Come October 21st, the inevitable will finally happen. After years of hemming, hawing, clamoring, and speculating, Bioware and Lucasarts are going to announce an MMO based on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This is not a guess. Bioware’s leash-holder, EA, already spoiled the surprise in July when chief executive John Riccitello flat-out admitted it existed. I couldn’t be more disappointed. I’m not inherently opposed to MMOs, far from it. In fact, I’m very excited about the impending boom of console-born MMOs and how, as is the case with everything designed specifically for consoles, the genre becomes streamlined and more readily accessible to players without two-thousand spare hours to hunt for rare armor. I’m disappointed because Knights of the Old Republic is Bioware’s narrative masterpiece. Even stripped of its abused license, Knights of the Old Republic’s story and characters are legitimate milestones in game development, successes that Bioware has yet to surpass. Obsidian’s sloppy-seconds follow-up The Sith Lords, despite being an unfinished mess, made the ongoing saga started in the original even more compelling, hinting at a grand conclusion that would reveal the hidden machinations behind both game stories. And now, after four years, we won’t see an actual single-player climax to the story of Darth Revan. We’re going to get a game built to accommodate literal millions of players, Xbox Live goons named Darth Ballz marching about with lightsabers, yammering bullshit in your ear that will make George Lucas penned dialogue sound like Lord Byron.
October 21st makes me sick.
(Link: Joystiq)
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