Unskippable: Star Wars The Old Republic

timeadept

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*sigh* I think star wars is actually starting to feel stale... How predictable was that fight? The Master takes on the sith alone when he could have easily escaped with his apprentice, thus condemning himself to a death that would have been heroic had it been necessary. He even tried to impress with 3 lightsaber blades which end up looking like it would be more of a burden than an advantage. The sith apprentice then steals his trick and of course kills the doomed master (i guess the guy with the most blades does win...). The only twist was that the sith lord survived long enough to be killed by his apprentice.

tOR just feels like it is trying so hard to be cool but failing because it can only impress with spectacle that fails to be anything more than spectacle.
 

anonymity88

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When the jedi started twirling three lightsabers I split my sides laughing, WITHOUT any commentary. The crack about Hans Marsden's mother did make my day though.
 

ZombieGenesis

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Dude... I totally recognised Darth Malak and Darth Revan in this : D
I feel like such an accomplished nerd for someone who knows sod all about the extended universe.
 

beniki

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Labcoat Samurai said:
So I think the video was pretty funny. I was a bit worried at first that it would just come off as antagonistic and spiteful, but the fun seems to be poked amicably enough. The thread is another matter.

Why do people have such vitriol for this game? Bioware is trying some genuinely new stuff in trying to bring story to the forefront in an MMO. It may end up being a failed experiment, but I, for one, am glad that there's someone giving it a try. I also like the direction they're taking Star Wars. The prequel trilogy and The Force Unleashed make jedi and sith the only interesting or worthwhile characters. Bioware's take on Star Wars has been that jedi and sith are important, but that there's more to the universe than lightsabers and force powers. Sure, it was a big part of this video, but at least they're letting the other characters be cool too.

The game may not live up to expectations, but if it doesn't, isn't that a disappointment? Why does everyone seem to be taking such pleasure in deriding the game before they've even had a chance to sit down with it?

I shall remain cautiously optimistic, and I hope this game doesn't fail simply because people refuse to give it a chance. Seriously, before anyone writes me off as a fanboy, let me say that I am a fan, and I really just don't see what's wrong with that. I mean, it's a game. It's supposed to be fun. Maybe it'll suck, but why on earth would you *want* it to? It seems a lot of people would take some perverse pleasure if this game were awful and it crashed and burned.
Well, it's starting to look like a mess. I was originally enthusiastic about this game. The KOTOR universe was Star Wars with it's own style, and genuinely looked like an earlier era in the Star Wars universe. But now they're trying to shoe horn in as many different styles as they can... leading to a very oriental jedi standing next to a space cowboy. I know they always had this, but if you put Han Solo and Luke Skywalker together, they still look like they share a world, even though their costume designs harken back to a cowboy and martial arts gi. Layering on the clone wars art style to the already established, more realistic, KoTOR style makes the transition to MMO more awkward. To put it simply, it doesn't look how people remember it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's an odd choice when you're already making a radically different type of game.

They're also cutting corners in terms of game design. Although it looks like they have 8 classes, it's fairly clear that they simply have copies for both sides. Again, there's nothing wrong with this in an original game. But here, a title such as Sith or Bounty Hunter already carries a unique character, which can't simply be overlaid onto another title with different animations. To put it simply again; a passionate Sith will have the same play style as a serene Jedi. A cunning bounty hunter will share mechanics with a meat head trooper. And as an aside... isn't it a little odd that the Sith, a militaristic organisation with their own distinctive looking soldiers does not, in fact, have a soldier class? This was done because the 'Republic Trooper' was popularised in the Clone Wars saga, but is out of place since they were a new concept then, and did not exist before Palpatine created them. In fact, it wouldn't be too far a stretch to imagine them being a Sith idea, which he sought to resurrect. Again, an odd choice, at odds with the established universe.

And you're right. It is interesting that they're exploring the other parts of the Star Wars universe, other than the Sith and Jedi. But they're crippling the great developments of the KoTOR story to do it. In KoTOR they were making Sith and Jedi more morally ambiguous, and thus, were becoming a lot more interesting. But as that cinematic shows, they're rushing back to the Sith bad, Jedi good mentality. He DOES look like Satan! This is leading to some fairly silly ideas, such as Smugglers being good guys. Han Solo was a good guy, it's true, and also a smuggler. But he's an exception, which made him interesting. Putting the smuggler on the 'good side' they're saying that smuggling, an illegal activity, is morally correct. Which is just... silly.You could argue that player characters are also exceptional smugglers, but with the ammount of players playing, well, that will be a little silly to say as well.

I'm not saying I wont't play the game. I'm just saying that the vitriol people have against this game is that it looks like a mess of ideas, without a whole lot of real thought put into it. Or at least any thought beyond, 'It was in the movies/games/books let's copy and paste'.

Hope that clears it up for you :)
 

CaioBrisolla

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samsonguy920 said:
CaioBrisolla said:
So how come they allowed the smuggler to carry his guns even though he was a prisoner?
Who said he was a prisoner? They were probably throwing around the fact that he did have contraband in order to get a favor out of him. Deception is a tool of the Jedi and smugglers are quite sensitive about being caught with cargo they shouldn't normally be carrying.
Korriban has been blockaded since the Great Galactic war, and smuggling sith artifacts out of that blockade would be criminal activity; he was being escorted by clone troopers as well and Jedi. Also, the handcuffs kind of give it away.
 

Faux Furry

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Kreia
a.k.a. Darth Traya
rocked triple Light Sabers before they were cool.

These Jedi and Sith (maybe they should be called Caora Sith?) are such goose-stepping conformist poseurs.

Apparently, one's power in the Force depends on how many flashy moves and gadgets one can 'force' into any given encounter. How much further will it go? How long until this is canon?



Soon, hopefully. I want to see a 30-way quadruple Light Chainsaw battle in the Old Republic! Can the Galaxy hope contain so much stupid awesomeness/awesome stupidity?
 

Tygerml

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thethingthatlurks said:
Wait, no One Piece rip when it came to the three bladed combat? For shame...

And no Firefly reference over that Not-Solo space cowboy? You guys disappoint me...

Ok, not really. I loved the episode, and the trailer is absolutely hilarious. $200 million, eh? Well, it's...clearly showing. But hey, Han Marston ftw!
First thought I had was: Red Dead Rebellion.

You watch, they'll end up on Tatooine. Everyone end up there, it's like the old joke: A Jedi, a Republic Trooper and a Smuggler walk into the cantina..

It wouldn't surprise me if it was $200 million, MMOs can get crazy expensive to keep running, especially if you don't keep growing the player base. I'm not even going to look at it because really, 4 classes per faction, 2 of which are force users? Bring back the pre-NGE classes!
 

Loop Stricken

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Keith K said:
Why must every single Star Wars game reuse the same John Williams scores from the movies? There's a million Star Wars games already and only 8 hours of music between them.
Because it is awesome.
 

GaltarDude1138

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Mikodite said:
drosalion said:
Mikodite said:
OK, so the storyline is about these people, a Jedi, a trooper, and a smuggler, who...

DO YOU CARE? ITS AN MMO! WHO BOTHERS WITH THE 'PLOTLINE' IN AN MMO?
Thats kinda the whole point of this game.. bioware want to change the way people think about MMOs by bringing story to it.

Why shouldnt you be able to care about those things purely caus of the genre of the game?
Have you noticed that every MMORPG has some backstory or plot running in the background? It's sad, really, someone had to write all that only for the average player to ignore it, as knowledge of the backstory has no effect on the game whatsoever.

Unless the 'plotline' isn't simply flavour text to go with your fetch quest, Bioware is wasting their time.
Well, it isn't flavor text, my good sir. They have conversations between your character and the NPC's, fully-voiced, with Mass Effect-like conversation wheels with chances for multiple players to also pick responses based on die rolls-I say, have you researched anything about this game at all? I would think the fact that it's been touted as a "fully voiced" MMO is sort of common knowledge to any interested in this game.

And, for the average player, they can skip those conversation cutscenes. just like in regular 'ol BioWare games. The fact that this is their first MMO and that they are bringing traditional elements of their games, which most MMO's lack, into it is what has me keeping an eye on this game, that and the fact that KOTOR was, well, a pretty damn good game.
 

Xenominim

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Clearly the best way to advertise your new MMO that is going to break new ground in story-telling is with lots and lots of CGI that features no story-telling whatsoever but a whole lot of pointless action scenes. It just seems like with as many of these as they have, they could have established a bit more than 'the Sith are back and fighting Jedi again.' Because that's about all I've gotten out of all these CGI bits.

And I REALLY hope the apprentice from the trailer who kills his Master isn't the leader of the Sith in the game. He's about as boring and generic looking as a fellow can be. Sith Lords absolutely need a creepy or intimidating look to them. Those are the rules. You can't just be a man in need of a tan. Count Dooku is the closest thing we've had to a normal Sith Lord, and he only got away with it because he was goddamn Gandalf in another life.
 

Saltyk

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Sep 12, 2010
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I thought I was the only one that used the NOT-[insert thing here] joke to describe people, places and things in games. I was just telling someone that inFamous 2 takes place in NOT-New Orleans. And I've been describing this one place in WoW as NOT-Egypt for a while now. Damn, now I feel lame. Guess it's time for my apprentice to strike me down.
 

Saltyk

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Xenominim said:
Clearly the best way to advertise your new MMO that is going to break new ground in story-telling is with lots and lots of CGI that features no story-telling whatsoever but a whole lot of pointless action scenes. It just seems like with as many of these as they have, they could have established a bit more than 'the Sith are back and fighting Jedi again.' Because that's about all I've gotten out of all these CGI bits.

And I REALLY hope the apprentice from the trailer who kills his Master isn't the leader of the Sith in the game. He's about as boring and generic looking as a fellow can be. Sith Lords absolutely need a creepy or intimidating look to them. Those are the rules. You can't just be a man in need of a tan. Count Dooku is the closest thing we've had to a normal Sith Lord, and he only got away with it because he was goddamn Gandalf in another life.
He's not the Sith Emperor, but he is a major player in the Sith Empire. He's actually the same guy in the other two trailers from what I know. Long story short, he's one of the most powerful and prolific Sith in the Empire, with plenty of victories under his name, but he doesn't seem to have any interest in the politics of the Sith. This actually seems to keep him safe from the other leaders, as they don't think he has any aspirations to be any thing other than a warrior.

Actually, here's his biography from the official site.
http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/biographies/darth-malgus
 

drosalion

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Mikodite said:
drosalion said:
Mikodite said:
OK, so the storyline is about these people, a Jedi, a trooper, and a smuggler, who...

DO YOU CARE? ITS AN MMO! WHO BOTHERS WITH THE 'PLOTLINE' IN AN MMO?
Thats kinda the whole point of this game.. bioware want to change the way people think about MMOs by bringing story to it.

Why shouldnt you be able to care about those things purely caus of the genre of the game?
Have you noticed that every MMORPG has some backstory or plot running in the background? It's sad, really, someone had to write all that only for the average player to ignore it, as knowledge of the backstory has no effect on the game whatsoever.

Unless the 'plotline' isn't simply flavour text to go with your fetch quest, Bioware is wasting their time.
Yeh.. and bioware are trying to change that, by delivering the story not via a textbox but by cinematic cutscenes, and giving you actual choices that can change things in the game quite dramatically as opposed to just the choice of 'doing' or 'not doing' the quest.

Quite simply - they're bringing the RPG back into the MMORPG, and frankly i cant wait for my mmo to actually start having some meaning and purpose. I just cant really see why people seem to be so against a genuine attempt to remove grind and increase immersion by giving all the things you do in an mmo purpose.. its like people WANT their mmo to be a dull borefest? But each to their own i guess.
 

Sofus

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I don't understand why people are complaining. The cinematic is awesome, and far better than what we have seen in any other mmo as of yet. Yes Blizzard did a few, but they were honestly not all that great.

But yeah... lets all complain about both getting quality and quantity, we should (according to some people here) demand that every mmo ends up as star trek online... repetetive, boring, underdeveloped text based waste of time.

If BioWare manages to make this an interesting mmo, even giants such as Blizzard will be forced to add voiceovers in future mmo's.
 

Abedeus

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Pfft, three blades for one guy? What's next, a quadruple-lightsaber-wielding robot? Gimme a break.
 

Loonerinoes

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Xenominim said:
Clearly the best way to advertise your new MMO that is going to break new ground in story-telling is with lots and lots of CGI that features no story-telling whatsoever but a whole lot of pointless action scenes. It just seems like with as many of these as they have, they could have established a bit more than 'the Sith are back and fighting Jedi again.' Because that's about all I've gotten out of all these CGI bits.
Okay...just do me this favour...finish KOTOR 2...then right after its ending, watch the Decieved trailer (the one that came out first for SWTOR).

Now tell me that doesn't frigging fit like a goddamn glove together with KOTOR 2's final warnings about the True Sith still waiting at the edge of the galaxy?! Meh...why bother with this crowd I guess...Every time there's too many lightsabers the elitist cries of the Star Wars oldfags come streaming out. I don't mind visceral Jedi/Sith action in Star Wars, though I do agree that triple lightsabers, like in this trailer, is quite overdoing it, hence why I'm not quite looking forward to this being their official intro to SWTOR really.

But having a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord wind up in an epic 1 on 1, like in Decieved...come on! - That's perfect. Or are you gonna cry about 'establishing motivation' for the lightsaber fight like Plinkett does for everything, considering these are meant to be 5 minute trailers...SERIOUSLY?
 

Siege_TF

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The Destroyer Droids had a lot more hardware/mass/gubbins but no shields, and the space cowboy's blasters were much larger than the blasters in any of the movies, so I'd say that the technology in the trailer actually was behind the movie's.
 

Superior Mind

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Notice how Han Marsden yelled "look out" which focussed the troopers attention on him and they were then blown up from the exact direction they were originally facing. Nice work Han Marsden.