GameSpot Q&A - The Sith Warrior

GameSpot has a Q&A up with BioWare where they talk about the next Star Wars: The Old Republic class: the Sith Warrior.

Here's an excerpt:

[GameSpot]: At E3, we saw the Sith Warrior take part in the game's multiplayer dialogue system. Given that the profession is basically a ruthless, power-hungry sort--yet the game will have heavy story elements, including branching dialogue--how will the game account for different choices made by different players? How will players be encouraged to role-play as this sort of character without feeling hedged in by limited choices?

[James Ohlen]: Star Wars: The Old Republic allows players to make moral choices, whether they are a Jedi serving the Republic or a Sith Warrior serving the Empire. The story of this character is written with the assumption that players will faithfully serve the Empire and perform their missions ruthlessly. However, there are many choices where players can choose to resist the temptations of the dark side and try to minimize the suffering that their missions might cause. Because the Sith Warrior is a servant of the Empire, he must perform his acts of compassion carefully. He might tell someone he was ordered to kill to get off-world and never return, thus completing his mission in the eyes of his master but without murdering someone who didn't particularly deserve it.

To be honest, this Q&A has the effect of taking my enthusiasm for SWTOR down a couple of notches. The way they describe the class is as a mindless evil, destroy everything in the most brutal way possible class, with the above quoted paragraph the only hint that you can go against the flow too (and it really does sound like going against the flow and not like a valid choice in its own right, like you're not playing the class the way you're supposed to).

I mean, when I read something like "The Sith Warrior is a heavily armored Force user driven by darkness and rage." How on earth does that work for a Light side character? How can someone using the Light side of the Force be driven by darkness and rage? How do abilities like the Impale one they describe make sense for someone who tries to follow the path of good? Is there really such a disconnect between the class abilities and the class story where the abilities are all brutally dark side regardless of your choices, but the story allows you to experience the dark side story while taking out the dark side of it? That sounds utterly hollow and uninteresting.

Until now I've been expecting something similar to KotOR where you have basically a force using class on both sides with the same abilities, allowing you to either choose the Light-side or the Dark-side abilities. But this Q&A makes it sound like it's not like that at all, that it's just one set of choices that you've got to do it with (or I'd at least have expected some mention of "how the Sith Warrior fights depends on the choices you make"; but there isn't even a hint of that).

What's more is that I now fully expect them to announce a "Jedi Knight" class who is based on <insert popular Jedi character here> and is heavily trained in combat, depending more on overpowering his opponents with martial skills than Force powers but often uses iconic powers, such as <insert iconic Jedi power here>. Of the five classes they 'announced' only two interested me so far (Bounty Hunter and Trooper both sound utterly uninteresting and the Smuggler simply doesn't suit my style) and that has dropped to maybe one. But Jedi sounds so utterly dull (you're good, everyone expects you to be good, yawn) and I have no doubt that they're going to try and make it sound interesting by telling you just how combat-oriented the class is... which has the exact opposite effect on me.

So with only three classes to go that brings the number of interesting classes in SWTOR down to a flat zero. And I'm seriously, seriously starting to doubt this game will be enjoyable at all. Because so far the Sith class was the one I was looking forward to for some deep and complex play, and all I get is "they're evil and like to destroy things... but you can choose not to destroy things maybe". Pitiful.

Combine that with the graphics which still look like some Cartoon Network reject to me and I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off looking for another game. Which is a shame, because there aren't a lot of BioWare-made MMOs to choose from.

<sighs>


[link] to the GameSpot Q&A.