If there are two things that deliver in this world, they are BioWare and Comic-Con. It was natural to expect, then, that when BioWare went to Comic-Con, something great might happen. It just did. If you’ve been following Star Wars: The Old Republic, chances are you’ve heard that players of SWTOR will all be getting their own ships. After this news, it was theorised that there was now the chance that there would be space combat in the Old Republic. However, an argument was put forward that such a major feature surely would have been announced by now, and that furthermore it would probably be far too great in scope to be implemented along with the already massive feature list upon launch. Both sound and logical points that thankfully turned out to be completely wrong.
BioWare has instead taken the opportunity of the SWTOR panel at Comic-Con to announce that the game will indeed include ship combat. This will apparently take the form of “an alternate gameplay experience” to that of the primary, traditional structure of questing planetside. Players will be able to fly to “hot spots” on the galactic map, using their personal spacecraft to zap everything from asteroids to enemy frigates, with the goal of the system being to “evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars space battles.” While this leaves the question of exactly how much depth will be present, and to what extent space combat will be linked to the story and character progression, I can’t help but be excited about the prospect of experiencing an even greater breadth of the Star Wars universe.