SW: TOR - More E3 Previews

As you can tell, on its narrative side, The Old Republic is still asking far more questions than it's answering. When it comes to combat, we can be clear: it's standard MMORPG stuff, but it's faster, and there's more of it.
Specifically, BioWare's aiming for many-on-one combat, and not in the traditional MMO sense of gangs of players contending with single tough enemies. The Bounty Hunter was shown dealing capably with three or four enemies at a time on his own, and when paired up with the Sith, numbers just increased further - until the two had to take down a Jedi Padawan and Knight in succession (the Sith looting a second lightsaber for his trouble). Enemies fall fast and come quick, and the pace of action is consistent.

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In general, though, The Old Republic is looking surprisingly complete for an MMO that's so far from release the developers won't even publicly pick a year yet. This was of course a controlled demo, so who can say what the rest of the game world looks like at this point--but the environments and characters BioWare did show off looked good enough to be included in a shipping game. The company has clearly taken a page from the World of Warcraft playbook by giving the art design a highly stylized nature, making the characters look a little cartoon-like in the interest of looking good on lesser PC hardware. But I was impressed and a little surprised by the technical detail in the world, too.

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