It is truly remarkable how quickly ire dissipates under the right circumstances, how fast we’re willing to forget decades of cruel mistreatment for a few seconds of joy. This is, in a very real way, the story of my relationship with Lucas Arts.
Anyone of a certain age within the gaming community came of age with some truly amazing Star Wars games, games like Dark Forces, like X-Wing and TIE Fighter. But of late there’s been a lot of, for lack of a better word, Shit Wars material coming out on the Star Wars license. With the exception of the wonderful, technically flawed and obviously under-funded and under-supported Knights of the Old Republic titles there hasn’t really been a good Star Wars game in a while, to say nothing of a good Star Wars MMO.
There was an attempt at a Star Wars MMO, one that could be considered two different attempts by especially generous commentators. But this attempt, or attempts as you choose to look at it, fell apart. It fell apart hard. So when early rumors started almost five years ago that Bioware was going to be developing a Star Wars MMO, people responded as you’d expect: with tentative, heavily tempered hope. If anyone could make a Star Wars MMO and do it right it would, after all, be Bioware, who had managed to eke out a worthwhile space in the downtrodden franchise’s annals. But no one, in their wildest dreams, actually imagined that this game would do anything new or interesting. No one ever hoped that it would be good, that it would make us feel something other than bitterness when we looked upon the Lucas Arts logo.
Today, while attempting to log into Star Wars: The Old Republic on a bus’ wi-fi, (I make no apologies for my actions, my beta time was limited and I wanted to get as much in as I could) I found myself frozen on a loading screen. The loading screen presented me with a number of triumphant graphics informing me of the involvement of Bioware, EA and, of course, Lucas Arts with the project. Full disclosure, I’d already played the beta, albeit on someone else’s account, but I’d spent enough time with it to get to know the game, to start to understand what it could be, to like it. So now, attempting to start over on my own account, frozen in time as I tried to struggle my way through those miserable early levels, I found myself staring at those logos, wondering how I really felt about them, and suddenly I realized something, something strange.
I loved the Lucas Arts logo again.
Lucas Arts was a bastion of intellect in gaming back in the day, releasing not just amazing Star Wars games but titles the like of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle which have earned their rightful place in Nerd Valhalla. But time, and the examples I mentioned above, mademe look at the Lucas Arts logo with something other than affection as time dragged on: it was no longer a treat to see it cast upon a box’s face, but rather a signpost pointing to disappointment. Buy our re-skin of a Battlefield game here. Play this truly atrocious, forgettable adventure game here. Lucas Arts logo, once synonymous with excellence, was a signpost to shit.
But the first twelve or so levels of The Old Republic, along with the impressively constructed Black Talon Flashpoint (encounter?) were all it took to win me over. An MMO with a moral system? With companions and party mates and enduring relationships in the galaxy at large? With lightsabers and dames that know how to use ‘em? There are certainly problems with the product, beta issues and bigger game design issues that involve player bottlenecking and some character development and difficulty curve snags, but the problems, contained within the product as a whole, are so minor, so overshadowed by the power of the experience as it can function, that I really don’t care.
I don’t care that the instancing system that makes earlier levels playable also makes party making an interminable chore. I don’t care that the chat system doesn’t take any of this instancing business into account when it’s trying to help me form a party. I don’t care that I can’t use the /who feature to actually look up players at this point to find out what kind of character I’m adding to the party before I invite them to join. I don’t care because the game, when it works, is still really, really fun.
See, The Old Republic, at its core, is about being a badass from level one onward. The ways you get to be a badass change and improve, sure. But from the second you log in you’re pretty awesome – you’ve got an epic destiny (just like the rest of the server), you’ve got a chip on your shoulder and you’ve got some special powers that just rip the shit out of your enemies. And what’s more, you have a personality, a personality you get to establish in the context of the world at large. Which means you’re not just grinding levels: you’re developing a persona, a persona which, despite moving through a set of limited conversation trees which usually have, at best, three options, allows you to make a pretty well archetyped character to project your actions on to. There are complaints I have about this system (the randomization of collectively selected conversation choices in encounters, for example, rather than a nuanced voting system which might weight player majorities and use randomization as a tie breaking measure) but overall it actually works quite nicely.
And the gameplay! There’s a sound balance between frenetic mashing and careful choice in the game, enough that a good player and a bad player, despite their limited ability selection by level 10, are clearly discernable from one another by any group member who is paying attention. Anyone who’s played with a Sith Warrior or a Jedi Knight who doesn’t use their Focus/Rage knows what I’m talking about. The end result of the design is a chaotic, visually engaging morass that keeps players occupied most of the time, unless they’re not doing their job. And the lack of an auto-attack feature, originally something I lamented, is something I’ve come to see the sense of in a game where even the most basic attack can constitute a tactical choice that can influence the course of a battle.
But connectivity issues and some early-game visual design issues plague The Old Republic. It’s not catty to say that the characters early in the game are pretty uninspiring, and you won’t really start to get out of this slump until you’re about to leave your starting world. If you’re lucky: one of my friends, a bounty hunter, still looked pretty lame when we ran The Black Talon together, more or less like a second rate Han Solo with a Fallout Boy haircut (though some of that might’ve been his choice). And time sensitive hits, an awesome idea, can be problematic with response-lag like the kind you can expect to see in SWTOR for quite a while.
Server queues are a frustrating thing and, as I discovered on this bus, a somewhat unpredictable and buggy thing. There’s a paucity of technical notifications for a bevy of issues that seem to be besetting testers left and right. But that’s beta for you: part of playing a game like this before release is enduring the problems that come with early builds.
Even with these problems it remains amazing to me that my heart swells at the sight of the Lucas Arts logo again. It’s such a coarse thing, such a simple thing associated with such a variety of creations good and bad. But this one great creation, a creation still in progress, a creation I’m still uncovering bits and pieces of, has turned me around on Lucas Arts. I no longer feel an urge to spit when I look at their logo: instead I kind of want whatever it is they’re selling in my mouth. Is that a bit too dirty or forward? I’m not sure I care.
This isn’t anything approaching a full treatment of SWTOR: I don’t think I’ve played enough of the game to really give one of those. Nor is it a defense of its many flaws – I don’t think anyone in their right mind would try to make one of those, especially at this point, except to say, quietly, that the game is, in fact, still in beta and that it might need some more time in the oven. This is just a quick love letter to Lucas Arts, to that crazy bitch who has fucked me over and wasted my money so often in the past.
I still have feelings for you, and that kind of scares me, but I want to go for it.
Call me. My home-made lightsaber is ready.
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