[Review] Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Bandolero -]

 

 

Star Wars: The Old Republic is fascinating. Next to World of Warcraft, it has somehow become the MMO I've invested the most time into, despite not always being sure what I think of it. In 2011, it was a game at odds with itself, and while so much has changed since then, that has not. But that conflict has also lead to seismic shifts, with BioWare Austin dragging it in unexpected directions. I keep coming back and, with a new expansion on the horizon, some of you might be contemplating the same. You should. With some Death Star-sized caveats. 

At launch it was disappointing. There was BioWare's RPG, an enthusiastic Star Wars fantasy full of scintillating class stories that offered up countless lightsaber duels, Sith intrigue, superweapons, a personal spaceship and you could play as a Chiss James Bond. Great stuff. But then there was the MMO, which stuck rigidly to the most conservative adaptation of World of Warcraft, from the combat to the structure. For every great Star Wars moment, there were a hundred lacklustre fights and hours upon hours of running between repetitive quests. 

Things have progressed quite a bit since those days, however. After you finish your class story around level 50, for instance, you've now got several games' worth of adventures and crises and character-driven yarns left to play through. The first couple of expansions aren't really worth repeated playthroughs, but everything from Shadow of Revan onwards is surprisingly gripping stuff, evocative of the singleplayer RPGs that inspired it, but not beholden to them. Perhaps most like Knights of the Old Republic 2, the later chapters make the Star Wars universe and the Force feel strange again.

 

 

All of that is far, far ahead of you if you're starting from scratch, but vanilla TOR has been tweaked countless times, and overhauled, so it's not quite the chore it sometimes used to be. Even before setting foot on one of the starting planets, however, you might want to consider if you want to spend any money.

 

 

Since 2012, TOR has been free-to-play with a cash shop and optional subscription. The free-to-play tier ain't great. You miss out on raids, gear, rewards, crew skills, the bank, races and have an absurdly low credit cap that means you'll never be able to buy anything decent. You do get all of the class storylines, however, which will take you to the free cap of level 50. And while there are a lot of restrictions, many of them can be eased with one purchase, no matter how small. 

Buying anything from the Cartel Market, the in-game cash shop, confers Preferred status immediately, easing up on the limitations for free players. Preferred players still miss out on a lot and don't get access to the expansions, but that can be sorted by subscribing for a single month. During that month, you'll have access to everything, but you'll also be able to keep a lot of it even if you choose not to continue your subscription. 

 

 

Those first 50 levels are going to either fly by if you're subscribing, or take a good while longer if you're not. All the XP bonuses and complimentary boosts means that subscribers can get to the original level cap purely doing class and planetary quests. They're invariably the best written and most engaging parts of the game, to the point where it feels like a classic BioWare RPG. Everything else is a crapshoot. The actual objectives for every kind of quest rarely deviate from the most uninspired MMO tropes of fetching and killing, so most of the heavy lifting is done by story and characters. I do regret blasting through it these days, because there are some interesting little side stories going on between all the important, fate of the galaxy missions. There are also plenty of duds. Even the poorer ones typically have convincing voice acting and more context than your average MMO quest, however, and if you're playing for the first time, you'll probably want to do most of them. 

 

 

Most of it is also all based on stuff that was a bit dated in 2011. The environments are large but lifeless, the characters are plentiful but look and move like soulless marionettes, and the quest design is just a bit boring. But this is also stuff that I've explored to death. Familiarity has made it more of a chore, and apparently not enough of one to stop me from making my second Sith Inquisitor and playing through that exact same story again. You don't understand, this time I gave him a terrible beard and a sassy attitude. It's a huge difference! You're the one with a problem!

 

 

 

When you finish the class story, there's a weird lull. You can't start Knights of the Fallen Empire, where BioWare made some of its most significant changes, until level 60. The Dread Lords and Rise of the Hutt Cartel arcs are related to other stuff you'll know about from your 1-50 journey, but they're weaker than the class stories and, while I didn't mind them the first time around, I'm never eager to return. I usually skip straight to Shadow of Revan. It's a brisk expansion if you're just in it for the main yarn, which ties together lots of threads from both the MMO and its singleplayer predecessors. The writers' treatment of Revan and the Exile is perhaps a bit divisive, but I think that's inevitable when dealing with characters that people have actually played. It's a solid expansion and leads into an even better one. 

Knights of the Fallen Empire was bold in 2015. BioWare made a singleplayer game in their MMO and it was, and still is, surprisingly great. The original promise of TOR was that it was going to be KotOR 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on. Better than a new singleplayer RPG. Nobody believed it, and that was because it was bollocks. But with Fallen Empire it gets much closer than any MMO has a right to. Calling it KotOR 3 might be a stretch, but there's a great deal of KotOR in it. 

 

 

 

The episodic structure also works wonders. Instead of trying to have your singleplayer fun while all these other Jedi and bounty hunters are jumping around and doing the same quests, you're transported to a personal instance where BioWare's been able to make a more curated experience. There aren't any interruptions, long jogs between objectives or repetitive odd jobs. They're brisk but manage to squeeze in plenty of action and plot, and while the story is shared across all classes and both factions, each episode gives you opportunities to leave your own mark and reap the consequences. The big choices are still binary and framed as Dark and Light side options, but they are more nuanced than that limitation suggests. A villainous Sith Lord can make what is ostensibly a Light side choice for evil reasons, like saving a city block from devastation because one day soon you intend to rule all the people you've saved. 

Advertisement