Jan 25, 2012 18:48
Old Republic does do an excellent job deconstructing the binary interpretation of the Force, and of morality in general. Playing Empire doesn't limit the PC to Dark Side choices only, and similarly a Republic character - even a Jedi - can choose Dark or Light options. And the Light isn’t always the best (or even Good) solution. TOR is a fascinating addition to the Star Wars series, and provides more depth, more color, more EVERYTHING than Episodes 1-3 combined. Not that I’m a bitter, disappointed fan or anything. Ahem.
I think my problem may lie in the format of TOR. A MMORPG is seemingly bigger than a single-player counterpart. It’s designed to take into consideration the choices made by thousands, if not millions, of players. But it’s this very expansion that limits it. If that makes sense. Which it might not.
Ok, so, like, Revan is the main character of Knights of the Old Republic. Who Revan is is almost completely decided by the player. From gender to appearance to background to friends to choices to destiny, the player defines who Revan is, and even how the rest of the in-game universe views Revan.
This degree of customization works for a single-player game, because only that single player interacts with that world. For TOR, certain canons have to be established; to continue using Revan as an example, there'd be no way that every player's interpretation of Revan could be implemented, so that character was reduced to a single version. And that Revan is certainly not my Revan. In fact, canon!Revan completely destroys my version of KotOR.
Which isn’t awesome, but I understand Bioware's angle. I don’t judge TOR poorly because of the Revan decisions; however it provides an example as to how such an open-ended and massive universe can sometimes feel limiting. Like Revan had to be narrowly defined, so do all the characters and all the action in TOR - because it all has to fit into the same universe. Does that make sense to anyone who doesn’t live in my head. Arrggghhh wish I were more articulate.
But yeah, that doesn't mean that I cry myself to sleep or wail away at the Star Wars gods. TOR is an immersive, extensive, exciting game that I can’t drag myself away from. I'm in love with my characters, with the NPCs, and hell, even with a lot of other players' characters. The Imperial Agent storyline is a better piece of espionage fiction than most thrillers out there. The Jedi Consular storyline is developing in ways I never could have imagined. And the Smuggler storyline is creating a character who'll be out-scoundreling Han Solo. And those are just the plots I've played so far; each and every class looks fascinating.
...That damn conversation bug is a killer though. Bioware y u so buggy. You're putting Bethesda to shame.
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