Remember, companions are very important to the game. Besides fighting alongside your character, they'll do other menial tasks such as collecting resources, forging items, or going out on diplomatic missions. Even the ones not currently being used on a planet will be based on the player's ship, performing passive duties while the player works on the ground. It's a pretty fantastic way of dealing with many of the classical MMO elements without becoming a drag on the action.
But the companion element of the game is not the only thing unique with The Old Republic. The most fascinating way the game approaches multiplayer has to be the way conversations are had. It plays much like a conversation in Mass Effect, but with numerous people. An NPC will chat away, and every player makes a response. The game applies a random number to each character, and the one with the highest number gets to make the response. I liked to play my Consular like a condescending jerk, and while my fellow journalists stuck to the “straight and narrow,” my hero would use every opportunity to lay down some disdain. With four different voices offering commentary in a conversation, it creates some of the most realistic dialogue I've seen in a game...ever. People can dissent and disagree, while others may be very compliant, and you'll start to become attached to other player characters and their personality quirks players give them. This “group discussion” element is oddly my favorite thing about the game.
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PvP wasn't something we were able to play, but there was discussion on how this will play out. Battles will take place in “warzones” with up to 8v8 set-ups, and instead of traditional PvP elements, players will be tasked with attacking or defending points on a map, or in the case of the Alderaan Warzone orient giant guns to take out enemy ships. With experience earned for PvP, as well as tokens earned that can be spent on PvP consumables and equipable items, players can focus solely on PvP should they wish.
As far as planets go, outside of Coruscant and Tython, Bioware was keen on showing off some of the in-game screenshots for future planets players will visit. Planets like Alderaan and Tatooine will provide mostly familiar sights for players accustomed to Star Wars, but they've got wholly different rulers and factions running these planets at this time, so don't expect them to be boring. Even more exciting are areas taking place inside a night club, a flashy and somewhat original place for raids, as well as a derelict world where massive ship ruins dwarf players as they wander about. Clearly, Bioware and co. has spent a long time making sure there are lots to explore in this game. Additionally, each of these worlds are promised to be much larger than the origin planets like Tython, itself a fairly substantial place to explore.
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These planets are also incredibly good looking. Even on Tython, different segments of the planet range from the Jedi Temple to the Pilgrim's camp, from the Jedi ruins to the Flesh Eater's region, yet all of them are clearly areas of Tython. Visually, it's one of the most impressive MMOs set for release, with very little in boring stretches of land made up of bland textures. Each area feels like an area, and it's good to see the level design is being paid as much attention as anywhere else. The voice work is probably one area that outshines this all, with every line of dialogue performed by voice actors. Not only that, the lip synch and facial animations are almost as good as BioWare's best console titles, and considering they have the equivalent of eight plot lines (one for each class), it's easy to be impressed with what BioWare has already done.
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Coming away from The Old Republic, I'm more than optimistic. It's an incredibly polished game, and even more than that, it's plainly fun. The stories already show a lot of dynamism and charm, and the complexity of the game is already visible. It's a little hard to tell if the combat is going to compete with other successful MMOs, it looks like it does just fine for this early game stuff. End game is impossible to gauge, but it's obvious that BioWare is looking to invest a lot of time in this area of the game, as well as the PvP. Once they make the cooperative elements of the game less buggy, they'll have a title that is already leaps and bounds better than many MMOs on the market, and if they apply the same amount of polish to all areas of the game that they applied to these origin worlds, BioWare, LucasArts, and EA may have the next big MMO on the marketplace.
