Recently a fan of the game and website named Ruben van der Leun contacted us wanting to get our opinions on character development. He hoped we would write an article about it, turns out he gets to be the author. Since it was a good read we are passing it on to you (with his permission). Feel free to leave your opinions for Ruben and all of us.
Letter after the jump.
Letter after the jump.
Greetings,
First off, my hats are off to you all for your wonderful site. It's my main source of information about The Old Republic, and I hope that you'll be keeping up your coverage in the years to come.
Now, as of late, you've been writing some very interesting articles, and I would like to bring up one particular topic, namely one of my reasons why I'm looking forward to The Old Republic. Namely, the idea of building a character who will continue to grow for years to come and the promise of adventures that my character will experience in the upcoming years. Allow me to elaborate...
I love RPGs. I love the Star Wars saga. I'm a big fan of Bioware's repertoire of games and as I had expected in the years leading up to the it, Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite experiences, as was The Sith Lords a year later. Likewise, the Mass Effect setting is one I'm hoping to explore more in ME2 and 3. One of my favorite things is watching my character grow from a relative unknown person to an infamous character in its setting's history. However, they all have generally one problem: They end.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a strong believer that every story should have a proper ending at some point and have most of the important storylines properly tied up. But one of the gameplay experiences that I've dreamed about was an episodic RPG series, where I would start out with a character and continue to develop him as new content would be delivered. I had great hope for Mass Effect would deliver this with its DLC, that I could continue to play as my Shephard all the way up to ME2, and I'll admit that I've been greatly disappointed in that regard. I'm not sure if they're planning on doing anything to prepare for ME1, but I'm expecting little at this point.
When TOR was first announced, I was skeptical about its promises about being a story-based MMORPG. I've heard the claims before, and had a "Have to see it to believe it" mentality to it. Then Bioware released the voice acting movie, and I was swept up into the hype. The cinematic cutscenes, the dialogue, the CHOICES... it was all there, just as they had said. And shortly afterwards, it hit me: TOR could be the episodic RPG that I've been looking forward to. Granted, with the multitude of voice acting involved, I'm not expecting new campaigns or hours of new content every week, but I do hope that they will be evolving the storyline as the game matures.
My expectations are, of course, that every class will have enough content to last a couple dozen of hours, but I will admit that my theoretical monthly $15 to Bioware will be aimed at supporting them to build more quests, more storylines, more characters and less about balancing PvP or adding features that can be handy to form a group. I'm generally a single-player gamer and will be logging in to continue my main (Republic trooper, by the looks of it) character's tale as he continues to fight the good fight against the evil Sith Empire. And this time, his storyline won't be finished in 20-30 hours, oh no... his will last for years to come.
Right, with that rant out of the way, I'd like to ask if you have any thoughts about this topic, and if you'll be writing an article about it. I'd love to hear what you all have to say.
With kind regards,
Ruben van der Leun
Comments
But I do hope they release those patches :D
The purpose of "end game" in terms of WoW is to gear out your character with the goal of pursuing further harder tiers of content, culminating with the final tier boss such as Kel' Thuzad, Kil'Jaeden, or the Lich King. Then, by that time, it is time for the next expansion.
For Bioware to get around a problem of WoW, that is the monotony of leveling, they need to make sure that leveling is fun and exciting, which they are attempting with the story driven part of their MMO. Time will tell if it works or not.
With TOR I hope to bridge this gap and finally enjoy an MMO with an actual story. I plan to watch every scene, listen to every second of voice work, and play my character with story in mind, as opposed to build. Because of this, I hope they have at least 8 character slots per server as I plan on seeing at least some of every story in The Old Republic.
I also hope the choices keep me in the game. I remember times in KotOR where I wanted to be truly evil, and the evil option was never evil enough. My favorite evil option from the KotOR series was in KotOR II during the battle of Iziz. There were the usual evil options where I ask for more reward, but the truly evil option was to have all the force sensitives sent to me for training as the Jedi were not to be trusted. [Force Persuade] "Give me all your money." is too cliche of evil. Having more depth in your options helps a lot more with keeping your character.
With The Old Republic I foresee myself listening to each and every quest, I am so excited about the questing that is pretty crazy. I want to be interested and I want to be involved. Actually having an impact on the storyline and visually seeing it is not something that I am used to at all. I am stoked that I can change the game by my choices, to actually feel apart of game and not be some bystander watching the NPCs do all the work. This aspect of The Old Republic is what is going to draw in a lot of people and will keep them playing for sometime to come.