Choreographed Combat…sometimes

SWTOR will have choreographed combat… at least sometimes. But just what exactly this entails has many gamers confused. Can attacks be parried by moving out of the way? Is the combat already sequenced with the viewing of the “scene” shown once a character is already determined dead?

Georg Zoeller attempts to clear up some confusion about this on the forums:

“Ability. These kinds of abilities have multiple segments, each of which can hit or miss (which may give the target a window to escape…). That said, some of these abilities can be upgraded to root or stun, or the player can use other abilities before hand to set up the kill and make sure the target is not going anywhere.

The whole system is rather complex and we’ve spend significant amounts of resources and time to balance visuals and gameplay – we don’t want to lock the player in place or stop them from moving, but we do want the choreographed combat / blaster bolt deflection / over the top abilities. Naturally, there are situations where we have to trade off the visuals for the player’s ability to act smoothly and freely – but most of the time, there’s ways to make both work that play well – at least our testers are pretty positive about it so far.

No other MMO has done something like this, so I can understand it’s confusing / hard to understand.”

Does this mean that players will have more control over attacks and combat that your typical MMO? What will choreographed scenes mean to the player?

What do you think?

Author

  • Smiling man wearing glasses and black shirt

    Soeren Kamper is the founder of StarWars: Gamers and a longtime Star Wars writer, community builder, and gaming journalist with nearly two decades of experience covering Star Wars games and fandom. He began writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic in 2008, later co-founding the SWTOR wiki and founding the SWTOR subreddit, and became an early, active figure in the game’s community. His hands-on involvement led to invitations from BioWare Austin and participation in SWTOR events during the game’s launch era. His work is grounded in long-term franchise knowledge, firsthand gaming experience, and deep roots in the Star Wars community.

Soeren Kamper

Soeren Kamper is the founder of StarWars: Gamers and a longtime Star Wars writer, community builder, and gaming journalist with nearly two decades of experience covering Star Wars games and fandom. He began writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic in 2008, later co-founding the SWTOR wiki and founding the SWTOR subreddit, and became an early, active figure in the game’s community. His hands-on involvement led to invitations from BioWare Austin and participation in SWTOR events during the game’s launch era. His work is grounded in long-term franchise knowledge, firsthand gaming experience, and deep roots in the Star Wars community.