E3 2009: Star Wars The Old Republic Impressions

I know we focus on the Xbox360, but the highlight for us at E3 was seeing a demo of Star Wars The Old Republic. Here is a summary of my thoughts, there is a ton more but its late and I’m tired and burnt. The bottom line is we loved the game, and can’t wait to get our own hands on it.

I also talk about it in our podcast, that will be posted shortly.

Let me start by saying the people at LucasArts are super nice, and opened the doors to all with access to the area after 4 today. And again they were super nice getting us into the demo.
It was a nice long demo which included the new trailer but more importantly GAMEPLAY.

The game is running on LIVE server.

We saw some Bounty Hunter action, some Smuggler action, and some two person group action(Sith and Bounty Hunter)

The game looks real good, and pretty far along. The art direction is very good and IMO a good choice as it allows for some great draw distances and other goodness(ie explosions, smoke and blaster/saber glows)

The bounty hunter is fairly straight forward, long rage attacks and a sick close combat flame thrower.

Smuggler is on the other hand very interesting, still long range, but no armor means you gotta use the new cover system. An awesome first for MMO’s and it seemed to work really well. Also the smuggler can kick at close range which then opens the enemy up to blaster shots.

But the coolness comes in the 2 player action, both players have responses when playing so the quests can be very very different each and every time. Working together is straight forward as any other MMOs.

The next coolness of the demo was the end of the two player boss battle against a jedi. When the jedi was killed you could loot his lightsaber amongst other stuff, and then DUEL WEILD!!!!

Other highlights were the HUD, its pretty much all on the bottom, you got your actionbars, minimap, player info, and XP bar. I thought it was a tad bulky and had some spots that weren’t really being used.

Overall its awesome looking and they said everything we know and love in MMOs will be there plus more!!

Oh and we got AWESOME SHIRTS!!!!!!

And before you all ask, there are no pictures, no video. I hear rumors someone got video. If they did they shouldn’t have been allowed to go to E3, behind closed doors the camera go off, its like wearing pants in public, you just do it, unless someone tell you not to.

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