Rise Of The Hutt Cartel – Early Thoughts

‘And Another Thing’ is a regular column where one of the Oceanic Gamer team get an issue off their chest. If you’ve got a pet peeve or controversial issue you’d like to write about, drop us a line.

Finally the cone of silence lifts and we can finally spill some beans on Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Big question first, ‘Is it worth it?’ Easy answer: Yes, yes, yes.

So what’s it like? It is polished, visually impressive and a great boost to the game. While we’ll be talking about the game more as the release draws closer, I’ll limit myself to sharing a little of SWTOR’s outstanding feature – storytelling, or swtorytelling. Sorry.

As most of us already know, while this is Chapter 4 of SWTOR, it’s not Chapter 4 of your class story. This expansion is faction based, or a world arc if you prefer, so you just get to see events from your own side’s standpoint. There is a lot less voiceover in this chapter, with only significant missions threatening the health of your space bar. Incidental missions are, for the most part handled through terminals and, in my opinion, it’s an improvement. Quality voice acting is a good thing, but you can have too much of it. Especially when it blurs the significance of the mission. It’s a little like typing an entire email in bold capitals – it’s hard for anything to stand out. RoTHC doesn’t suffer from that and it definitely helps smooth out the story telling now there’s less background noise.

As to the quality of the story, it would be hard to complain. To the extent of the opportunityI had to play (thanks Eric), it felt at least as good as anything previously in the game. There is nothing that hints of reduced resources or a cash grab as some of the more cynical have suggested.