I’m sure many of you, like I, are eagerly awaiting the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) which we are told should be released in the spring of 2011. Overall, I am fairly happy with what I see from the game – but one thing still bothers me. Where are my flying body parts or droid limbs? SWTOR needs dismemberment to really capture the Star Wars experience! There has been a lot of discussion on this topic over on the SWTOR forums, and I think a lot of reasons that people give in defense of the apparent lack of dismemberment are silly if not just plain incorrect. So let’s take a look at the major arguments against:
1a. “They want to keep a Teen rating.”
Okay, this is probably the most common argument, but seems altogether pretty weak when you break it down. First, all of the Star Wars movies have dismemberment, and with the exception of the bar scene in Episode 4, there really isn’t any blood because saber wounds cauterize. In addition, all the films have received a PG rating, except Revenge of the Sith, which received a PG-13 rating. So let’s look at the Teen and Mature ESRB ratings and make a wild guess on which SWTOR will fall into:
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp
1b. “Bioware doesn’t want kid’s parents not buying the game.
The idea here is that if it has got dismemberment, the parents of younger kids won’t buy the game for them. Well as I already pointed out, I am fairly sure the game could still keep a Teen rating with dismemberment, but there are two other reasons why this argument is a joke. First, the average age of MMORPG players is around 26 years old. Now of course this is changing rapidly as developers are attempting to open the market to other ages, but I am fairly certain that Bioware knows that most of its players are not going to be minors. Secondly, how many parents do you know that do not let their 12-17 year olds watch the Star Wars movies because they’re “too violent.” Have you watched TV in the last 2 decades? The Star Wars movies are mild, and the fact that an MMO which doesn’t capture the same amount of realism as those movies has some dismemberment isn’t going significantly halt any sales. I’d even make the argument, if I didn’t think the case was strong enough, that the simple fact that the game has “Star Wars” in its title is more likely to make parents not even look at the rating.
2a. “I don’t want to lose limbs in combat.”
This argument has some validity, and it’s basically born out of the fact that we’re talking about a MMORPG. And in a MMORPG, we have to make light sabers work a little differently than the movies. In the movies, lights sabers do what? One-shot everything. Basically, unless you dodge, or block said light saber with another (or a few rare energy weapons), it’s going to cut through everything without question. I am sure the people at Bioware figured out that this wouldn’t make for a very good game mechanic – whoever gets the first hit wins – so they had to change things and that is perfectly fine by me, because I understand that the system has to be revamped to fit a playable model. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t have dismemberment on the killing blow, when a light saber is involved. It’s pretty simple, when you get the killing blow with a light saber, give us a pretty good chance to cut something off as part of the death animation.
2b. “But player’s aren’t going to die, they’ll be unconscious .”
This one is tough because as far as my research went, I couldn’t find a strong explanation of the death system. There was some mention of a “Return to Med Center” option when being defeated, but as other’s have pointed out, in some previous Star Wars games the story behind the death system is that you leave DNA behind so you can be cloned in case of your demise. So in short, the developers have not settled on a specific story behind the death system yet. There are a lot of different death systems out there, from die and return to your corpse, to die and return to your bind point, to resurrect at the nearest hospital like in City of Heroes or Villains.
Honestly, I don’t care what Bioware chooses, as long as it’s not this sissy “oh you don’t actually die you’re just unconscious” garbage. Last I checked, light sabers weren’t blunt weapons – you might pass out if a limb is severed, but your enemy isn’t going to graciously leave you alive. And the weakest part of this argument is actually all the other ways you’ll take damage. Does it make sense to argue against dismemberment because your character is suppose to get up and have all their limbs, when your character can be blown up, burned via flame throwers, and shot with lasers? I mean, explain to me how you become unconscious when someone throws a grenade at your feet, but your feet are still there.
A light saber you can only slap someone with.
3. “Dismemberment isn’t necessary.”
This one makes me weep. Where would Star Wars be without droid parts flying through the air in an elegant dance of precession and death that is the light saber? Of course you could argue that it isn’t necessary, but that argument can be applied to almost anything. Next you’ll say that any telekinesis powers aren’t necessary because they’ll be too hard to implement or some junk. If you want to play some subpar, shallow, underdeveloped game be my guest, it’s your money, but please don’t argue against something that really can’t adversely affect you.
In conclusion, there are a lot of players out there that say they’d like to see some dismemberment, but they’ll play the game regardless. This article is aimed at those players, in hope that you’ll send feedback to Bioware and make them aware of what you want as a future paying customer. We’re not nerfing a class, we’re not trying to hurt your game experience in any way, we just want SWTOR to actually reflect the Star Wars universe that we’ve all come to love so much. If you would really choose no dismemberment, I can’t imagine that you’ve ever enjoyed a Star Wars movie in your life. Dismemberment doesn’t take anything away from anyone (except your limbs, but you know what I mean) and I think it would be worth the hours required by the Bioware team to implement it.
There is the small possibility that they are working on it, and plan to surprise us. It’s a nice hope, but I still think we should be as vocal as possible about what we would like to see. On the other hand, it’s not out of the question, for those that think it would be too difficult to implement remember we’re probably just talking about death animations, and in light of the recent news that Bioware is syncing character animations to make light saber battles actually look like they should, I don’ t think it’s too far out of reach.
I completely think there should be dismemberment. More people are likely to buy the game with a “Mature” rating anyway. I know people that buy games specifically because of an advanced rating based on non-realistic violence. It would be one thing to have someone blown to pieces using modern-day weapons; then it would be popularizing the horrors of actual real-life combat. Using a laser-sword to slice body parts off of futuristic telekinetic warriors and sentient robots is as far-fetched as violence can really get. Even the popular Cartoon Network series Samurai Jack featured gratuitous amounts of cartoon violence against robots and it was considered an age 10+ show.
The beauty of using the lightsaber as a weapon in a game is that it would supposedly cauterize the wound. This leaves flying arms or whatever a viable option to introduce into gameplay without the obvious fountains of blood that would naturally follow if it were any other weapon.
Just another reason why I think this game is not going to do well in the long run. BioWare doesn’t even know their target audience, and if they think it’s kids who need their parents to buy them games (what is that, sub-teen ages?), then they are sorrily mistaken. If they are targeting kids with this MMO, it’s going to be far too simplified to appeal to the adult MMO market.