thoughts on SWtoR
Q: People say “wow” out loud for WoW – are they going to say “swatter” for SWtoR?
So. Yeah, this happened. I was completely planning on skipping this game because… another Star Wars game, who cares, right? (Don’t answer that!)
However, two of my real life friends were excited about playing and I like playing games with people I actually know IRL, so I went with it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get everyone on the same server, but oh well.
So. The game is basically Mass Effect (or KotOR, but I didn’t play that, so ME is my Bioware comparison point) plus WoW. I mean, like exactly. You have got all your standard quest types, having to farm massive cash for mounts that come way too late, etc. from WoW, stacked on top of the companion and plotline system from the Bioware games.
There are a couple of other little tweaks – like the fact that you can send “companions”/pets/party members off on crafting quests to harvest resources and create items for you while you are doing other things. This is really cool in theory and in practice, although the durations of the missions just gets STUPID the higher level you are – currently mine are 15-35 minutes. 5-20 seems like it should be the sweet spot for me, but hey, game balance and time gated progress, right? They have to keep people p(l)aying.
I have a level 40 assassin and 26 sniper, so I’ve definitely been playing.
Null, my (Lightside!) Sith Assassin
The space missions are also great. I mean, they are simple, but they add a ton of fun to the game for me and as you level up new objectives are added to the missions, so even the starter mission continues to be interesting.. I think that’s what really sold me on it – the fact that hey I have a starship but OH hey I can blow shit up with my starship? WIN. Also, hitting 80 missiles is akin to getting a mount as far as improving your ease of experience goes.
The story IS generally pretty good, or at least mine was up until recently. I liked the Inquisitor plotline up through level 30/end of chapter 1-ish. After that, it seems to be just getting stupid/sloppy/lazy (“force walking” = ingesting ghosts? WHAT THE FUCK? That doesn’t make any kind of linguistic sense. Turning ghosts into macguffins = meh.), but the beginning was good.)
They also have the whole light/dark good/evil plot dynamic that I guess KotOR probably had. You can choose various dialogue options that may get you Light Side or Dark Side points and potentially affect the outcome of a mission or dialogue. Generally, they seem to have no effect save getting you light/dark points and companion points (no one seems to refer to any of my past light/dark actions, so I guess no one notices that I’m a light level 3 sith lord /shrug), but inside the instances (dungeons) there are generally a choice or two that affects the flow of the dungeon – like venting a crew out of an airlock to expedite something or taking the long way and saving them.
It’s also worth pointing out that some of them are really bizarre. At one point, another Sith kills my apprentices (whom I never bother to train). The lightside response is to bribe him to leave?? You have to actually take a darkside point hit in order to fight the bastard. Other times the “light” choice will be more “evil” on an “average human moral compass” kind of level… I wonder how much of it is intentional and how much is sloppy writing.
This game has a lot of room to grow – filling in companion gaps (agent & inquisitor go 10-15 levels between companion 2 & 3 – and companion 2 doesn’t even really count!), adding a wardrobe system so you aren’t quite as restricted in your looks, adding gear coloring/dying, fleshing out their legacy system (right now you just choose a last name that is account wide and dump xp into that “legacy”, but nothing happens), adding more visual options, instances, free range space missions, etc. I’m curious to see what their update strategy looks like… I’ll be around for a little while at least.
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