Settling in at a demo station in EA's booth at Gamescom 2010, I had my first opportunity to play as a lightsaber-wielding class in BioWare's upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. I was lucky enough to play a Sith character, an Inquisitor to be exact, which was preferable because, as we all know to be true, "Good is dumb." He wasn't a full-fledged Sith yet, unfortunately, just a trainee of sorts. Though his face was most definitely evil, filled with spikes and ferocious markings, he only had a training sword instead of the iconic electric death blade.
This was just following a presentation where BioWare explained to a crowd all the features of its big budget online game. It's a fully voiced MMO, which means when you talk to NPCs to accept quests, they actually talk to you through cut scenes with what seems to be quality voice acting. Your character will even talk back when given a choice in the conversation, establishing more of a sense of motive and personality, unlike in some other MMOs where you collect quests like you're stealing pies from windowsills.
Later on in a character class' life cycle a specialization can be chosen to open up more varied modes of play. For example, with the Inquisitor you can choose to go the path of the assassin and use double-bladed sabers while taking a more stealthy approach to combat and walloping enemies with high burst damage, or can go sorcerer to more effectively singe targets with lighting from a distance.
BioWare also made mention of the space combat in the game, which sounds like it won't exactly be free-roaming, but will allow you to do things like soar through asteroid fields, blast enemy fighters, and flee from capital ships. Since every player can acquire and customize a ship, this should hopefully be a nice diversion to the more traditional on-foot gameplay, and it's tough to say more without getting some hands-on time with the ships.
Back to my Inquisitor character, he was initially tasked with proving his worth by finding a certain NPC located nearby the starting area on Korriban. By roaming outside I found myself in a red rock valley along the sides of which were carved huge, ominous figures. I trotted around and checked out the skill bar. It wasn't very full yet, the character was very low level, but could still pull off a few useful attacks. Saber strike could be triggered at close range for a boost in melee damage played out across a flurry of strikes. Shock functioned as a simple ranged electrical attack, and lighting drain was a channeled ability that damaged, restored force, and slowed targets. If a fight proved to be especially tough, there's also the option to meditate to quickly restore health and force over time. With a cooldown of one minute, it seems like this ability is meant to be used pretty often, keeping downtime between battles to a minimum.
Out in the valley with a large pyramidal temple off in the distance, there was plenty to fight. A number of insect-like creatures were roaming the orange-red terrain, and it wasn't long before I cut a number of them down, inadvertently fulfilling a bonus objective on my original quest to prove I'm worthy of being a Sith. Then into the underground I went, where more of the creatures roamed. An NPC was standing down there too who wanted more of the creatures killed, and through a fully-voice series of cut-scenes gave me the task of blasting apart a room filled with the eggs of the creatures. Further in to the cavern network, a datapad sitting on the ground had additional instructions for wiping out bands of looters and robbers down in the tunnels, which I did and was awarded with a few bits of fancier armor. Finally I discovered the NPC that I was originally tasked to find, and he instructed me to kill or be killed in a fight against his minions to show that I'm properly prepared. How very Sith-like.
That's where the demo ended, and it'll be interesting to see how a higher level character with a wider range of skills might play out, especially in a group. If you haven't already, you should probably head over to our video page and watch the space combat trailer, and then join the rest of us in hoping this game might be ready for launch sometime soon.
