In a recent BioWare developer blog concerning the Sith Warrior class, Neil Pollner clarified something that BioWare has been hedging at for some time now: that The Old Republic won’t be just “good guys” vs. “bad guys”, but good guys on the bad side, bad guys on the good side, good guys on a side they thought was good but it might not be, bad guys on a side they thought was bad but it might be, and so on. In other words, instead of a universe full of clear-cut, black-and-white contrasts, we’re going to get a whole lot of human shades of grey going on.
The point they make is with what is seen as the “Darth Vader archetype”, the Sith Warrior. The Sith Warrior
can serve dutifully and pound away by the letter of your master’s law, or you can risk plotting to someday destroy him and grab his power (as Vader reveals in his plea for Luke to join him). You can even have secret designs to redeem yourself, embrace the light and destabilize the Empire from within.
Darth Hater has an excellent article discussing this, and I wanted to chip in my two cents. For some people, the idea of a bad guy on the bad side actually being, well, a sheep in wolf’s clothing is repugnant. They want their evil black, insidious, uncomplicated. There’s been a lot of hoo-hah over how BioWare might let you make choices counter to what your class/faction might expect of you, but I think it’s actually very much in the spirit of Star Wars to do so.
On the surface of Star Wars, especially if you were only to see A New Hope, the franchise looks starkly dualistic. The good guy (Luke) wears whiter than white clothing and is nobler than King Arthur, the bad guy (Vader) is donned in black and does nothing but Force choke people and kill kittens through the entire film (hey, there were kittens on Alderaan, okay?). Good. Bad. Not a lot of wiggle room in the middle.
Yet you also had a “bad” good guy, Han Solo, who shot Greedo first (he DID), was initially out for just money, and only at the last minute had a change of heart. The film series expanded to show that the good guys weren’t always all that good — Luke flirts heavily with the Dark Side, Lando betrays his friend, and Obi-Wan Kenobi is revealed to be the biggest liar in the entire galaxy (from a certain point of view, of course). The bad guys, well, even they have a moment in the light, as Vader is redeemed back to the light side of the Force. It becomes a story about how the best of us can fall, and how the utterly fallen can be saved. In between of all that is a heapload of grey, with uncertain choices and vague morality.
One decision that always hits me is in Empire Strikes Back, when Luke receives the vision of his friends in pain and ignores the command of Yoda to go rescue them. Staying on Dagobah or leaving to Cloud City — neither of these were purely right or wrong, and both had positive and negative consequences attached. Luke followed his heart and did what he thought was best, but it still bit him hard in the end.
This is why I love that BioWare is opening the game up to something more intricate and nuanced than Angelic Good and Demonic Evil. We don’t often get choices between obviously good and evil like that, and so it feels off to play games where it is that simple. I mean, hey, I’m a Christian — I believe in absolutes, but if life was that simple the Bible would be about ten pages long. That’s not how it is. The world is complex, life is complex, and it’s not always easy to see where the right and wrong is. It doesn’t mean it’s not there and we should just shrug and give up trying, it just means that it takes experience, judgment, wisdom and discernment to figure out the right path.
That’s what I want in a game, and it’s one of the aspects of interactive storytelling that BioWare has proved extremely adept at telling. Maybe the choice I make for the right reasons will end badly, but that’s how it sometimes is. And if I want to be a good guy in a bad world (or vice versa)… why not?
(This thread may have spoilers of previous Bioware games)
I have a feeling Bioware has been working up towards a more nuanced choice system. I remember how in KotOR the evil choice was to from a widow trying to get off of Tatooine. As you moved towards Jade Empire you were to able to choose some more obvious choices, such as enslaving your companions in the party near the end.
Mass Effect is where the new model started to show up. There were several missions where your choices were not to be mean for the sake of being mean, but rather how to complete your mission. The best example is how you decide who will be sacrificed for the sake of the mission. Will you save the guy defending a bomb to ensure it will detonate or will you save an a squad with one of your companions and several aliens? Neither choice is necessarily good or evil, but how you execute your choice will be.
It’s this possibility for depth of character that keeps me interested in TOR. So many MMORPGs are black and white, which I guess makes sense for developers as they keep moving further and further away from the RPG element to focus on being an MMONumberCruncher.
I’ve got serious doubts about TOR as an MMO, it sounds more like a glorified chat lobby with instancing, but if the storyline and RPG side are awesome. Maybe I’ll have yet another game to subscribe to
Agreed, good post.
Wotcha Syp,
The Star Wars films may appear to be about the polar opposites of good and evil, but it’s very much a story about good people turning to evil, and their redemption.
It’s the biggest theme of the series, so a plotline allowing for that is perfectly in keeping with the source material.
Cheers,
Hawley.
That will be a wonderful game experience. I am quite tired of choices like this in games where you “decide your fate.”
1. Help the little old lady across the street.
2. Beat the little old lady’s cat to death with a tire iron and then rob her.
Oh yes, clearly my actions will add up over time… in the form of +1 or -1. I will be evil or good with no real shade of grey. A far more subtle approach would be much nicer.
Also, for the sake of just saying it, this post would make an awesome sermon. It could easily be woven in with religious values. Religion + Star Wars = Awesome.
Star Wars is a story of decisions and how they impact the world(s) around them.
I’m torn here, because BioWare has the storytelling chops, but if they have preset classes and factions, will the decisions in the story-related quests have actual impact, will they actually amount to much from your character?
Can you change sides? That would be a big factor to me and it seems the initial answers have been negative.
If it’s WoW / EQ with story threading, it’ll probably be hugely popular, but it may not grab me.
That will only work if Bioware has guts and adds real consequence to moral actions. You want to play sith against type and try to discreetly help jedi? Fine, but you should reach a point where you have to flee the sith for your life and for a time be hunted by everyone. You need to feel your choices have weight and risk.
I don’t think Bioware has the guts. Imagine this: you are a sith, ordered to exterminate a captured force-sensitive child who refuses to join. You have a choice to let him go, but if you do you actually lose experience, and get nothing positive out of it but doing what is right. Your superiors may even notice it and force you into dangerous work. Would you be willing to take the hit?
We’ll probably just see good, bad, neutral, and snarky options on a conversation tree, with the only consequence being whether or not you get force push instead of force lightning.
Glad to hear that there are going to be shades of grey in the character development.
As far as changing sides, I’m hoping they’ll implement betrayal quests similar to EQ2. I definitely think that defecting from one side to the other should be an option, but it should be a serious decision to make that comes with consequences for your character.
I really think that they should go skill based, not class based. It provides for a more believable “change” in the character. That or some kind of respec if you change your faction. ’twill be interesting.