Games Radar?s Hands-on Preview

Like most you, we here at MER are just drooling over the thought of getting our hands on some type of playable demo of The Old Republic. At the most recent E3 there was in fact a playable demo which created a lot of buzz amongst those that had the chance to play. Games Radar recently wrote a very detailed description of their experience, including insights from Rich Vogel.

Vogel, Bioware Austin’s studio co-director, goes into detail to explain the cause-and-effect scenario that was something new to me in a MMO game. During a mission involving a captain that failed at his duties you are given the option to kill him and promote the first officer in his place, or forgive him and allow him to keep his post. Up until reading this article I had been a bit worried that the whole “Good vs Evil” gameplay was going to be nothing more than choosing to spare a life and taking, or helping, someone out and keeping recovered goods for yourself. Vogel explained that your choice on the captain’s fate actually would weigh in to how the story would progress. If you kill the captain the young inexperienced first officer makes several mistakes which makes your mission more difficult. On the flip side, if you spare the captain’s life than he was able to defeat a sizable portion of the enemy, his years of experience allow him to make tough decisions that save many lives. This excites me because for once I am making choices where my actions will have direct consequences on the outcome of a mission and the entire story as a whole.

There are a lot more details on ideas and storytelling methods BioWare is working on in the article. I encourage you all to check it out.

Check out the Games Radar TOR preview.