While reading the final part of John Walkers’ “Bastard of the Old Republic” series, I wondered how BioWare was going to translate its infamous Light/Dark side meter into their MMO. It’s 2009, after all, not 2003 — one-or-the-other personalities are so passe.
You’re probably familiar with KOTOR, but if not, a brief recap of that system: as you played through the campaign, decisions and dialogue choices would shift your force meter from light side to neutral to dark side. It was pretty innovative at the time, and BioWare’s gone nuts with it ever since: Jade Empire, KOTOR 2 (not BioWare, but still their baby), Mass Effect — all feature this “Devil or Angel” system. In KOTOR, it had a minor impact on the story as you played through — opening up some options, closing others, and affecting dialogue that others had with you — until the very end, when a major choice would make your path irreversible. Yet as has been noted, for all its innovation, this system was grossly black-and-white. You either were the saintliest of saints or Jack the Ripper, with the biggest sin of being neither somewhere between.
There wasn’t room for nuance, for more character development in the personality department than pure evil or pure good. And that’s not the way the world works, is it? Dungeons & Dragons even knew that, back in the day, with their oddly acute alignment system, which had two axis instead of one: good/neutral/evil, lawful/neutral/evil. So if BioWare’s serious about refining their system for a MMO, how might they do it?
The first thing is that they will do it. From the official FAQ:
Yes, during character selection you will align with the Republic or the Sith Empire. In addition, throughout the game you will also be faced with many decisions which can change your path down the Light or Dark side of the Force.
This means that while TOR is a two-faction game, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all Republic players will be “good” or all Sith “bad” — your choices will swing you up and down on the Force rating. So far, that stinks of KOTOR’s simplicity, but it is intriguing that a MMO could have a faction where players sit opposed to each other inside of it — good Sithians vs. bad Sithians.
We haven’t heard anything more about that, but here’s sincerely hoping that (a) the system will allow for more complexity and nuance than the same ol’ Light Side/Dark Side switcharoo, and (b) that your stance in the Force will have a meaningful impact on your game — and no, I don’t care if it closes me off from content or ticks people off because of it. I’m tired of game devs pussyfooting around trying not to offend everybody, and by doing so, create homogenized gameplay that doesn’t react to your choices, decisions and actions differently than others.
It’d be great if there was at least a second axis to this system, or if BioWare would truly reward (in terms of story and content) folks who carefully tred the neutral side of the Force. I’d love to see them go even further, and have Force rankings broken down into attribute subsections, such as Greed vs. Generosity, Hate vs. Love, Mercy vs. Vengance, and so on. Even the very worst of people have good qualities, and the very best a few bad quirks, so why not step it up in video games and reflect more than a single dimension of personality?
Yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing how it all works out. I’m thinking that it’ll probably be more along the lines of Mass Effect’s paragon/renegade scales, which was something of an evolution of the KOTOR system. Earning points in one didn’t necessarily negate the consequences of the other and had impact on your other skills…specifically charm and intimidate, which made for more complex decision making than just the good and evil sliding scale.
I have to say, I never found the “Devil or Angel” system very innovative. Not in comparison to other games where your actions dictated your direction (Black & White immediately comes to mind, but so does several games in the Ultima series) and certainly not in comparison to the sort of choices people have long asked for within RPGs.
I think the reason it stands out is because KOTOR hit such mass-market popularity as an RPG and that generally has happened most with games that are so RPG-lite / action-RPG that I’d hardly call them RPGs at all (*cough* Diablo *cough*).
I’d love to see BioWare go further with TOR, but from what we’ve seen so far, I suspect it’s more likely to go less with the serious choices and more the typical “choose sides at character creation” that we’ve seen from MMORPGs.
I think it comes down to realistic choices for content creation. There’s a strong push, mostly financially, for MMORPGs to create mostly content that everyone has the potential to see, so individual choices and long branches paths are very unlikely. Unfortunately.
I know I have low expectations of TOR, which may seem odd since BioWare puts out such good quality product and I have tons of respect for Gordon Walton too– but I also see them striving for mass-market dominance with TOR, so I can’t see them using it as much of an innovation platform.
Interestingly we’ve been discussing this on teamspeak a lot and whether your individual actions will impact who you end up grouping with.. since I play in a semi-fixed group, we’re all waiting to hear how they plan on dealing with those kinds of things.
The D&D alignment scales are Good/Neutral/Evil and Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic, by the way.
I dunno how much emphasis there will be on the “neutral side” of the Force. Lucas’ works were explicitly Manichean, after all – every Force user is either all good or all evil, and there’s not really any room in between. The expanded universe offered more complexity of course, and so it’s possible we’ll get some chiaroscuro, some interplay between dark and light to create greater texture and realism. It’s a difficult balance to find, between accurately manifesting Lucas’ ideals, and making a game with actual depth; personally I’d prefer the latter.