Star Wars The Old Republic, Initial thoughts
Originally published on Frags and Beer, December 17, 2012
This past weekend, despite Guild Wars Wintersday event, I decided to try out The Old Republic. It has recently gone ‘free-to-play’ so I thought I would download it and check it out. All of the previews were exciting, the descriptions of the game looked great. Everything leading up to this game made me want to play it, except for the subscription fee. Once it went ‘free-to-play’ it was easier for me to give it a try. Let me clarify a little bit though, when they say ‘free-to-play’ they don’t mean that in the sense that Guild Wars is free-to-play. Right away, from character creation, you find out that it is a very limited definition of the phrase. Only three of the many player races are open to the player right out of the gate. There are unlock buttons and references to subscriber benefits all over the screen. It’s clear from the start that to experience the game in its entirety you still need to pay per month.
The opening of the game is epic, as anyone that has seen the initial trailers will know. The movies that play at the beginning of the game, and at the beginning of each faction choice are great. They lead into a fantastic story of struggle between dark and light, between the Republic and the Sith. That is the extent of the awe one will feel with the visuals in this game. From the moment you pick your character’s class and see what your avatar will look like, the lackluster level of the in-game graphics sets in. Colors and textures are flat and cartoony, but not to the extent that you think it intentional. If they had made a game animated and drawn like the Clone Wars cartoons that would be excusable, but this looks like they tried to emulate games like Guild Wars but failed. Guild Wars doesn’t try to give you realism, so they go for an artistic, almost anime feel to the graphics, images, colors, and animation. SWTOR just looks like they couldn’t decide between realism or cartoon, and fell somewhere in the middle.
So far the points that have been positive for me have been the voice-acting and the story-telling. It reminds me of playing KOTOR, and that’s at least pleasant. I can tell that they hired, or had, some decent talent in these areas. Granted I haven’t gotten very far, only through the first couple of story quests for my smuggler character, but it did catch my interest. Will these elements overcome the bad visuals? I don’t know yet, that remains to be seen.
The final flaw that I found in my short play time was the animations, specifically the running and the firing from cover. I am not sure if it’s related to the chosen race, class, or gender yet, nor will I be able to actually test that since most races are closed to ‘free’ players, but the running animation for the human male smuggler is bad. It’s like one of those bad commercials where someone runs in place but the background moves behind them. It makes you wonder if the motion capture guy for this class, race, gender (or all of the above) was on a treadmill or just told to run in place. The other bit was the firing from cover. Your character can take cover and fire from these positions, but he doesn’t always fire ‘at’ the enemy. What I mean is, these cover positions are preset and face a certain way, regardless of enemy position. You can take cover, facing forward, but your target might be off to the right. Your character will continue to face forward, blaster pointed forward, but his blasts will be flying at an agle to your position to hit the target. It’s strange that they did not code these cover positions to make them rotate with the target.
These are my initial throughts for now. I plan to get more time in and see if there is enough good in the game to overcome the bad, and I’ll keep you all posted on what I find.
