Sweet Poison or A Girl's Story

In writing about Wuthering Waves, I find it very hard to avoid repeating myself endlessly. It's staggeringly gorgeous to look at, the storytelling is excellent and the voice acting is top-notch. There's an extraordinary amount to do, the gameplay is varied and wide-ranging and the whole game feels welcoming and comfortable throughout. Yada yada yada...

Also, as I say every time, I find it exhausting and overwhelming to the point where I need a good lie down to get over it every time I indulge. It's like a delicious but extremely rich dessert, something you crave but know, for your own good, you can only indulge in every so often.

That cadence makes it very tough to write about, too. Because I've fallen into this pattern of leaving a couple of weeks between each session, biting off a complete chunk of story every time, I'm stuck with reviewing each chapter without trying to get too spoilery, while using a selection of screenshots I took along the way as illustrations and maybe dropping in a critical comment or two about anything that strikes me as being particularly notable, unusual or well done.

I'd add "or that could have been done better" to that last but honestly, there's not very often much that I feel could be improved and there seems to be less every time I play. Wuthering Waves feels very "finished" compared to just about all the games I'm used to or that I've played over the years.

It wasn't always that way or I don't believe so. I seem to remember at the start there were a lot more translation issues and plenty of times when what the voice actors were saying didn't match what I was reading in the subtitles. This morning I saw just one example of that and even then it was only a single word that differed.

Contrast that to Once Human, another relatively slick, well-funded and successful game which, as I recently noted, gets a five star rating from me in most departments. Even there, the tendency, as it is in many games I've played, is for the words you're hearing not to match the ones you see. 

I was playing OH last night. I did a couple of new quests and the words the voice actors were speaking barely resembled the text at all. The weirdest part about that wasn't that the production team couldn't get it right, it was that both versions were coherent and well-written, so either of them would have been fine. How they ended up using both is the mystery. Just pick one, guys!

I suppose it's a minor issue anyway. There's no real reason to read along with the actors after all, even if having subtitles on for everything, all the time, is the current fashion. I do find it distracting, all the same. I wish production teams would talk to each other now and again and settle on a final version. Or at least listen to the QA reports when they tell them "The words don't match the voices". I mean, it's not like its a hard error to spot. Maybe it's intentional, I don't know...

As I said, that wasn't a problem for me this morning, as I played through the quest that came up top of the list when I logged into Wuthering Waves for the first time in a fortnight. I had kind of half promised myself I wouldn't do that - just blindly follow the prompts. I was going to go off and do some exploring, open up the map a bit, do my own thing but it's so easy to just slip into the old habit of going where the quest-marker tells you. And when what you find when you get there is often so compelling, why would you want to stop?

In this case what I was being led towards turned out to be a Companion Story. There's one of those for all the main Resonators, I think, not just the leads but the co-stars, too. I haven't done very many of them. I think this might have been the fourth. Maybe the fifth. I should check sometime because they've all been excellent so far.

This was no exception. Cantarella's horror-inflected tale is chilling, even disturbing, but ultimately joyous. It also stands well inside the boundaries of the primary storyline, adding some depth and texture to the core narrative, rather than simply filling out the biography of the character herself.

And it's long! Boy, is it ever! It took me at least two hours which, judging by the full play-throughs on YouTube, seems to be about average. The huge majority of my time was spent, as always, watching animated characters act and listening to their voice-actors speak. I watched an anime movie, basically. 

I doubt that if you cut all the gameplay and just strung the cut-scenes together you'd get a cut lasting less than seventy-five minutes, a very decent length for an animated film. There was a fair amount of fighting this time but it was all so easy, none of it took very long. Ditto the puzzles, which mostly involved not too much more than following the visual prompts and pressing a few buttons at the appropriate moment. There's even a potentially terrifying jumping puzzle that the game just takes over and does for you.

In keeping with what has been the very welcome trend in the past sessions I've played, even the final boss fight is both easy and partially completed through cut scenes. I sincerely hope it's a trend that continues. As for the narrative, without giving any spoilers, I'd say 90% of Cantarella's story was clarity itself, without any of the confusing technobabble just about all the characters are prone to. 

The wrap-up, though, did its best to make up for that with a flurry of lines about frequencies and sonoro spheres that I'm a little concerned to say I mostly understood. I worry I may have been assimilated.

And then there was very final coda, because no Wuthering Waves story is ever complete without at least three or four false endings. That was... odd. One aspect of the game I do my best not to mention is the ever-present, free-floating sexual charge that seems to hang in the air around some of the main characters like the opiated miasma across the poppy fields in the Wizard of Oz. 

Nervously passing over Cantarella's distracting personal appearance, which gives me disturbing of Eurotrash as presented by Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gautier back in the 'nineties, in this case I'm talking about the almost predatory way she looks at, talks to and occasionally even touches the player-character. She's by no means the only NPC to have clear and obvious designs on "Rover" but she's the first one to try to put her intentions on a co-habitational basis.

All of which might be uncomfortable if my character wasn't so very much the alpha in every situation. I'm used, as we all must be now, to having the character I'm playing be treated as some kind of famous hero or maybe even a demi-god but in Wuthering Waves it's quite self-evidently true. When NPCs act awe-struck or honored to meet her, it's with palpably good reason and they, frankly, do not know the half of it. 

With that level of authority, I'm pretty sure she can handle a few over-familiar flirtations, not that she ever seems to notice there's even a subtext. She tends to look, at most, slightly baffled by the attention but by and large it just seems to fly straight over her head. 

As I've often said, if I'm going to stick with a game for long, I really need to feel an affinity for my character, something that's almost inevitably going to be harder to achieve in a game where the player gets no choice at all in who they play, other than to pick a gender. Add to that a complete inability to affect what your character looks like (Seriously, are there no cosmetics in the game at all outside the cash shop?) and then to add insult to injury, dress the main character in the worst outfit of anyone on the team and it's surprising I've been able to bond with her at all.

That I have owes a significant amount to the skill of the actor who voices her and also to the way that vocalization is handled in production and writing. I generally prefer the good old "Silent Protagonst" approach, so I was happy enough when all my character did was nod and gesture, which was all she did for a long time after I started playing.  When she suddenly began to speak, I was first astonished and then delighted at how much I enjoyed hearing the sound of her voice.

There are two reasons for that. Firstly, I really appreciate the way she doesn't speak in every scene, only when she has something worth saying or to give her internal monologue an airing. It makes the times when she does speak up feel much more significant. Secondly, and much more importantly, I love the way the actor voicing my character handles the dialog. I like her voice, which obviously helps, but mostly I love her phrasing, which is reliably close to the way I hear the lines in my head. 

You'd be surprised how often that doesn't happen. Lots of actors seem to have very different ideas to me about cadence, emphasis and even interpretation. It's jarring to hear them stressing the wrong syllables or drawing attention away from the subtext, which is why, on balance, I like my characters not to speak. If they all spoke up as eloquently and authoritatively as this, though, I'd be happy to sit back and enjoy the show rather than imagining I could do a better job myself.

With Cantarella's story told I imagine a return to the main storyline will be next. As usual, I'm going to need a while to decompress before I take that on. I'll at least try to make it a shorter break than last time. It's hard enough to remember the plot as it is.

The House On The hill

Something that happened to me very soon after I started playing Dawnlands that made me feel there was a lot more to the game than the bad reviews suggested was when I found an abandoned house not too far away from the starting settlement. There are a couple of spectacular geographical features in the area where you first spawn in that just demand to be explored and right at the top of one of them, a vast, rocky outcrop that looms over the countryside below, there's a house made of wood and stone that, from certain angles, looks not unlike a ship.

As the sunset shot above shows, I was still in my starter gear when I found it. I'd made myself the most basic hut down in the village but when I found this place I decided it was time to relocate. The whole place was empty. Whoever lived there had left a few bits of furniture, including a large storage chest, and there was a fire still burning in the hearth but of the previous inhabitants there was no sign at all. I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't move in.

I had a good look around and started to make myself at home. I dumped a load of wood and rock in the chest. I went outside and cleared all the goblins away. I found another chest half buried in the ground outside. Up in the attic I even found a magic spear that crackled with caged lightning. You can bet I helped myself to that.

I was all set to move in when a problem occured to me. The house was perfect. The location was stunning. The views were out of this world. The only downside was the commute.

At that point I hadn't even begun to figure out how the instant travel system worked. I didn't even know I could use the map to travel to the Shelter. About the only thing I did know was that if I died (When I died...) I'd either wake up in my bed or at the nearest Teleport Beacon. 

It seemed like it'd be a heck of a long walk back every time I wanted to sleep and at that stage I was far too nervous about being out after dark to contemplate it. I didn't even know at the time that you could teleport to your bed on demand but even if I had, the isolation of the spot would still have made settling down there seem like a bad idea.

I didn't abandon my ambitions to take over the abandoned mansion on the hill completely. In the above shot I'm wearing upgraded and distinctly more respectable armor, even if I do look like I've just finished my shift as a bike messenger, indicating a return a few days later to give the old place another look. 

I mean, who wouldn't want to look out on a sunset like that from their balcony? It's not the kind of prospect to be abandoned without a fight. Regardless, there was still one other consideration to take into account. Even imagining I was willing to deal with the long ride up and down that hill every day, if I did set up shop there in no time all the peace and tranquility of the setting would be shattered.

This is my makeshift camp back at the Grasslands Shelter. The picture was taken a few days ago . It's a lot worse now. I have two charcoal kilns set up, belching smoke into the sky. I have two smelters, ditto, only the smoke is even worse. There's a stone grinder, an anvil, a cooking pot and a roasting frame (each over an open fire), an oven, a loom...

I even have a windmill and a field of cotton. The whole place is a zoning disaster. And it's only going to get worse as time goes on. To set something like this up in the unspoilt beauty of the highlands would be a crime against both art and nature.

And then today (Edit: a week ago by the time this got published.) I made a most welcome discovery. There's a device you can make called an Echo Stone. It's one of the most basic items there is, the first piece of "furniture" in the list. I hadn't even noticed it before. I don't believe it gets a mention in the tutorial. The fanciful description doesn't make its function precisely clear but since I hadn't read it anyway I can't claim that's why I hadn't bothered to make one until now.

What the echo stone does is allow you to recall to it at will. It's your "bind", in EverQuest parlance or your Hearthstone, if that's more your era. I experimented a little and it seems you can have just one of these up at a time, so it's not the equivalent of Valheim's portals, but one is plenty for what I have planned.

Meet Karrid. She's my new best friend. Actually, she's my follower. I was looking through the store last night, something I haven't really bothered with before, when I noticed the diamond price to hire her had fallen to a very reasonable amount. More accurately, I'd saved up enough diamonds that just under a thousand didn't seem as wildly out of reach as it had a couple of weeks ago.

So I bought her. Or hired her. The exact relationship is unclear. I gave her all my best cast-offs and read to her from several books of instruction I happened to have lying around and now she's Level 4. I'm Level 28 so there's a bit of a gap but I'm sure she'll soon catch up.

Karrid and I have moved into the house on the hill together. The plan is to keep all our manufactury down at the Shelter and just move the personal stuff up to the mansion. We're going to try and stick with a minimalist theme, while still making the place feel cosy.

Finding a really nice place all ready and waiting to move into like this really sets Dawnlands apart from Valheim. I'm sure at some point Karrid and I will want to work on something we've designed ourselves but until then this rental is going to do us very nicely. Especially at the low, low monthly rent of nothing at all.

Karrid and I will have many adventures together, no doubt. I'm almost ready to build our first sailing ship. We're going to see what lies across the water. But when we're done adventuring, we'll be very happy to head back home. Just a click of fingers and there we'll be. Back in our mansion on the hill.

Switzerland Is The Place To Be: SWTOR

Arriving on Alderaan felt like a breath of fresh air. Cold, clean alpine air. I never thought of Princess Leia as the Heidi of the stars but if her home world's not based on Switzerland, I'll eat my lederhosen.

Of course, Heidi was poor. I don't believe anyone on Alderaan is poor. I'd be surprised if the average Alderaanian had ever met a poor person. Even the servants probably have trust funds.

The spaceport looks like the lobby of a luxury hotel. It has trees. Not shrubs. Full-grown conifers. Actually, I bet they're larches. Also giant succulents that look totally out of place.

You did get all of that Spice out from under your skin, right, Corso? This isn't Nar Shadaa.

What the Alderaan spaceport doesn't have is street gangs that try to kill you in the Arrivals lounge. That's the kind of welcome you only get on Coruscant. At least, I think it was Coruscant. So many street gangs have tried to kill me on so many planets, it's hard to keep them all straight.

What Alderaan has instead of gangland violence is internecine political strife shading into all-out war. Because of course it does. Someone always has to be fighting someone else for the soul of the planet.

Let's see, so far there's been Ord Mantell (seperatist insurgency), Taris (failing reconstruction efforts due to piracy), Coruscant (gang warfare and vigilante justice) and Nar Shaddaa (organized crime and general breakdown of law and order).

Alderaan may look like a tourist brochure but I wasn't even out of the main concourse before someone buttonholed me about bomb disposal. This is a feature of TOR that fascinates me. I understand the trope whereby the Player Character is a de facto Hero, or even a DemiGod, but I'm a smuggler, for heaven's sake!

Yes, off-worlders often mistake it for a Cathedral. Can't imagine why. It's just the old Organa family pile...

On what planet do generals in command of entire armies delegate crucial and specialist military procedures to professional criminals? And it's not even as if they're recruiting The Dirty Dozen. There's only one of me. Well, and Corso, who no-one ever notices. Or mentions.

It isn't only generals and military high-ups who react as though I'd arrived at the head of a full armored division with air support. It's noblemen and senators, spymasters and technical experts of every stripe. They see me step out of the Smuggler's Elevator (let's not even go there...), they watch me jog past the destination boards and somehow they just know I'm the one they've been waitng for.

The extreme expectations placed upon the head of a slightly-built, scruffily-dressed captain, owner of a scuffed star-freighter with a crew of two humans, a wookie and a droid, three out of four of whom never leave the ship, beggar belief. I'm used to stretching credulity to the breaking point in fantasy MMORPGs, where complete strangers often refer to me as the Chosen One or The Ascended, but in this context some of the conversations I'm having verge on Spinal Tap levels of irony.

They must have heard we were coming, Corso. Red carpet treatment, again!

It's become entirely commonplace, normal even, for me to accept Missions that I'm told would be too risky for whole squads of sodiers. I seem to have an almost infinite variety of technical skills, from hacking to explosives to PTSD counselling. It's very fortunate I envisaged my character having a Can Do attitude when I created her because it's apparent she can quite literally do anything.

Which is fine. I've suspended my suspension of disbelief, packed it away for the duration, and now I'm just going with it. Stop a war here, start a revolution there, all the same to me.

I'm just happy to be doing it against a background of beautiful, blue skies and majestic snow-capped mountains instead of jaundiced jungles or claustrophobic corridors. I spent so long on Coruscant and Nar Shadaa, battling gangs, bashing droids and going so deep into the water supply network Corso complained his blaster was going to rust. It's just nice to be out in the fresh air again.

Do you hear that rustling sound? It's too cold for snakes, right? Tell me it's too cold!

So far, Alderaan has been such a refreshing change. I've spent more time tripping across the alpine meadows, waving at the Nerfs and taking tourist shots of the mountains than I have doing missions. I have done a few. I grabbed some guy from some insects. That was weird. And I delivered a headless droid to a brother and sister double act (siblings, yet again - it's becoming quite the theme).

Sis did the straight lines, Bro did the comedy. He was dressed for it, too. He reminded me of a minor member of The Legion of Super-Heroes. Matter-Eater Lad, perhaps. There was some flirting but I just couldn't take him seriously. For a moment I wondered if he might be looking to join me as an official Companion but nothing came of it.

I confess I'm a little vague on Companionship in TOR. I'm never really sure who might be up for it. I can think of at least three possibles I've let slip.

I'll take a Legion Flight Ring for the robot, Tenzil.

There was that treacherous minx on Ord Mantell, the one who got Corso's boss killed. I liked her. I kind of wish I'd taken her instead of Corso. I think she might have come along if I'd asked. Then there was Corso's cousin. She was a bad egg. There was a conversation option about her working for me but I didn't take it. I'm sure there was someone else, too, but I forget. I meet so many people.

Or maybe it's all in my mind. Perhaps I'm reading things into conversations that aren't there. I could find out. I could go read a guide on  "Companions and How To Get Them". But I don't want to. I like muddling along. I'll be "efficient" another time, with someone else.

Now that  my first character's only a handful of levels from the original cap, it would normally be the time to think about starting another. In the old days, when it took months, not days to get to max level, I'd often have four or five characters in play before any of them capped out.

And stay down!

That's why I never subscribed to the "Main" and "Alts" way of thinking. I used to annoy Guild Officers no end with my instance that I didn't have a "Main", but it was true. I had characters I was playing more than others at any given time but it probably wasn't until MMORPGs fully adopted the Free to Play model that I finally reached a point where, at least in some games, I could honestly I had a Main character.

Once the financial barrier fell I played a lot of MMOs. I just didn't have time any more to build up a big roster. I tended to play one character for a few weeks and then, when my interest began to falter, instead of starting another character I'd start another MMORPG.

In TOR, though, I'm beginning to feel the pull. I'm already wondering what some of the stuff I've already seen would look like through another pair of eyes. With the expansions now available and the level cap raised to 70 I could probably stick with my Scoundrel for weeks but I don't think that's going to happen.

Now this beats a yellow cab!

I might manage 50 before I squirrel off to another Class. That should be manageable. I definitely don't want to leave Alderaan for a good, long while. Although next comes Tatooine and I do like a good desert.

Anyway, enough of that. This civil war between noble houses isn't going to stop itself. I'd better get back to what I do best: saving the world by shooting people in the head.

Hey, I never said I was Heidi!

SW:TOR First Impressions: Story, Narrative and Choice

Coming in to Star Wars: The Old Republic cold, there was one thing I thought I knew: it was going to be all about the story. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the concept of Story as the Fourth Pillar was an overriding principle of BioWare's master plan for their first (and so far only) MMORPG.

That shouldn't have surprised anyone. BioWare's reputation, which at that time was both considerable and largely unsullied, was built on an assured ability to provide branching narratives with meaningful choices. By the time TOR launched in 2011, BioWare had already published, among others, the Baldur's Gate series, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect 1 and 2 and Dragon Age 1 and 2, all of which used some variation of the choice wheel and/or companion system.

I played and finished both Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 at launch. I also played Neverwinter Nights, although I didn't complete the single player storyline, instead becoming all but addicted to tinkering with the Aurora world-building toolset that shipped with it.

I skipped the Mass Effect games (more accurately I didn't even realise they existed) but when Dragon Age: Origins arrived in 2009, I bought and played it immediately. DA:O marked my personal falling out of love with BioWare, not because it was a bad game but because ten years of MMORPG gameplay suddenly made the level of nitpicking detail and emotional micromanagement of NPCs seem not just purposeless but infuriating.

By the time SW:TOR launched a couple of years later, in the midst of a furious debate over the relevance or otherwise of Story to the MMORPG genre, I was already of the firm opinion that I wanted none of it. It wasn't just that the I.P. and setting did nothing for me, it was that I'd had enough - more than enough - of the kind of spurious, artifical "choice" I'd rejected in Dragon Age.

Don't try to read anything into the body language. They don't have any.

Very little that I've read over the years since then has threatened to change that fixed opinion. I've seen enough posts where bloggers discuss their character's relationship, romantic or otherwise, with various Companions to give me the heebie-jeebies. I've scanned accounts of supposed moral dilemmas that have made my eyes roll. I've pondered on the infantile duality of Light vs Dark, although not for long. Life's too short for made-up problems.

When I decided I'd give TOR a run the one thing over and above all else that I expected to have difficulty dealing with was The Story. I was well aware that, following the commercial failure of the game as a full MMORPG, it had been re-made and remodelled into a spurious online single-player campaign. In effect it had become the third entry in the Knights of the Old Empire series, games produced by BioWare and published by LucasArts, the first of which I own but have never played.

It would be overstating the case to claim I was dreading engagement with TOR's narrative but I very definitely wasn't looking forward to it. I expected that, at best, the chore of dealing with NPCs and their trite dilemmas, while simultaneously massaging the emotions of my toddler-like companions would feel rote and tedious.

Much more likely, I imagined, it would annoy the living hell out of me.  Even if TOR had other small pleasures, I half-expected The Story would overwhelm and ruin them, driving me to the point where I'd just up and quit. That's what happened with Dragon Age, after all.

With that background and baggage in mind, I am both surprised and delighted to say that, thus far, I have found TOR's storytelling to be engaging, entertaining and mostly not annoying at all.

I seem to run into a disproportionate amount of brother/sister combos.

The narrative itself is pulpy, which is wholly approppriate, but also sprightly and fresh, like an old, comfortable sweater clean out of the drier. The writing is crisp, uncomplicated and clean. There's a very welcome absence of florid description and unecessary adjectives. Most NPCs speak in plain, declarative sentences. Everyone sticks to the point.

If the greatest strength of the writing is that it doesn't get in the way, much the same can be said of the voice acting. In nearly twenty hours I have yet to hear a single dodgy accent, an oviously incorrect line reading or the least hint of hysteria. Every performance has been dialled back and the game benefits enormously from that restraint.

If the Gold Standard for both dialog and voicework in MMORPGs rests with The Secret World, which it does, then SW:TOR is solid Silver. The quality benchmark exceeds workmanlike and rests comfortably at professional.

TOR may not have the unintentional joys of the insane translations in Twin Saga or Dragon Nest, or the quirky, companionable, friendly familiarity of EverQuest 2, but instead it offers a reassuring, steady hand on the tiller that instills confidence. While playing I have that safe feeling that comes when you put yourself in the hands of people who patently know what they're about.

So much for the content. How about those mechanics? In Dragon Age (and even, if I'm honest, in Baldur's Gate), it wasn't so much the writing that raised my hackles, it was the endless preening and posturing of the characters.

Frankly, I'm surprised Corso didn't up and walk out on me the moment I put on that hat. The hat is getting its own post soon.

I got so tired of managing the mismatched expectations of my raggle-taggle bands back then. I'd spend hours trying to Do The Right Thing only to have one of them storm off in a hissy fit because of something I'd said. I was dreading those post-battle debriefings, where everyone gathers around the fire (or the syn-coff dispenser) and rubbishes everyone else.

And guess what? There's none of that! I get constant updates on whether Corso Riggs "approves" or "disapproves" of what I've said or done but so far he keeps his opinions on my performance to himself. I'm starting to get a rough idea what he does or doesn't like and generally it's there or thereabouts in line with what I was planning on doing anyway. I don't yet feel like I have to manage his emotions to keep him onside. I can just observe them, which is fine.

Whether this is "Early Days Syndrome" and later in the game, as I acquire a mulltiplicity of companions, the dreaded emotional micromanagement will make itself known, I can't say. For now, though, Corso is effectively my MMORPG "pet" or "henchman" or "mercenary". He does what I tell him and doesn't argue about it. Long may that continue!

Despite monitoring my choices for moral turpitude, Corso loves a bribe. This is something I've always found an odd trope in RPGs. It's not unique to BioWare; Project: Gorgon makes extensive use of the mechanic, whereby giving NPCs presents makes them like or respect you more. Why or how this works is never explained.

It's understandable that you might go up in an NPC's estimation if you hand over something useful or valuable. That's being a good employer or a good friend. Why anyone should like you more because you gave them the carapace of a beetle you found on a random monster is beyond me.

When there's an option that looks like it's going to give me lore I always take it. I have no idea what that implies on the Dark/Light scale.

There's even a description on each item telling you in advance how much a given companion will like the object in question. Of all the obviously gamelike mechanics in TOR, this is perhaps the most blatant. You could make a spreadsheet. I'm sure someone has.

Much, much better is the Conversation Wheel. Color me impressed.

I've seen countless iterations of the mechanic. In MMORPGs, where choices are rarely allowed to be meaningful for eminently practical reasons, the goal is usually "flavor". In that context you might expect to choose between "Polite", "Funny"  and "Rude", allowing you to create a head canon version of your character without changing anything that actually happens in the game.

TOR, being an MMORPG, is also limited in how much impact your choices can have on the world. Most of the tension is going to rely on how they might impact your character. I was expecting that to be predictable. From what I've seen so far, it's not.

I began with the intention of keeping my Scoundrel as close as possible to true neutral but it became apparent all too quickly that there were going to be serious problems with that. In theory, I should have been able to play off Light and Dark choices to steer a middle course. I probably could still do that, if I could stand it. Which I can't.

Instead,I've been picking the options that feel natural. In character, you could say. Even that's harder than you'd imagine.

Almost all conversations have three responses. I expected those to represent Light, Dark and Neutral. That doesn't seem to be the case. What's more, even if it is, I can't reliably tell in advance which is which.

A very rare binary choice. And even that didn't turn out how I expected.

The Dark choice is often plain because it's also very rude. But sometimes it isn't. I have a significant Dark minor chord rumbling beneath  my underlying Light melody because I have taken several options, which I was sure were Neutral, which turned out to give Dark points. Also, since the one, defining character trait I gave my Scoundrel was that she wouldn't do anything pro bono, it turns out asking about money all the time isn't great for your soul. Who knew?

Conversely, I began to pull strongly towards the Light just from taking what I thought were Neutral options long before I finally threw up my hands and accepted my Scoundrel was more Calamity Jane than Bonnie Parker. And so many of the options just seem too harsh. I find myself drifting towards the light even when I'm trying to hide in the shadows. I'm just too good for this world.

The happy confusion is enhanced by a couple of very simple functions of the system itself. The category of choice is largely independent of the order in which the options appear. The Dark choice does appear at the bottom more often than not, but by no means always. You can't allow yourself to drift into a pattern of always clicking #3 or you will come unstuck.

Much more subtly, the options from which you choose are mere approximations of what your character will say. There's no space on the wheel for long dialog entires and while my Scoundrel is on the terse side, she doesn't speak in fragments. I am frequently suprised by what she actually says after I press the button that hints at what it's going to be.

I love this. It makes the whole process entertaining, amusing and alive. It also adds a frisson of risk that I find refreshing. I always think about what the written response might mean and I always try to pick the one that's going to take me where I want to go but I don't always get it right. I can imagine some people finding that infuriating but I like it a lot.

Here's where I have trouble. I want to talk about pay because that's my motivation but I hate not knowing what's going on.

It does have the effect of turning "my" character something other than the typical MMORPG player's avatar. After spending twenty hours together I feel a strong affection for her but it's the kind of emotion I'd feel for a character in a book or a movie I was enjoying, rather than a character I'd created or a facet of myself. I want to see what she's going to do next but I don't necessarily feel I'm in complete control of what that might be.

And that's fine. Actually, it's more than fine but it's also weird. I find myself talking out to loud to my character as I play, not something I am prone to doing in other MMOs. I also talk to Corso. It's almost as though the three of us are engaged in some kind of dramatic production, possibly with an invisible audience. Perhaps I ought to think about livestreaming...

Thus far, then, I am both much happier and considerably more impressed by TOR's storytelling than I imagined I would be. The mechanics work much more effectively than I expected, the writing and voicework are solid if unexceptional and the storylines are of a standard approrporiate to the source material.

Contrary to some things I have read, I am also finding the non-narrative missions to be well worth doing, not just for the extra XP but for the interesting side stories they tell. Some of them have been more interesting than the main plot, or at least more emotionally affecting. It's always the little stuff, isn't it?

Whether I'd want to go through all eight Class stories is another matter. That might be altogether too much of a good thing. For now, though, I'm enjoying the ride to fifty, seeing the sights and hearing the tales as I go. I'm in no hurry to get there, either. I think I'll just carry on as I am, poking my nose into other peoples' business and seeing what turns up.

So long as I keep getting paid, of course.