It’s been a great year for those of us who love great stories and storytelling methods that transcend quest text boxes in our MMOs. Easily the highlight of my time in SWTOR so far has been the class storylines that BioWare crafted, and they delivered the goods as promised: These stories definitely made me feel more connected and involved with my character.
However, I was not quite expecting The Secret World to be giving SWTOR a race for the best storytelling of 2011-12 here. Both use similar methods — cutscenes and voice acting feature heavily in these games — but each comes off differently in the end. I thought it was time for a little compare-and-contrast between the two.
Voice Acting
BioWare holds some sort of world record for the most recorded dialogue in a video game at this point, but dang if TSW isn’t just as talky. Both games have a higher ratio of good voice acting to bad, and the better voice actors usually make more memorable NPCs.
SWTOR gets a leg up in this department by having your character be fully voiced (your character in TSW is functionally mute and doesn’t even shake hands for the most part). I like hearing my character actually talk, although it does take away some of my personality that I like to imagine injected into these toons.
TSW, on the other hand, offers more flavor text for its characters. You have the choice to just jump ahead to the quests or to take some time and get to know the characters by clicking on their dialogue options. Many of these are great short stories in and of themselves, and I highly encourage players to check them out.
Quest Assignment
Both games start quests the same way, by going into a cutscene mode where the NPC takes a long time spelling out why he or she wants you to do something. TSW gives you a summary box ahead of time, so if you’re in a hurry you can just skip the voice stuff, while SWTOR lets you skip the voice stuff and then you can find out afterward what you need to do from your quest tracker.
The main storyline in SWTOR almost always had much more interesting quest assignment cutscenes than its side quests. After a while, I grew really tired of talking to generic-looking and -sounding NPCs in that game that blathered on and on about a simple task that would have no greater meaning past the quest completion. TSW decided to downgrade side quests to a simple text box, usually letting the environment and text tell the story.
SWTOR was better in giving you dialogue options during these cutscenes so you felt more like a participant, instead of an observer, although you had to be careful about gaining and losing dark/light side points. So while TSW may have the more interesting quest story assignments, SWTOR kept me involved and let me do a little roleplay during this time.
Quest Progression
Once in a blue moon — usually during a main storyline — SWTOR would inject cutscenes and scripted events into the middle of a quest. This always felt like a rare event, however. TSW seems like it does more with this.
I think that TSW has a home field advantage between the two games because the contemporary world is so much easier to grasp and related to than a “galaxy far, far away.” A small island town under attack by the forces of darkness carries more weight than an entire alien planet facing extinction from a plague. The player also relates to the environment and objects more with TSW; we know what’s “normal,” so when something abnormal is shown, it’s jarring. SWTOR has no real “normal” to it; it’s a fantastic world that’s mostly removed from our own.
I liked it every time that SWTOR give me a choice during a mission instead of before or after it, especially when it put me on the spot and had me try to muddle out a situation with no clear good or bad angle to it. TSW’s missions don’t offer any choice in them that I’ve seen; you do the same things to complete it that everyone else does, and the outcome is always the same.
TSW’s advantage is how the investigation and sabotage missions really make you think and approach the mission from a new perspective. There’s a lot of thin lines between the virtual and real world going on, and I feel more involved as a player doing these than as a guy controlling an avatar doing the missions.
Quest Wrapup
TSW drops the ball here, I feel. The quests are usually great, but when you get to the end… a little text box gives you a pat on the back from your boss and your rewards. That’s it. No cutscene, nothing from the characters that assigned you the mission, nothing. And half of the time, the text box just uses a generic “WELL DONE” form.
SWTOR provides more of a satisfying wrapup from its NPCs. It’s good to hear them say “thanks” once in a while or give you a final choice that changes how it ends.
Personalities
While I certainly liked SWTOR, I’m finding that TSW resonates with me a lot more in the storytelling department. It’s hard to pinpoint just one reason, but if I had to pick, I’d say it’s that the NPCs feel more like real people to me. Maybe if SWTOR didn’t bother with voicing or cutscening any of the characters outside of your main class story, it would’ve felt similar, but after a while I felt like the original personalities in that game were washed away by the sea of disposable quest-givers.
TSW’s characters have another advantage, in that many of them have relationships with each other and the area that extend well outside of just one little quest hub. Without spoiling anything, I was delighted and surprised to discover that a character I met and did missions for in the first area had a huge secret unveiled in the second that made me rethink what I knew about him.
The NPCs in TSW have funny conversations between each other if there are two or more together in a room. Lately I’ve been doing the Innsmouth Academy quests (a really awesome hub), and all three of the characters you talk with have hilarious and sometimes poignant interactions with each other. There are definitely fewer of these NPCs, but each one is well-thought out and great to get to know.
Final thoughts
I think it’s interesting how both of these games share very similar DNA with its storytelling. Both have aspects that I’d like to see in each other’s games, but I’m not complaining that we’ve been gifted with so much great story this past year.
It’s telling how TSW’s first monthly update is basically a bunch of new missions — and that has a lot of us very, very excited. I never thought I’d be thrilled to see “new quests!” as a core update feature, but it’s kind of like the game’s giving us little sequels to our favorite stories. That makes me happy to consider.
Totally agree — also loving this game for the same reasons. I will say that the occasional non-generic responses on quest completion from my Illuminati boss are also pretty hilarious, but it’s still weird to suddenly be squinting at some small text that my instinct is to skip over.
I think my biggest gripe is that the phone calls on leveling up in your secret organization can get buried if you’re in the middle of something else at the time — which is pretty much every time it happens. I really want “answer the phone” to be an explicit action
.
Agree with Eric Tilton above. My calls from HQ always manage to drop right when I am in the middle of a fight or something. Very annoying.
Hmm, I am almost finished with Savage Coast and have not run across that reveal – I will have to take another run around to see if I missed anything.
I totally agree with you about the Innsmouth Academy hub – great dialog and fun quests. It helps that the Headmaster is voiced by Jeffrey Combs, a great voice actor, of Star Trek (Enterprise’s Shran, DS9′s Weyoun) and Reanimator fame.
I’ve commented elsewhere that I find TSW’s mute protagonist a genuine paradigm shift. Having my character NOT speak or, largely, react in cut scenes gives me back the ownership I want and need. I haven’t played SWTOR but one of my few real complaints about GW2 is the words that are put in my character’s mouth there during the Personal Story.
I don’t want my character saying or doing anything that I haven’t authorized. Simple as that. Put words in his mouth and he stops being my character there and then. That’s fine in an RPG where I, the player, am taking on the role of a named character in a storyline. It is not at all fine in an MMO where I create the character from scratch and direct all of his actions apart from when a cut-scene takes over.
I want to see TSW’s mute PC method in all the MMOs I play form now on, and that includes in text dialog responses in quests too. I don’t want my character saying a single word that I don’t type in.
It seems the generic responses are to the side quests only. Which actually make them kinda comical in a bureaucratic-canned-response sort of way. “Oh yes, thank you for returning the boy’s iPad. We’re sure that will come in handy later.”
There’s also a bit of hilarious interplay between factions sometimes with the completion texts. Not to give anything away, but Templar computer security really sucks.
“It helps that the Headmaster is voiced by Jeffrey Combs”
Jeffrey Combs is in Innsmouth Academy??? Can’t wait. I LOVE him. Well played, TSW. Well played.
I do, too! Combs is also the voice of the “mad” doctor in the Illuminati starting area, which is reason enough to play Illuminati as far as I am concerned.
I love that tsw doesn’t bother with dialogue heavy cutsenes for every single quest, it makes them stand out and feel more special that way. The story in tsw is miles above in terms of quality and character development, it just feels more cohesive as a world
Great article as always. I’m kind of on the fence about TSW at the moment, leaning more toward a purchase. Hmm, I’ll see what the wife has to say as we usually jump MMOs together.
For all the hype the Bioware made with its 4th pillar PR, there’s simply no comparison. The writing quality in TSW is light years ahead of SWTOR (or any Bioware game for that matter) and so is most of the voice acting.
I have to agree with Bhagpuss here about your character’s interactions – the voiceover in SWTOR worked fine for my character as long as it was pretty much where I wanted my character’s personality to be. But when it started to deviate too much it lost the appeal really – my character was more of an actor in some other story, something different.
In GW2 beta weekend I rerolled some characters completely after a few levels, because the story element did not fit at all with how I imagined my character. I think it will end up in a few trial&error to find some combinations there that will work out.
I can perfectly understand why certain limitations has been made in recorded interactions – it is simply not possible with a reasonable effort and cost to cover enough options. Different developers have made different choices regarding whether to leave things out completely or provide a few options.
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