BioWare blows brains with intro cinematics for Star Wars MMO BioWare has bowled over E3 with a taste of its highly-anticipated MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. Fans have been patiently waiting for this particular Star Wars title to appear since it was first announced in 2008 amid bold claims it would attract more players than World of Warcraft. Periodically, we've been reminded the game …
Spoken like a man who's never played Knights of the Old Republic.
If you're into RPGs and don't mind some retro graphics, give it a try. It beats any of the prequel films hand down in the plot and character front, and I guarantee you'll find yourself loving this era as much as (or more than) that of the films.
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But unfortunately, it seems chock full of Sith and Jedi, just like almost every other SW-themed game out there (Republic Commando being a notable exception).
I like the SW universe very much. I am unhappy with the fact that nobody seems to be able to make any other part of it interesting.
Some hands-on previews I've read have said that it is good but there may be some hyperbole in what we've been told.
Specifically, they were referring to the usual grind in fighting swamp rats (etc.) and masses of similar quests with some names/locations swapped out; though they did emphasise that these have all been previews.
Still, worth a watch - loved the KOTOR games.
I'm not a fan of WoW, but I do understand the gameplay qualities that Blizzard have capitalised upon to draw in a large playerbase who are susceptible to gambling addiction.
What got me interested in this article was the quote stating "amid bold claims it would attract more players than World of Warcraft"... I'd love to know where such a quote was sourced from, as it is fair to say that Bioware have _never_ made such a claim. Maybe hopeful fans have made such a claim, but certainly not Bioware.
Actually LucasArts said it. If you follow the link in the article, which points to when the game was announced, it says
"And Tom Nichols, a LucasArts executive, has told VideoGaming247 that he believes it’ll attract more subscribers than WoW"
There is another link in that article that takes you to the source.
Hmm... I recall a mythic and then bioware (after assimilation) game touted to be a WoW killer too... Where is it now? :P
WoW has just too much momentum.
And mythic/bioware are idiots (at least as far as the administration of this other MMO they have is concerned).
Besides, seriously... Who'd you rather be? a druid or a jedi?
The starwars peeps have Obi-wan etc... but... we... have Alamo!
Have we actually seen anything which shows what the in-game content will look like?
Yes, Lucasarts can do great CGI. We've known that for a decade by now. Hell, episode 3 was entirely shot on greenscreen.
However, I have not seen anything to say that any of this CGI is from the game engine. For all I know the game engine renders everyone as stick men with cardboard tubes. Can we see some actual previews instead of unrelated cinematics?
"Have we actually seen anything which shows what the in-game content will look like?"
Yup.
Around a couple of months ago, there were numerous hands-on preview articles online - more than a few of the writers were able to play with the game for a couple of days. Plus, there's been other previews from E3. At least one site (Gamespot, I think) had video footage of gameplay in the last few days.
However, if you go back 3-4 years, you'll see that gameplay footage was being shown as long ago as that. Obviously, things have moved on since then, but Bioware have been showing the public what to expect for a *very* long time.
Also, I think it's worth mentioning that the recent previews allowed hard-working hacks to try out low-level and/or high-level missions with different character classes, so they weren't all playing the same content. I think two editors at Gamespy compared their experiences, a couple of months back and the spaceship combat was discussed.
But I'm not sure I agree that it in any way demonstrates that "it's getting harder to differentiate between real video and computer graphics" in the same way that say Jurassic Park, or District 9 did for example.
To me, it's a pointless video because we all know that the real game will be nothing like this - and will most likely add nothing of significance to the Star Wars canon except more of the same tedious mish mash of ill through through content that blighted the 3 prequel movies.
I'm sorry to say it - but the more the Star Wars brand is milked as a cash cow, the more it becomes nothing more than a parody of itself that is fast eating away at the genius and shine of the original 3 movies.
Correction : the first two movies.
I don't think there's any doubt that this will have better cinematic sequences than WoW, or a more compelling backstory, or a more interesting world. But I those things aren't really what makes for a compelling and long lived MMO.
What WoW got right and what pretty much every other western MMO has failed to was to continuously provide stuff to do in PVE. First you level, then you gear, then you raid, work on gear some more, hard modes, more gear - oh look a content patch - more raids, more gear, more hard modes - oh look an expansion, and back to levelling.
LOTRO for example never rivalled that even though it's set in a far richer world.
it is also the content. LOTRO was just plain boring. Sure it had the mechanics spot on, the world was good, monsters were accurate but it was glued together by someone who had no idea about LOTRO. The same can be said for DDO - the world was spot on along with character progression but the dungeons were dull and uninspiring. No excuse as NVN spawned some fantastic adventures that could have been adapted (the theme of them, not the ACTUAL adventures!).
Before we all get too excited - where in there did it even imply that was "in game footage" ? Fancy CGI is all very well (and its a cool clip)..... but I'm not letting myself get my hopes too high for this one, the industry's been churning out too much rubbish of late... I so hope I'm wrong :)
all very pretty but as we all well known a cut scene doesn't make a game, more importantly, is it going to be yet another wow clone? "select target, select attack, hit special attack keys at correct moment, pot., repeat" pick thing up here take it there, kill some of those tell him, navigate this place kill that, find this, bring it back, collect my mail from the post office, o I died o no what a shame *respawn for no real loss* pointless pvp tedious pvm affair?
I'm on of the Oct 08ers that have been on the forums since they existed:)
Head over to swtor.com for tons of gameplay videos, and another TWO CG videos that are just as good as this one. ( Deceived and Hope )
Oh, and there's lots of non-jedi/sith...in fact, half of the classes are not jedi or sith. You have Republic Troopers from the Havoc Squad, Smugglers, Imperial Agents and Bounty Hunters.
Well, I gotta head out, I might pop back in here to say a bit more about it. I'm zechio on the tor forums if anyone wants to say hi for any reason.
>"as the mouth-watering CG trailer for the Old Republic demonstrates, it's getting harder to differentiate between real video and computer graphics"
Well, maybe you see it differently to me, but particularly Han Solo and the good-maul-guy's girlfriend looked really unnatural, in a we-got-our-skin-rendering-out-of-a-final-fantasy-game kind of way. And although they put a lot of effort into the fight scene, the ordinary walking and running still makes them all look really badly like computer game characters.
It's good, but it don't pass the turing test / uncanny valley just yet.
Also, would be more impressed to see actual game graphics rather than an expensively-high-end-rendered FMV. I suspect a lot of the salivation in this comment thread comes from people who think the actual game is going to look like this. Err.. no, not likely.
Yes, I agree that most of that animation is noticeably animation, and not real video. I'd also like suggest that the animation on that short clip is really absolute state-of-the-art to the point that it is so expensive that you couldn't produce a whole animated film/series at that quality without making a mind-blowing loss.
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