I caved and picked up the new Star Wars MMO The Old Republic this week. This despite never having really been that into Star Wars (certainly nowhere near as much as my brother and his kids, anyway) and rarely having the patience to see MMOs through to their endgame.
You know what, though? The Old Republic does one hell of a lot of things right, and might just be the big shakeup that the stale, overcrowded genre needs.
By far the best addition to the whole experience is the fact that plot is delivered with some degree of effort, rather than through static text boxes. One of the things which always bugged me about World of Warcraft was that there was this huge, epic storyline going on, but you wouldn’t have known it. Text boxes do not make for good interactive storytelling. Interactive cutscenes with dialogue choices, however, do — particularly given the innovative implementation of “multiplayer conversations”, where each “response” is rolled on by all party members to see who gets the chance to say their piece. It sounds odd, but works really well in practice, and is certainly a far more elegant solution than what Guild Wars did by only having the party leader visible in cutscenes.
It helps that it looks like being an interesting story (or, indeed, stories) too — I’ve only played as a Jedi Knight so far, but already the things I’ve been doing could have been straight out of a new single player Knights of the Old Republic game. This is very much a Good Thing, and the fact that you can have a completely different experience and story by playing with one of the other classes is also a Very Good Thing.
The game doesn’t break completely with established MMO conventions, however. We still have a hotbar filled with abilities with cooldowns. We still have clearly defined party roles. We still have vendor trash, skill trainers, flight paths, rested XP, Elite mobs and all the other shenanigans we’ve come to associate with the genre. And while it would be nice to see a little more originality in some of these aspects, what we haven’t seen before is the combination of these game mechanics with strong storytelling. And, unlike most MMOs, where the mechanics are very much at the forefront, here — at least early in the game — the story is very much front and centre, making you feel, as the marketing says, like you’re in the middle of your own personal Star Wars saga.
It’s ironic, really, that out of all the recent “new” Star Wars material, it’s not the movies that were the most worthwhile things. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the Episode I-III movies were some of the worst things to happen to the franchise. Conversely, the Old Republic series has been one of the best things to happen to the saga, plot holes relating to the fact that the galaxy has been using the exact same technology for thousands of years notwithstanding. And the new game certainly has the potential to create an enormous expanded universe over the course of its lifetime. Will it ever eclipse the movies themselves, though? Probably not; the movies have a considerable head start on the game, after all. But there’s so much potential here for BioWare and LucasArts to explore, and I for one am actually quite excited to see how it all develops. It’s a very strong game now — where will it be in ten years’ time? You only have to look at how far World of Warcraft has come since its 2004 release to see how much one game can evolve. And if The Old Republic is starting from such a strong beginning, I can’t wait to see what the future holds.
This likely isn’t any consolation to players of Star Wars Galaxies, which shut down earlier this week. But despite the fact that The Old Republic is far more focused on the heroic side of things rather than, say, being a dancer in a cantina, it’s an authentic-feeling Star Wars experience that makes good use of both its multiplayer mechanics and BioWare’s considerable chops in the storytelling department.
In short, if you’ve been considering trying it for yourself, then don’t hesitate. Give it a try; you won’t be disappointed.
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