Forever Will It Dominate Your Destiny
Nov. 22nd, 2012 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenFinally checking out The Old Republic. It’s a decent enough game, though it does have some annoying quirks, and feels suspiciously like a single-player game that’s been rather poorly converted into an MMO at the last minute…
The character limitations are annoying – can’t be a Wookee or a Mon Calimari or a Jawa or any other recognisable alien except for Twi’leks, with virtually all the species choices being essentially ‘humans in a different colour’. And the Free-to-play limitations seem rather petty, with things like quest rewards and elements of the user interface(!) being limited if you’re not a subscriber.
The thing that really confuses me though, is one elements of the quests. Like in the single-player games, some missions give you Light Side or Dark Side points depending on your decisions. Cool, and if ever there was a setting that could benefit from BioWare’s one-dimensional morality system, it’s Star Wars. Except… Well, the points you get seem to have been decided almost at random!
See, I rolled up a smuggler, intending to be a Han Solo-style reluctant hero. Emphasis on the hero. But because of my decisions, the game’s convinced he’s flirting heavily with the Dark Side! What decisions might you ask? Well, there was the time he turned medicine over to Republic soldiers, instead of giving it to the people who stole it from them. Or the time he tried to stop a reporter who’d gone native from producing propaganda for a brutal Sith-aligned rebel army. Or the time he tried to talk a traumatised child solder into returning to his family, rather than letting him run away from his home world and never see them again…
Meanwhile, hilariously, my Sith Inquisitor is picking up more than her fair share of Light Side points just because I decided her philosophy should be ruthless efficiency over petty sadism. Example, in one mission, she refused to crush a slave rebellion by using a poison that would cause prolonged suffering followed by death… instead, she used a poison that would only cause death! Granted, better than the alternative, but it doesn’t really seem like it should actively move her towards the Light…
The character limitations are annoying – can’t be a Wookee or a Mon Calimari or a Jawa or any other recognisable alien except for Twi’leks, with virtually all the species choices being essentially ‘humans in a different colour’. And the Free-to-play limitations seem rather petty, with things like quest rewards and elements of the user interface(!) being limited if you’re not a subscriber.
The thing that really confuses me though, is one elements of the quests. Like in the single-player games, some missions give you Light Side or Dark Side points depending on your decisions. Cool, and if ever there was a setting that could benefit from BioWare’s one-dimensional morality system, it’s Star Wars. Except… Well, the points you get seem to have been decided almost at random!
See, I rolled up a smuggler, intending to be a Han Solo-style reluctant hero. Emphasis on the hero. But because of my decisions, the game’s convinced he’s flirting heavily with the Dark Side! What decisions might you ask? Well, there was the time he turned medicine over to Republic soldiers, instead of giving it to the people who stole it from them. Or the time he tried to stop a reporter who’d gone native from producing propaganda for a brutal Sith-aligned rebel army. Or the time he tried to talk a traumatised child solder into returning to his family, rather than letting him run away from his home world and never see them again…
Meanwhile, hilariously, my Sith Inquisitor is picking up more than her fair share of Light Side points just because I decided her philosophy should be ruthless efficiency over petty sadism. Example, in one mission, she refused to crush a slave rebellion by using a poison that would cause prolonged suffering followed by death… instead, she used a poison that would only cause death! Granted, better than the alternative, but it doesn’t really seem like it should actively move her towards the Light…