Tabula Rasa E3 Previews

A handful of websites are offering up new previews of NCsoft’s Tabula Rasa, based on what’s being shown of the sci-fi MMORPG at this year’s E3. The first is at GameSpot:

It’s clear from speaking to Garriott that Tabula Rasa has a strong moral element. The story basically concerns an end of the world scenario that could happen tomorrow, leaving only the characters in the game as survivors. One example of the moralistic choices you’ll have to make is in the power plant that we see during our demonstration. It looks beautiful, drawing power and routing it through a huge building, but it transpires that the source of this power comes from a human sacrifice, and one that has to be chosen by you. You’ll have to select from people that you’ve met or who may have helped you in game to be sacrificed for the greater good, and the team say it’s just one of many situations that will test the character of its players.

The second is at 1Up:

Tabula Rasa’s cover system seems to be a viable solution to mixing first-person-shooter movement and MMORPG dice-rolling. While ducked behind a low wall or tall tree (but still within some line of sight), you’re less vulnerable to attacks (TR factors that into its die rolls), represented visually by yellow “just hit by a bullet from the left!” arcs rather than red. Crouching increases your accuracy, too, meaning Tabula Rasa battles could wind up being about more than finding a good place to stand for the duration. TR promises great storytelling in an MMO, at long last! (see above), but then again, so has every other MMO we’ve seen so far at E3 this year. Also cool: Going on an FPS-style killing spree gets you a temporary experience-point multiplier, encouraging frantic firefights instead of overly careful play.

The third is at The Escapist:

Garriott says quests, as they exist in today’s MMOGs, are “really just your excuse to go farm for [experience].” He plans on introducing a series of ethical parables into TR’s quest arcs, if only to make the quest text something people will actually want to read. He says the quest arcs are long, and the choices you make have affect the world around you. In the particular quest he showed us, he had to choose an NPC to sacrifice to an eternity of suffering for the sake of defending an area. (Of the NPCs he had to choose, he’d been working with each of them closely – presumably for much of his character’s life; think having to choose between Barret and Tifa.) According to Garriott, the game’s full of situations where you have to make the best of the bad (or good) decisions you’ve made in the past.

And the fourth is at MMORPG.com:

As we rapidly ran out of time, we were shown the home bases where you could equip your character, the medical tent where you respawned if you died; the crafting stations to create weapons and bombs. We also saw battlefield control points which players could attempt to take. If successful, it would turn from enemy controlled to friendly controlled points. As we watched, a player character created detonators then disabled the forcefield doorway of an enemy control point with it to enter it and “flip the switch” so to speak, turning the Bane control point to that of the Allied forces.