Hands-On Preview: Star Wars: The Old Republic (#e3) Part 2 of 2

If you didn’t check out my video presentation impressions from the first part of this preview, head on over and check it out first.

(all images in this article are not of the gameplay segments I played through)

Minutes after the video presentation was completed, we were lead to a small room with roughly sixteen Alienware PC’s set up, each of them holding a segment of Star Wars: The Old Republic, playable for us. Each PC had a different class for us to play as. I happened to stumble onto the Sith Warrior set up, and was able to play about ten to fifteen minutes worth of gameplay, being one of a small handful outside of Bioware’s development team to spend time with a playable build of this massively hyped MMORPG. Sadly, photography and video recording were prohibited during my brief time with The Old Republic, but I’m proud to to say that although visuals have a simplistic, cartoon-like nature to them, the familiarity, ease and solid structure of the gameplay early on just furthers my impatience for Bioware to release this MMORPG, and forever destroy my social life once again.

As explained previously, the visual presentation isn’t the focal point in the development of The Old Republic, but still retains a formidable look, showing off some fluid animation this early into the project. The game world holds more detail than the character models, giving the area around you a suitable amount of life to them.

Placing the headset Bioware provided me onto my head helped present a sample of the fully voiced dialog in The Old Republic, something that has never been done in an MMORPG before it. While the NPC’s and even my own avatar did not come off as Hollywood caliber vocal performances, but they did their job without sounding hammy or underdeveloped. To have a whole game running off vocal performances of this quality will definitely please every subscriber, especially since you can bypass these possibly long winded vocal dialog by hitting the Space Bar. Naturally, you’re also surrounded by the iconic sound effects from the Star Wars universe, further immersing you into the game world in a more meaningful manner.

Having played Everquest off and on since late 1999, Everquest 2 in its infancy, City of Heroes and World of Warcraft for a few months, as well as Champions Online and Star Wars Galaxies for a month each, I’ve experience a long line of gameplay elements, broken gameplay, and diversity in how to partake in combat. The Old Republic’s brief taste of solo play gave an early impression that combat will be as painless to command as World of Warcraft was, with hotkey attacks with cooldown timers, attacks based off the range between yourself and the mob, and an overall general sense of entertainment. You’re able to tab over to the next closest mob that you’re in battle with, making transitions effortless. Perhaps it’s because the game is based off a universe that’s more fully developed, and just generally more intriguing, but The Old Republic already feels more captivating than any other MMO out on the market right now.

As a Sith Warrior, I had to look for a new weapon to help me through the upcoming trials that await me. After a brief search throughout the immediate area, I find my destination: the mouth of a cave that leads me to the story progression point. Entering the cave, I am given the task of defeating a handful of the cave dwellers, which are bug-like creatures of a freakish descent. Needless to say, even with my training blades that had a passing resemblance of a vibroblade from the Knights of the Old Republic franchise, these foes were no match for me. Only three attacks were available to me for this play-testing — a regular strike, a power strike that just about decimated any monster I encountered in one hit, and a leaping attack performed from a certain distance away. The first two attacks are kinked together, so when one is performed, they will both hit a cooldown simultaneously, with the second attack having a slightly longer cooldown timer. After running around and hacking down a bunch of these bug-like cretins, I returned to the quest NPC, who sent me to locate an item that was found a bit further into this cave.

Sadly, I was given the two minute warning, so instead of trying to complete the task I was given, I decided to venture a little further into the cave and attack whatever I could. I encountered some humanoid mobs in groups of three, who were a level higher than I was. I leaped into battle with my long ranged distance attack, and systematically took them apart, without much hassle. As we were lead off our PC’s, I landed one more power strike to the final humanoid mob from the pack I was engaged in battle with. It was hard to just walk away from my time with The Old Republic, but unfortunately, there was one more line of players that were set to close out E3 with their own experience with Bioware’s MMORPG.

Having the opportunity to play Star Wars: The Old Republic for a limited amount of time, two things became apparent:

• Bioware is crafting one of the most enthralling and captivating MMORPG’s since the early years of Everquest, with a story that will actually get people to care for its lore.
• I need to find a way to play this once again, as soon as humanly possible, even if I have to find a way to bribe the developers into getting me into their test periods!

Granted it was a very small taste of what I can expect to see, Bioware has already structured an early glimpse that feels like A New Hope for the MMORPG genre. Even this brief gameplay sample blows away anything Star Wars Galaxies has degraded to over the years. From the information I gathered, there won’t a full fledged beta per say, but periods of playtesting of various elements and locations, without complete access of everything that will be available at launch time. Before E3, Star Wars: The Old Republic was one of my most anticipated titles of 2011. After having a chance to play a small portion for an even smaller amount of time, I can say that, without a shadow of a doubt, The Old Republic has become one of the top three most anticipated video games ever. Unfortunately, for the impatient gamers out there (myself included), Bioware has scheduled the release of their massive multiplayer awesomeness for a mid 2011 release. Until there, here are another handful of images from The Old Republic. When the Chocolate Lemon crew returns back home, we will release some of the video content that we all witnessed behind closed doors, as well as some concept art of the various classes that will be available upon creation.

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