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I’m a Star Wars fan. Always have been. I wasn’t alive for the original release of any of the original trilogy films but I have fond memories of sitting in front of the TV aged 6 and marvelling at the Battle of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back. I saw the cinema re-releases of the films in 1997. I bought the DVD box set release of the original trilogy, even though the films were modified from their original state (Han Shot First). So I was very excited by the recent release at E3 of the trailer for the upcoming Star Wars MMO - The Old Republic. The trailer is named Deceived and I recommend you download the large resolution version if you haven’t already.

There have been many Star Wars games over the years, most of which I have played. However, the odd thing about the games is that almost none of them actually let you feel like you’re a Jedi or Sith, which is something that I think all Star Wars fans have wanted. You’ve been able to play as a Jedi or Sith but none of the games have really captured the essence of the role, as portrayed by the films. The game mechanics might not have been good enough or maybe the artwork wasn’t right, but for whatever reason the games have left you wanting.

However, The Old Republic might just break the mould of less than satisfying Star Wars game experiences. It’s being developed by BioWare, the same guys who made Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR), which was excellent (even though the combat was turn based and therefore spoiled the Jedi experience). They have a reputation for making really great story driven games. It is my hope that BioWare is able to rise above the mediocrity that has plagued Star Wars games and craft a game that can live up to the brilliance of the original trilogy.

I thought I’d take a look at some of the things in the trailer which may give us an insight into some of the things we can expect from the game. The Old Republic takes place 300 years after the events which transpired in the KotOR game. This means it’s still at least 3000 years before the the prequels.

"ah the jedi temple, so lovely and peaceful"

The trailer starts with a characteristic Star Wars panning shot of a spacecraft flying towards a planet (Coruscant). We see a Sith Lord and a Twi’lek walking up the steps towards the Jedi temple on Coruscant.

It didn’t occur to me initially but it seems likely that the Twi’lek is a companion character that it’s been mentioned will be one of the features of the game. The Twi’lek is clearly armed and we see her take part in some combat later in the trailer. Whether companion characters are of a particular class is unknown (in KotOR party members were of a particular class). From what I’ve read/heard in interviews the key motivation for the companion characters was to provide an additional vehicle to tell the game’s story. I wonder if companion characters will take part in PvP. If they do take part in PvP with the player’s character it seems to make sense for them to be of a particular class.

The Sith and Twi’lek are being observed by an attractive bounty hunter who, after seeing the Sith successfully dispatch the temple’s token security (with a forcepush and obligatory lightsaber throw), jetpacks up to infiltrate the temple from a higher level.

Mr Sith Lord and his companion enter the temple and meet up with some less-than-friendly-looking Jedi, headed by Mr Master Jedi. All the Jedi seems to be wearing some form of body armour under their cloaks, in contrast to the Jedi we see in the films who wear cotton tunics/trousers under their cloaks. Later in the trailer there’s even a (very brief) shot of a Jedi wearing a mask covering the entire face.

HAI GUIZ

Just as we think a fight is about to break out between the Jedi and Mr Sith Lord a spaceship crashes through the entrance to the temple, distracting the Jedi. After screeching to a halt, and completely ruining the beautiful stonework in the temple lobby, a hatch opens in the spaceship to reveal that Mr Sith Lord has brought some of his Sith pals and some troopers to play! The Sith seem to be attired very similarly to the Jedi, except of course with more black. The armor being worn under the cloaks suggests itemization and armor choices for Jedi/Sith in the game will not just be restricted to light armor and there will likely be some kind of tradeoff between wearing heavier armor and light armor.

The Jedi and Sith then have a big battle (as opposed to a tea party). This is very cool, hopefully the game will feature some large-scale battles like this as part of the PvP. During the course of the fight we see a bunch of cool stuff:

1. Deflecting blaster fire with lightsabers - this was pretty much guaranteed to be in the game and shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
2. Force grab by Mr Sith Lord - this seems like it could be a different ability than a force push. He uses the force to grab a Jedi, lift him into the air and throw him against a pillar. It’s hard to tell, but it also looks as though the Jedi might be under the effects of a force choke at the same time.
3. Bounty hunter flying around with jetpacks and shooting missiles to destroy a bridge - will there be destructable terrain? I haven’t really seen many MMOs implement this before. I think WoW has some destructable terrain now in one of the battlegrounds. Also, I wonder how long bounty hunters can stay flying? It seems like the sort of thing that could be pretty powerful if they were able to their jetpacks for as long as they wanted.
4. Force lightning by Mr Sith Lord - This is an ability that’s appeared in many SW games before and some of the films. It’s usually only seen as a Sith ability and it’s not clear whether this ability will be available to the Jedi (although apparently it has been used by Jedi in the Expanded Universe books).
   

   "you wish you were as creepy as me"

5. Flame throwers by the bounty hunter - definitely in the game, on the SWTOR site you can see a (very) short clip of a bounty hunter using flame throwers.
6. Force jump - another common Jedi/Sith ability seen in pretty much every movie and game.
7. Force smash - seen at roughly 2:25 in the trailer, a Sith performs a force jump and as he lands smashes the ground underneath him with waves of energy apparently knocking over the nearby temple security forces. I haven’t seen this ability in previous SW games, perhaps it’s one that will be available to the Sith and maybe Jedi.
8. Mr Master Jedi receiving a message from a droid - I wouldn’t be surprised if droids were available as companion characters in the game. Obviously they’re seen many times in the films and other games in companion-like roles.

As battle continues we see Mr Sith Lord meet up with Mr Master Jedi in a pretty epic fight scene. It’s interesting to note the difference in fighting style between the two. I haven’t heard anything about whether Lightsaber Forms will make it into the game, indeed there’s been very little info about the combat so far, but they were present in KotOR and would make a cool addition and add extra depth to the combat. Mr Master Jedi appears to be using Form IV (lots of spinning and jumping with wide strikes with the lightsaber, physically avoid blows rather than blocking) whereas Mr Sith Lord is probably using Form V (very powerful strikes, not especially mobile, preferring to parry/block strikes rather than try and avoid them). The fight also features another lightsaber throw by Mr Sith Lord - this ability will doubtless make it into the game.

"I believe I can fly..."

Mr Master Jedi is defeated by Mr Sith Lord. We see the Jedi drop his lightsaber and fall to his knees, staring out at Coruscant which is now burning and under attack from the Empire. We see some starfighters which look quite similar to TIE-fighters, we see some starships that look suspiciously like Imperial Cruisers, and also some walkers similar to AT-STs. Very cheeky.

Mr Sith Lord pulls on his hood and strolls away from the Jedi temple, the sacking of Coruscant well under way, pleased with a job well done.

the background in this shot is actually the stage from an old KISS concert

The release of the trailer at E3 generated a lot of positive hype. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a short review of the trailer. They made an interesting comment: “This cinematic, then, may not be explaining all that much about how the game plays, but it is saying one thing loud and clear - “we’re going to fix Star Wars.””  That’s definitely the vibe I got from the trailer as well. I was speaking to a bunch of friends after seeing the recent Star Trek film and it became apparent that for many people the Star Wars prequels have really tarnished the Star Wars name as a whole (the Rock, Paper, Shotgun review touches on this as well). This is a huge shame. While I didn’t really like the prequels I feel the original trilogy is so awesome that it still deserves to be thought of as an epic film series which has really enriched our culture.

Please comment and tell me what you think of trailer and game and if I’ve missed anything from the trailer :)

This post will touch on themes I covered in my earlier post gaming - do not want! In that post I expressed how I felt that current games and gaming are essentially time wasters. Adding to this, I believe that gaming doesn’t benefit players in a meaningful way, ie. more than just as entertainment. I say ‘current’ because I believe games could be of meaningful benefit people but aren’t at the moment.

However, recently I’ve begun to think that this time wasting applies to other media as well - namely film and television. People have different tastes but most film and tv shows seem so devoid of any meaning. Sure they’re good for entertainment purposes, for a light laugh, but it pretty much stops there. There are films and possibly some tv shows which break this mold but generally it seems that you spend some time watching a film/show but you are no different for having watched it. It hasn’t enriched your life in any way.

Good films/tv should be thought provoking and you should be different for having experienced them. They should make you question things you’ve taken for granted or give you some insight into life and the way you live and the things you do in ways that you hadn’t previously considered. Films (I don’t really watch tv) that have had this ‘enriching’ experience for me are 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Dark Knight. 2001 really makes me think about what it means to be human, and the possibilities and challenges that humanity will face in the future. The Dark Knight really makes me wonder about corruption in society, and how much of a difference one person can make, and the power of symbols.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but yesterday the LA Times featured a story with a quote by Alan Moore which really hit on what I’m trying to say:

“I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying,” Moore told me during an hourlong phone call from his home in England. “It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The ‘Watchmen’ film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I, for one, am sick of worms. Can’t we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change.”

Alan Moore expresses well what I’m trying to explain (even if the metaphor gets a bit convoluted towards the end of that quote) and also alludes to another aspect of it: Repetition and lack of originality. Not only does most film/tv lack any meaning or value beyond pure entertainment but there’s so little original thought in most of the movies I’ve seen recently (beyond The Dark Knight). Speed Racer, a film I really enjoyed and found to be superbly entertaining, suffers from this badly. It was novel in terms of the art direction and extensive use of green screen special effects for pretty much everything, but in terms of plot or themes it’s nothing we haven’t seen before thousands of times.

I also think the fantasy genre (books/films/whatever) suffers from this as well. I don’t claim to be an expert on fantasy but I have read/watched quite a few fantasy series, and the genre seems for the most part to just recycle the same  basic plots/ideas/characters that were established years ago. One notable exception I’ve read recently is the Temeraire series.

Of course it isn’t surprising that there’s a large number of books/films (particularly in the fantasy genre) that are very similar to each other in terms of plot/characters - these are obviously quite popular and sell quite well. But in that respect they are close to most films/tv: entertaining but ultimately meaningless.

I think “regurgitated worms” is a good metaphor for many films/tv. Hollywood/whoever feeds us more and more unoriginal, visually pretty, entertaining, ultimately meaningless crap which we watch and consume without thinking. It entertains us, keeps us happy and distracted from real issues. Meanwhile, other things are happening in the world, interesting things, important things, things which people don’t hear about or let slide if they spend too much time just watching unenriching films/tv. This may sound very cynical, but it really does seem at times like some forms of media have the effect (whether it’s being used deliberately or innocently) of a drug - it’s nice to watch it, consume it but it’s ultimately distracting us from things that are more important and worthwhile of our attention.

I’ve never really been into comics. I recently saw The Dark Knight, and it was awesome. I used to watch the Batman cartoon when I was a young and have always been really into him. Before The Dark Knight began one of the trailers which was shown was for Watchmen. Before then I had only really heard of Watchmen in passing a couple of times from friends. The trailer for the film looked really cool, if only for the special effects (trailers don’t really tell you much about the story). I ended up borrowing the Watchmen graphic novel from a friend, and tonight I just finished reading it.

I think what made me enjoy the graphic novel so much was the writing and plot. I’m still not that much a fan of the illustration even though there were some really clever touches to it. I just found the plot to be fantastic and ridiculous - events in the book could never really happen in real life. The loved the way the politics and war were portrayed, and how the characters were never simply good or bad, but doing what they did for their own reasons.  And the ending was just superb…

This next paragraph contains plot spoilers…

… But I find it difficult to believe the movie ending will remain as it is in the book. I don’t know if American audiences will want to see a New York that’s been bombed (by a huge fake alien!) and with 3 million people dead. Even if the movie is good it will never be able to live up to the graphic novel. I’ll still go and watch it though.

I’ve never really read comics before and when I started reading Watchmen I disliked having pictures with the words. I used to read a lot of novels so the dialogue driven method of story telling felt weird and unfamiliar to me. It took me a little while to get over that aspect of it. However, now that I think about it a little bit, it occurs to me that Tarantino films are pretty much entirely dialogue driven too, and I like those a lot too.

I don’t think I will all of a sudden start reading comics as a result of reading Watchmen, but it’s given me an appreciation of graphic novels as a medium. They bridge the gap between novels and films, but have a unique feel of their own.