the elite and the strong duo would make a challenge just on their own), while some end-planet encounters were merely a Strong foe backed up by two Normals. And all of this is still to say nothing of the times when the game gives you what sounds like it’d be the kind of challenge you normally eat for breakfast until the quest log cheerfully tells you it’s actually balanced for four people.

Another thing that’s a clear difference of emphasis is the way The Old Republic treats your character, which is to say the significant amount of respect the game has for your character and what they’ve accomplished, even in the case of detractors or enemies hurling insults. By contrast, World of Warcraft tends to have this constant undertone of laughing at your character for being an absolute idiot, often setting up situations where your only choice is to undertake actions that are phenomenally stupid all while the game makes it very clear just how stupid the decision is, and once you’ve gone through with it, the game effectively laughs at you for being stupid. Sure, World of Warcraft also lets you play the role of grand hero from time to time, but it always seem to be while elbowing you in the ribs to ask whether you were dropped on the head as a child one too many times.

Comparably, in The Old Republic, even characters who responded with frustration, annoyance and distaste at how entirely un-useful my character spouting yet more mystical force nonsense was still acknowledged who and what she was and what she clearly was capable of for having gotten that far; and more yet who clearly ended up very thrown by being told some philosophical mumble, but put on a polite smile and said they’d get right on following the “advice” before getting to what they needed to have done.

There’s also this sense of scale, which unfortunately hits significant limits likely due to performance – where World of Warcraft is typically hypercompressed to a level that’s outright ridiculous, The Old Republic offer vast open spaces to traverse (and no flying mounts to skip around effortlessly with!) which gives a sense of size and expanse to the snow fields of Hoth or the dune seas of Tatooine. On the other hand, it also means you have a Republic Senate building large enough to house the entirety of Stormwind and have space over, yet is much more sparsely populated with NPCs. Blizzard has a much greater attention to letting NPCs wander around and live their own life, and while The Old Republic does have things like that, it’s not as common, and seems even less so because the voids available to fill are just that much greater. Of course, having the senate building full of NPCs walking around would likely eat away at precious performance both on server and client sides, but I’d love to see the populace living up to the scale of the world itself.

Speaking of the world itself – I’d love to see more interactible chairs and the like – there are several locales that are full of seats and the like which would make absolutely amazing meeting and speaking places… if you could interact with them in any way. Other things that would help are generic talk animations when speaking in /say and speech bubbles; your character turning their head to look at who you have targetted is a nice touch, but there’s definitely more features I’d love to see implemented just to help acting in and interacting with the world beyond cutscene dialogue. It’s one of those cases where the potential is there, but it’s not really tapped and I’m not sure if it actually will be.

But let’s move on to the central feature, the part of The Old Republic that’s meant to make it really stand out from its peers – Story.

While I still have a few beats to go (maybe two hours at the absolute most) before reaching the conclusion of the consular story and I don’t want to spoil it to those who picked other classes or haven’t had time to finish yet, I’m going to start by saying that I’ve found the journey of Kayrin Olana from a padawan recently arrived on Tython to a highly accomplished Jedi Master and diplomat both entertaining and compelling. Sure, I’d be hard pressed to call it groundbreaking as a game story, but in typical BioWare fashion it’s a basic but functional story with usually good presentation behind it. Well okay, the consular story does drag itself along throughout most of chapter one, part because chapter one is so long, part because it’s pretty sparse with handing you clues to work with, but once past that it starts taking off to interesting places.

The way she developed, she quite quickly became the typical “model Jedi” – she’s calm, patient and serene and dedicated towards doing what’s right, even at the expense of herself, the Jedi Order or the republic. She still has a bit of a dry edge to her which makes itself known on occasion, but for most part she’s entirely content in doing the right thing and spouting Jedi Wisdom of varying utility to anyone who provides the slightest prompt for her to do so.

All throughout this I’ve found I really like the orange quality of equipment present in The Old Republic – what it is is essentially an equipment class that has no inherent stats on its own other than which slot it goes into and what type of equipment it is, and it then gains all its statistics through swappable modification items, such as armouring to improve the armour, and so forth. As a result, Kayrin have been using the same low level hooded robe since around level 10 and it’s still a fully competitive piece of combat equipment as I’ve just kept swapping out the old mods for new ones as I’ve gone. This is even more expanded upon by several vendors (refered to as social items vendors) throughout places in the game offering various froms of guard uniforms or the like available for purchase provided you have the appropriate social level which are all also of orange quality, so spend enough time grouped and you can pick something completely different for your active combat gear if you wish.

I found the companions I picked up ended up growing on me too, though only being able to bring one at a time strictly limits how much time I’ve gotten to interact with them – a limit only increasing by the combat difficulty often insisting that I bring team members that are useful over ones that are not. I would, of course, love to have more banter and interaction between them, and I’d love for more of them to speak up during space combat, but unfortunately so far no.

There’s another thing with interactivity that very clearly comes out of the widely different types of armour and four body types – since the game can’t make assumptons as to your characters size and shape, we’re back in all character interaction being essentially look but don’t touch – there’s very little direct character contact and it puts characters at an arms length interaction which is understandable but really a pity. I understand the amount of work that goes into animation, so I realize just how much I’m asking by saying this, but it’d be great to see characters able to touch shoulders or hug or the like when appropriate – it simply adds to the percieved connection between them.

Of course, it’s far from a perfect game – the UI is limited, there are still several strange bugs that come with it its recent release and BioWare’s inexperience with a project of this sort, and there are a whole lot of abilities that are situational, conditional or sequential in ways that simply cry out for the existence of conditional macros, which unfortunately are absent. There are also several elements of the UI which I’d love to be able to move around but most of it is pretty much entirely static. You can really tell too that BioWare didn’t really think about the UI when they made many of the abilities – many are situationally interesting, certainly, but the UI provides little space to easily place them in easily accessible places and less indication when they’re available for pressing. Certainly, World of Warcraft had similar issues with its UI, but its UI was built entirely out of lua script and could be modified by way of that; The Old Republic has a static and macro-less UI that makes the large amount of abilities all the more difficult to juggle.

Beyond that, I’ll admit I’m still finding it difficult to judge what kind of staying power The Old Republic fields – I haven’t really looked at end-game content yet, but considering how the journey towards end-game is comparably much more interesting due to the greater emphasis on narrative and character, I’m having a hard time seeing how the end-game content can really live up to that. Of course, I’m told that the PvP is actually quite fun (until the legions of premade inquisitors come to ruin your day, anyhow), but while I haven’t tried it yet, I have a hard time seeing how even that could really hope to stand up next to the class-personalized journey up to 50. It may surprise me, definitely, and I suspect we might see a whole lot of quick iteration for upcoming content throughout early 2012 to expand both end-game content and provide actual features for the legacy mechanic.

I wasn’t there when apparently everyone else on the internet were handed out their crystal balls, so I can’t make the same kind of accurately contradictory predictions regarding The Old Republics longevity like everyone else; especially since I suspect the game won’t remain static in the near future – BioWare have already said they have something they’re adding for people who like the space combat, and that features for the Legacy mechanic is coming, so I’m quite curious where it ends up. And, to be honest, even if I don’t end up sticking with it, I do hope the game manages to keep around for awhile, even if only because the scene could use another heavyweight name next to World of Warcraft.

For the moment though, I’m looking forward to hitting the conclusion of the Consular story, and already have at least three more alts in mind to play in the coming future. I suppose after that, we’ll see where the game is. Presently, I’m happy enough with it.