3 Star Wars: The Old Republic- Exciting Videos and News from PAX

Just as promised, here are the demo videos of space combat, planet Hoth and Planet Tatooine from Star Wars The Old Republic. I think you will like what you see, I particularly enjoyed seeing Tatooine. It is worthy to note that I was able to get confirmation from one of the developers during the meet and greet that you will in fact be able to walk inside of nearly every building in cities such as Anchorhead. Space combat looks like great fun, and it seems to be solely focused on letting players have as much fun as possible. When you get blown up during a space combat mission, you can either choose to restart from the beginning or simply continue on from where you were. To an EVE Online veteran like myself, I thought this sounded a bit too easy. But I came to see things differently after I heard the Dev's discuss this further. 

 I love the explosion and smoke effects.

According to Daniel Erickson, the consequences of player death have been toned down because they wanted to make the combat challenging. He went on to explain that in a game where you are meant to die less frequently (Like most PvE in EVE Online, with the exception of some of some of the newer AI.) then you can have a rather harsh death penalty. But when you have a game that is challenging enough that you end up dying quite often, hardcore death penalties would swiftly become a major issue and hindrance. You don't want to have players rage quitting all the time. No one likes that, and it isn't what most people would describe as “fun.” That is why we play games in the first place isn't it? To have fun? 

Jawas!  Hip- hip hooray!

So when you look at in this light, I say bring on the challenge. I am excited by the thought of a space mission or ground encounters that I would have to try several times before getting it right, so long as I don't have to be taking any serious consequences such as a loss of experience for every failed attempt. Over and over again the Bioware developers would say that their main concern is what is fun for the player.

Oh, and while we are on the subject of The Old Republic I have two very juicy tid-bits of information for you. First off, the game will feature a armor color matching system that you will be able to turn on and off in order to give your character a more unified and iconic look. I was very pleased to hear this news, I hate it when my character’s equipment looks all mismatched. WoW is one game that pops into mind where this issue comes up. Before you start to gather up epic armor sets in World of Warcraft, your character will often look like a clown. Complete with purple shoulder pads, green pants, a yellow chest piece and some blue gauntlets. This isn't really an issue for a lot of players. But if you are like me and you are obsessed with trying to make your character look as bad ass as possible, then this is very good news. 

I want to fight the Snow Yeti and cut his arm off Skywalker style.

Second, there was some exciting, but not all that surprising, news that accidentally slipped out during one of the Q&A sessions on the show floor. I wasn't actually there, but I heard about it. I feel safe telling you this because it came out of the Bioware dev's mouths and not mine. There will be mounts in the game! Apparently during one of the Q&A sessions, someone asked something about the in game currency and what all it will be used for. The speaker (I am not sure which Dev it was, I apologize.) then began to answer by saying that players need a goal to be saving their money for, which was why they will have mounts. Then rather comically, someone in the audience shouted: “You mean 'which is why may or may not have mounts'?” (Oh my, how embarrassing that must have been.)

I hate to be releasing any information that Bioware doesn't want us to know, because I totally understand the need for secrecy for games that are still in development. There has to be hype for the game, and hype is normally created by people wanting to find out more. But... the damage was already done. I didn't pull the trigger. So, mounts! Hooray! At least we don't know what kinds of mounts there will be. I just want to be able to ride a Tonton when I am on Hoth and I will be one happy camper.

I hope you enjoy the videos! I will be posting the Q&A from Deus Ex: Human Revolution next, so you will want to keep an eye out for that. 

Relevant links:

http://www.swtor.com/  Official Old Republic site.