By: Reach for the Sky
Well see, we're already off to a bad start with the title of the article. What I should have called it was Why "The Old Republic" Can Not Satisfy My Standards. Oh well. You may think it bad form, judging a game before it comes out, but the fact is the situation is stacked against it, at least in my opinion. Let's take a look, shall we. (writing this part after the fact, the following can get nerdariffic at times, be warned)
The first problem is that it's an MMORPG. My personal feelings about MMOs aside, this just doesn't fit with the Knights of the Old Republic feel, and quite frankly a Star Wars MMO is just a bad idea in general. An MMO world is static, there's no plot progression, the world never changes*. Oh, what's that? Cataclysm? Funny you should bring that up, because I have a few things to say about it. Once it's turned on, World of Warcraft will be altered, and then go unchanged again. Congratulations, for the first time in ten years, the Warcraft storyline has advanced. the Star Wars universe tends to move a little faster in general. Planets are destroyed, major characters are killed, various political and military factions rise to power. In single player games this can be easily reproduced, the story can move as the player advances. But when millions of players are in the same world, the plot can't follow any one person. Villains you've just spent an hour or so trying to kill are brought back to life in two minutes for the next guy who comes along. A population of monsters will never be eliminated, or else who would the next hero get his five Wampa Pelts from? Planets can't be conquered by different factions, etc. KOTOR has always been about an epic story that revolves around a main character, and even if some kind of story progression is achieved, it will seem disingenuous when millions of others are experiencing the same things right next to you.
There's also the problem of balance. If a trained Jedi like Luke or Anakin fought a scrappy smuggler like Han Solo, the winner would be obvious. In a single player game, the solution is simple. If the main character is a Jedi, they will win, like they should, maybe even against multiple smugglers to preserve difficulty. If the main character is a smuggler, they won't be pit against a jedi, or maybe they'll just have to escape to survive, or maybe you'll have friends to help you. Either way, you get both difficulty and immersion. But when you have multiple players, a problem arises. One player wants to be Darth Vader, another wants to be Han Solo. Both are understandable, they are both cool characters, but if they met in combat, the outcome would be fairly predictable. In an MMO, however, things have to be balanced. You will inevitably have light saber-toting Jedi fighting bounty-hunters wielding blasters, and either could win. In fact, the bounty-hunter will probably end up taking several light saber strikes with little more than a grunt in response, which would look ridiculous to someone who has seen any Star Wars movie ever.
My final concern is with the gameplay. MMO combat at it's fastest is generally pretty slow compared to most games. It also tends to be repetitive, and detached from player action, reducing your input to a right click and maybe a few keystrokes to cast spells or force powers or whatever. This does not fit well with Star Wars' fast-paced, visceral, action-packed universe. With Star Wars game, we tend to expect something like The Force Unleashed and MMOs tend to deliver Bejeweled. You also have the aforementioned problem with taking multiple light saber/blaster attacks and living. This is actually a problem with the KOTOR series in general, and unlike the others is not totally inescapable. It all depends on how much the developers are willing to stray from the MMO formula.
To be honest, I don't actually think it will be a bad game. In fact, since it's being made by BioWare, it will probably be well-made and fun. I just don't think it will be a good addition to the KOTOR series, and it definitely won't fit well with the Star Wars universe.
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