Also, by way of addendum: I realize that just about every MMO and MUD before WoW has had the two-sided thing going on for it; I just read Bioware’s comments on the game to imply that they were thinking of really shaking things up insofar as how these games work.

Mostly I just pine for the more open-ended vision exemplified by Evan and Dan’s old Bespin MUSH (with working carbonite chamber!).

By Jason on 04.07.09 1:39 pm

You mean Jason that in realms of complicated and complex issues (war, religion, cloned warriors, Intergalatic rebellion) that you think it would be more interesting and exciting to allow for players to have shades of gray and none cookie cutter roles. Hmmm. Next you’ll be telling me that you’d like good voice acting for main characters in shooters!

Anyhow, I was a very unlikely player of this game, but I’d be more interested if everything wasn’t done by some sort of checkbox (Rebel v. Empire, etc.)

By Chris on 04.07.09 1:50 pm

I too was disappointed at this announcement, since my favorite characters in the universe are the “shades of grey” folk (smugglers, bounty hunters, mercenaries, etc.).

I also know that pull-quotes on blogs aren’t always representative of the whole story, though (a potential benefit to working inside the sausage factory) and upon reading the developer’s blogs, it does sound like there’s a little more leeway than that quote suggests:

Each hunt has its own flavor and each hunt brings with it a unique set of challenges and choices. Do you follow the job’s description to the letter and kill the wayward daughter of a powerful officer or do you bring her in alive and force the man to do his own dirty work? Will you take a bribe to fake a kill you didn’t make—will you switch sides when it’s clear the person you’re hunting has more honor and justification for his actions than the one who sent you? Does your honor come from getting the job done or being a good person? Is your loyalty to your crew, your conscience or your credits?

That’s more interesting to me. It’s still not making me think “hey, I need to try this game,” but I’ll be keeping an eye on the development. BioWare certainly seems to have a pretty good track record, and if the finished product is any good, then maybe it will be the first MMO I’ll really be interested in playing.

Then again, it probably won’t run on any hardware that I own, so maybe not.

By Dan on 04.07.09 2:48 pm

I’m sympathetic to what you’re saying, but I have yet to come across a game that boasts the possibility of rich moral complexity that doesn’t wind up devolving into cartoonishly good, cartoonishly bad and (optionally), super-boring. See also: Fable, KOTOR, etc. I’m not convinced that this is really just a persistent failure of game designers — I’m beginning to think it may be an inherent feature of the medium that’s only very rarely transcended — and consequently I now welcome games where the developer has enough confidence in their story to put me on rails.

By Tom on 04.08.09 12:49 am

I like linear game narratives just fine when they’re done well, but I still think there’s something to be said for the different kind of identification that’s made possible when you can customize a character and know that it can be played in different ways. I don’t think that it’s an inherent limitation of the medium itself so much as a matter of convenience for developers—like, you could make more “complete A-hole” actions possible for the protagonist in games like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect, but it would be time-consuming and probably just piss of critics more when they found out you could make a character that eats babies or whatever.

Honestly, the content of the original post is not as much about Star Wars as it is about me getting irked that this industry is so risk-averse in formulating new game mechanics even when the source material they build upon would seem to demand something different. Even if I had played the Star Wars MMO, I would’ve had no interest in playing a smuggler or a bounty hunter. (Crossing fingers that ewoks or jawas are an option.)

By Jason on 04.08.09 4:25 pm