A couple of weeks ago, I was cleaning out the drafts folder on this blog. I had a hundred or so article ideas that I never managed to turn into proper posts. It was mostly just random notes and single-paragraph article stubs. But mixed in with those scraps was this thing. Way back in July 2012, I apparently began and subsequently abandoned this LP of SWTOR.
I think my heart just wasn’t in it. In the past, I’ve managed to make some fun stories. Champions Online was too dumb for its own good. I thought Lord of the Rings was earnest and admirable despite its occasional insanity. And while there are few places more well-traveled than Azeroth, I like to think I found a few funny places and ideas that hadn’t yet been given the mocking they so richly deserved.
But Star Wars the Old Republic is too bland a target for my kind of humor. It felt like the game wasn’t even trying to make a case for itself. When mocked, the game doesn’t even have the decency to fight back. The (early) quests were a bit lame, but not mind-bogglingly stupid like Champs Online. SWTOR was based on well-known source material, but unlike LOTRO I didn’t feel like this game arose from a genuine love and appreciation for the universe. Oh, I’m sure plenty of people on the project love Star Wars, but that wasn’t coming through the malaise of cookie-cutter game design. The stories eventually get interesting, but only after many endless hours of soul-crushing hotbar-based combat and trudging through environments that are too dull to mock in screenshots.
This isn’t fun and it isn’t funny. It’s mostly just sad to see how much money was spent to make something so lifeless. I’m only posting this because my choices are:
1) Delete this and leave the blog blank for a few days.
2) Post it.
So don’t read this and think, “This is supposed to be good.” More like, “This is hopefully better than having no content for several days.”
Okay, back to me-from-2012…
Get on With It Already
Let’s play Star Wars the Old Republic. Partly because I want to comment on the game, but mostly because it’s free-to-play up to level 15. Assuming you can get in. Not that I’m bitter.
Unlike some of my other series, I’m not going to meticulously track in-character and out-of-character commentary. Also, I’m not going for comedy here. We’re just going to jog past all the quests while I point at them like a tour guide. In keeping with the standards of tone and continuity set by the Star Wars Expanded Universe, we’re going to half-ass this.
Are your expectations sufficiently lowered? Great. Let’s get started…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “SWTOR: Legend of Hipstar 1: Character Creation”
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.
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