Personally, I’ve always thought that covering an MMO must be a daunting task; so much to see and do, potential technical difficulties in earlier builds and the incredibly confusing game mechanics have meant I’ve never envied those who write about them. Of course, then I found myself in front of Star Wars: The Old Republic at Gamescom and was a bit concerned that I was jumping in at the deep end, despite being a huge fan of the KoToR games.
After a short presentation from the BioWare team that demoed an impressive multiplayer battle, I was moved into a room stacked with screens to play on. Each build had a different class/section, and so continuing the TVGB tradition of setting ourselves apart, I stepped over that Jedi nonsense and sat down to play as a trooper.
As you probably know by now, The Old Republic is a fully voiced MMO, the first of its kind. It’s the first thing to experience, as the demo boots up with me and another trooper inside a walker as it roams the battlefield. Played Mass Effect? Then you’ll be right at home with TOR’s conversation system; you get a handful of replies to pick from that range in attitude and tone, and your character will say something along the lines of what you choose. Seeing as my character was pretty well built, I went the tough-guy route and blabbered on about how I’d crush the enemy and lead the way to victory. This earned the respect of my comrade, but a similar approach in later conversations just offended whoever I was speaking to. You’ve really got to pay attention to what you say to whom, because it can lead to some cool bonuses, or give you a bigger task.
Once our chit chat had gone on long enough, we were rocked by an explosion. It didn’t take us long to find a fire extinguisher and put out the flames, but now we finally had our mission; to head into the enemy base and mess stuff up. And so I left the safety of the walker with “here comes the difficult bit” in mind.
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