Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Star Wars: The Old Republic: After Chapter One!

I’ve spent almost a month playing Star Wars: The Old Republic now, and it’s been a fascinating journey. There have been ups and downs, new companions I love and new companions I hate but still want to love oh so very badly. The game has been unfolding in a way that previous MMOs have never really been able to, in a fashion that makes me regret each piece of content that I miss through careless action or misstep.

This is something that I never felt in WoW, where I skipped entire sections of the game that were just the wrong level for me and never gave a shit. In SWTOR, when I skip a portion of an area I feel like I’m missing out on the bigger story at work there, and even when I’m not a fan of those areas (and there are some planets that feel like a chore, I’ll be honest) I feel like I’ve lost something by leaving it before finishing everything.

Now, the gear and money I receive for this completionist attitude, previously the distinction that MMOs like WoW would use as an incentive, really isn’t that great when you come right down to it. SWTOR uses an upgrade system to actually make getting fresh drops a lot less significant than other MMOs, and I’ve found myself selecting which piece of equipment I want to wear based on appearance over stats because I know that I’ll be able to spend a handful of commendations to get some armor upgrades that will let me get the whole affair up to snuff. And the experience boost, by the time I’m done with all the quests on a given planet, is usually pretty minimal by the end of my time there. Quest rewards scale with level, and I’m usually well above the level range for a given world by the time I’m done there. So these conventional incentives for retaining my attention as a player aren’t at work – what is?

Well, if you remember the previous tirades I’ve issued about SWTOR you’ll likely be unsurprised, since the thing that’s keeping me around is also the thing I’ve been lionizing for the last few weeks: SWTOR’s heaping injection of story into each and every aspect of its content.

Some of the stories backing its missions are a bit meh – one of the earliest planets involved a tale of political intrigue that made fuck-all sense and put me right to sleep. But for the most part, the storylines that run through SWTOR make great worlds even better and sustain me through environments I’d be miserable in otherwise. A perfect example: I’m currently playing through Taris, the first world of “Chapter Two” of the SWTOR experience. While on Taris I’ve been enjoying the story more than almost anywhere else: I’ve been engaged in a rivalry with another Sith, who seems to fuck up everything she touches, I’ve been tracking down complicated and interesting enemies who are in equal turn crazy assholes and noble antagonists and I’ve had some great comedic beats while helping incredibly earnest Imperial agents spread zombie toxin throughout the planet’s water supply. And I’ve been doing all of this in a planet that is, frankly, uglier than any planet I’ve ever seen before.

The encounters themselves on Taris seem poorly designed – I’ll often find myself fighting wandering elite enemies along with dozens of trash mobs because of poor timing, and I’ll summarily die and spend a bundle of my hard earned cash repairing my gear, not because I made a bad decision but because a giant golden frilled lizard decided to wander up at that moment. I’ve been fighting re-skins of the same enemies again and again and, following an enjoyable stint where I was fighting and killing Republic troops and Jedi early on in the world, most of those enemies have been identical zombie-like creatures called rakghouls who can only be differentiated by their proper names (such as Greg) and slight variations in color between them.

But the class-story missions bring me back, showcasing the sort of epic war and the balance between nobility and honor and self-serving skullduggery that makes playing an Imperial character interesting. There are still stretches between these missions that I find pretty unenjoyable, stretches that focus on me churning through dozens of samey enemies until I’m standing atop a pile of their bodies next to a giant toxic pit. It feels (not incidentally) like one of the starting levels of Knights of the Old Republic, the first true Star Wars RPG, and it reminds me of why I hated playing through Taris then as well.

What’s really remarkable, then, is that I’m still hunting down all of the quests on Taris, unlocking each nugget of story, doing my all to avoid missing out on a portion of the game that I might enjoy. And even when I’m frustrated by the enemies I have to churn my way through or the map design of the area that I’m traversing, I still persevere because I actually want to know how this story sorts out. I’m interested in how the Sith Warrior storyline will progress into Chapter Two. Right now it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as exciting as the search for Jaesa Willsaam, but I have faith that that will change, and even so the wholesale slaughter of the war-making body of the Republic offers some pretty promising stakes.

I have a feeling that the whole thing will pick up even more-so once I leave Taris. But even while I’m not a fan of my surroundings, I do enjoy savoring the plot and the pace as much as I can – even previous worlds that were frustrating, in retrospect, simply served to accent more enjoyable portions of the game. Frustrated as I might be by how ugly Taris is and how little I enjoy fighting its denizens I’m still hooked, and I’m all the more excited for the worlds to come. It’s tough to be a kid who grew up with Star Wars and not be excited at the prospect of fighting wampas on Hoth.

And therein lies the crux of SWTOR’s appeal. It’s not just that it allows you to be a part of the Star Wars universe: it’s that it allows you to experience the sort of epic story that fits so well into that universe. It’s all good and well to give people blasters and lightsabers and ask them to play. It’s an entirely different matter to guide people through an epic storyline that leans on these set pieces, warts and all, as well as Bioware does. And I can’t wait to see how it pans out, how the end-game will unveil and how my next playthrough will unwind as I do it all again.