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E3 2009: Star Wars: The Old Republic Demo

Smugglers, Sith and story-driven action!
by Steve Butts

June 2, 2009 - Day one, hour one of the show there's one place that I wanted to be: front row at the Star Wars: The Old Republic demo. The team at BioWare made some ambitious promises when we originally debuted the game, and we were excited to see whether or not they'd live up to their pledge to bring story to the forefront of the MMO experience. After seeing the first ever live demo of the game at E3 today, we're happy to say that BioWare is delivering the Star Wars MMO experience that we hoped The Old Republic would be.

First, the team walked us through the trailer that was shown at yesterday's press conference. The trailer shows the Sacking of Coruscant, an important event in the history leading up to The Old Republic. Apart from setting the stage for the Galactic Civil War, the trailer also showcases the cinematic combat and emotional weight that players will experience in the final game.

After viewing the trailer, the teams from BioWare and LucasArts loaded up the game for our first ever live demo. We started by exploring the new Bounty Hunter class and the first of two new planets for the game. The bounty hunter, Ayrik, begins on Hutta at the start of The Great Hunt, a massive contest organized by the Mandalorians and designed to find the best new bounty hunters in the galaxy. Through his mentor, Braden, Ayrik starts the game as one of the more likely candidates.

The interactions with Braden gave the developers a chance to show off the massive amount of voiced dialogue in this game. The Old Republic will be the first fully-voiced MMOs; all the NPCs as well as all the PCs will have full dialogue. Moreover, the main interactions with the NPCs will play out in cinematic cutscenes that allow the player to input their own responses in a Mass Effect-style dialogue wheel. As Braden introduces Ayrik to his companions, a Nar Shaddan tech specialists and a Trandoshan security officer, Ayrik has the option to respond in ways that emphasize his moods. Whether he responds with humility or arrogance, cruelty or greed, will impact the way the rest of the story unfolds.

After playing through the cutscene, Ayrik heads outside to explore Hutta. This is the first time that Hutta is being displayed in video game form, so we were happy to see the ways that the art team has rendered the industrial wasteland of this Hutt stronghold. Through the sickly green mists in the air ahead of us we can see the palace of the Hutts protected by screens of Fa'athra gangsters.

As Ayrik moved up to the palace, we had the chance to see the combat system in action. The bounty hunter is primarily a ranged attacker and makes use of special attacks like rockets and stun darts to maintain an advantage over his enemies. The requisite flamethrower attacks are thrown in as well for when the bounty hunter finds himself in need of some timely crowd control. All the abilities are triggered using a traditional MMO hotbar, but the actual action seems a bit more fluid and dynamic than the usual round-by-round combat in most MMOs.

The new Smuggler class also makes use of ranged attacks but doesn't have access to the same armor that the bounty hunters can use. To help even the odds in combat, the smuggler can use a new cover system. We saw this in action on another new planet, Ord Mantell, where the smuggler was running guns to the Rebels in their war against the Separatists. The opportunity for cover is displayed in the environment as a faint green crouching outline. When the smuggler takes cover, he gains access to new abilities and is protected from the attacks of his enemies. Of course, not all the smuggler's combats take place at far ranges. Should an enemy get too close, the smuggler can stun them with a quick kick to the crotch and then finish them off by shooting them in the head.

Each of these two new classes has a unique role to play in the Galactic Civil War, and because they're on different sides of the conflict, they won't share any of the same content. Anything that the smuggler plays through with the Rebellion will be off limits to the Imperial bounty hunter and vice versa.

The last half of our demo gave us the chance to see how one of these Civil War story points plays out. Called a "flashpoint," these story instances give players the chance to join together in groups and take on deep, story-based missions. In this particular case, a Sith player and a bounty hunter player grouped together to deliver a reprimand to an Imperial ship captain who had recently disobeyed a Gran Moff's order.

After fighting through waves of marines to get to the bridge, the pair of player characters confront Captain Orzik in a dialogue driven cutscene. The cool part about this cutscene is that different players are prompted for different responses. So after the captain tries to justify his action, the bounty hunter may have the chance to direct the conversation. The conversation culminates with a decision to kill the captain or let him live. The team's not quite sure how they're going to handle big decisions like this and preserve each player's experience. Whether all the players will vote on the consequential dialogue choices or not hasn't been determined.

In our demo, we voted to kill the captain (as if there was ever any doubt). The second in command takes over and, with our brutality having given her a renewed sense of loyalty, decides to fulfill the Gran Moff's order and launch an attack on a Rebel capital ship. Standing on the bridge, you'll watch as your ship comes out of lightspeed right in front of the Rebel ship. Lasers begin firing and boarding pods come crashing into your ship. The new captain tells our two players that rebel soldiers have infiltrated the engine room and suggests that you head down to repel the boarders.

This sequence finally gave us the opportunity to see real lightsaber combat in action. Given that the players we were watching were only 8th level, there was an awful lot of cinematic action on the screen. The Sith character charged into combat with an array of awesome leaps, swings and stabs. The sense of connection between the lightsaber and the enemies was very believable, and the animations for the blocks and strikes enhanced the sense of realism.

But it's not just about the regular attacks. The Sith can use a range of Force powers, choking enemies or stunning them with lightning attacks. The bounty hunter can even jet up into the air and rain blaster fire down on his enemies from on high. As they took out Republic soldiers and infiltrators, our party of two eventually came into contact with a Jedi Padawan, the student of the Jedi Master who was the target of Capt. Orzik's originally order. After the Padawan is dispatched, the Jedi Master appears to take on our two characters.

Watching the three characters fight, using a range of Force powers, lightsaber attacks and bounty hunter tricks, really got us excited to see more of the game but, unfortunately, our demo ended with this final combat with the Sith brandishing his lightsaber and his enemy's in an awesome dual wield pose.

If this is the kind of thing we can expect from an 8th level encounter, we can't wait to see what else the team has in store for the game's higher levels.