by Cody "Micajah" Bye,
Managing Editor
Big guns, a feisty girl, and a little gore; what more could you ask for
in
a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game? Upon second thought,
you should expect much more than that out of your MMO game of choice.
In this day and age, massively multiplayer games should include a
plethora of options for the player, ranging from crafting and housing
to PvP and guild warfare. Although not all of the previously mentioned
elements are in the recently released
style="font-style: italic;">Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa,
the game is far from as simple and shallow as the first sentence of
this article would have you believe.
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14156" title="Firefight">
src="/image/view/14156/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">A scene from style="font-style: italic;">Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa.
When Garriott first jumped onto the massively multiplayer scene back in
the late 90s with Ultima
Online, the marketplace was devoid of any
truly successful graphical MMORPGs and any sort of trend or tradition
had yet to be established. Following the original stylings of the
text-based online games that went before UO, Garriott created a world
that allowed players tremendous amounts of freedom, but was often
harshly stringent on new players to that fantastic world. After a
decade long hiatus from having any direct influence on a game's
development, Richard Garriott is now trying to hop into the marketplace
one more time, but this time he's diverging from the fantasy realm that
he had so long followed and has instead opted to pursue the genre of
science fiction.
Richard Garriott's
Tabula Rasa is an apocalyptic vision of a universe
torn apart by an invading army of frenetically violent aliens that
enjoy a good human snack between their meals. The story of Tabula Rasa
begins a short time after the invasion of Earth and drops your
character into their role as an official member of the Allied Free
Sentients, a force that is fighting to repel the massive alien army
(named the Bane) with the help of a few other alien races thrown in the
mix. As your character advances within the game, you gradually work
your way into a more favored position within the AFS, graduating from a
Recruit to whichever path you choose for your fresh-faced character.
While I've gone over the basic details of
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa in
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14118">my
initial
first impressions review, I've now had an adequate amount of
time in
the game and talking with the player community to adequately score
Richard Garriott's science fiction epic.
Finding that Perfect Face
Starting out in a fashion incredibly familiar to most roleplaying game
aficionados, Tabula Rasa
continues the fundamental tradition of
creating a character before the game ever begins. However,
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa uses an
avenue that differs many of the other MMORPGs on the market and
doesn't force players to make any crucial decisions at the beginning of
the game. No classes or abilities are selected, and players
simply create the gender and basic "look" of
their character. However, even these things are temporary and
inconsequential; many of the items you select in the beginning are
replaced when you upgrade your gear, and your face and hair selections
are only used so long as you don't clone your character (more on
cloning later in the review). But the character creation system isn't
without pitfalls.
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14152"
title="Over the Shoulder Shot">
src="/image/view/14152/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">The reviewer wasn't
entirely impressed with the character models included in
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa.
Be weary of what you decide upon for your characters last name; you'll
be stuck with it throughout your life on that server (unless the folks
at NCsoft allow for name changes). Instead of using a first name and
last name character naming sequence, the developers at TR wanted
players to feel some sort of connection to every player on a particular
server, thus the last name remains the same on that particular account.
So, if you want to be known as "(___) Grumpy," you'd better make sure
you really want that last name.
As far as progression is concerned,
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa follows
the same
titular format that is used by almost every MMORPG in the world.
Character's earn experience through completing missions and killing
monsters, advancing in levels as they do so. Upon reaching a new level,
characters gain a set number of statistic and skill points to put into
their character. A characters stats are separated into three categories
- Mind, Body, and Spirit - and each of these stats correlates with
either maximum health, power, or regeneration of the two. Skills are
the areas that your class specializes in, like Rage for Soldiers or
Swords for Spies. Although skill points can be modified through the
Character Cloning System, stat points are forever permanent and
cannot be modified once they've been apportioned, so take care when
you're selecting your statistics.
Shoot First, Ask Question
Later
From your very first steps into
Tabula Rasa, you'll find that the
gameplay is geared around combat. Rather than take the typical
auto-attack / hot-key combat approach, the team of developers at NCsoft
opted to pursue a much livelier version of hostilities in order to
capture the true feeling of face-to-face gun battles. Without the
restrictions of sword-and-sorcery interactions, the TR team wanted to
find a way to make the player feel like they're aiming their weapon
without falling into the player skill and server slowdown pitfalls that
would be common with a world full manually aiming players.
Played entirely in a third-person mode (at this time a first-person
option isn't even available), the combat gameplay of TR functions like
a blend between a shooter and the standard functions you'd find in an
MMORPG, creating a mixture as creamy and smooth as anything you'd find
at your local Orange Julius. While aiming is done manually with the
mouse (or through hitting the oft-used TAB button), your target is not
permanently adhered to that particular enemy. By moving the mouse, you
can target any of the aliens allies with a quick flick of your wrist.
This sort of aiming style is necessary in
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa because
all of
the weapon firing is done through clicking the left and right mouse
buttons. All of your weapons are fired with the left button, and any
abilities that have been selected are activated with the right button.
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/14185" title="Burn!">
src="/image/view/10311/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">The combat in TR
functions like a blend between traditional MMOG combat and a shooter.
Once you've engaged your enemy in mortal combat, you have several
options at your fingertips. First, it's often best to find a nice piece
of cover to hide behind. By finding a nice log or rock to hide behind,
you'll automatically take less damage from the enemies weaponry. If you
can kneel behind that cover, you're in an even better position because
you'll then be issuing the full damage alloted for your particular
weapon. Riflemen take note, kneeling or crouching is almost a necessity
when using your weaponry because of the high percentage that is
automatically taken off the top due to poor accuracy while standing.
Finding cover is a decent strategic element that has been placed within
the game, but I found that the most interesting aspect was trying to
uncover which of my weapons would be most effective in particular
situations.
As a Soldier (and eventually a Guardian), I was able to take full
advantage of most of the weaponry afforded to the players, and I must
say that each type of weapon has a particular type of strategy
associated with it. For example, the shotguns aren't particularly
useful against single opponents, especially if those opponents are at
range. However, if you're able to get up close to a whole slew of
enemies, you can easily slaughter the whole lot of them without
blinking an eye. If I was trying to kill enemies solo, I would often
start with my rifle, move to my chaingun as the enemy approached, then
switch to my shotgun if they were bringing along a whole troop of
friends. One more note to Soldiers, don't overlook the Rage ability.
Although rumors have been spreading about an upcoming nerf to the
ability, don't ignore the automatic damage increase that you can plop
onto your already tremendous damage potential.
Perhaps one of the biggest concerns many players have had with the
current status of a
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa is the
amount of weapons and/or abilities
that have yet to be tweaked into their final forms. The Soldier's Rage
ability is only one example of this problem, as the current form of
Rage drastically accelerates the Soldier's damage-per-second output. As
another example, the Guardian's Staff wielding abilities, for the most
part, have been doing less than their estimated amount of damage per
swing, and the developers are still working on the issue that has
caused that problem.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Tabula Rasa Game Page.
