Star Wars: The Old Republic Previews
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Dual Shockers brings a hands-on report.
Enter BioWare master RPG-creators and story tellers. The cut scenes and dialog options had a very noticeable, very deliberate BioWare feel. Of special note was the dialog rings, set up in a similar fashion to Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2. Now, because there are four members in the party, not everyone can respond to each inquiry from the quest NPC. Everyone gets the option to respond, but after we all made our decision, an internal dice roll was done and whoever ended up with the highest roll was the player who's character spoke to the NPC.And for those interested in spin-offs, the SW:tOR Strategies fansite published a review of the Deceived novel.
This also is where the massive amount of dialog (for an MMO) comes into play, which we've heard about previously. For every question that asks the player to reply, there has to be any number of different responses, from different voice actors for all the possible outcomes that the player and internal dice rolls can choose. That's pretty impressive.
Deceived is a novel that does its job perfectly; being a tie-in to a huge upcoming game (Star Wars: The Old Republic, of course) it had to be not only a separate story that could stand on its own two feet, but a novel that ties in with the events of the SWTOR so that it makes the readers curious about the game itself. Luckily, it does just that, dragging you into the universe the game takes place in while making you curious enough to check out more.
Deceived introduces us to the situation of the galaxy and the important characters making an impact on events, most notably Darth Malgus, the Sith seen leading the attack on the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in the (Deceived) trailer for SWTOR (I see what you guys did there!). They really do a fantastic job of fleshing out his character in this novel; it's probably the best part of the whole thing. No, he's not just a mindless Sith who goes around with his lightsaber screaming, (BLARGH I'M GOING TO KILL ALL JEDI BECAUSE I'M EVIL! SUCK IT LIGHT SIDERS!) He's actually a very (human) Sith sure, he's certainly filled with anger, hate, rage, and all those dark emotions, but there's more to him than just that. We witness his battle with his own feelings on certain things certain things I won't elaborate on in this review due to not wanting to spoil you on a book that's not even out already and it's always a very realistic emotional conflict. It's because of this that he serves as both a protagonist and antagonist during the course of the novel, something that's difficult to pull off really well sometimes, but Paul Kemp author of Deceived managed to do just that.
