Star Wars: The Old Republic E3 Previews

Even though this year’s E3 has come to a close, there are still plenty of previews for BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic to read through.

The first is at Shacknews:

BioWare’s target is to make this the first MMO to squarely focus on story, and immediately impressive were the dialogue scenes, the first initiated with an NPC quest-giver. The camera cuts back and forth as characters converse, with a minimal, Mass Effect-style radial menu providing the response options. Every scene in the game is fully voice-acted, and the end result is that the MMO plays more or less like a singleplayer experience.

The second is at 1UP:

For my hands-on, I found myself in the bizarre situation of being a nice, sensible Sith. See, I had already seen what happens when the dude dies, so I want to see how the mission changes when he lives. But, well, I was a Sith — one that said things that “you’re forgiven” and “we need to be all in this together.” Letting him live alters the context and geometry of the flashpoint: instead of fighting a sudden breach in the engine room, you literally go in the opposite direction and fight fewer opponents as they arrive via the hangar. While it sounds like just a wall-texture swap, there were some subtle differences; such as how the lack of breaches means that the enemies didn’t just smash their way through the walls, they conveniently had to go through doors and were hence really easy to spot without surprise.

The third is at Kotaku:

It may be a massively multiplayer game, but it certainly didn’t feel like one. While playing I was still moving around with the keyboard, attacking with the mouse, using hot keys to pull of choke holds, powerful light saber attacks, impaling enemies. But the inclusion of all of those choices, the voice acting, the look combines to make it feel more like a powerful single player experience.

The fourth is at SciFi.com:

We were told that this is Knights of the Old Republic 3, 4 and 5 and so on, but one you can play through with your friends. In addition to the player-vs.-environment mode, it was confirmed that there will also be a player-vs.-player mode. And as in any good MMO, there is looting: You can steal anything from a corpse, including weapons. There will be character customization, raiding, guilds, grouping, an in-game economy and all the traditional features of massively multiplayer games, though no details were given for any of these.

And the fifth is at WorthPlaying:

The more that I learn about The Old Republic, the less it looks like a typical MMO, and the more it looks like an extended co-op campaign for Knights of the Old Republic. Dickinson has promised there’ll be typical MMO elements eventually, such as crafting, but for right now, it looks like somebody snuck a second player into KotOR. That’s by no means a real criticism, though, as KotOR, for all its show-stopping bugs, was an absorbing experience. That’s even coming from me, and I hate Star Wars. If The Old Republic manages to recapture that same feel while avoiding the typical pitfalls of a Bioware game (i.e., easily broken character builds, an unfinished or unsatisfying endgame), it’s going to be the life-ending experience that everyone wanted Star Wars Galaxies to be years ago.