Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Star Wars: The Old Republic Video

Darren over at The Common Sense Gamer has the latest trailer for the BioWare MMO being produced right now.

I have one complaint with the "Old Republic" setting through all the games that BioWare has produced. It is, in essence, the exact same as the original Star Wars universe with different characters and slightly different setup in Galactic politics. Empire versus Republic, Jedi versus Sith, bounty hunters look like Bobba Fett, Troopers look like Storm Troopers, Wookies, Droids, etc etc etc. Even the fighters of the Sith Empire harken back to TIE fighters.

BUT IT SUPPOSED TO BE SET A MILLENIUM IN THE PAST! It all points to a massive deficit in imagination... or the cynical desire to leverage the recognizable Star Wars universe without being tied to Star Wars canon.

Sigh. Whatever, I'll still give it a try. I'm a sucker that way.

4 comments:

  1. Well, I reckon the notion is that the Star Wars setting plateaued, technologically, sometime before TOR, and hasn't moved a lot since. Just because we live in an era where technology changes rapidly doesn't mean that's always going to be the case.

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  2. I haven't played a good Star Wars video game since the original trilogy of games on the SNES, so I approach the recent hype over SW:TOR with an immense amount of skepticism.

    But yeah - I agree - total failure in imagination here.

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  3. Even accepting that technology plateaued to such a large degree so long in the past, one would still expect that social norms and styles would evolve and devolve over centuries. Remember, the Old Republic setting is 3500 years before the events in A New Hope.

    Yet Corsucant is still the capital, Jefi are the same, Sith are the same, etc etc etc. Its unbelievable.

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  4. I'm a huge SW fan and I don't see a problem. Coruscant has been known to be the seat of power pretty much since forever. The SW races are very well know and you can't start changing them. Stuff like armor and technology has a certain feel that needs to remain constant throughout the ENTIRE history. And Sith are plentiful because this happens before the whole Darth Bane "Rule of Two" thing.

    Yep, I'm gonna have to check it out !!!

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