Welcome back to the 66th edition of Reloading...!
Welcome back!
Please remain seated. If you look to your left you can see the SWTOR beta test on the horizon. Driver, turn this bus around!
I’m John Hoskin and I’ll be your MMOG tour guide today. Enjoy the ride!
I have you now!” – Darth Vader
Everyone can use a feel good moment to start the day. Let’s go with this…
Thanks for taking some time out of your day to read this column. I truly appreciate it. If you happen to use Twitter, you can follow me @BoomjackTTH. I rarely use Facebook, but I do occasionally post gaming related tidbits on Google+ where you can find me under my real moniker John Hoskin.
It’s official, Star Wars The Old Republic beta in early September. Those of you itching to play will finally be able to put away the back scratcher. Your journey is almost complete. Ten Ton Hammer was at PAX covering the
SWEATER developer panel. Open world PvP was discussed among other juicy topics.
PCMag has a great infographic posted showing
how gaming has gone social. Take a quick look at the graphic and then ask yourself if you can picture a group of people in front of a Kinect playing a MMOG.
Back to SWTOR…
If you have watched any of the gameplay videos from SWEATER I’m sure that it has struck you that Bioware did not jump the shark over the uncanny valley and go for lifelike graphics. The art nestles itself somewhere firmly between the
World of Warcraft style on the left and oh, say,
EverQuest 2 on the right. Emmanuel Lusinchi, Associate Lead Designer had this to say,
“We do that on purpose because a realistic looking game will look great the first year, will look okay the second year, and look terrible three years later when people make fun of it. While a more abstract style has more longevity. More polygons, better technology, would add nothing to the style we’ve chosen.”
What are your thoughts on the artistic style of SWEATER? Do you prefer a more lifelike approach or does the abstract style appeal more to you?
Short, but sweet today.
That’s it for today. Thanks again for reading. See you in-game!
As always, you can contact me a number of ways:
Email
Twitter
Website
Telepathy (Just make sure it’s during business hours. I hate to be woken by this stuff)
Until we meet again,
John “Boomjack” Hoskin