T w e n t y S i d e d

Remember back when Star Wars the Old Republic was still new, and there was a bit of a debate about whether it was The New Awesome, or a poor execution of a fundamentally flawed design? Often there were comparisons drawn between SWTOR and Guild Wars 2, which was interesting since the latter game wasn’t (and still isn’t) yet released. Now that I’ve played both games, I think I get why.

On Twitter, I took SWTOR to task for not having a mouselook-toggle. If you want to look around, you have to hold either mouse button while you move the mouse. There is no setting or option that will let you click to switch between “looking around” mode and “clicking on stuff” mode. Some people thought I was being petty for complaining about this, but it’s an important aspect of the game and it goes way beyond “my hand gets tired holding the button down all the time”. By making the interface default to a mouse-pointer mode, the game is telling you that the normal interaction is to click buttons and menus. This isn’t just about how the game plays, but about what kind of game you’re playing in the first place. Or to put it more accurately, it tells you how the designers intended for you to interact with the game.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Star Wars the Old Republic:The Game is at the Bottom”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.