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Since it was first announced in 2008, BioWare's first MMOG has been the most hotly anticipated title in the genre. With the great RPG chops at the studio, it was the perfect choice to take over the Star Wars license and make the great MMOG that Galaxies never was. The plan was to concentrate on story, as BioWare games are wont (known?) to do. That's where all of the fully recorded dialogue came in; for the first time in an MMOG, we were going to be able to hear what our character sounded like. That was the feature I was most excited to try out when I was invited to the LucasArts facility at the Presidio in San Francisco last week. But instead, the demonstration build focused on showing me the Trooper class, a Republic military bad-ass with a big blaster and exploding bombs. At least the pre-built character at my station was a hot chick, that somehow made it all that much cooler.
My Trooper was a dark-skinned female human with a big gun and scarred, worn pieces of body-armor that were reminiscent of Boba Fett's costume. She was level 6, and her action bar was populated with around 6 different abilities. The Trooper's mechanics are based on "Action Points" which you accumulate by hitting a target with your basic attack, which in my case was a single shot of (from) my blaster. Once I had 5 or 6 points, which were displayed in the HUD by an increasing number of tiny blue lights below my health bar, I could use the more vicious abilities, such as a rapid fire barrage which used up all of your (my) action points over time.
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The standard UI for most modern MMOGs is used for The Old Republic. You've got your minimap, your questlog and your target frames. While you get major story quests from a quest giver, you acquire the more simple "Kill 12 of these guys" quests once you actually start killing them. That one innovation may have more to do with not wasting computing cycles on quests that lack a significant story element (it gets hard to justify and (an) in-game story reason every time you wasn't (want?) your player to kill guys.) And it also means that less voice acting and scripting needs to occur to explain what is a comparatively simple task for the player.
I was disappointed that I didn't get to see very much story and dialogue, but I was pleased with what I did see. The first quest giver you speak to let's (lets) you in on the basic story that there's an uprising of separatists and you need to stop them, possibly by blowing up the base. You also get a side quest to track down a holograph reporter whose been taken hostage, which you can accept or not. This is all told through short conversation points to which you can choose from three responses in a radial menu. If you've played any BioWare game in the last ten years, then you can pretty much guess what those three break down into.
"With each decision you make, you can be good to bad, mean, snarky, whatever you want to be," Neri said(said Neri).
The good part is that these choices actually do matter beyond being a dick like Han shooting first (I don't know what to do with this, but it seems off). "You do have choices that have consequences in this game," said Neri. It seems that choosing to not accept a quest is just as important as dialogue choices. "It's not just about taking a meaningless quest, it's a quest that actually changes the story that you're participating in, which can also change your progression." Neri hinted that TOR might have some Fable-like changes as well. "You might go down the dark side as a player, and perhaps that affects the way you look from a physical perspective," he said.
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There's still a lot we don't know about The Old Republic. LucasArts is being incredibly tightlipped on PvP or endgame (content) other than that they are aware that players want those things (them) in the game. If you want any more proof that LucasArts loves a secret (secrets), look no further than the fact that their office in San Francisco is on an ex-military base and that we were "escorted" when going to the men's room. You can read about Russ Pitts' adventures at LucasArts here.