Warning: Super-minor Skyrim spoiler included. It’s one isolated event unrelated to anything else in the game, and will spoil only this one location/encounter for you, but it’s still technically a spoiler.
I was on a quest for the mages guild, when on my compass I saw a lighthouse icon and wanted to discover it for later exploration. I wandered up the mountain to said lighthouse, and when I finally arrived I saw a dead horse near the front door. This got me curious, and so I entered the lighthouse to check things out.
As soon as I entered, I saw a skeleton in the middle of the main room, an axe in its back, and a trail of blood leading from said main room to a door. A quest notification popped up, something about investigating the murder. The mages guild quest was put on hold, and it was time to play detective.
Searching around the main floor, I found a few journals, describing how a family of four had purchased and moved to this lighthouse, the parents looking to retire and the (guessing) late-teen kids coming to help before they leave to live their own lives. As the days went by, the different members of the family each recounted hearing noises in the basement. The different takes on this one event were very interesting, and in only a few pages really defined each character for me.
Little notes also made things interesting. The son had noted in his journal that he made a copy of the basement key, and hid it in the urn on the mantle. I went looking for the urn, and sure enough, the key was inside. I could have picked the lock and still progressed, but this detail did a good job of not just letting me pass a tough lock, but also drawing me into the story and rewarding me for actually reading.
Down in the basement, a hole had been made in a wall, and two alien-ish critters were crawling around. The hole lead to an underground lair of sorts, with the remaining family members dead inside. The daughter was in a holding cell, with a note near her that her father tried to save her, failed, and snuck a dagger to her at the last minute before being dragged away. While not expressly stated, the implication was clear, and the location of the dagger near the corpse was a nice visual cue as well.
The son’s corpse was a bit further inside, with a battle scene around him. No text this time, but again the visual cues made it pretty clear what he had attempted, and ultimately failed to do.
Finally, at the end, the father’s remains were inside the critter breeder (a bigger bug), who was at the center of a massive room with dozens and dozens of eggs, along with the family chest key. That chest, found at the very top of the lighthouse, contained some nice loot. This wrapped up the quest, and this little bit of Skyrim content.
I bring this up for a few reasons. The first being just to point out the excellent storytelling contained within Skyrim. This was not a major location, or even a spot you get directed to. It was just one random location out of the hundreds in Skyrim, and the whole thing took maybe 30 minutes to complete. Yet in that 30 minutes I got a complete story, and one that I was honestly interested in. Each journal was well written, not too long, and those along with the visual cues really pulled me into the encounter. At one point I was actually hoping to find someone alive, and actually felt bad for this family, who just wanted to retire and ended up picking the wrong spot.
The other reason I bring this up is because I believe it highlights a key difference between written quest text (the journals) and voiced content. Voiced content, while also great, leaves little room for imagination or your own take on things. Voiced content is paced how it’s paced, sounds like it sounds, and you either “believe it” or you don’t. Text is ‘voiced’ in your head, and so sounds as believable as you make it. The ‘voice acting’ in those journals was Emmy-award winning stuff, IMO, because I’m just that great at it in my own head :)
Finally, this bit of content, loot aside, was most definitely a one-off thing. If I roll another character in Skyrim, I won’t experience this content the same way. At most, I’ll speed-run through it to get that final chest, but the journals, the mystery, and slow searching of the lair will be skipped.
I believe this is how most will approach SW:TOR. The first time you experience the content, most will (hopefully) take it at the intended pace and really enjoy the story pieces. But on an alt, the focus is going to shift to that chest at the end, and most likely more-so because SW is an MMO, while Skyrim is an sRPG where loot is nice but not the point. I’m seeing reports of this already, as beta players roll alts and ‘skip’ the story parts that they have already experienced, or at most are picking the other options just to see the differences. While the 200 hours may indeed be true for your first character, I imagine most will play alts in “fast forward” mode. That’s OK in a story-light themepark like WoW, where the real ‘meat’ of the content is grinding dailies/raids/BG or some other form of repeatable content, but considering how emphasized the “4th pillar” is in SW, what will that do for its retention rate?
One more thought: Remember how many considered it a mistake by Blizzard to hold such a long Cata beta, given how linear that expansion was in terms of leveling, and how this likely contributed to the accelerated boredom of that expansion? Considering how many people beta-tested SW, and how linear that game is, can’t we expect the same result, only again increased due to SW linear-story focus? How many of you how have pre-ordered will speed-run the 1-20 content now? What about those who hit the level cap, or have been in multiple beta rounds and tried out multiple characters?
Hardcore Casual 
I’m a big Star Wars fan, and a big MMORPG fan, and in beta I played hard for a week, by week 2 I made myself play thinking it would get better, by week 3 I stopped playing entirely. When this has happened in other games that I think still have hope I will do a large suggestion or problem and solution post on the forum. In SWTOR I didn’t even bother. If the core is rotten, there is nothing you can do. I would recommend it to an extreme Star Wars fan as a 1 char play through just to get a Star Wars fix, but noting else.
Meanwhile in Skyrim I cannot stop playing, MMORPGs take note, exploration is fun ;)
Couldn’t agree more about the best voice acting happening in the player’s head. There’s been a lot of hoohah about SW:tOR being voiced throughout but it’s not the first time an MMO has offered this as a USP. EQ2 made a huge fuss about every quest being voiced back in 2004.
I was keen on the idea in theory back then, but in practice I just found it irritating. I can read a lot faster than actors deliver dialog and in my head the characters always sound right. I do like voiced NPCs for background and flavor in MMOs but I really don’t want to listen to hours and hours of quest text being read out loud. Does anyone?
This past weekend was my 3rd beta weekend, and I decided to make a new character and see how far I could get. Detail here if you care. TL;DR version is that I made it to level 17 in about 20 hours of play time, so unless leveling slows to a crawl I’m gonna have to call BS on that 200 hours per toon claim Bioware’s making. Especially becuz had I run flashpoints I’d have probably made level 19 or 20 in the same amount of time.
My plan is to hit up the various AC’s in cross-faction play so I’ll never be in a position to skip the dialog. That said, I also don’t plan on doing all 8 of the mirrors either. I’ll play it until I’m bored with it, and then I’ll move on, or back to something else I enjoy, or. . whatever.
The second I realized that half of the characters share starter zones I knew I would be skipping a lot of stuff. I’m sure they intended for each of them to have a specific zone but VO takes a lot of time, and they clearly ran out before finishing a few things…like background audio of any kind, anywhere. I’ve never felt less ambience and immersion in a game in 20 plus years.
It’s funny, because I’m not a huge Star Wars nut (if anything, I’ve read/watched more Star Wars stuff because of TOR than the other way around, and a lot of the extended universe is pretty interesting) but I’m still going to enjoy the game a lot, even if I seek my sandbox options elsewhere.
As to replayability: I suspect people like myself, attracted to this sort of thing in the first place, will eventually want to see all 8 of the stories. That’s a big one. Yes, classes share zones, but the stories on the zones are different between classes, with plenty of instanced content for each.
One thing Bioware has done right, imho, is they provided more quest hubs per zone than what you’d need to level through that zone. It’s not Skyrim-caliber detail, but unless you’re being OCD about doing -everything- on a planet, you will have content to get back to on another alt, perhaps better suited to the storyline in your head for that particular alt.
PvP warzones and Space Invaders 2011 aka the space combat thing do offer decent xp rewards, so you might end up levelling a dungeon heavy or PvP/space combat heavy alt to spice things up for yourself. Again, there are chunks of story you can access through that.
And, in the end, it’s less about the content you are spoonfed and more about what you make of it. People you meet in dungeons, world PvP encounters, that sort of thing. I do hope they put in some sort of arena system, at least.
I’m seeing reports of this already, as beta players roll alts and ‘skip’ the story parts that they have already experienced, or at most are picking the other options just to see the differences.
As someone who really has only been interested in SWTOR because of the finite story bits, I have a hard time believing the premise was ever that the story was going to help retention. The actual rate of retention is going to come 100% from the entertainment value of the endgame. The value of the story and the voice acting and so on was to act as a foot in the door, a hook to get people into the game at all, and then to the endgame.
Pre-beta, I wasn’t going to buy SWTOR at all. Having since played it, I absolutely am going to buy it, but will be treating it as KOTOR 3. A win for BioWare/EA just the same. And the longer I take to “beat the game,” the more likely it is that I make friends and otherwise get ensnared.
If your point is that each of the eight classes doesn’t have unique content beyond 1-20, and therefore your 2nd/3rd/4th alts will rocket through the 20-50 shared content, that’s fine. Keep in mind that amounts to 50 + 20*7 = 190 levels of unique content in an MMO genre that typically has only has half that, if not less.
So true – also, why I prefer books to movies. the greatest films happen in your own head, no director could achieve that for you.
I loved the lighthouse in Skyrim, I did make a halt there on my way to the mage guild too. :) your recount showed me that I did miss a clue or two though, so now I will have to go back!
This is the information age, TV, internet, and movies just to name some of the biggest. What does this mean?
We are hooked on info coming at us short, fast and always something new and exciting. It is a drug. And yes most will run through the content at breakneck speed.
Unfortunately this affects the way games are made also and how they are maintained. I am an explorer and many times while going through out of the way areas I would stop and think, This would be a great spot for something unique and different”.
That tower sounds like an excellent find.
shit… i rly wanted to read this… but stoped at “lighthouse”. dont want to spoil this for me… cause lighthouse is one of my catchwords! you know… when you fly over the description of a movie or something like that looking for those catchwords…. like lighthouse, fog, desert, accident, backwoods, …
example: A young couple having a caraccident in the desert when… stopping there… going to watch. dont give a shit whats it about.
I’ve got a raging clue, err cue.
What I did to save myself from ruining my SWTOR was skip through all the story during my beta playing. HAHA, YEAH TAKE THAT!
I MUST find that Lighthouse!