Just a BioWare Fan

There’s an interesting discussion about game play length taking place over at the BioWare Social Network. Rather than post several hundred words (the dreaded Wall of Text) there, I thought I’d post my thoughts here.

I see complaints with, to me, ridiculously small total hours into BioWare’s games. Most of my Dragon Age: Origins plays end up about 90 hours. I do my best to find all gifts, max out conversations with companions, and have an essentially empty quest journal when I head into the final string of battles. I wander around towns and talk to random NPCs, read some codex entries, click on everything that lights up, and generally act like my completionist self.

While many Mass Effect and BioWare fans feel betrayed, abandoned, and otherwise shunned by their formerly beloved game company, you may have noticed that I feel different. It seems I have different in-game desires than many.

When it comes to the recently announced Dragon Age 3: Inquisition, my excitement stems not from blind love of whatever BioWare does, though they’ve not utterly let me down even with ME3, it comes from having found something to love in each game, no matter the flaws.

In particular, the Dragon Age series has captured my heart. There isn’t a particular character or love interest that I feel the need to continue, as much as I’d love to see what happens with my Wardens. The characters and setting in general have, instead, drawn me into that world.

I crossed the open room toward Admiral Anderson, surrounded by people in familiar Alliance blues going about their business. Six months’ isolation had allowed me too much time to contemplate the fact that I had, as accused, blown up an entire star system and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The anticipated dramatic accusation, or at least gasps of recognition from the soldiers around me, never came. No one paid much attention to the notorious Commander Shepard in their midst, at least openly. I suppose I should have been relieved that the staff at HQ had that much discipline.

In all the time I’d been under arrest only Anderson and James Vega, the soldier who’d guarded my cell on the day shift, had been even vaguely friendly with me. I’d been held strictly incommunicado, even from my closest friends. Anderson had passed along a couple of declarations of support, though not the one I wanted most to hear. Otherwise it had been aloof guards and interrogators going over the same information for the hundredth time.

For those of you who are curious about SWTOR and its vaunted class stories (and excellent voice acting) but reluctant to pay for the privilege of experiencing it, good news has arrived! In the near future—sometime this fall, which could be anytime from next month through the end of the year, depending how you define fall—you’ll be able to pick up the game and play up to level 50 without paying a subscription.

Fifty is the current level cap, so that number may change. If they increase the maximum level for characters the free-to-play (F2P, as they say) limit may be raised as well or it may be extra incentive for non-subscribers to buy access or pony up that fifteen dollars a month to see the end of their story.

The point is that you can leap into the Star Wars universe, run through the main story line in at least one of the classes, and get a good sense of what SWTOR is all about without committing to the monthly subscription. In fact, I’ve seen the possibility of two free character slots thrown around the forum so you may be able to unlock your legacy and establish a relationship between a pair of them without paying a dime.

“You know, Corso,” the Captain said casually, her eyes on her screens and the still-distant docking bays, “it’s times like these for which pilot’s pants were invented.”

Corso never knew where she was going with these nonchalant little comments but they invariably led to his blushing madly at her audacity and making him want her even more. She was so different from anything he’d ever known. His stint with the Republic Army had left him feeling urbane and experienced compared to his fellows on Ord Mantell but the smuggler operated on a whole different level.

“All right,” he said with a nervous laugh, “I’ll bite. What are pilot’s pants?”