I guess most of you know Cryptic is the studio behind City of Heroes/Villains and the new Champions Online superhero games. These MMOs excel in customization options, and Star Trek Online will continue this trend. During the behind closed doors demo at Gamescom, we were shown a character generator that allowed an almost limitless creativity. It even allows the player to create his or her own alien race. This feature worried me at first. Not that I am a stickler for canon or anything, but it struck me as weird to have many people play a creature which is the only specimen of that race. It turns out, this does not have to be the case. I asked if it was possible to share designs with other players, and the answer was yes. This shines a whole new light on this feature. It makes it possible to start a guild (‘fleet’ in STO) made up of a new unique race, designed by the players.

Come fly with me
When the guys from Cryptic wanted to show how ships can be just as unique, a small glitch caused some hilarity. Rather than the expected ship model, a rather confused looking human materialized in outer space. A few button presses later, the correct model was flying on the big screen. Ships can be fitted with all kinds of parts, creating a unique and personal look. Ships cannot be every shape you want, though. Every class has its base configuration which will always be recognizable. There will be no mistaking a Galaxy class starship from, for example, a Constellation class. These craft can of course be taken into combat. Starship battles will be tactical and allow for huge epic fights. Imagine, for example, fleets of 25 ships working together to fight a Borg cube.

Up, up and away
The core of an MMO is of course team play, and STO has its own way of dealing with parties. Every standard away-team will be composed of five characters. If there aren’t enough players to fill out all spaces, NPCs will step in. Every player will have access to NPC officers, who are ‘pets’ with different strenghts and skills. As you move up through the ranks, you can have more and better officers in your ship, and therefore in your party.

To boldly go…
Damn, I was doing so well. But how else could I describe the exploration system? Cryptic designed what they call the ‘Genesis system’, which procedurally generates planets. The game designers use Genesis as the basis for in-game missions. But it will also be used to allow players to actually explore strange new worlds. By going into certain sectors, players can find stars and planets that have never been seen before. Not only that, it is possible to share coordinates with others, to show off your discoveries. I am very curious about how this will play out in the actual game, and if these player discovered planets feel like part of the universe, or ‘tacked on’. The idea is great in theory, anyway.

Star Trek Online certainly seems to have the correct ideas about what makes Star Trek great. It gives players a tall ship and a star to steer it by. It looks very well and the art style is dead on. I do hope the game will have many more sandbox-like elements, like the exploration system. For me, Star Trek was not about grinding for an epic phaser, but about the freedom to fly to the stars. So far, Cryptic seems to give us just that.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. You can hardly call yourself a geek if you haven’t ever fantasized about jumping to light speed in the Millenium Falcon, or about staying on target while strafing the Death Star. So it’s not hard to understand the appeal of a game set in the Star Wars universe. Especially if it’s a persistent world where we can all live out our most geeky fantasies. The Old Republic, as you probably know, promises just that.

Thumbs up!
Bioware have a thing about choice. As they demonstrated in their single player RPGs, they consider the story that unfolds based on your actions to be very important. The demonstration at Gamescom began with the now famous trailer, where Sith and Jedi battle it out. Following that, we where shown a live played sequence where a Sith warrior decides whether to save or kill an Imperial captain. It must be noted that all of the events where displayed in real-time, looked awesome and where fully voiced.

By showing a thumbs up or thumbs down, the press in the audience was asked to decide the captain’s fate. To my surprise, most of us wanted to see him live. Unfortunately, it seems the Dark Side had overtaken the demo systems and the sequence crashed. This was doubly unfortunate for that poor captain, as the only playable ending was now his demise.

Yada yada yada
After this, it was time to move on to the behind closed doors portion of the demonstration, where I was finally allowed to take control of the same Sith warrior, and to play through the same sequence. This time, I chose to save the captain, and saw an entirely different set of events unfold. Everything was again perfectly voiced, and playing though the dialogue was a joy. The same system is in place as in Mass Effect, and it works great.

Fortunately, it wasn’t all about menus and dialogue. There was action as well. After the cut scenes, it was up to me to first cut through dozens of troopers. Using several attacks, I could string together combo’s. For example, there is a charge attack, which launches your character through the air towards a targeted enemy. You can follow this up with saber strikes, use an AOE to stun nearby enemies, or force choke your target.

More is better
Controls are very responsive, and even though there are the typical MMO cooldown timers on your actions, combat is extremely fluid and fast. After battling through the minions, I was finally confronted with the boss character: another Jedi. Killing him awarded me with his light saber, which allowed me to dual wield. This is just as cool as it sounds.

A Bioware guy asked me what I thought. My first reaction was: “This isn’t an MMO. This is a next gen Knights of the Old Republic”. The whole experience felt very much like a single player game. It is very hard to imagine how this all will feel when playing with others. Combat and story are so streamlined and so scripted, that I cannot yet see how the experience will be with a random PUG or even with some good friends.

No comment
Bioware wasn’t talking much about this yet, but confirmed parties of “approximately four or five people” where planned. Exact numbers where not given. Same goes for raiding, which was confirmed, but again no team sizes where specified.

I can say I walked away from this demo impressed. I have played dozens of MMOs and TOR seems to be unlike every one of them. If the quality of the rest of the game is like the demo, I might not even care if there are other players around to group with. This truly feels like a true KOTOR sequel.