Star Wars: The Old Republic Hands On

Before the media could get anywhere near Star Wars: The Old Republic, they had to first sit through a thirty minute presentation about the game. Despite first thoughts, it turned out to be anything but a hardship as the gig was awesome. Right in the middle of GamesCom, LucasArts and BioWare had built a mini-cinema, skinned to look like a building plucked straight from Tatooine. Walking inside we found around twenty-odd seats (each with speakers inside) lined up in front of a massive screen surrounded by laser lights.

Once we found our seats, our ear-drums were assaulted by that legendary orchestral build-up that everyone associates with Star Wars before being launched into one of the coolest trailers I have ever witnessed. If you haven’t seen it yet, visit www.swtor.com/media/trailers (after you have read this write-up of course) and watch “The Sacking of Coruscant”. It shows an epic stand-off between two factions of Jedi and Sith and if this doesn’t get you excited about the game then you are probably clinically dead. The laser light show that gleefully burned our retinas probably made it that little bit more awesome though.

The Old Republic is the eagerly anticipated massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based around the ever-expanding Star Wars universe. Right from the start of the presentation BioWare were quick to point out features new to the genre though. One of the main draw-cards for The Old Republic is that it is the first-ever fully voiced MMORPG which means that there hundreds of hours worth of recorded dialogue to correspond to the sequences in the game. Starting quests, meeting characters and progressing through your campaign isn’t just reading text and hearing Jabba472 blabber on about his latest kill anymore. The game is full of rich, professional voice-acting talent to mimic the cinematic cut-scenes that really help you get immersed in the rich storyline the game has to offer.

To a person such as myself, who has never spent much time with MMORPGs, the game looks like World of Warcraft. Your character stands in the middle of the screen with around a hundred little icons located along the bottom representing attacks, statistics and your status. The Old Republic does look better however and has its own visual art direction that makes the game look like a digital painting. Character models take on a slightly cartoonish look, but the amount of detail is amazing with every space cantina or Jedi training room looking just right. It’s also important to note here that the game is HUGE. With cities, moons, planets and even galaxies to explore either on your own or with your party of online comrades.

Just like World of Warcraft, players select a Class and currently on offer is Smuggler (think Han Solo), Jedi, Bounty Hunter and at GamesCom we were shown the newly announced Sith class. As you can imagine, sulking around in your black cloaked robes, wielding a crimson light-sabre and smacking people around with your force lightning is going to be a popular choice. But BioWare have done an excellent job of keeping all of the classes not only balanced, but desirable as well. All of the combat is progressive, allowing players to work their up to more impressive attacks and abilities. Another novel feature in The Old Republic is the inclusion of a fully integrated cover system, which proves to be vital for players with long distance blaster attacks. By clicking on nearby objects, a player will be able to roll behind a rock before assessing their next move. Players will also be able to engage with multiple enemies at once as well - another relatively new area for MMORPGs which makes for a stunning display when four light sabre wielding Jedi are on screen at once. All of this makes the combat a lot more dynamic in The Old Republic and promises to offer more control than previous games of its type. As you can imagine, with the epic world of Star Wars to draw from there will be a lot to entice fans. Basically every weapon, force power and recognisable locale from the franchise is included in the game – as well as a massive array of new characters, space-craft and areas that have either been created for the game or mentioned in the numerous novels written in the Star Wars realm.

I did have some rather monitored hands-on time with the game. As you can imagine at this early development stage, only a very small amount of the game was on offer to us eager writers. If there’s ever a type of person who wants to break a game – it’s a journalist. We’ll basically find anything to try and cause a mild panic, whether it’s trying to jump over a crate we shouldn’t jump over or shooting our ally in the face to see if the game can handle it. But the BioWare team were vigilant and although our ten minutes of play was severely controlled, it showed plenty of potential. Our sequence saw us as a young Sith apprentice on board a vessel, investigating why the ship’s captain is refusing to go into battle against the Republic. We were given the option of intimidating and killing the captain, or allowing him to live on the grounds that he would agree to take commands. Either option was allowed and sadistically, I decided to skewer him like a kebab on my shiny light-sabre. Shortly afterward the ship was invaded by Republic troopers and I got my first taste of combat. With my Sith being fairly well levelled up already (thanks to BioWare) I had no trouble mowing down enemies, either with melee attacks or force choking.

Not being a fan of MMORPGs I did find the pace of the combat (as opposed to The Force Unleashed for example) to be a fairly lacklustre affair of clicking left mouse button and pressing numbers 1 – 9. Each number is an attack type or a special ability and with every successful move giving your player ability points. Chain together enough standard attacks with your light-sabre and you will then be able to do a leaping parry to attack foes at a distance or throw force lightning at them. Later on players will be able to throw their light-sabres or use explosive attacks for non-Sith or Jedi classes. It’s not that the combat is dull, it was just a massive change in pace for a traditional action game fan like myself.

Even if MMORPGs don’t appeal to me, I can see a huge amount of scope for a Star Wars game of this calibre. The Old Republic literally is crammed packed full of months and months of on-going adventures. Getting a team of Jedi together to take down the Empire, trying to become the most feared Bounty Hunter in the galaxy, or simply just travelling between solar systems ferrying cargo to strange people and places is going to a dream come true to fans. BioWare and LucasArts have taken no short-cuts in ensuring that this will be a truly epic game that you can experience with others the world over.