IGN: Story Matters In The Old Republic

Last week at the lift of the press embargo, IGN unveiled no less than 4 separate articles on their experience in the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta. What’s more is they made a promise for one new article each day this week. Today they began delivering that promise with their next piece on the game: story.

As we all know, this game has story. And IGN’s Charles Onyett talks about his experiences and what it means for him:

The Old Republic beta hooked me. I was up slaughtering enemies of the Republic until the embarrassing hours of the morning. Eventually, I had to ask myself why. The gameplay feels very safe, very much like World of Warcraft. The crafting systems are well done, the world looks pretty, and the companion system is a lot of fun to play around with. It’s a good game, even better than I expected. But still, at this point in my life, after playing quite a few MMOs, the presence of good gameplay systems isn’t enough to make me lose sleep.  It was the story presentation that pulled me along. I knew exactly who I was fighting for, I knew my foes, and I could make decisions about how to proceed. I was, in fact, role-playing.

That’s a ringing endorsement on the effectiveness of using personal story as a driver for the otherwise potentially mundane tasks you’ll be performing. Still, Onyett offered an opinion on what this might mean down the road:

While I admire a lot of what BioWare’s done with story in The Old Republic, I still fear decision-making may eventually feel like a grind. There’s a meter for Light and Dark side points, there’s a meter for social points, there’s a meter for how much my companions like me. Numbers are associated with everything, and I worry after extensive play time the sense of context could disintegrate, defeating the system’s purpose and making me feel like I’m grinding morality. 

Definitely head on over to IGN for the full read, and don’t forget to follow their coverage the rest of the week as they release new content every day!