You are here: Home / Archives for SWTOR / Community

Hi ho… Hi ho… It’s off to play we go…

November 21, 2010 by

Well, well, well, what have we here?

We got a tasty tidbit in the latest update, didn’t we? Crafting is looking very good, and this is coming from a Star Wars Galaxies veteran. But it wasn’t just the crafting, was it? There were also those interesting sounding side missions for the companion characters to do. Whether it is treasure hunting, diplomacy or other types of things, it sounds very interesting. Side missions and mini-games almost always spice things up.

I think the first mini-games I truly remember, not counting the puzzles in old games such as Donkey Kong, Contra and Pitfall, were from the first Knights of the Old Republic. The gun turret scenes, the swoop races and Pazaak, ah, the memories are sweet. But… blowing Sith fighters up, while fun, did get repetitive. It brought back fond memories of flying in the gun turret of the Otana in X-Wing Alliance. Good memories of exploding Imperial ships. But even then, how many times can you listen to Carth say ‘Incoming Fighters!’ without going ‘GAH! Not again…’? Pazaak was fun, and I even found an online version, fan made of course. I have to admit I found the swoop riding annoying, but that is normal for someone who doesn’t have the best reflexes.

Bioware has introduced a number of mini-games into their regular games in more recent years. KOTOR 1 (I try to forget KOTOR 2 most of the time) had the workbench as well as the other mini games. Mass Effect had the circle that you had to pass your pointer through to unlock things/defuse things/etc. Mass Effect 2 had the bypass and hack mini games. Even Jade Empire had the flying game with the Glorious Dragonfly. But as in most games, especially in recent years, crafting is starting to take a larger role. It used to be ‘Oh I need something, I will go kill ‘x’ number of zombies/goblins/dragons/whatever to get money to buy it’. Now, it is ‘I will go out, kill ‘x’ number of zombies/goblins/dragons/whatever to get pieces to make it.’ But the time involved in crafting has always detracted from the time spent going out and playing. Unless you are one of those strange people who likes to play as a builder, you get a bit annoyed at times having to spend time crafting when you could be blasting stuff/hacking things/ etc.

This little teaser from Bioware seems to have set things on their heads again. Now you don’t have to spend time at the workbench yourself. Your ever industrious companions will work for you, even when you are mean and turn the lights off on them! You can even have them working on things when you are offline!

That was always my major problem with crafting in MMOs. Either you cheat, with a macro or something, or you cannot compete with people who do things like that. I always wanted to play the game, not get bogged down trying to find the best ingredients to build the perfect set of Sith underpants to beat that nasty Jedi in some Level 15 quest. Now you can send your faithful minions, er, slaves, er whatever… to go do these things. And what you can send them to do… wow… How many other games have companions where you can send them to gather things? Larian’s Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, had runners you could send for ingredients. But for them to actually make things for you while you are not playing the game…? Whoa, that is cool.

In the update, we see the bounty hunter companions. I am assuming, carefully, that the same types of skills –gathering, crafting and mission- will be available for all classes. Now it is very likely that the missions will be VERY different. A Sith Inquisitor will likely have very different missions for his or her companions than a Republic Trooper would. But the basic idea will be the same. While you are out doing whatever it is you do, your companions will be hard at work back at your ship, or off doing whatever you ordered them to do.

I like this idea. I like it a lot. One of my gripes with KOTOR was that when I was out and about, the crew never moved from their spots. I always wondered when Carth went to the washroom and where. Was there one in the cockpit of the Ebon Hawk?

Over to you. What do you like in mini games? Are you as enthused about this idea of crafting as I am?

Filed Under: Community, Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Latest poll results: we like to solo

November 10, 2010 by

The second of our ongoing polls has wrapped up. The question this time was around likelihood to join a guild, and if so whether the focus in the guild would be social or serious progression. The results:

The outright winner was soloing, although nearly half of respondents are going to join a guild, with 25% doing it for the progression, the rest for the social interaction. Interestingly, one in five are unsure of what they’ll do. That’s likely to be the cohort who maybe haven’t been in a guild before or who haven’t comprehensively played an MMO before and so don’t know both sides of the equation (solo or guild).

There’s certainly plenty of guild talk on our forums and the oceanic guild listing continues to grow, so there’s no doubt guilds will play a central role. That said, the claimed story-centric focus of SWTOR means that solo or ad-hoc team questing will be a very appealing option as well.

Thanks to all who voted, and the new poll is now up on the site – this time the subject is oceanic servers.

Filed Under: Community, News, Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Tanks in Star Wars The Old Republic: more than beef

October 1, 2010 by

We have been hearing a lot of stuff about tanks on the SWTOR forums lately. The iconic armored forms of the stormtroopers and Boba Fett come to mind specifically. Hence the focus of Bioware into the Trooper and Bounty Hunter classes. In this installment I will be discussing the Trooper.

We see troopers for the first time in Episode IV. The rebel soldiers who try and defend the Tantive IV from the Devastator’s assault get pwnerized pretty badly by the men in white suits. Yes the men in armor go down fast when shot, but come on! Stormtroopers are not supposed to be heroic, right? They are the BAD GUYS, right? They shoot so badly they became a mythos all their own. Who hasn’t heard of the Imperial Stormtrooper marksmanship academy? The one place in the galaxy where the only one who is safe is the target? They get killed when people miss them, one bangs his head on a low beam… the list goes on and on. They are NOT heroic. It only gets worse for the poor troopers as the movie progresses, an entire platoon getting chased by a lone smuggler, getting outfoxed by an old man in a brown robe, yeesh…

Then we get Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. The Imperials utterly devastate the Rebel base on Hoth, but somehow manage NOT to capture any of the big shots they were aiming for in the first place. Oops. And then to add more insult, in Episode VI who beats the Stormtroopers? An entire legion of troops gets pwned by a small band of commandos, a Wookiee and a bunch of Ewoks. Sigh. It just doesn’t pay to be an elite soldier in Star Wars, does it?

Now before anyone starts screaming about me not defending the stormtroopers – I do. They get a bad rap. When they are facing the heroes of the movies, of COURSE they are going to lose. It would not be a good story otherwise – but let’s look at it objectively. What are Stormtroopers for? They are there for the heroes to show up, outmaneuver or out-fight. Troopers are not heroic in the original trilogy. Even the Rebel troops on Hoth and Endor were there to put emphasis on the hero’s actions, not to actually do anything else.

Then we see Episode II: Attack of the Clones, which showed a very different kind of trooper from the Stormtroopers that we all knew and laughed at. These guys actually had a clue. They actually hit what they aimed at, and when they did, they devastated it. Games like Republic Commando showed a very gritty take on what it was to be a single cog in a huge military machine. I am not going to go into the stuff from the Clone Wars series because I don’t watch it. We all know what happened in Episode III. Most of the Jedi Order were taken down by troopers when Order 66 was given. Was it easy? No. Did a lot of the troops die doing it? Yes. The ones facing Ki Al Mundi lost a bunch of men when he deflected their fire but they took him down in the end. It was a major cinematic moment in Star Wars and it was the troopers who did most of it.

So… Heroic troopers. Special Forces like Delta Squad from Republic Commando are much easier to sympathize with than TK421 ever was. They have personality. Scorch in particular still cracks me up when I hear some of his one-liners, even today. We never see their faces, all we see are their personalized helmets. But it doesn’t matter. We remember them. We remember Sev counting his kills. We remember Scorch saying ‘You want a big crater or a small one?’. We remember Boss saying to a Trandoshan that tried to ambush him ‘You lizards need to realize that I am a lot more scary than you.’

Speaking of scary, we had seen Kyle Katarn be scary and epic in the original Dark Forces, but then we found out that he was a Jedi. Er, sort of a Jedi. He was a lot better as a mercenary than as a Jedi in my opinion, but that is just me. The novelizations of the game absolutely rocked. ‘Soldier For The Empire’ should be required reading for anyone who plays anything Star Wars. The later games were good, no question, but the best was when he was a not-so-common soldier.

In the book Allegiance, by Timothy Zahn, we see Stormtroopers as they were intended. Elite troops. Not gods, but very, very good at what they do. They are not supposed to be common soldiers, so when the heroes beat them, it is supposed to be hard. Not ‘Oh another squad of stormtroopers, I will use my left hand this time, it will be more of a challenge.’ He makes that part of the book believable. The rest was good, but not great. The stormtrooper parts though, ROCKED.

The trooper in Star Wars the Old Republic seem to be taking a similar approach. These are not cannon fodder. These are not people who die from near misses. These are beings who can wade into the thickest fighting and stand there while the bad guys throw everything they have at them. Beings who can unleash hell on their foes while taking the best the enemy can throw at them and laughing at it. Characters who can take and hold an enemy’s attention so that the squishy beings around them don’t. They are tanks.

Tanks in real life are mobile, they are offensive and defensive weapons. They can take punishment while dishing it out. Tanks in games are usually grouped into two general kinds. The uber-tank, like the Tanker from City of Heroes, who just takes the punishment so that others don’t have to. I have seen a tanker stand off Lord Recluse, all by herself, for ten minutes. She just stood there, taking the hits while the group respawned. Then there is the DPS tank who can take some punishment, while dishing out punishment as well. This is actually more like the soldier Shepard from Mass Effect 1 and 2. That character could take damage, but oh man could that character dish it out as well. The commando from Tabula Rasa, for those of us who played it, went this route. Heavy armor, insane amounts of damage done, often in area effect.

That seems to be what Bioware is shooting for in this MMO. Heavy armor, heavy weapons and lots and lots of ammo expended. Sounds like fun.

Over to you. Do you want to give troopers as envisioned by Bioware a try?

Photo courtesy of: http://www.swtoronlineguide.com

Filed Under: Community, Opinion Tagged With: ,

You’ve got to love Star Wars humour

September 27, 2010 by

One of the best things about any well established genre is the satire developed by its community. The best stuff comes when two iconic movies are mixed together.

Take last year’s Full Metal Star Wars – Gunnery Sgt Vader for example. If you’ve seen Full Metal Jacket, you’ll remember the character of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. He makes an appearance in Star Wars, with great effect in the video below.

Enjoy, but a warning: this is in no way safe for work and contains very frequent explicit language:

Filed Under: Community, Humour Tagged With: ,

Remembering History

September 20, 2010 by

Ok, rant on. I am SICK of George Lucas and Lucasarts changing things! First we have Obi-Wan Kenobi being the last of the Jedi in A New Hope, then we have Yoda being the last of the Jedi in Empire Strikes Back, and now we have untold HUNDREDS of Jedi who survived Order 66 and were hiding around the galaxy. After all, we only saw a handful of them get killed in the movie, right? Shaak Ti was the highest rank of them apparently, and of course she gets pawnerized by Starkiller in The Force Unleashed.

So much for Jedi history. It keeps changing, with every season of The Clone Wars changes something else. I guess it is George’s sandbox and he can knock down any sandcastles he wants to. One of the interesting points on Attack of the Clones was the Jedi Archives were supposed to be inviolate. The only ones who could access them were Jedi and why would Jedi change or remove information? Why indeed? Can anyone spell retcon? Rant off.

The Jedi Order existed hand in hand with the Republic for a very long time. As a matter of fact, according to Wookiepedia, the initial study of the Force was undertaken on Tython thirty six thousand, four hundred and fifty three before the destruction of the first Death Star at the battle of Yavin. Since the Republic itself was founded twenty five thousand and fifty three years before that battle of Yavin (there have been several there in Star Wars history after all), this shows the origination of the Order predates the Republic.

Now the actual Order of Jedi that people recognize as Jedi didn’t come to be until much later. And the reason it came to be was typical. Powerful people will have differing opinions on things, this is known. And when those powerful people have access to things like the Force, well… Yuck. The conflicts known as the Force Wars devastated Tython, and the survivors went elsewhere. They founded the Jedi Order some seven centuries later. Interestingly enough, the lightsaber, the signature weapon of the Jedi, was not invented for many years, almost ten thousand according to Wookiepedia. Before that, they used swords, blaster and other weapons as the situation called for it. Of course, once they had lightsabers, all bets were off.

The history of the Jedi Order, unsurprisingly, is dark versus light. Ever since the inception of the Order, heck, before it with the Force Wars on Tython, there were always those who chose the dark path. The Jedi stood for selflessness, for compassion, for mercy, for nobility and courage. This is not an easy path. It is so tempting to give in to expediency, ‘just this once’,’ just for this time’… So, much of the Jedi’s history has been conflict with Dark Force users.

Eventually, this culminates in the events of what we learned about in 1977 in Star Wars: A New Hope. But it takes a long time to get there. The time we are focused on is set thirty five hundred years before the events of A New Hope. It is a time of war, a time of heroes and villains. It is a time where history will be made, and lost.

The timeline on the SWTOR website  is an interesting look at the history as told by a Jedi historian. It is going in reverse order, starting with the Sacking of Coruscant, the defining moment of the game. It is chronicled by a Jedi historian who is trying to uncover the truth behind the war. At the moment, it is half done. Considering that the game is due out in April of 2011 that works well for updates over the next seven months. The reading is fascinating. A great deal of work went into the writing of the timeline, and getting Lance Hendrickson to voice Jedi Historian Gnost-Dural, that was a stroke of genius.

So far, the timeline has covered the Great War itself, and has moved as far back as the Mandalorian Wars, the events that set in motion the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Now, not all of the material is great, the Mandalorians using Sith Armor is just one inconsistency that strikes me, but there are some parts that just resonate. The Battle of Bothawui was such a powerful piece. Inspired of course, by the last stand of the Spartans at Thermopylae, as was glorified in Frank Miller’s 300, this entry was, in a word, epic. Others were kind of ‘meh’. I personally couldn’t care less about some smuggler defeating a Mandalorian fleet. But for the most part, the entries are very good.

As teasers go, this timeline is probably one of the best I have seen for a game that is not out yet. It gives just enough information to whet the potential player’s appetite while at the same time leaving lots of room for expansion and leaving people hanging. As a marketing tool, it is working. People are talking about it. People are visiting the site, trying to figure out what was left unsaid, trying to fill in the gaps. Which is good, from a marketing standpoint. The publisher wants people engaged, they want it to be talked about. They want the game hyped as much as possible. That said, if it is over-hyped, bad things can result as well. But I do not see that happening. This timeline is a good example of a marketing tactic focused on a particular group, Star Wars fans.

I just hope George Lucas doesn’t start changing things in this as well, or we might wind up with a Kushiban as the Sith Emperor. That would make about as much sense as some of the other dubious choices made in The Clone Wars recently. I loved the idea of The Clone Wars, I HATE the execution.

Enough ranting. What do you think of the Jedi history as told by the Timeline? Does it make sense?

Photo courtesy of Star Wars: The Old Republic RP Wiki

Filed Under: Community, Opinion

I can hear people. Whoa…

September 15, 2010 by

People have heard a lot about Star Wars the Old Republic since its announcement. We have heard about story driven a MMORPG, which is actually nothing new. Most MMOs have story. World Of Warcraft has a story, IF you can find it. And IF you can stand to read each block of text for each quest. I know I couldn’t. Bioware is well known for making gripping stories so we can expect a cool one. What else? Combat. Every MMO out there that succeeds has cool combat. From the sheer nastiness of the combat medic in the original Star Wars Galaxies, to the utter coolness of a sniper shot felling Lord Recluse at the end of a Statesman’s Task Force in City of Heroes, to dropping a Bane mech with a single careful torqueshell rifle shot in Tabula Rasa (may it rest in peace), to running in shouting ‘Leeeeroy Jenkins!’ at the top of your lungs in World of Warcraft. Just kidding. Anyway, from those types of MMOs to the grind, grind, grind, run away, grind, grind, grind, RUN AWAY of most MMOs, combat is a major factor. Even Star Wars combat really is not anything new. Some of the looks and moves are cool, but again, most of them have been done somewhere. Most of what is in MMOs has been done to death in other MMOs. What IS new for Star Wars: The Old Republic is the amount of voice over.

Everyone who has played a recent Bioware game knows about voiced NPCs. Dragon Age Origins, and Mass Effects 1 and 2 both had HUGE amounts of voice acting, both by the main player characters and the supporting NPCs. Add to that the lines from some of the bad guys and other NPCs and you have major coolness. One of my biggest gripes with older MMOs is I wanted to hear things from people in the game. Not just the big shots, the major quest givers, but from others. Many MMOs recently have added sound bites to major quests. The biggest gripes I had with Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft was that there was always silence when the characters were talking. They would say ‘Hi’ at times, but no more. The quest was all given in text form. And it got annoying. We had the journal for text. I want to hear the voice of the person I am talking to. I know, I know, I got spoiled by Mass Effect, but can you blame me?

Sound effects in games have come a long way from things like ‘Pong’ and ‘Asteroids’.  You know, ‘ping’, ‘bang’, ‘zot’ that kind of thing. Arcade games had cool sound effects and even voices sometimes. But the processing power of the Commodore 32 or similar home entertainment consoles simply couldn’t handle the load. Sound, sure. Realistic sound and voice? Not so much. The main reason they introduced cutscenes to games was to immerse the character in the game. Because, let’s face it, the actual gameplay was not immersive for a lot of games. Come on, how immersive is the grind in WoW? I tried, I really tried to immerse myself. But it didn’t work. The only MMO I ever really managed to immerse myself in was Star Wars Galaxies, and we all know how that turned out.

The whole point of a video game, any video game, is a suspension of disbelief. We play video games to get away from reality for a while. Some of us may play them too much but all of us play them for the same basic reasons. We want to be able to lose ourselves, if just for a time, in the game. We want to have fun, we want to be excited, we want to go ‘Oh MAN that was cool!’. Sound effects are just one of the many ways that game designers draw in their players. Graphics, music, plot, action, all of these are important. But if the sound is ‘meh’, the game will likely be remembered as ‘meh’, if it is remembered at all. From the few video clips we have seen of in-game footage, I personally do not think Bioware is going to have that particular problem. Of course, many of the sounds are well known. Lightsabers of course are truly distinctive. And then they said the magic words. ‘Fully voiced’

As far as I have been able to determine, it has never been done before. Heck, as far as I can find, it has never even been TRIED before. The work involved is just too huge for most game developers to even attempt. To make every single NPC, every single quest giver, or quest participant, speak is just…whoa… Just the coding for the voices had to take years. And such voices…

We judge people, on a daily basis, by how they sound when they speak. Yes, we look at them, but their tone of voice is one of the major factors in how we judge. Are they angry? Sad? Happy? How do they feel and why? Tone of voice tells us a lot. It makes the characters come to life, which is one reason things like opera and theater are never likely to go away. Movies are fun, but the raw emotion that can be portrayed live has no substitute. Now a video game is not live, the conversations will never change, well, not quickly or easily. But to be able to hear how a person is feeling… That is just ‘wow’!

Is this being telling the truth? Is he/she/it about to blast me? It adds a layer of suspense, and immersion to the game. Just the clips that we have seen show a great deal more emotion that is shown in most games. Not that we expect anything less from the makers of Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

Personally, I think it is about time. I want to immerse myself in the story. I want to feel the tension, the fear, the grittiness that is Star Wars, especially during the time of the Great War. I want to hear the fear in someone’s voice as they beg for their life before I blast them. But again, I am not a very nice person when I play games. I want the game to stand out. I want it to be epic. And if it is anything at all like the clips that have been shown, I don’t think that will be a problem.

From the Imperial Agent and Bounty Hunter quest footage clip:

Czerka rep: “Do you know who I am?”

Imperial Agent: “I couldn’t care if you were the queen of Naboo.”

(Lol!)

Over to you. Are you looking forward to the voices as much as I am?

Filed Under: Community, Opinion Tagged With: , , ,

Put on the hardhats people…

September 3, 2010 by

Lets build!

Okay, who wants to build stuff? Whether it is swords, guns, buildings, starfighters, capital class starships like Star Destroyers or space stations like the Death Star… Um, wait a sec… No, I don’t think I want to build a Death Star. People tend to blow them up before they can really be used. And it is just so insulting, it was always those pesky small fighters doing it too. And the Millennium Falcon – every time that ship shows up, Imperial insurance rates must hit the roof. Man, if I were an insurance agent in the Star Wars universe, you couldn’t pay me enough to insure that huge pile of junk. Sure it has a really, really big gun on it, one that can destroy planets, but come on! It’s a massive risk to build one. No insurance company in existence is going to take a chance on it. So if you build it and some pesky Rebel scum blows it up like they always seem to, you are out of luck. And out several hundred billion credits.

So… Let’s stay small. Many games these days have some kind of crafting component. It can be something as simple as slots for sockets on your equipment that items of some sort can be placed in to enhance it. Who here played Diablo II? *Raises hand* The socketable items in that game were just too cool. You could make your gear do everything but sit up and beg. Same for KOTOR I. But was it really crafting? It was more enhancing an already crafted item. Players wanted more.

MMORPGs have incorporated crafting almost since the first ones. Games like Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest, City of Heroes and World of Warcraft have incorporated or added in a crafting element to keep players happy. But for the Star Wars fan, the pivotal moment was when Star Wars Galaxies came out. I remember the harvesting, the searching, the planning and then the building. I had one character who was an artisan, he was supposed to go droid engineer eventually, but I got tired of the constant work involved. And yes, it was work. You needed a lot of resources and not trash either. Better resources made better products and I still remember the sticker shock when I looked at some of the best items for sale on the bazaar and elsewhere. But players could make virtually anything in the game that other players could use. Anything from bio-agents for combat medics to starfighters and space transports after Jump to Lightspeed came out was feasible for players to build, if not always easy. But that was the challenge.

It was something else to do in the game besides grind. Admittedly, you had to find the resources first. Either you had to go out and mine them, harvest them, whatever, yourself. Or you had to pay someone else to do it for you, which could get VERY expensive. A lot like real life in some respects. I remember my first suit of composite armor for my commando character. It cost more than all of my starfighters combined. But it was worth it! Players will buy almost anything if it is available in a game. But if it is decent, gives them an advantage, or just plain looks better than the regular gear, you better believe the virtual items will fly off the virtual shelves.

So, what kind of crafting do we want? Do we want something like the system in City of Heroes, where you crafted items to improve your abilities? I still recall fighting Hamidon a dozen times, trying for a specific drop to make a specific piece. Or do we want to be able to build anything like in Star Wars Galaxies? I have to say that, speaking for myself, the crafting in that game and others like it was more than a bit overwhelming.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I and II also featured customization. Customize your lightsabers, your blasters, your armor, what have you, you could make it better. The developers have stated on several occasions that customization will be present, but what kind or how much, we don’t know. I don’t know about you but I want to trick out my blasters. KOTOR II in particular had crafting out the wazoo. You could make all kinds of things. Weapons, armor, grenades, mines, swords, guns, you could make it all. So it stands to reason that The Old Republic will as well. They have even hinted that you can customize your personal starship, but how or to what degree, they haven’t said yet. Annoying, isn’t it? I want to put the biggest weapons I can on mine. What can I say? I like big guns.

Many players gain enjoyment from building things. Hence the popularity of the LEGO series of games. But not every player has 1) the time, or 2) the inclination, to sit around for hours and hours watching things be built. For myself, I want to be out blowing things up. But there is a distinct subset of players in MMOs who live to do one thing and one thing only. Build. And their work is generally in high demand. They can charge whatever they want for their services, because lets face it. They provide a service. Usually a very good service for those of use who lack the patience to grind, grind, grind, build, build, build. We don’t mind paying them for the convenience. We want to play, not work.

Over to you. What would you want to be able to build or customize in Star Wars: The Old Republic? Is there anything you would NOT want to see able to be built by players? For me, I really don’t want to see player-built Star Destroyers and Death Stars!

Filed Under: Community, Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Good Sith and Evil Jedi? Wha…?

August 17, 2010 by

Light or Darkness

Jedi and Sith. Light and darkness. Good and evil. Simple, right? Bioware seems to be hell bent on making what we thought was simple complicated. The whole good/bad thing gets kind of fuzzy, like Dr. Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters put it. Those of us who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy know about good and evil. Darth Vader was evil, Luke Skywalker was good. Empire was evil, Rebel Alliance was good. Stormtroopers, brainless soldiers following orders to the letter with no questions asked, were evil. Smugglers and… um… murderers (Han shot first in the original) …were… um… good? Ok, so he turned good at the end of that movie, but is it so easy to define?

What is good? Oh, man, I doubt I could put that in words if I had a hundred pages to try. We all have our own definitions of good. Selflessness, heroism, courage, kindness, etc. But in the first movie, Star Wars: A New Hope, good was fairly easy to define. The people fighting the bad guys were the good guys, even if all of them were not ‘good’ themselves. Han Solo in particular was a mercenary, out for one thing and one thing only: money.  He took the charter job to carry Luke, Obi-Wan and the droids to Alderaan not out of a sense of helping others, but for one HECK of a payout promised by the Jedi. He certainly did not attack the detention bay of the Death Star to rescue Princess Leia out of the goodness of his heart. He would not have lifted a finger without the promise of a massive reward.  Yes, at the end of the movie it was shown that he was not simply a greedy, self centered scum, but it took most of the movie. But for the most part, in A New Hope, good was fairly easy to recognize. Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi were good.

Now as to evil. Again, where to start? We all have our own definitions of evil. Selfishness, greed, lust for power or other gains, or simply an excess of pragmatism. Why did Darth Vader strangle people with the Force? Was it pragmatism? The easiest and quickest way? Or was it because it was the most terrifying way to do it? Did he enjoy cowing his subordinates, or was it simply the fastest and most efficient method of promoting an underling? From the time of Episode IV until the end of Episode VI, Darth Vader stood as the personification of evil to most movie goers. He wore black, he was big and scary and treated his subordinates like dirt. It wasn’t until the end of Return of the Jedi, when we see his redemption that the entire story comes to head.  Until then, he was always the bad guy, the ULTIMATE bad guy. A sound of heavy breathing still scares me to this very day, wondering if my own throat is about to be compacted by icy insubstantial fingers of the Force. Darth Vader was evil.

Now, as to good and evil in games. Most video games through the history of them, you play a good guy. From the earliest games like Defender and Galaga, you were trying to protect others, fighting unending waves of bad guys to win. There was no question, you were the hero, and what you were doing was ‘good’. Not so more modern games. Role playing games in particular have always catered to all kinds. People who wanted to play ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’. Baldur’s Gate II was probably the best of its era in games where you could choose. You could be an amoral mercenary, killing anyone and everyone who got in your way, a cynical ranger dealing death to orcs and scum from a distance with a bow, or a noble paladin sworn to serve your gods and dealing holy fury to the enemies of truth and justice. Or anything in between.  And in all things, there was choice. You COULD play as a paladin and do evil. You then lost your powers and had to play the rest of the game as a fighter with a few odd quirks. I personally loved playing as a monk, always Lawful Neutral, that way I had to choose VERY carefully what to do and when.

And then games like Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Origins where your choices for good and evil have a massive effect on the game. Do you support the noble good guy, even if he really seems to have no clue what he is doing? Or the schemer who had his brother murdered to try and snatch the throne? He knows how to get things done after all. Do you play the good cop, bringing truth and justice to dark places? Or the evil scum who is only in it for themselves? Only speaking for myself, I almost always play good guys. I see too much evil in daily life to want to perpetuate it in any way even virtually. Maybe that makes me a wimp, but I think it makes me a better person than many I meet on a daily basis.

Bioware has not given out a lot of information on the actual story of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Part of this is intended to whet potential player’s appetites, which it does very well. Part is likely because they have not finalized everything yet. I mean, come on, how COULD they have finalized it all by now? In any MMO there is a lot of stuff to get done, and in this MMO…sheesh… If half of what they tell us is true, it will put all the others to shame content wise.

But they have said that it will be possible to be a light side Sith. Or a dark side Jedi. My first reaction, like many people probably, was to say ‘WHA…?’ But then I thought about it. Jedi are not necessarily ‘good’. They have to do what it takes to protect the galaxy as a whole. Does this mean they can be paragons of virtue all the time? Heck no. Obi-Wan lies to Luke. Forget the ‘different point of view’ garbage. He flat out LIED to the young man. He did it because the truth would have caused all kinds of problems. We see Anakin, as a Jedi, act Dark Side. And that is what started his fall, in Episode II, avenging his mother.

But we never saw any Light Side Sith in any of the movies, probably because Lucas didn’t like the idea. Jedi were good and Sith were evil, period. Right? But now we have this quandary. If you are serving evil, does that make you evil? Do Sith warriors, Sith Inquisitors, Bounty Hunters and Imperial Agents HAVE to be evil in SWTOR? Bioware’s answer seems to be their stock one. ‘It is all up to the player.’

I personally am looking forward to playing a Dark Side Trooper or a Light Side Sith Warrior. How about you? What do you want to play?

Yin-yang image courtesy of: Dreamstime.

Filed Under: Community, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Time to fight!

August 3, 2010 by

Well, it’s official. And yes, I admit I had a geekasm when they announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic would include space combat. Yes, I even went ‘squee’. Can you blame me? Most of my fondest memories are of X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance. What can I say? I am not a pilot in real life. With only one eye that works right, I will never be a pilot in real life – certainly not a very safe one anyway. So I do simulations – that way, if I crash the ship, plane, tank, whatever, all I have to do is reset the game or reload the level. But I do love flying. And there is something about flying in space, even simulated, that draws one in, and holds one. I still play Battlefront II, mainly for the space combat aspect.

We don’t know a lot yet about what space combat will involve. What we DO know is that it will involve ‘hotspots’. Will these be instances? We don’t know. It is touted as an ‘alternative gameplay experience’. Does this mean it won’t be a mandatory part of the game, for those people who seem strange to me who don’t like flying games? We don’t know. There is a lot we don’t know yet.

Many people seem to be holding out for a free flight simulator like X-Wing Alliance was. I admit, I am one of them, but I am not holding my breath. The problems in the Jump to Lightspeed expansion for Star Wars Galaxies shows just how bad twitch based flying can be in an MMO. There were parts of it that were quite enjoyable, mixed in with mindless grind, mindless grind, mindless grind, mission and then back to grind, grind, grind. I always enjoyed tweaking my birds for maximum efficiency, speed, firepower, you name it. And I enjoyed making life miserable for Imperial dogs. But free flight is a big enterprise. How many items were there to program in Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed? Hundreds if not thousands or more. Ships, asteroids, space debris, planets, stations, nebulae… you name it, it was there somewhere.

An alternative is the gamestyle of games such as Rebel Assault, or like the gun turrets in Knights of the Old Republic.  This is a game or mini-game where you have no control over the movement of your ship, you just blast everything in sight as quickly as you can. Some people call these games rail flight simulators for a good reason- your movement is set, you can go around and around, but nowhere else. If you shoot fast enough, straight enough and pick the right targets, you will survive and progress to the next level. If not, there is always that handy ‘reload save’ feature.

Most games that have come out since the dawn of video games have been one or the other of these. Some of them have been a mix. In Space Invaders, Galaga, Centipede and the like, you could move a bit, but not much. You were on rails, but you had the ability to move your ship or whatever in a limited area. Then there were games like Defender and Asteroids where you had free control to move your ship anywhere on the screen. But those were rarer from what I recall, admittedly, I only played some of those games. I was mainly a Galaga fan. And I still am. I loved getting three ships in a line to blast the enemy three times as fast.

So… What will we see in the Old Republic? We don’t know yet. It may be a free flight simulator like X-Wing Alliance, but what are the odds? Those are incredibly hard to pull off well. Most of the space simulators that are made never make it past a week on the on the store shelves and wind up in the bargain bin in two weeks, and then the trash can in three. Will it be something like Star Wars: Empire at War, where you control each ship from afar? Will it be something like Lego Star Wars where you had a tighter view, but a top down one designed for console players? Or will it be something like Rebel Assault, where you could shoot up things to your heart’s content, but never deviate from your flight path? I personally hated that kind of game play. I like to have control of what my in-game thing is doing, whether it is a tank, a plane or a spacecraft. The top down games always seemed… off in some way to me, if that makes any sense. The far view in Empire at War was fun, but again limited in what you could order your vessels to do. There was simply too much other stuff going on to have a lot of controls for things like say, fighters.

Bioware and Lucasarts will likely give us more information fairly soon, especially since after the announcement at Comic Con, many of us needed to change our pants and wash our faces to get the froth off. But no, we are not fanatics. Just dedicated. We do know that there will be space battles, we know that there will be larger vessels than the player ships. We are told that we have to ‘blast our way through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles that will evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars™ space battles.’ (quote from Sean Dalhberg) What does this mean? We don’t know. But knowing Bioware, they are unlikely to market Space Invaders: Star Wars style.

For myself, my dream is another flight simulator like X-Wing Alliance, but harder. I want to fly around, get on an enemy’s tail and stay there while he maneuvers frantically. I want him to sweat while I pump enough laser fire into his hull to make him a pretty cloud of scattered atoms. But then, I am not a nice person when I fly. Good thing I only do it in games. I quote a famous man: ‘A fighter pilot finds the enemy and shoots him down, everything else is rubbish’ -Manfred Von Richthofen (AKA the Red Baron)

And yes, I have to say it again. SQUEE! As soon as that issue of PC Gamer comes out, I am on it like a X-Wing on a TIE.

Over to you, what kind of space flight would you want to see? Free flight like X-Wing Alliance or SWG JTL, rail flight like Rebel Assault, top down like Lego Star Wars, far view like Star Wars: Empire at War, or something in between?

Photo courtesy of Retro Gamer.

Filed Under: Community, News, Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Profile: Gestahlt (SWTOR forums roleplayer)

July 24, 2010 by

No this is NOT the person

For this week’s piece I am interviewing another regular at the TOR forums. Just about anyone who follows any of the Star Wars: The Old Republic Website forums at all has likely seen a post by this writer. Love this writer’s work or hate it, you have to respect the skill and sheer writing ability that is shown. Give it up for Gestahlt!

E:  Hello ­ Gestahlt, I have a few questions for you today, if you don’t mind.

G:  Mind?  I’m absolutely honored to be even be considered for an interview.  The pleasure’s all mine, really.

E:  In very general terms, what are you in real life?

G:  Perpetually bored?  No.  I’m a full-time student finishing out a degree in English, as well as the committed boyfriend of a woman I’ve been in love with for just about three years now.  When I’m not writing I’m usually with her, and if I’m not with either – well, that’s where that whole student thing comes in.  I’m an amateur health nut and love to work out whenever I can.  It keeps me relieve stress and on top of that, think out stories while I exercise.

E:  How long have you been doing RP and fanfiction in online forums?

G:I’ve been writing in general since I was about 8, which is to say I started putting together terrible ideas ever since I was a kid.  When I turned 13 we were given America Online 3.0 (Oh god, I just dated myself, I think?) and from there, it was almost an instant gravitation toward roleplay. I’ve since used AOL, WoW, Age of Conan, Star Wars Galaxies (briefly), and Final Fantasy XI as means of roleplay.

But, at the end of the day, it’s writing my own story that really gets me into the creative mindset.

E:   What got you started in this?

G: Reading, without a doubt.  I’m a military brat (Chair Force, represent!) and we moved around a lot.  To compensate I started reading more than I would have otherwise and fell in love not only with the written word, but the world that it could create.

In many ways, it has become a sandbox without boundaries.  My friend, Terminalpleasure, has often compared roleplay to kids playing “make believe”, and I think he’s on the right track.  I actually never played DnD or anything of the like; Bioware was my first time testing out a D20 system, yet it was their story telling that further encouraged me to try out my hand at roleplaying.

E:  What do you think is the most rewarding thing about writing fanfiction?

G: It’s two-fold.  The first is the sense of completion that you get when your protagonist works out something that you’ve been trying to have them solve for awhile.  It’s as much a journey for me, I believe, as it is for my readers.

The second part is the readers themselves.  If someone can read a piece of writing I did and glean some entertainment from it, then I know I’ve done a good job.   I recently put in my sig that if a person has a story in their head they should just write it.  No matter if you think it’s bad or good, get it out.  When we create we encourage others to create and when there is a creative community then we’ve established something that’s lasting.

Let’s put it this way.  I played WoW for about six years.  After the first three, it became boring.  But the ability to roleplay with other creative people made it a wonderful thing.  I hope that in time TOR gets that same feeling (if not one more focused on the creativity) and enables us to look back six years in the future and say “Man, I wasn’t ever bored for a day with that one.”

E:  What do you think could be improved in general about the fanfictions we see on the forums?

G: I think that people should have a little more confidence in what they do.  Yes, a lot of the stuff is new but it’s well worth trying your hand at.   We have a lot of good writers, I have seen, with excellent ideas but they all become somewhat insular.  TP tried to combat this with his Circle of Reviewers thread, but the problem with that was if you didn’t start a story early on, it’d be hard to catch up.

I think it’d be nice if the moderators gave thread creators a bit more control over their threads, so we could weed out the posts that are just problematic as well.  But, I suppose that is only really a problem if you write a story in which Revan loves Alek!

E:  What on Earth made you write about an alternative lifestyle Revan?

G: Well, the fact is we don’t know a lot about Revan.  Bioware’s been working to fill in gaps, but I feel like we’re trapped in some archetypical Heisenberg’s Principle: the more we learn, the less we know.  I can understand that Revan was a charismatic Jedi that made sacrifices and ended up falling, but what does that mean about the MAN himself?  Well, there’s the disconnect.

I wanted to make Revan more of a person.  I’m not saying that having him fall in love with Alek makes him more “interesting” than if he was entirely straight, but by the same token we didn’t see Revan always around a woman, did we?  No, he was with Alek and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with two people finding love in one another.  From that alone, I knew there’d be a problem… but I didn’t care.

To be completely honest, I like Revan.  I dislike his fanatics, though.  The people that go on and on about how Revan could defeat Sidious, Mace Windu, and Bane at one time just irritate me.  Not because I think Revan is weak, but because they don’t even like Revan.  They like the concept of some all-powerful jackanapes that can run up and destroy everyone without feeling or effort.  That’s boring; if that was who Revan was, KOTOR would have been a very flat game.

I’ve had my story referred to before as the “Gay Revan” story.  Shocking?  Not really.  In the start of the story he is in love with Alek – to be honest, I think he even loved Alek after he struck Malak down on the Star Forge, but the story itself was much more about what happened between those events.  I was allowed to explore the Exile and show her in three important stages: Broken, Mending, and Completed.    I was able to elaborate on the Bastila and Revan Dynamic – on the Revan and Arren Kae relationship.  There’s just so much out there that we could know, and I wanted to put attention to those important details.

So in the end, do I think I made Revan “gay” just so he’d be “gay”?  No.  I think I made Revan a person, just so that we could have something to like more than a mask and a red lightsaber.  I’m quite certain my vision of Revan and that of Mr. Karpyshyn does not match up all that much, but I can live with that.  What I was most concerned with was giving answers where only questions were before, and in the end maybe helping other people really think about who Revan was and what he was capable of.

TOR should answer a lot of things.  I wouldn’t be shocked if 99% of what I said is refuted by what is revealed, but that 1% will mean a lot to me.  I’m eager to see just how far off the mark I was.

E: What do you think is your best piece of writing?

G: It’s up in the air.  I have two pieces of writing for my own personal stories that have competing places in my heart.  The first is the story of a young girl who grows up in a horrible situation and rises above it.

The second is the story of an alpha-male, take-no-prisoners, itinerant swordsman on a quest to rescue his bastard daughter from the hands of a megalomaniacal despot… so that he can kill her.  An amazing tagline, isn’t it?

=====

In conclusion… Ladies and gentlemen, feel free to check out the really cool writing of Gestahlt on swtor.com. You won’t be disappointed. Surprised, sure. Possibly shocked – but not disappointed.

Photo is courtesy of www.swtor.com

Filed Under: Community

She Plays Insane People: NitWhit

May 20, 2010 by

Is this what I think it is?

Yes that is a Mynock, and yes it has a rifle. It’s so totally random and yet, so totally cool that anyone who sees it is like: ‘Huh? Oh wow!’

For this week’s piece I am interviewing another regular at the SWTOR forums. Like my previous interview, she has been posting in the forums there since October of 2008, a month before I started. She has been a massive presence on the SWTOR Boards since they began. She has a devious mind that is only matched by her absolutely brutal style of roleplaying and ‘assisting’ people – sometimes with a swift kick in the cranium via a private message. She has no patience for people whose grandstanding gets in the way of good storytelling. But at the same time, she always has time to help a rookie, which we all were once, whether we admit it or not. Whether it is roleplaying a psychotic Twilek assassin, a naive technician or a brain bent shape shifter, she does it with style. Give it up for the NitWhit!

Edward: Hello Nit, I have a few questions for you today, if you don’t mind.

Nit: I don’t mind at all.

Edward: In general terms, Nit, what are you in real life?

Nit: I’m a college student working on getting a degree in engineering who spends my free time juggling writing, art, and several groups I’m involved with on my campus.

Edward: Why do you play insane characters most of the time?

Nit: Well sanity is overrated tends to be my quick answer, but really I just like a challenge when I write. Insane characters provide such a different perspective that they make me have to really sit down and consider how this psychopath would handle a situation rather than how I would and how they developed into what they are, not everyone who is insane started out crazy of course.  Those are the kinds of things that fuel me to sink more and more time into a character so a lot of my characters wind up with their own brand of craziness. I should probably also note that not quite all of my characters are completely bonkers.

Edward: How long have you been doing RP and fanfiction in online forums?

Nit: Not very long actually. I’ve only written fan fiction and RPed on a forum since I joined the SWTOR site coming up on 2 years ago now. I have been playing RPGs for far longer than that of course and I had RPed in Star Wars Galaxies when I played what now seems like ages ago, but I was always far too terrified to try anything beyond that until I saw some RPing threads on the swtor site and decided I’d take a shot at it.

Edward: What got you started in this, writing fanfictions?

Nit: Not all engineers will admit it but numbers get boring day in and day out. I found myself quickly missing high school English classes, which I honestly never expected to hear myself say. Unfortunately though, there are only so many ways you can spice up a report on the various parts used to assemble a mechanical device and when you try, as I know well with the numerous attempts I’ve made, the assistant grading your paper will promptly tell you that your writing was too ‘narrative’ and that you need to be boring. That was what really made me decide that I needed to pick up writing just for fun again and flex my creativity. It was around this time that the SWTOR site went live, I spotted a few RP threads and decided to give it a shot and well things spun off from there.

Edward: What drew you to SWTOR in the first place?

Nit: I grew up as the original trilogy was re-released in theaters and the prequels hit theaters. I’ve always been a bit obsessed about Star Wars. It was this obsession that led me to eventually pick up Knights of the Old Republic, my first Bioware game and I’ve been a bit of a Bioware fan girl ever since. With all that in mind you could say I was pretty much instantly drawn to SWTOR.

Edward: What do you think is the most rewarding thing in writing fan fictions?

Nit: I find the most rewarding thing is simply getting your ideas out there and working with other likeminded people to craft a story especially when those other writers and RPers seem to click together.

Edward: What do you think could be improved in fan fictions?

Nit: I’d love to see people being more open to criticism and more willing to provide others actual feedback. I feel like a lot of people miss major chances for improvement as a result.

Edward: What do you think is the best writing you have done?

Nit: That’s hard to say, I don’t know that I have anything that I’d label my best. I suppose I have a few fan fictions sitting on my desktop which I’m still prodding at which might qualify if I ever find time to finish them.

Edward: Indeed. Well, this is a question some people are likely to ask. What kind of character will you play when SWTOR comes out?

Nit: Well I do know I’ll likely largely be staying on the Sith side of matters, darker more ‘evil’ characters hold a special place in my heart. Currently I’ve got my eyes on the Inquisitor class and Bounty Hunter where I can cross a few of my RP characters over, but I’ll see. Knowing myself, I’m liable to eventually wind up with one of everything.

Edward: Is there anything you might want to say to New Zealanders or Australians who read this blog?

Nit: If you ever feel tempted by RP or fan fiction, give it a shot; you might just be pleasantly surprised. And of course I’d love to visit both countries one day, diving at the Great Barrier Reef and kayaking in New Zealand are musts on my massive to-do list.

Edward: 🙂 Mine too. Well, thank you for your time.

NitWhit has been one of the major players in the SWTOR site since its founding in 2008. Her biting wit, intriguing (and insane) characters and her desire to assist other people -myself included- have made her a massive presence on the boards. Her skills in writing are only matched by her skills in art, and I like to call her a friend. It’s always best to stay on the good side of crazy people after all, right?

Check out NitWhit on Deviantart.com and SWTOR.com. The Mynock with a rifle is one of her pieces, and in my opinion, it’s not even close to the best one. She has talent, does NitWhit.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: , , , ,

Space: The MMO frontier

April 26, 2010 by

Space. The deep black. The awful emptiness. The final frontier. The fringe. There are all kinds of names and monikers for what is beyond the atmosphere of Earth. For as long as humans have looked up towards the sky, people have created stories about space. From aboriginal tales of gods and demons coming from space, to writers like Jules Verne, to modern day screenwriters like George Lucas and James Cameron, people have looked to the sky and said ‘What if?’. Now, people who follow Star Wars: The Old Republic have a ‘What if?’ of their own. What if space is part of the game? Well, what if it is not? Would you play it without a space component at launch?

Think about it. Star Wars has the word ‘Star’ in it. It is not Planet Wars, or Ocean Wars, or Sky Wars. It is Star Wars. The very first scene of Episode IV, after the introduction writing, is of two starships, a small one and a huge one, fighting in space. To this day, I get a small thrill when I see the image of the imposing huge white bulk of an Imperator class Star Destroyer. Ok, ok, for those purists out there, an IMPERIAL class Star Destroyer. Whatever… The image of X-wing starfighters diving in to attack the first Death Star was one of the most iconic scenes ever made in a movie. So from the very beginning, the stories have included space. It was added on with the later movies, with the battles becoming more epic in scope. Love the prequels or hate them, the space battle images from Episode III, especially the battle of Coruscant, were epic.

Star Wars games likewise have been very focused on space. Everything from Empire Strikes Back for the SNES to The Force Unleashed has shown space as an integral part of the Star Wars story. But it hasn’t always been playable. Games such as the X-wing series, the Battlefront Series and the Empire at War Series have all shown what is possible in Star Wars. Even Lego Star Wars has space missions. But is it possible to do such a thing right in a MMO?

Take Star Wars Galaxies. The people in charge tried to make space a part of the game. To their credit, they delivered most of what they promised. It was flawed in a number of ways; it was shallow and more than a bit boring. Grind, grind, grind, do mission, grind, grind, grind. Lather, rinse, repeat. It got old after a while. I personally played space more than the ground side, because I was a huge fan of X-Wing Alliance and older titles. What can I say? I like blasting TIE fighters out of the sky.

There is a problem in a MMORPG however. There is more than one kind of person playing the game. From my own personal experience, people who like space games usually fall into two categories. There are those people who like to ‘see what is out there’. In effect, they are explorers. They are driven to seek out new life, new civilizations, to boldly go… Oops, wrong game. Essentially, they are there to see what is there. To explore, to find things, to visit strange places so they can talk about them. Or just to collect the badges, whichever comes first.

Then there are the people who like to blow stuff up. Come on, you can admit it. I know I do. We live to make things go boom, the bigger the better. There was nothing at all more satisfying that blowing up a Star Destroyer in the original X-Wing game with a Y-wing. Or taking on a rebel fleet with a single assault gunboat in TIE Fighter. Or watching the second Death Star blow up after flying the Millennium Falcon through its innards at full speed in X-Wing Alliance. Player versus Player or Player versus Environment, space simulators are just fun!

But as in all things, there is no free lunch. A MMO is a big undertaking, and this MMO is apparently larger than almost all the others ever made. According to Bioware, this game is larger than every single other game they have made put together! There is a lot of work that has to go into any MMO. Do we want a space component? Exploration or combat or both? Oh HECK YES! But what if it detracts from the rest of the game? What if, in making a space simulator of some kind, which is not an easy enterprise all on its own, parts of the rest of the game get neglected? This is what happened in SWG I believe. They focused so much on the space expansion that everything else went on the back burner, bug fixes, additional content, everything.

My personal feeling is this. Space is an integral part of what makes Star Wars special. The aliens, the cool locations, the evil bad guys, the not so nice good guys, all of these are important – but space is what really makes Star Wars. That was what I really missed when I started SWG. It was the only reason I stayed as long as I did, first the promise of the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, then when it came out. It had problems, yes, but it was space combat and I got to blow up TIE fighters! If the rest of the game hadn’t gone so belly up with the changes, I might still be playing it to this day.

So to answer my first questions: Space is important. At least some kind of nod to space is absolutely required by anything Star Wars related.  Knights of the Old Republic had the gun turret scenes. The Dark Forces and Jedi Knight series had multiple references to space even if you couldn’t do anything in space. Jedi Academy had a mission where you had to use turrets to defend against TIE fighter attack – it was cool, but it lacked something. Something that all of us Star Wars simulation freaks knew and loved: the freedom to fly in space. I am willing to bet that even if it is not available at launch, that somewhere later down the line, some kind of space content will become available. Because it is, in the end, Star Wars.

As for me? I will play the game even if it doesn’t have a space component at launch. If it does, you will not be able to drag me away from it with a tractor beam.

So what do you think? I am going to be… busy… Green Seven rolling in on some Imperials now… DIE YOU DOGS! *sounds of laserfire*

Filed Under: Community, Opinion Tagged With: , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »