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The Old Republic MMO: DEUX?!?!?!?!
12 years ago
If you've been around me a while, you know a few things about me.
You may know I love Star Wars.
You may know that I have a deep, intense loathing of Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games. The closest one ever got to snagging me was EVE, and it lost me when a chap in a monstrous battlecruiser flew out of nowhere and eliminated my wee mining ship while filling the chat screen with repeats of 'lolusucknoob!'
So, sit around the campfi-Ah, I mean, *glowlamp* and I'll tell you all a tale, dear readers.
The year was 2003, near Christmas. 9/11 was still smarting and we had a fascinating year in film! The X-Men Sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean, 2 Fast, 2 Furious, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Matrix Reloaded AND Revolutions, Finding Nemo, Bruce Almighty and... the very expensive fanfiction known as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew, God rest their souls, undertook its final flight and burned up on reentry. America seized Baghdad, ending the Hussein regime, the Prime Minister of Serbia was assassinated, Lithuania and Malta joined the EU, we put the Spitzer space telescope in orbit and Libya admitted to trying to build a nuke.
The Star Wars prequels were fresh off the grill and it hadn't sunk in yet how much they blew mighty chunks.
At least to many...
As a younger man, I found myself unable to articulate what was missing from the prequels. That little dash of Star Wars *magic*.
I also LOVE many of the Star Wars novels, joining Luke, Han, Leia, Lando, Chewie, Artoo, Threepio and Han and Leia's children on amazing adventures! The Han Solo trilogy, the Jedi Academy trilogy, the Timothy Zahn novels, the Young Jedi Knights! OHHH! So many great books....
Then, something changed. Something that would see my inner child playing happily, reading these Star Wars books and would come up to my inner child, take the book away, rip it apart, pee on it, kick my inner child over and stomp on it until all joy was wrung out. Something that set a precedent that would cause George Lucas himself to personally declare it non-canon.
That hideous abomination was known as the New Jedi Order series. I had been reading the more recently (Anything published after 2000) published Star Wars books and watching as authors gleefully destroyed the universe and characters I had grown up with and loved. Killing Chewbacca, then Anakin, then Mara Jade, then Jacen (After compacting him into Stock Sith Lord #4,350) and generally taking a massive, watery shit all over that which I held dear.
The stunted writers behind those books didn't know (Or care) that people don't read Star Wars books for DARKER AND EDGIER stories. They don't read Star Wars to watch the characters get ground up and spat out (And on). They read Star Wars books to join the characters they grew up loving on an adventure.
That's it, right there, as JonTron laments about Banjo and Kazooie, it's *NOT* about how much woe you can inflict on the characters. Star Wars is about the adventure! Now that's not to say dark and edgy doesn't have its place in fiction. It's what made Battlestar Galactica WORK so well.
But as Mr. Plinkett pointed out in his review of Episode 3, darker and edgier does not a good Star Wars make.
The lack of magic in the prequels and the lack of basic human compassion in the books was not lost on the highly talented Bioware writers.
Knights of the Old Republic was released in that same year...
Now, they knew they would be slaves to the new, uncomfortable rules being laid down by Episodes 1 and.... ugh... 2. So they turned on the Way Back Machine, placing us in a time thousands of years prior to the events of the Battle of Yavin.
They built a universe (Partially inspired by the comics set in the same era, but mostly from scratch) part and parcel, including a few memorable locations
The result...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl8m.....tu.be&t=8s
The storyline was compelling, with a cast of colorful, likable characters who all have their own stories to learn about and a villain with clear motives.
And a twist... that is worthy of Empire Strikes Back... Learning exactly WHO Revan was and what drove her.
Great, right?! Magnificent game. Great story, fun gameplay, variable difficulty... it's a beautiful thing.
Then came the sequel, this time by Obsidian.
And my God... The writing...
See, it's one thing to use the RPG element of leveling up as being synonymous with 'getting stronger' or 'learning more'.
Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, turns it into an actual element of the story itself! Your character is a Jedi Exile who has been so deeply wounded in spirit that she has a gaping hole in her heart. As you play, your character levels up and your teacher, Kreia, tells her that the more wounds in the universe she either mends or rips open, the more she's unconsciously filling that hole. More sinister however, is when she mentions all the people and creatures The Exile has slain... That she, the Exile, deep down, *hungers* and that is being filled with the lives of those she claims.
Again, we're introduced to a cast of characters who are each fascinating to learn about. And in many cases, through dialogue and dialogue options, more about your character is revealed.
And the villains... THE VILLAINS... Nothing I write would do them any justice at all. One, more a *force* than a man and the other, a fractured beast. The dialogue between the Exile and him is downright haunting.
When using the Restored Content mods, this game is a true masterpiece.
So fast forward to 2011!
I get word there's a new Knights of the Old Republic game set to come out!!!!
I'm so completely happy...!
Then...
I see...
What kind...
Of game it is...
It's an MMO.
By EA.
It's...
An MMO... by EA...
...
...
...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s
Say it again, Vader...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s
Say it AGAIN, Vader...!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s
SAY IT AGAIN!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s
...
So, I want you to understand how betrayed I felt. Like someone ripped my heart out and used it for hockey.
Here it is, a series with a history of excellent storytelling, and what do they do with it?
They make it into a genre of game with a story more stunted and base than fucking PONG!!!
And SHOCK OF FRAKKING SHOCKS...
The game sucked.
Badly.
And a friend of mine (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE >:( ) just *LOVED* rubbing it in. 'It's an MMO now Zucca! It's canon now Zucca!'
I give him plenty of slack for a lot of things, but this was a mean-spirited, as he would put it, dick-punch. >_>
But it gets EVEN BETTER!!!
In the two KOTOR games, the default (Hence CANON, hence all the concept artwork, all the PLASTIC MODELS that came out for the tabletop) Darth Revan and The Jedi Exile were women. In the second game, Atton Rand refers to Revan as a woman and all references to Reven thereafter speak of her as a woman.
Why, look at the art on DA alone! http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&a.....p;q=Jedi+Exile NOT A WHOLE LOT OF WIENERS TO BE HAD!!!!
That's right. Strong, powerful, independent women with rich tales. Women who aren't damsels in distress, who command the Force, who can do amazing feats! In Revan's case, a woman who is a *gifted*, master strategist. In the Exile's case, a woman who commanded armies, who is in a constant inner turmoil and conflict.
Women whose appeal comes from their sheer excellence, not from how tight their jumpsuits are or how they tickle the pickle.
What's the MMO do with them?
Turns them into dudes.
Both of them. Not just Revan and not just The Exile, but both of them.
Developers: *Wraps an arm around your shoulder, gesturing outward with the other* Penises! Penises EVERYWHERE!
Thanks a fucking bunch.
Thanks a real, mighty, fucking bunch, you base, verminous, sexist assholes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsbYx6hevoQ
Amen Charton Heston. Amen.
So, after the torment... after the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF_Ca45JRFs moment, after the torture of watching the good name of KoTOR get dragged through swine poo-mud, I finally settled down, moved on, rubbed it from my mind and that was it.
NEW KoTOR GAME COMING OUT SOON!
Oh, thank GOD! No doubt they learned their lesson after critics and gamers panned the Old Republic MMO for the piece of crap it is and have decided to pick up where we left off!
So what's it about? What'll it be like?
...
...
It's ANOTHER MMO by EA!
...
...
...!!!!
http://youtu.be/HY-03vYYAjA?t=6s
You may know I love Star Wars.
You may know that I have a deep, intense loathing of Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games. The closest one ever got to snagging me was EVE, and it lost me when a chap in a monstrous battlecruiser flew out of nowhere and eliminated my wee mining ship while filling the chat screen with repeats of 'lolusucknoob!'
So, sit around the campfi-Ah, I mean, *glowlamp* and I'll tell you all a tale, dear readers.
The year was 2003, near Christmas. 9/11 was still smarting and we had a fascinating year in film! The X-Men Sequel, Pirates of the Caribbean, 2 Fast, 2 Furious, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Matrix Reloaded AND Revolutions, Finding Nemo, Bruce Almighty and... the very expensive fanfiction known as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew, God rest their souls, undertook its final flight and burned up on reentry. America seized Baghdad, ending the Hussein regime, the Prime Minister of Serbia was assassinated, Lithuania and Malta joined the EU, we put the Spitzer space telescope in orbit and Libya admitted to trying to build a nuke.
The Star Wars prequels were fresh off the grill and it hadn't sunk in yet how much they blew mighty chunks.
At least to many...
As a younger man, I found myself unable to articulate what was missing from the prequels. That little dash of Star Wars *magic*.
I also LOVE many of the Star Wars novels, joining Luke, Han, Leia, Lando, Chewie, Artoo, Threepio and Han and Leia's children on amazing adventures! The Han Solo trilogy, the Jedi Academy trilogy, the Timothy Zahn novels, the Young Jedi Knights! OHHH! So many great books....
Then, something changed. Something that would see my inner child playing happily, reading these Star Wars books and would come up to my inner child, take the book away, rip it apart, pee on it, kick my inner child over and stomp on it until all joy was wrung out. Something that set a precedent that would cause George Lucas himself to personally declare it non-canon.
That hideous abomination was known as the New Jedi Order series. I had been reading the more recently (Anything published after 2000) published Star Wars books and watching as authors gleefully destroyed the universe and characters I had grown up with and loved. Killing Chewbacca, then Anakin, then Mara Jade, then Jacen (After compacting him into Stock Sith Lord #4,350) and generally taking a massive, watery shit all over that which I held dear.
The stunted writers behind those books didn't know (Or care) that people don't read Star Wars books for DARKER AND EDGIER stories. They don't read Star Wars to watch the characters get ground up and spat out (And on). They read Star Wars books to join the characters they grew up loving on an adventure.
That's it, right there, as JonTron laments about Banjo and Kazooie, it's *NOT* about how much woe you can inflict on the characters. Star Wars is about the adventure! Now that's not to say dark and edgy doesn't have its place in fiction. It's what made Battlestar Galactica WORK so well.
But as Mr. Plinkett pointed out in his review of Episode 3, darker and edgier does not a good Star Wars make.
The lack of magic in the prequels and the lack of basic human compassion in the books was not lost on the highly talented Bioware writers.
Knights of the Old Republic was released in that same year...
Now, they knew they would be slaves to the new, uncomfortable rules being laid down by Episodes 1 and.... ugh... 2. So they turned on the Way Back Machine, placing us in a time thousands of years prior to the events of the Battle of Yavin.
They built a universe (Partially inspired by the comics set in the same era, but mostly from scratch) part and parcel, including a few memorable locations
The result...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl8m.....tu.be&t=8s
The storyline was compelling, with a cast of colorful, likable characters who all have their own stories to learn about and a villain with clear motives.
And a twist... that is worthy of Empire Strikes Back... Learning exactly WHO Revan was and what drove her.
Great, right?! Magnificent game. Great story, fun gameplay, variable difficulty... it's a beautiful thing.
Then came the sequel, this time by Obsidian.
And my God... The writing...
See, it's one thing to use the RPG element of leveling up as being synonymous with 'getting stronger' or 'learning more'.
Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, turns it into an actual element of the story itself! Your character is a Jedi Exile who has been so deeply wounded in spirit that she has a gaping hole in her heart. As you play, your character levels up and your teacher, Kreia, tells her that the more wounds in the universe she either mends or rips open, the more she's unconsciously filling that hole. More sinister however, is when she mentions all the people and creatures The Exile has slain... That she, the Exile, deep down, *hungers* and that is being filled with the lives of those she claims.
Again, we're introduced to a cast of characters who are each fascinating to learn about. And in many cases, through dialogue and dialogue options, more about your character is revealed.
And the villains... THE VILLAINS... Nothing I write would do them any justice at all. One, more a *force* than a man and the other, a fractured beast. The dialogue between the Exile and him is downright haunting.
When using the Restored Content mods, this game is a true masterpiece.
So fast forward to 2011!
I get word there's a new Knights of the Old Republic game set to come out!!!!
I'm so completely happy...!
Then...
I see...
What kind...
Of game it is...
It's an MMO.
By EA.
It's...
An MMO... by EA...
...
...
...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s
Say it again, Vader...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s
Say it AGAIN, Vader...!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s
SAY IT AGAIN!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s
...
So, I want you to understand how betrayed I felt. Like someone ripped my heart out and used it for hockey.
Here it is, a series with a history of excellent storytelling, and what do they do with it?
They make it into a genre of game with a story more stunted and base than fucking PONG!!!
And SHOCK OF FRAKKING SHOCKS...
The game sucked.
Badly.
And a friend of mine (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE >:( ) just *LOVED* rubbing it in. 'It's an MMO now Zucca! It's canon now Zucca!'
I give him plenty of slack for a lot of things, but this was a mean-spirited, as he would put it, dick-punch. >_>
But it gets EVEN BETTER!!!
In the two KOTOR games, the default (Hence CANON, hence all the concept artwork, all the PLASTIC MODELS that came out for the tabletop) Darth Revan and The Jedi Exile were women. In the second game, Atton Rand refers to Revan as a woman and all references to Reven thereafter speak of her as a woman.
Why, look at the art on DA alone! http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&a.....p;q=Jedi+Exile NOT A WHOLE LOT OF WIENERS TO BE HAD!!!!
That's right. Strong, powerful, independent women with rich tales. Women who aren't damsels in distress, who command the Force, who can do amazing feats! In Revan's case, a woman who is a *gifted*, master strategist. In the Exile's case, a woman who commanded armies, who is in a constant inner turmoil and conflict.
Women whose appeal comes from their sheer excellence, not from how tight their jumpsuits are or how they tickle the pickle.
What's the MMO do with them?
Turns them into dudes.
Both of them. Not just Revan and not just The Exile, but both of them.
Developers: *Wraps an arm around your shoulder, gesturing outward with the other* Penises! Penises EVERYWHERE!
Thanks a fucking bunch.
Thanks a real, mighty, fucking bunch, you base, verminous, sexist assholes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsbYx6hevoQ
Amen Charton Heston. Amen.
So, after the torment... after the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF_Ca45JRFs moment, after the torture of watching the good name of KoTOR get dragged through swine poo-mud, I finally settled down, moved on, rubbed it from my mind and that was it.
NEW KoTOR GAME COMING OUT SOON!
Oh, thank GOD! No doubt they learned their lesson after critics and gamers panned the Old Republic MMO for the piece of crap it is and have decided to pick up where we left off!
So what's it about? What'll it be like?
...
...
It's ANOTHER MMO by EA!
...
...
...!!!!
http://youtu.be/HY-03vYYAjA?t=6s
But get the enhanced sound mod and the Juhanni Cheetah mod. Trust me, you'll thank me for it...
Is EA trying to kill itself now?!
You are making a game that will directly compete with your other MMO. MMOs are not like Call of Duty. You Can't keep making them and--
Goddamn BioWare is finally going to die.
EA wanted the Reapers walking around on the ground like Godzilla because it would 'look great for the trailer'.
EA wanted the Illusive Man not to be a grey area benefactor alluding to the fact that it's a big, diverse universe as was implied in ME2, but REALLY A BAD GUY ALL ALONG! Wut a tweest! Since as we all know, the universe is split EVENLY down the middle between Reapers and their slaves and Good Guys.
EA also wanted Mordin to die because 'He's old and we need to make the stakes seem high, so he's the one who should be booted.
EA decided on dropping the original, better thought out ending, leaving the... one that was put in... and reneged it when everyone pointed out how abysmally stupid it was, putting out free DLC that scrubbed it... in the most ineffective way possible.
EA swallowed up the Origin Studios, creators of Wing Commander, Privateer, Crusader and other titans of the DOS era and what did they do? They sat on it for a decade and a half and released an ad saying 'ORIGIN, A decade of excellence reborn!' and when I clicked that ad in a fit of joyful excitement, seeing visions of Next Gen Wing Commander and Privateer games, what did I find? A crappy Steam knockoff that EA unveiled as a way to even FURTHER piss of honest gamers who pay for the product, disregarding the thousands of E-Mails telling them that hackers and pirates will break down any wall EA erects, so making it harder on the paying customer to play the stupid game is antithetical to any common damned sense...
That last one hit me CLOSE TO HOME... I grew up with Origin's games...
So what I'm trying to say is...
Screw the EA marketing team. I don't blame the coders, I don't blame the execs, I don't blame the undeserving. But the marketers? Couldn't be held responsible for my actions if someone introduced themselves to me as a marketer for EA Games...
The Illusive Man and Cerberus I can sorta understand. A) Exposing yourself to reaper tech has ALWAYS been shown to be a horrible idea, as indoctrination always results. Like any good Lovecraftian entity the allure of trying to grasp a power that's far too dangerous for human hands was just too much.Hell 2 proved a Reaper CORPSE can still indoctrinate easily. The Illusive Man played with fire and ended up losing himself to the flame.
Mordin at least got an honorable send-off. Unlike Thane.
But the execs? they're to blame. They honestly think turning Battlefield into a CoD knock-off, they refuse to adapt thier dinosaur tactics, they allow everything to be rendered market tested to hell and back until it becomes a sterile, soulless mess (Like FUSE).
A ship is only as good as it's Captain, and the USS Electronic Arts (PWAAAAAHHHHHHAAAAAAA what a ironic name) has very poor leadership. When you fire thousands of employees on your mobile division to "Focus on triple a games" THEn later fire thousands of your triple a divisions to focus on mobile games, I think your board of executives needs to be changed and fucking fast.
In short, EA's entire corperate structure is toxic. The marketers are only one part is a poisoned system. The only way it could get worse if the new CEO was Joffery Barattheon or something.
It shrinks the scope of the universe a lot when you make all villains draw from the same roots.
How much better would it have been to have The Illusive Man 'disown' Shepard after Shepard destroyed the Collector base and telling Shepard that if they ever cross paths again, he'll see Shepard eliminated and from time to time during the game, Cerberus operatives try to throw a monkey wrench into your operations. Or if you kept the collector base, Shepard gets a pat on the head and told to keep up the good work, but learns that human colonies are still being abducted. Shepard traces all this back to Cerberus and finds that the Illusive Man has been kidnapping people to fill a captured Collector ship in order to create a sort of 'Noah's Ark' project, that Illusive Man is planning on flinging the ship deep into space with a several thousand year circular trajectory. He's putting animal and plant samples on Earth into this ship and all these people Cerberus has kidnapped.
Illusive Man asks Shepard: Come with us! You're the best humanity has to offer and that's the kind of thing that must be preserved.
Shepard says no dice and is left with a choice... Let him and the Ark go or stop the project.
C'mon... that would've been way better than 'Le gasp! He was with the only bad guys in this universe AWWWWWWLL ALOOOOOOOWNG!!!!
Just my two cents, but adjusted for inflation against EA's crippling stupidity, that's more like fifty bucks... >_>
"Don't. This stuff is dangerous. you saw what happened to Saren!"
I'd find the ark thing hard to believe, given the clear Lovecraftian influence and what we know about reaper tech and indoctrination. Again, the fact a reaper that had been dead for millennia could still indoctrinate is a clear warning reaper tech is a Pandora's Box. A Forbidden Fruit; it's just going to end badly for all parties involved, and anyone who thinks they can outsmart the reapers with their own tech is deluding themselves. A good chunk of the reaper plan is hoping you'll do exactly that and just make things easier for them.
What EA does is the equivalent of getting the sail specialists, midshipmen, surgeon and cook to handle the cannons while the cannoneers stand back and futilely attempt to advise them.
Just because you normally know what you're doing doesn't mean you *always* know what you're doing.
Bungie might have been right to flee Microaoft.
Dude, did you play ME3 and DAII?!
And I kinda blame the execs. Tone deaf outta touch with anything approximating reality sorts kinda need the rug yanked out from underneath 'em before they catch on. Unfortunately once you're one of the biggest companies around you can get away with being utterly incompetent, since it's easy to just buy out the competition.