Star Wars: The Old Republic will kill WoW - outsourced to Broadsword

[Popiel]

People think I'm crazy when I say SWTOR has some of Bioware's last good writing

They shouldn't, 'cause you're right. It's not like the bar is set particularly high, is it.

 

[Hellion]

The game's also available on Steam now, 9 years after its release.

 

[gurugeorge]

EDIT: I went and confirmed some dates. KotFE is from 2015. DA: Inquisition is from 2014 and Mass Effect 3 from 2012. Fuckin' MMO expansion has better plot than these two games, my sides.

People think I'm crazy when I say SWTOR has some of Bioware's last good writing

I agree. I thought the Smuggler story was pretty damn good as these things go. Some of the Dark Side stories too.

 

[Erikkolai]

SWTOR is a very casual MMO, but at least it's mastered the use of camera angles. This is what a typical conversation with a female character looks like.

 

[Zariusz]

I didnt play this since i finished eternal throne few years ago.
Are companions still turned into interchangeable skins and voice packs?
I hated when they removed every unique skill and item from them few years ago.

 

[Popiel]

Are companions still turned into interchangeable skins and voice packs?

Yes

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I didnt play this since i finished eternal throne few years ago.
Are companions still turned into interchangeable skins and voice packs?
I hated when they removed every unique skill and item from them few years ago.

Yes, it was one of my bigger gripes considering how much effort they put into them to begin with.

 

[Popiel]

>I never group in this game 'cause I still feel pretty new
>I take some Alliance Alert quest
>it's Ilum, yeah let's go rehash some locations
>I walk ‘round killin’ some Imp Untermenchen
>there’s a guy beggin’ in the general chat for someone to help him with a heroic quest
>I’m a generous god today so I think fuck it and write to him
>we start the dungeon
>smooth operation
>boos comes in
>what a fuckin’ absolute specimen of a motherfucker, we go at him for what amounts to like hour and half
>boss stuns you two times per appearance and when you’re stunned he heals for like twenty or thirty thousand HP per usage
>at the same time he has an armour and you can get him down by like what, ten thousand HP per appearance
>after an appearance he jumps away and summons trash
>he has like two hundred thousand HP
>imagine the horror
>and so we grind and grind, at some point guy figures out we could perhaps use these explosive, indestructible barrels lyin’ ‘round…
>yeah, when boss reappears he jumps on you
>so you need to stand on the barrel
>works like a charm
>he dead
>…
>…
>my good mate, who endured this unspeakable horror with me, glitches on a barrel
>can’t move, can’t unstuck
>…
>…
>we need to do it again
>stellar job BioWare

 

[Popiel]

I started my Sith Warrior (I just got tired with my Consular durin' Onderon, newest expansion - it maaaayyyy be connected to the fact that BIG BLACK WOMAN is one of the main characters now, I dunno...) and just arrived on Balmorra. I have no idea what all you guys are talkin' 'bout. It's good, I would argue better than Consular's openin', but come on. It's just that, good.

I also start to heavily question binary Force choices. Some Dark Side choices should be neutral at worst. This wasn't an issue on my Jedi 'cause he was staunchly Light Side, it starts to become an issue now.

 

[Storyfag]

I started my Sith Warrior (I just got tired with my Consular durin' Onderon, newest expansion - it maaaayyyy be connected to the fact that BIG BLACK WOMAN is one of the main characters now, I dunno...) and just arrived on Balmorra. I have no idea what all you guys are talkin' 'bout. It's good, I would argue better than Consular's openin', but come on. It's just that, good.

Told you so. Agent is better. Also Inq, but that may vary according to taste.

I also start to heavily question binary Force choices. Some Dark Side choices should be neutral at worst. This wasn't an issue on my Jedi 'cause he was staunchly Light Side, it starts to become an issue now.

Yes.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I also start to heavily question binary Force choices. Some Dark Side choices should be neutral at worst. This wasn't an issue on my Jedi 'cause he was staunchly Light Side, it starts to become an issue now.

At first I agreed, but after some time thinking on it I'm starting to believe it may have just been the writers pointing out the problem with the binary dark/light of the force in an Avellonian way. Considering kotet/kotfe, I'm more willing to believe this is true.

 

[gurugeorge]

Dark/Light choices are always going to be lame so long as they're constrained by the ubiquitous dogmas of liberalism (and I mean "liberal" in the broadest sense, not just the narrower American sense, though that's included). To take just one example: so long as individualism is automatically considered to be good and collectivism automatically considered to be bad (because muh Nazis or muh Commies), you're always going to have aporia when, for example, the Jedi act in their collective interests, or the Sith are supposed to be both selfish assholes and stronk collectivist "social order" types at the same time.

Really the whole thing is lame, because nobody except emo posers consider themselves "Dark" - nearly everyone who's ever been a mover and shaker in the world has believed that they're fighting for the Light. Mere assholes tend to remain low-level criminals. So the real meat is in the deep philosophical and scientific problems about what's actually good and bad, for whom, and under what circumstances. And only very occasionally do writers in movies, games, etc., touch that sort of thing.

One might say that entertainment media aren't the place for that sort of thing, but the hunger for it among consumers is shown by the fact that any writer who does occasionally touch on such things (like Avellone), however amateurishly, gets carried through the streets and lauded as the Second Coming. In fact, entertainment that does touch on deep topics is the only entertainment that has staying power (consider Shakespeare, consider his original audiences). And that was always the case until about the middle of the 20th century, when gradually, gradually, entertainment moved towards the shallow end of the kiddie pool, because there are certain topics that liberalism just cannot touch (mainly, the question of its own legitimacy as hegemon).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

collectivism automatically considered to be bad

Get in the helicopter.

 

[Popiel]

Are you really goin’ to have a conversation ‘bout philosophical underpinnings of Star Wars franchise in a thread ‘bout a failed single/multiplayer cRPG BioWhore experiment?

Dark/Light choices are always going to be lame so long as they're constrained by the ubiquitous dogmas of liberalism (and I mean "liberal" in the broadest sense, not just the narrower American sense, though that's included).

There is the Force as depicted in the Lucas continuity (OT + PT + arguably Clone Wars, though there are some strange things there). There is the Force as depicted in current official (corporate sanctioned) continuity (nominally OT + PT + ST, but mainly ST and adjacent materials like Rebels animated series). There is the Force as depicted in the original extended continuity (Extended Universe), and here already it must be understood that EU contains multiple mutually exclusive views of the Force (like the Living Force concept which perhaps most influenced so called Disney canon). And there are other minor depictions, of which perhaps most famous here is postmodern deconstruction of the concept done by Avellone (RAPEMAN) is KotOR 2, which is a take based on the original Lucas vision.

Each one of these views presents the Force in a different way. It understands it differently. TOR evidently lies in this category. It has its own view of what the Force is and what conveys a Dark Side and a Light Side actions and choices.

In original Lucas continuity dichotomy between the Dark Side and the Force (there is no Light Side in the original equation – I wrote ‘bout it extensively elsewhere) has nothin’ to do with individualism or collectivism. The Force is life and it is best understood similarly to (late) Stoic concept of logos (or Confucian rendition of idea of tao, but I’m not knowledgeable enough in Eastern philosophy to fully stand behind that, I mention that as an aside), divine (‘cause late Stoicism was influenced by Neoplatonism, just look at Marcus Aurelius) reason which orderly governs everything accordin’ to everything’s nature. What later was called the Light Side is a choice of goin’ with the current, fully submittin’ to the will of the Force and denyin’ oneself up to the point of renouncin’ one’s own identity. There is no death, there is the Force (Jedi Code) – there can be no death for someone who is a part of the Force and not a singular, separated person. When one fully fuses oneself with the Force one can not die ‘cause one can not cease to be, one just evolves past physical body (hence the Force spirits, and these in original canon were only a Jedi thing, it’s a fact of key importance which was forgotten by 99% of extended continuity which introduced Sith wraiths and other nonsense because of RULE OF COOL).

Dark Side is exactly an opposite of the Force. Dark Side adherent does not flow with the current – he seeks to master the waves. Sith does not submit to the will of the Force – Force is supposed to serve his will. It’s the Dark Side which in individualistic. Sith are inherently proper anarchists. There is only the will and individually determined purpose of an individual. That’s why the Rule of Two is the most efficient embodiment of Sith philosophy. There can be only one master, and his apprentice to serve him as supplant him (that is until a point at which the master will be immortal, but that’s beside the point).

Perfect Jedi will not be a liberal or a fascist. He won’t do anything that is against the will of the Force. And main objective of the Force is as large preservation of life as possible, it’s quite evident by the first movies. Force is life and Force wills life. That’s why Jedi preserve. When it gets to the particulars it gets tricky. I don’t think that a Jedi necessarily will always fight for every singular livin’ being, even though in secondary material it comes to that precisely.

I believe that TOR’s vision is quite an interestin’ one, even though at times it comes off as stupid and illogical. I mainly blame it on the wide range of writers and no direct, unified vision behind whole metaplot and themes of the story. Let’s take Jedi Consular – a class which’s storyline was written to be explicitly Light Side, there can be no doubt ‘bout that, plot makes zero sense if you go Dark – and Sith Warrior – which as of now (I’m done with Balmorra) evidently was written to present you with choices, that is you can play your Warrior in two different ways and it gives you two very different characters.

A Jedi Consular is your typical Lucas model Jedi. Follower of the Code and will of the Force (Nolan North was a perfect casting for this role IMHO). If you always choose LS dialogue options you speak ‘bout the Force and its will constantly. Your actions are always based on the will of the Force and never your own. You are always calm and emotionless ‘cause you know – your Consular knows – that everything is predetermined, all is ordered and all will ultimately come to foretold ends. Consular gets on edge only when dealin’ with visible perversions of the will of the Force, i.e. when dealin’ with the Sith. And then his justification is always restoration of the natural order of things. It means that you never kill anybody if you can avoid it (plot never strongarms you to kill anybody in the main Consular story arc). You preserve all life and fight for perpetual peace, even though you accept that some amount of strife is a necessary aspect of life. Consular is a diplomat and a negotiator, he forges alliances through peace talks and not through violence (when he can). As a Consular you obtain a title of Barsen’thor, Warder of the Order – someone who watches the watchers, keeps Jedi in line so that they never fall from the Light Side. In Shadow of Revan, second expansion, Consular constructs his own holocron – and Light Side choice of legacy to leave behind is not his name but his title, his function in the order, not his individual identity (which matters not, perfect LS Consular is devoid of personal distinctiveness, as a LS adherent should be). In consequence Consular playthrough is not individualistic. You care ‘bout the Republic and social order it represents – pluralistic democracy, ‘cause only in that kind of social structure (we speak archetypes here mind you) each type of life (alien or human) can flourish, which is the will of the Force. Each individual life is worth preservin’ and thinkin’ in this way leads the Consular to full support of political entity which is at the same time a collective. You always see yourself as part of the greater whole.

Sith Warrior is different. Here you play a role of right hand of Darth Baras, who represents your typical Lawful Evil archetype as far as inherently emotional and chaotic Sith can represent it. If you play it Dark Side you are just that – you go ‘round killin’ people, you often channel your fury, rage and other emotions to achieve your goals, you are cruel to your slave (yeah Vette keep this shock collar, it really does wonders, it almost seems like BioWare was aware how annoyin’ their lil’ sister characters and their antics are) and to people ‘round for no good reason, you sass at your master (who does not give a fuck, Darth Baras the Widest truly is the MVP) and so on and so forth. But most of all you are a supremacist. This is how TOR interprets Sith Dark Side philosophy – not collectively but individualistically. It’s most obvious AFAIK in the Imperial Agent storyline, but I’ll get to that later. Only the best of the best deserve to have anything. Weak must be purged, might makes right and so on and so forth. At one point you do a side quest (yes I know, all Imp characters can do it but IMHO Sith Warrior fits here really well, keep with me). Band of Sith decides to have some fun. HUNGER GAMES time. They go ‘round and tag people, then hunt them for sports on the streets of Dromund Kaas. If you are a Dark Side adherent you just keep with it ‘cause obviously those who can’t defeat a bunch of Sith stalkin’ them don’t deserve to live. So you kill the guy who’s tryin’ to publicise this story and games continue. However. There is, as usual, a Light Side choice. Here we come to an interestin’ thing. A Light Side Sith Warrior is not a right hand of Darth Wideass anymore. He’s more in the lines of your Consular, but not loyal to the Republic – but to the Empire. You see, there is a runnin’ theme throughout TOR. Theme of Sith inherent idiocy. Sith philosophy is individualism in its most strict, pure form. Through victory my chains are broken, the Force shall free me (Sith Code). The Force is victory and power of the Sith, through Force they subdue all to their will so that they only can rule themselves. Ideal Sith society is a Hobbesian state of nature in which everyone can do as he pleases with no shackles of any sort on anyone. There’s a problem with that. It fucks over the Empire as a poltical institution. I mentioned the Agent storyline. There you are told explicitly that – there’s Empire’s goals and there are Sith’s insanities which, for the good of the Empire and it’s citizens, should fuckin’ stop. Light Side Sith Warrior is most of all a honourable knight of the Empire. He protects its citizens. He honours his enemies. He is loyal, obedient and respectful of his master. He values his allies and friends. He uses his emotions but not for himself, for other, higher purposes. Remember these Sith HUNGER GAMES? LS Sith Warrior just says that these idiots disgrace the Sith code and tags Sith acolytes instead to punish the idiot masters who organised the whole ordeal. This Sith Warrior is very proud but not foolish, not a brute but a connivin’ schemer who uses his personal power to do some crazy political moves. And these are all Light Side choices – and they are collectivistic. You fight for the greater picture and not for your personal gain, your feeble emotions and self.

And I have some problems with how these Light Side choices are written, as I’ve mentioned. Game treats killin’ people as Dark Side and sparin’ them as Light Side. On the Imp side it’s binary. But there’s a problem. When you don’t kill someone you take them prisoner (you’re an Imperial after all, not a defector). But in prison they will suffer, be tortured and so on and so forth. Killin’ them would be mercy, a thing commonly considered good. Yet still it’s Dark Side. IMHO it’s a problem of concept. Game is written ‘round a binary axis and you can’t stray too much from that.

Tl;dr – I think you’re incorrect when it comes to TOR. It tries to nuance things and does not present Light Side as MUH LIBERALISM and Dark Side as MUH FASCISM. I.e. it's not lame. I also believe that you’re fundamentally wrong and it never was nor is (sans perhaps some most recent inane Disney aberrations) this simple of a presentation. Just look at the story of Darth Caedus, also known as Jacen Solo (that was before poor Adam Driver was forced to play Disney rendition of Han Solo’s son).

And that was always the case until about the middle of the 20th century, when gradually, gradually, entertainment moved towards the shallow end of the kiddie pool, because there are certain topics that liberalism just cannot touch (mainly, the question of its own legitimacy as hegemon).

Are altrighters always like this, puttin' these WISDOMS everywhere they can beggin’ people to notice?

...

Such a good thing that previous ideological regimes freely allowed questions of their own legitimacy .

...

Right, boys?

 

[gurugeorge]

Perfect Jedi will not be a liberal or a fascist. He won’t do anything that is against the will of the Force. And main objective of the Force is as large preservation of life as possible, it’s quite evident by the first movies. Force is life and Force wills life. That’s why Jedi preserve. When it gets to the particulars it gets tricky. I don’t think that a Jedi necessarily will always fight for every singular livin’ being, even though in secondary material it comes to that precisely.

Interesting post and I don't disagree with much of what you're saying (bear in mind I only instanced the individualism/collectivism as one example, which I thought was more relevant to SWTOR).

Darn right it gets tricky. "Preservation of life" - well that sounds grand, but whose life? And at what cost? Or if the idea is one of simple maximization, then suppose you maximize the number of lions and wildebeest, then you've just maximized the number of wildebeest that are going to suffer.

Much "cleaner" are some of the older concepts that Lucas possibly drew inspiration from - like Dao/De, or Logos, or the Wyrd, or whatever. Those are closer to impartial and neutral. The Force is just a Disneyfied, cartoon-like version of such eerie, impersonal, even monstrous powers. Let's face it, the Force just does whatever nice liberals (again, in the broadest sense, including but not limited to American liberalism) vaguely think is nice. On Mondays. Then it's different again on Wednesdays depending on whether the liberal got out of bed on the right side or has indigestion

 

[Popiel]

"Preservation of life" - well that sounds grand, but whose life? And at what cost? Or if the idea is one of simple maximization, then suppose you maximize the number of lions and wildebeest, then you've just maximized the number of wildebeest that are going to suffer.

I would interpret that as (please Ewan McGregor don't kill me) an absolute – all life at any cost, or, to be more practical, maximum volume of life at maximum affordable cost. Look at actions of LS Jedi in original materials (that would be Yoda and Obi-Wan basically, Mace Windu is acknowledged to dabble in the Dark Side, Qui-Gon Jinn was judged to be a tricky case as well, Skywalkers don’t count for obvious reasons and ‘bout others we don’t know enough to infer). Each individual life is worth savin’ and they do it when it is in their capacity. That’s quite clear. A Jedi should follow the will of the Force, not overly actively enforce it, i.e. Jedi should not engineer matters to force his own vision of what must be done on others. It’s quite clear in the OT that Jedi so strictly entangled with the political world of the late Old Republic were a mistake and a perversion of order’s ideals – they lost their connection to the will of the Force and were unable to detect fuckin’ Palpatine, admittedly one of the strongest DS individuals ever to grace galaxy. Perfect Jedi should be a perfect Stoic, or a perfect Taoist. Things come and go. Things live and die. There are good things in life and they should be protected but only as far as individual Jedi’s strength allows it. Or rather – there are things that must happen and those that would subvert nature/reality to suit their unnatural desires (Sith) must be stopped.

And yes it is and must be tricky. No grand questions will ever be answered by that kind of philosophy, both in real life and in Star Wars universe.

The Force is just a Disneyfied, cartoon-like version of such eerie, impersonal, even monstrous powers. Let's face it, the Force just does whatever nice liberals (again, in the broadest sense, including but not limited to American liberalism) vaguely think is nice. On Mondays. Then it's different again on Wednesdays depending on whether the liberal got out of bed on the right side or has indigestion

I do not agree with that simplification, strongly. You would get that impression, I think, only if you would look at literally child content (animated series, cartoons and so on) or at some of the current Disney continuity content (even there, I dare say it, they experimented a bit here and there). It was almost never that simple. How Palpatine explains some lures of the Dark Side in PT is much more than what you wrote.

Whatever you mean here by liberalism in broadest sense notwithstanding, ‘cause liberalism in broadest sense means nothing. A non-word. It’s both Hobbes and Locke, both Rousseau and Mill, liberal economists and liberal theologians, and at the end of the line American libruls (who are properly called leftists). It’s as wide range of stances and ideas as you can get. Nobody knows what you mean aside from that duck I posted above.

 

[gurugeorge]

"Preservation of life" - well that sounds grand, but whose life? And at what cost? Or if the idea is one of simple maximization, then suppose you maximize the number of lions and wildebeest, then you've just maximized the number of wildebeest that are going to suffer.

I would interpret that as (please Ewan McGregor don't kill me) an absolute – all life at any cost, or, to be more practical, maximum volume of life at maximum affordable cost. Look at actions of LS Jedi in original materials (that would be Yoda and Obi-Wan basically, Mace Windu is acknowledged to dabble in the Dark Side, Qui-Gon Jinn was judged to be a tricky case as well, Skywalkers don’t count for obvious reasons and ‘bout others we don’t know enough to infer). Each individual life is worth savin’ and they do it when it is in their capacity. That’s quite clear. A Jedi should follow the will of the Force, not overly actively enforce it, i.e. Jedi should not engineer matters to force his own vision of what must be done on others. It’s quite clear in the OT that Jedi so strictly entangled with the political world of the late Old Republic were a mistake and a perversion of order’s ideals – they lost their connection to the will of the Force and were unable to detect fuckin’ Palpatine, admittedly one of the strongest DS individuals ever to grace galaxy. Perfect Jedi should be a perfect Stoic, or a perfect Taoist. Things come and go. Things live and die. There are good things in life and they should be protected but only as far as individual Jedi’s strength allows it. Or rather – there are things that must happen and those that would subvert nature/reality to suit their unnatural desires (Sith) must be stopped.

But there again we're moving from a general position that should be more truly neutral to an unexplained particularism - "there are good things in life and they should be protected." Without a principle to the Force, that's indistinguishable from caprice, but if the principle is as general as you say, then the Jedi is as likely to calmly watch a child drowning as to go and save it - depending on the "will of the Force," which presumably has some greater plan in mind.

(I agree with you wholeheartedly that Palps as a character is awesome, and Ian McDiarmid's scenery-chewing performance nonpariel - in fact that alone is almost worth the price of admission for the prequels )

Whatever you mean here by liberalism in broadest sense notwithstanding, ‘cause liberalism in broadest sense means nothing. A non-word. It’s both Hobbes and Locke, both Rousseau and Mill, liberal economists and liberal theologians, and at the end of the line American libruls (who are properly called leftists). It’s as wide range of stances and ideas as you can get. Nobody knows what you mean aside from that duck I posted above.

Oh come now, it's not as difficult as all that. The shift to liberalism was the shift to taking the individual and their "rational decisions," their cares and woes, their gratification or lack thereof, as the basic unit of political analysis. That's pretty much the thread that runs through all forms of liberalism, and even mutations of liberalism like Marxism (in the final analysis it's still the individual labourer who's being cheated out of their due, it's just that there's a whole class of people in a similar position). This, as opposed to (things like) the life of the people, or the nation, or the Church, or the glorification of God, or the preservation of hierarchy, or whatever, as the central structuring principle.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I get the sense that having to deal with the Force (and the philosophical ramifications of such a thing) is far too commonplace than it ought to be. I suppose there are very few works where the Jedi sith and the Force don't actively feature?

 

[Commissar Draco]

My Imperial agent took mostly LS choices when dealing with Shits and their insane schemes but every Jeewdie who tried to make him defect also got blaster bolt, he was filthy alien but of Admiral Thrawn tribe so he also had hidden agenda of protecting the Chiss Ascendecy. At the end of game both Siths and Yedis were revealed to be same power-hungry sociapat assholes with Sith being at least more honest about it. Playing whole agent story line + first expansion on tectonic planet was worth subbing for one month, I dropped durring the Rise of Revan addon cause it was no longer Bond movie and those later addons make no sense at all if you are not playing Jeewdie/Shit, they raped our beloved Raven and this hole alliance shit is not something my agent would do. You really should be given choice to ignore the expansion and just retire after main story.

And of course they need to add gay and lesbian romance to the game too, such degeneracy in my Empire.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The revan xpac was easily the worst, you should try out kotfe if you haven't.
OTOH, I'm glad they essentially ended Revan's story, and the way they ended it was alright.

Spoiler

iirc it was basically something like "I've done enough go fix this shit on your own" or whatever

 

[Hellion]

Resubbed for one month using my immense pile of Steam Trading Card profits, just to see how the Eternal Empire storyline plays out.

Most Light/Dark dialogue choices during the storyline almost always make the player character sound like either "idealistic goody-two-shoes" or "mustache twirling peasant killer", but other than that there were some choices that did impact (to a small degree, for the most part) how the story plays out. Overall story arc was OK, I guess. Perhaps it could have been something more robust and memorable had it been utilized in a non-MMO game.

Oh, and after the KotET story ends, you have the option to restart any NPC romance you had going on before the expansion. If you accept, you get a new quest that forces you to... break up with any character you romanced during KotEE/KotET. Just Bioware being Bioware.

PS. Imperial Agent still reigns supreme as far as storylines are concerned - that stuff was truly legendary. Sith Inquisitor comes second, I think.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Sith Inquisitor

 

[Popiel]

I've heard conflictin' reports 'bout Inq storyline. I'm goin' either him or Knight after I'm done with Warrior.

 

[Storyfag]

I've heard conflictin' reports 'bout Inq storyline. I'm goin' either him or Knight after I'm done with Warrior.

Inq's gud. But not as politicised as it could have been, far less so than Warrior. I imagine this is the problem many people have with it.

 

[Hellion]

When one hears of the Inquisitor's general premise, initially he assumes he'll be a Darth Sidious-like Envoy/Diplomat/Politician of sorts, pulling the strings and gaining influence from the shadows. There is quite a bit of Sith infighting and backstabbing in his storyline, but in the end that's the major extent of all "political" stuff and the Inquisitor is mostly a Sith Sorcerer who hunts ghosts. But the story's still good in its presentation.