Morality and Player Choice

This past Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend Dig London, a gaming and technology conference (in Ontario, not England). One of the biggest highlights of the day was, without a doubt, listening to two back-to-back talks by Bioware story slingers Ken Thain and Mike Laidlaw. They addressed the matters of narrative, when and where to inject it into gameplay, player freedom, player perspective, etc. It was a very interesting hour, and got me thinking a lot about a topic that has been on a lot of peoples' minds in recent years; morality systems. Of course a lot of the reason my brain went there is simply because they are Bioware guys. While Bioware didn't invent game morality systems, they are certainly a big proponent of them. Regardless, now that morality systems are on my mind, I figure I should do what I do on this blog, and try to translate my random thoughts into a somewhat coherent analysis of the matter at hand.

SWTOR Space Combat

What's up internet. For the past week and then some I've been playing Bioware's MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Yesterday I hit the max level of 50, and so I want to take some time to put together my thoughts on what I have experienced so far. The first topic that I want to talk a bit about is the game's space combat. At the end of the second world, at around level 18, you will obtain your own person ship. Using this ship you can go on space missions with varying objectives, and completing said missions awards you with experience, as well as fleet commendations. You also get daily quests to complete space missions, the problem is, is this enough to make the player keep blasting down their opponent's fleets? Read on to find out!