Previews// Star Wars: The Old Republic

When Electronic Arts and BioWare first unveiled Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3, the game’s strategic significance was evident, if nothing else. A Star Wars MMO developed by RPG kings BioWare is clearly intended to provide some belated competition to World Of Warcraft. In so doing, help EA to get its Number One Publisher slot back from the post-merger Activision-Blizzard, with its dominance of the MMO market. Sadly, that was able all we were able to learn back then, as the only aspect of the game shown was an admittedly lush cut-scene.

Flash forward to GamesCom, and BioWare felt able to demo some actual gameplay – enacted live, rather than from pre-recorded video. Graphically, The Old Republic had a fairly distinctive stylised look, with a third-person camera backed a fair way out. Gameplay appeared not unlike that of BioWare’s Star Wars RPG Knights Of The Old Republic, with shooting and melee action to the fore.

Unusually for an MMO, The Old Republic sports a cover system – BioWare senior producer Dallas Dickinson explained that this is necessary for characters such as Republic-class smugglers (essentially Han Solo), which are proficient with ranged weapons but not so confident at close quarters. Although the Republic-class smuggler did have a “dirty kick” and an execution-style finishing headshot.

Dickinson made much of the fact that The Old Republic will have a coherent storyline which persists all the way through the game – a first, he claims, for an MMO. Another big idea the game will attempt to nail is that of giving each player a different story – conversational choices will influence how NPCs react to you, and will launch different storyline branches.

As well, of course, as determining whether you follow the Dark Side or the Light Side. Dickinson claimed that you can play the whole game as an Empire-class bounty hunter, then start over again as a Republic-class smuggler, and not see a single mission in common between the two.

The game’s events take place about 3,000 years before those chronicled in the films, and 300 years after KOTOR. BioWare demoed the choices system by taking on a mission later in the game, with a couple of levelled-up characters, including a Sith Warrior who could dual-wield light-sabres, and had a repertoire of Force abilities.

It took place on a spacecraft whose captain had disobeyed an order from high command; you had to confront him, and decide whether to spare or execute him. Having spared him (and advanced the plot accordingly), a big fight defending the ship’s cargo bay from an invading force ensued.

Star Wars: The Old Republic looks like it has the potential to be a game-changing MMO, with its state-of-the-art RPG/third-person action-adventure-style gameplay, mutating Star Wars storyline and general feel that it is a classic BioWare game, except massively multiplayer. On paper, it is seriously seductive and could potentially wrestle some sort of superiority from the iron grip of WoW.

It’s early doors in the game’s development, BioWare has never done an MMO before, and the developer refused to answer many crucial questions about it, such as how it will handle guilds and PvP play, what network of local servers is being set up or indeed whether it will be a subscription game, a flat-fee one or a mixture of both. The omens are good, but will it really have the class to take on World of Warcraft?