From the moment you first log in, Star Wars: The Old Republic
puts you in the mindset of a star-hopping badass. The opening
cinematic, where the Sith appear out of nowhere and reclaim Korriban,
introduces you to the conflict between the Empire and the Republic. Then
you choose which faction you're going to play for, and another
cinematic sets the tone of your alignment. For Empire players, the focus
is on power, control, and anger. The Republic cinematic portrays a need
to take back what's lost through planning and tenacity. The cinematics
are spectacularly compelling and make me wish Blur, the creators, were
contracted to do a feature-length film.
Then you're kicked back to a menu screen to create your character. The
creator is quite flexible, with a wide range of customization options
unique to each race, but you're limited only to strictly humanoid races
and a few rather similar body sizes (males at least get a "fat" option –
female characters don't even get that). For a universe with a vast
number of established intelligent races of all shapes and sizes, this
feels limited. You can't, for example, play as a Jawa or a droid. In the
grand scheme of things, it's a minor annoyance though. The classic scrolling yellow text of the films begins immediately after
you've created your character, accompanied by the Star Wars theme. There
is, in my mind, no better way BioWare could have kicked off your
adventure. The text briefly explains who you are and in what context
you're entering the galaxy. It's unique to each class and, along with
the cinematic that follows, sets you on your way to making a name for
yourself. This is where inexperienced players will hit a figurative
force-field. The Old Republic has no structured tutorial. Rather, there's a tip
system that offers help about an aspect of gameplay whenever the context
calls for it. In any other MMO, that would probably suffice, but the
moment you set foot in The Old Republic you are faced with quest-givers,
future quest-givers with grey quest icons, class-specific story areas
that you can't enter, vendors, dialogue trees, half a dozen abilities
and hostile NPCs who will attack on sight. That's a whole lot to take in
within the span of about five minutes, and while many of the systems
that The Old Republic uses are familiar to MMO players, I can't help but
think how overwhelmed I was by my first MMO, and just how much more The
Old Republic throws at the you from the get-go.
But BioWare gives you an incentive to get over that initial hump by
giving you a sense of purpose and the opportunity to breathe personality
into your character. In the amount of time it takes to get through the
first dialogue bit, you may be tempted to proudly announce to anyone
nearby that you're "the most evil Sith ever," or "a Bounty Hunter with a
heart of gold and an eye for credits." From there, BioWare gives you
hundreds more opportunities to reinforce your identity (or flip-flop
entirely). This makes learning the complex game systems feel like more
of a side-effect of role-playing your character than a requirement to
move forward.
The complex game systems won't seem so complex if you've played an MMO
in the last decade. Combat is based around selecting a target and using
an ability to attack it. The Old Republic sets itself apart from many
MMOs by removing the auto-attack that initiates when your character is
set to beat up a target. Instead, each class has a basic attack that has
to be activated manually whenever you want to use it. It requires no
class resource, and in the case of the Jedi Knight and the Sith Warrior
it actually helps build the resource, somewhat similar to Rage for the
warrior class in World of Warcraft.
 This quest on Voss is one of the best on offer.
I'm not a huge fan of the system. While it does away with the passive
gameplay of the auto-attack, it introduces the problem of forcing you to
fill every gap between cooldowns with a basic attack, and to constantly
pepper it into every attack rotation. The attack doesn't do anything
unique – even the Knight and Warrior get other abilities that add just
as much resource – and the damage scales with gear at the same rate as
other abilities, except abilities get significant bonus damage and
usually a secondary function. For some classes the basic attack might
trigger another ability, but invariably there are other abilities that
act as triggers as well. So the sole purpose of the basic attack is to
add a slight amount of damage to gaps in an attack rotation, or to give
you something to do while you wait for your class resource to
regenerate. It doesn't make for more fun gameplay in the long run and
just means you'll be pushing a single key a whole lot.
While it can get a little annoying having to babysit a single button
that doesn't add any true depth, the rest of the skill set makes up for
it. The nature of the Advanced Class system means that two very
different style of character will share many of the same skills, but by
virtue of the skills they don't share, they function in wildly different
ways. The best example of this is the Sith Sorcerer, a ranged damage
dealer/healer versus the Sith Assassin, a melee damage dealer/tank
capable of going into stealth. They both split from the Inquisitor, so
they both have Overload, which knocks nearby enemies back. As a Sorcerer
the skill is a powerful means of getting some distance on an attacker,
while an Assassin can use it from stealth to completely disorient an
enemy player or get them way out of position.
While these abilities certainly do their job against an AI-controlled
enemy, against a player in one of The Old Republic's Warzones is where
they really shine. This is true especially of Huttball, a deranged
version of American football mixed with rugby, with acid pools and
plumes of fire scattered across a multi-level arena, is the most
original and compelling PvP map I've seen. It's the only map that
currently allows two teams of the same faction to fight against each
other, so for servers with population imbalances it's also the most
frequently played of the three Warzones and according to in-game chat
and forums, people are getting sick of it. I'm not one of those people.
Huttball's emphasis on teamwork, communication, planning and clever use
of the environment set it apart from Voidstar and Alderaan's emphasis on
straightforward combat. Regardless of the Warzone, The Old Republic has a brilliant method of
making every class role viable. In traditional PvP, tanky characters –
usually a central part of PvE group combat encounters – become little
more than a free, albeit slow, kill for damage-dealing classes, or a
flag-carrier in capture-the-flag modes. It's the only role in PvP that
has traditionally struggled to find its niche. In The Old Republic,
besides being excellent Huttball-carriers, tanks are able to redirect an
ally's damage to them and reduce the damage an enemy deals to everyone
but the tank himself. This can make a massive difference to the lifespan
of squishier characters and makes tanks an important part of a solid
team's makeup.
The Old Republic takes note of the reduced and redirected damage in the
background, along with the amount of damage each player deals and heals,
the number of kills they are involved in, and how often they are
involved in attacking and defending objectives, and allocates Badges to
players whenever they reach a certain threshold throughout the match.
Badges are turned into one of the game's many currencies at the end of
the match, rewarding those who contributed to a battle. In my
experience, the system rewards performance well, and I've only seen one
person standing idle in dozens and dozens of matches, which to me
reflects that the Badge system is effective at encouraging players to
participate instead of trying to rack up the meager default rewards.
Early speeders look like giant noses and lawn-mowers. The later ones look much nicer.
Class roles in PvE group encounters are much more simplistic, and the
encounters themselves – at least prior to the level cap – fairly
standard. The more interesting ones take place primarily in Flashpoints,
which are instanced and heavily scripted. The first Flashpoint for each
faction is a particularly excellent showcase of BioWare's signature
branching storylines. Later Flashpoints don't emphasize story as
strongly and play more akin to instances in other games, which makes
repeated runs less exciting.
That's not a big deal, though, because you'll get plenty of storytelling
through questing. The quality of the story is very good – you get
opportunities to threaten, extort, maim and murder, or be totally nice
and live and let live. Light and dark side options spring up regularly,
and occasionally foregoing the obvious light or dark side choice early
on in a conversation will reveal an extra opportunity. Force-alignment
is mostly cosmetic (you can get equal or better gear through different
avenues) but can influence what your companions, AI-controlled allies
who aid you in battle, think of you.
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