Become Jedi in Austin-made ‘Old Republic’
I’ve been spending a chunk of my free time lately becoming a pretty powerful Jedi Consular and doing Jedi things. Oh, you know: defending the galaxy against Sith Lords; helping the sick and the helpless with my benevolent use of the Force against gangsters and Flesh Raiders; keeping wayward Galactic Senators from giving in to corruption. Jedi stuff.
I thought I had lost my faith in the Force in 1999 when “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” (soon to have an unnecessary 3-D re-release) seared my ears and bummed my psyche about all things “Star Wars.”
But it’s been lucky for me that Bioware Austin’s remarkable, massive (and very expensive to produce) “Star Wars: The Old Republic,” an online game released in late December, has given me a great, workrelated excuse to do some virtual galaxy gaming. On Wednesday, Bioware parent company Electronic Arts said the game had 1.7 million active subscribers and that 2 million copies of the game have been sold.
As in so-called MMOS, massively multiplayer online games such as “World of Warcraft” and “Eve Online,” thousands to millions of players can mingle online, adventuring together and building up powerful characters. If you choose to play it as a social game, you can have lots of conversations, join a guild — basically virtual clubs for groups of gamers — and do a bunch of group quests.
Or you can play it in the style that Wired cleverly called “Captain Solo,” playing through the game in single-player style and concentrating on the game’s built-in stories and your own progression.
I’ve been playing it as a mix of both. As I
struggled in the beginning to find my footing and get used to the pace of an MMO, I kept to myself, getting acclimated to the game’s use of weapons, learning to navigate the sometimes convoluted maps and exploring as much as I could.
In the beta, a test version of the game, I played a wicked Sith Inquisitor, who, only a few hours into the game, was already torturing some poor guy in a medical center to extract information vital to the Empire. It wasn’t anything like the TV show “24”: The violence was offscreen, and the game in general is muted in its portrayal of violence and sex.
You have the choice to play good or bad (Republic or Empire) and within those two categories to choose whether you want to be, say, a bounty hunter, smuggler, warrior or one of five other classes. You can also choose from a set of nine species.
When the beta ended and I had to start a new character, I chose to be a Twi’lek (the “Star Wars” species with the distinctive tentacles flowing out of their skulls) Jedi Consular who was committed to truth, justice and not being like my evil Sith character. I must admit, playing Sith was sometimes much more fun and interesting.
What’s the game like? In some ways, it’s like most other popular MMOS. You spend a lot of time being told to go fetch this item from that location and bring it to this guy who’ll give you a weapon and fill in the details of how that mini-storyline was resolved. You gain experience points and cash, then find other missions to do. There’s a lot of walking until you can afford a vehicle or spells to transport you more quickly. As you gain experience, you gain abilities, powerful clothing and weapons.
But “Old Republic” has found interesting ways to include more narrative than other, similar games by making nearly every quest encounter a fully animated scene with stellar voice acting and beautifully detailed character work. Bioware has a history of making compelling adventure games with great stories, and they’ve worked their magic on a genre that has been sorely in need of better writing and more interesting narratives.
In “Old Republic,” I’ve found myself taken by the fight against warlords in the slums of the planet Coruscant. I spent a great deal of time trying to help my Jedi Master recover from a debilitating disease that controlled her mind and made her act irrationally. On one elaborate group mission called a “Flashpoint,” one of the big set pieces of the game, my fellow Jedi and I had to make a decision whether to let a small group of engineers die in an explosion in order to save an entire spaceship full of people.
In other words, “Old Republic” has drawn me into a world that has engaged me, that has made me care about even its least notable inhabitants and that feels like a true virtual universe. The level of detail, the visuals, the sound design, the writing — it’s as clever, well-constructed and compelling as any online game I’ve ever played.
But the game’s scale can be intimidating. The galactic map you get with your spaceship — it felt like the greatest Sweet 16 gift ever — makes you feel like a tiny speck in an incredibly large game that you’ll never have time to fully explore.
On the other hand, the group missions, where I’ve been flailing the most, are typically limited to two or four players at a time, making them much more manageable than in other online games, which can sometimes require 50 or 100 players to defeat some gigantic foe.
The intimacy of these smaller groups makes for more conversation and good stories, but my inexperience with MMOS became most glaring here. There’s a language that’s developed for players who have been playing MMOS for years, and it’s not one I know fluently.
Once, a player berated me for breaking away from the group and attacking, blaring in all caps, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” It turns out I was supposed to be engaging in what he called “CC.”
“Closed Captioning?” I asked.
“CROWD CONTROL!” he shot back.
On another mission, I was asked early on, “Can you be a tank?”
I thought perhaps he was confusing me for a Transformer. It turns out a “Tank” is the person in the group who attacks in the front while other group member hang back and cast spells.
Inspiring confidence, I replied, “I think so?”
Since getting hooked on “World of Warcraft” years ago and giving it up cold turkey when it was taking too much time, I’ve mostly avoided MMOS. But “Old Republic” has felt worth the time and effort; I’ve enjoyed the mesmerizing art direction of the republic capital Coruscant, the Vegas-like neon of planet Nar Shaddaa and the ice waste of Hoth.
I’ve enjoyed watching my character, Maumouchowchow, grow from a Padawan to a strong, principled Jedi who only occasionally gets chewed out by frustrated group members.
But mostly I’ve had a great time seeing how the effort, money and time put into the development of the game by locals and support staff in other parts of the world have paid off into a solid, expansive product that will keep expanding and refining itself.
The Force is strong with this one.