Guest_Capt. Obvious_*
I first heard about TOR back in 2008 and never even played a BioWare game by then. I consider myself to be a pretty big Star Wars fan even back then, but I never bought Knights of the Old Republic 1 or 2 because, well, I don't know. I think it's because I didn't recongnize the games. Like, I saw the cover of the first game at the store and I knew that it was a Star Wars game...but I never purchased it because it was just too enigmatic to me. That's the best way I can explain it. I had already read some of the EU novels at the time, I watch both the micro-series and the prequels, and I guess another reason for not playing the games was because I was done with Star Wars for the time being.
2008 was the year I got back into Star Wars when the previews for The Force Unleashed started showing. While the game disappointed me(it was good, but definitely nothing special), I became more focused on Star Wars. I started lurking around the The Old Republic forums and watching the developer videos. By the way the developers talked about the MMO, I thought it was creative and inspired, and I was really excited with the E3 2009 trailer. Eventually, BioWare kept pushing the release date back, and I started to lose my hype for the game.
That, and I was starting to take a more pessimistic view on the EU. To me, it was just more Jedi vs. Sith nonsense; same old, same old. If anything, I started to feel like the EU was making the Star Wars universe smaller. I was still determined to play the MMO because this was still a BioWare game.
It wasn't until I saw the Return trailer, that my view on the MMO started to take a shift.
Wasn't Dash Rendar enough? When will EU writers stop making these Han Solo clones? In the trailer, the viewer can infer that the smuggler is protective about his ship. That he's cocky. That he's laidback. Hmmm, gee, he sort of reminds me of someone. Keep in mind that what happens in this trailer is canon. The trailers lead up to the game. In other words, that's a real character. The ship he's piloting even looks like the Millenium Falcon. It doesn't have the intersection at the front of the ship(at least as far as I could tell), but it has that distinct round shape and that - what do you call it? - blaster thing(you know, similiar to the one that Luke was using when they were escaping from the Death Star in Episode 4) on the side.
It is after this trailer that I started to become more disenchanted with the game. I started looking at the game as a whole. But mostly, I take issue with the fact that you can be a good Sith and a bad Jedi. I get it. It's not all black and white, but they don't have to get rid of what makes being a Jedi a Jedi and a Sith a Sith. Now the lines between the two Force user groups begin to blur. They lose their distinction. Each becomes a group that has only one difference: which side they're on(Republic and Empire).
In the article, Daniel Erickson justifies it by putting it like this:
"I always take it back to the World War 2 analogy: if you were a very evil British soldier in World War 2, you wouldn't join the ****s; you were torturing them in the basement," Erickson explained. "You're a bad man, but that doesn't mean you're going to leave your country. You're going to do what you're trying to do in the worst possible way."
*sigh* The thing is, the Jedi aren't the common soldier. There can't be such thing as a bad Jedi because that would mean that he or she succumbed to the dark side. Anakin is already a stretch. He did bad things, but he was almost at the dark side. He was at the edge. He was a different case. But according to an IGN article, you could potentially get all the darkside points you want and still be a Jedi.
The plan is to make the Light side and Dark side system more of a "customization," according to James Ohlen.
See, they seem to be compromising the identity of the Jedi and Sith for customization. This is what I don't like. But I think the problem stems mostly from the fact that there are "sides" so the speak. You're either Republic or Empire. They should explain why the Smuggler are on the Republic and why the Bounty Hunters on the Empire's side. I mean, aren't they technically neutral?
Even in the EU, Boba Fett wasn't just in it for the credits, but for justice as well. Han Solo was a criminal. The Empire under Palpatine had enough money to pay these people. Bounty hunters should be a "neutral" faction. Even the Republic during the Clone Wars paid it's own bounty hunters. Smugglers are breaking the law. I think it's lazy of the devs to just label a class as either "Republic" or "Empire" because not only does it not have to be that way, but I think it limits options within the MMO.
I think the writers of the MMO could be suffering from the same thing that the other EU writers suffer from: the belief that everything has to be like the movies. Star Wars was inspired by the likes of Greek mythology, history, movies and seriels from the 1930s and 40s like Flash Gordon, and so on. The writers of Star Wars: The Old Republic(and likewise, the EU writers) should be looking towards the original inspirations of Star Wars instead of making everything like the OT or PT. Or better yet, come up with more lore. A lot of what we've seen of the game so far are stuff we've seen before. Mandalorians, Sith, protocol droids, Zabraks, Twi'leks, Tatooine, Sarlaacs, etc. All I'm saying is that they could focus more on creating lore and making the Star Wars universe seem bigger instead of rehashing the same stuff.
"Oh, Han Solo was a smuggler and he was a good guy; therefore all smugglers must be on the Republic's side".
Another thing, I'm worried about how related bounty hunters are to Mandalorians. Almost all of the screenshots and videos I've seen have a bounty hunter flying on a jetpack and wearing Mandalorian armor. Oh, and you can turn someone into carbonite.
I think people like bounty hunters in their distinctness. They're not like your typical troopers. But so far, we've seen bounty hunters that are routhly the same as each other with the same equipment. Power armor. Flame throwers. Pull ropes. Everything that we've had in the movies and the EU.
I look at Embo as a good example of a bounty hunter. He's "foreign". He's not just carrying a blaster like everyone else. He's not the people you find everyday. I think when people first saw the bounty hunters in The Empire Strikes Back, people were thinking about the same thing. They're different from everyone else. They're not your typical guy with a gun. The bounty hunters in TOR seem to lack this "foreignness". This distinctness. They all look the same instead of being different.
And do we really need two classes for the Jedi and two classes for the Sith?
This is what concerns me about Star Wars: The Old Republic. From what we've actually seen of the game, it's obvious that the gameplay is nothing special(even kind of boring) and the graphics are bad even by MMO standards. That's why they have to make it up with the story. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to play the game. I'm going to see whether BioWare can truly give the "rich deep story" they kept harping about in the early developer diaries. But until then, the story aspect doesn't look promising.
There is a possibility that they could make the characters in the MMO exactly like the ones from the PT and OT. And the way they set up their classes doesn't look promising either. It doesn't look any different from any other we've seen in the novels or the movies. But I'll take a leap of faith. Hopefully, I'll eat my words.
Anywho, discuss.
Modifié par Capt. Obvious, 05 novembre 2011 - 01:49 .
Retour en haut
But even the post Return of the Jedi stuff didn't work too well for me (save KotOR, but only because it was an awesome game DESPITE the setting.)
