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Monday 11 June 2012

SWTOR: We are the Voss. We are right.


Last time, I wrote about how beautiful Voss was and how much I enjoyed running around there. I was thrilled by the setup of the planet: the Republic and the Empire quarreling to get the support of the Voss, a people with a mysterious, closed culture that prefer to stick to themselves. It is said that Voss prophets are always right and their whole culture is based upon this belief. Voss will walk to their death without hesitation if a prophet would tell them this would save more lives in the future. Even the Republic diplomats and the Jedi you speak to seem to believe the Voss can foretell the future. Being connected to the force, it is indeed possible they receive such foretelling visions, albeit in another form than the Jedi do. Are Voss indeed always right? This mystery fed my imagination and made me curious as to what was going to happen on this planet. This smelled like an opportunity for an exciting storyline.

Several levels further (my sage Ravanel is now level 48) I'm disappointed. This could have been an exciting story: can the Voss misinterpret their visions, like the Jedi council sometimes does? And if so, is this covered up to ensure the continuation of the Voss culture with their blind belief in their prophets? If the Voss would indeed always be right, how come their life is not perfect? And why are they so self centered? Instead, the air of superiority and blindstaring when speaking to the Voss ("I have seen this, so it must be true") is starting to annoy me. There were some unorthodox quests, such as one wherein you participate in a Voss ritual and walk through a vision (picture to the right). This could've been an interesting test full of puzzles, but instead it was just more creatures to kill. Voss turned out to be more of the same, most quests involving planting/deactivating devices, killing dangerous adversaries and mostly many, many mobs. None of the above questions were answered in the storyline: so far Voss has only proved to be yet another planet on which I have to spread goodwill for the Republic. When I started playing Star Wars, I was very impressed by the storylines, the voice acting and the nice closeup shots. However, the longer I play it, the more I recognize the same questing patterns repeated over and over. Slowly the questing experience is turning into a grind.

Perhaps I shouldn't think about this too much. Perhaps I should just level like everyone else, mindlessly killing mobs on a steady pace and spacebarring through conversations. The real question is: to what cause? Okay, that might have sounded too depressing, especially for me. I still like this game and its world, I'm just a bit done with leveling. I really hope I'll find some fun when I reach end-game. We shall see soon.


2 comments :

  1. I've heard there are "games" where you can basically spacebar through the combat (easy mode) and just do the cutscenes. I don't worry too much about the grindyness of it myself, just working through the conversations that make it interesting. The combat itself isn't really any different than every other MMORPG I've played.

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    1. Haha, well those sound like "games!" It reminds me of Mass Effect 3, which I once tried on "narrative mode". My boyfriend laughed so hard at me as I tried to find the right controls and my companions were basically killing everything for me because I kept hiding or using the wrong buttons! Apparently shooters really aren't my cup of tea...

      On-topic: you are right, of course. I think I should just skip more of the normal landscape quests and stick to the class story in SWTOR. One overlevels the area around them quite easily anyway. Yesterday, I flew to Corellia and the class story in-between-worlds was pretty cool. So I'm really enjoying myself again. :)

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