Star Wars: The Old Republic Previews
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First up is MMORPG.com:
The dialogue though struck me as a bit odd. I'm used to the old Bioware standard of having a silent character that the world bounces off of. In Dragon Age, for example, your character never actually talks. It's kind of silly, in a way, but it's the standard Bioware themselves set for RPGs. To be fair though, this dialogue system is far more like Mass Effect, which didn't have silent protagonists.
In Old Republic, your character is fully voice acted. It was well done, the acting was serviceable, and maybe this is only because I was using a pre-fabricated character and not one of my own creation, but it only served to remind me that I was playing a game and was not a part of the experience. In an RPG, I want to sink into my character fully, and when he has his own voice and acting, it felt like I was watching a movie starring someone else. That complaint though could well just be a personal quirk. I am sure others will love the fully voice acted PCs.
Then we move to SPOnG:
In the short time I got to play the game for myself, it seemed pretty fun and was only a taste of what could be achieved in my character's hobo-esque state. What would happen if I earned enough experience to rank up to Level 80 or whatever? What would the powers and weapons available to me be like? Oh, the possibilities... Ahem. It can be quite easy to see how these things suck you in, to be honest.
I was introduced to a range of different character customisation features during my playtest that will add a huge amount of depth to The Old Republic. Chief of these was the multiple paths that characters can take. Like most MMOs, you select one of several classes that you can assign your avatar to. In BioWare's game, there are added '˜paths' for each class that further customise your skill level depending on how you play.
And then we finish things off with a three-minute video preview on G4.