The ongoing Space Opera of Glucas' digital existence keeps marching on. In what's basically a 150-hour episode of Dynasty he's spent the last few levels tracking down the progeny of his enemy in order to wipe out a stronghold of information from father-to-son that could put his Sith master in a tight spot.
This kid's father is a secret spy, a guy who has been living up in Empire HQ running a Republic-aided Balmorran resistance but whose blood runs Sith. Only now with news filtering in about a Jedi Padawan who can smell out your true allegiance, Sith spies need to be pulled the hell out of there, along with all traces of information about them.
This is where Glucas steps in. When he meets the son, Glucas is given the option to simply wipe his memory clean of information about Spy-dad. The kid stares up at him with his baby-blues in hope that he will be spared, but his smug Wil Wheaton-esque face destroys the moment and Glucas force-chokes him out of existence. Glucas' companion Vette isn't too pleased, her non-nonplussed stance screaming "-15 affection points". But he needs no female companionship in this role-play, only the soft comfort of wild reactions and regular genocidal mood swings to guide him through his day.
This is a fairly standard example of playing the game in-character. Glucas is hard to the core, doing only good deeds when he sees fit, which keeps him in an almost constant state of cloud-grey moral alignment. So what if he killed a couple of people in cold blood? He still helped that one robot find a battery or something on that one mission a few levels back.
Still as the player I can't help but feel some slight pang of regret. BioWare's talent for manipulating tears out of a person within its morality plays was at max setting when the son character asked Glucas not to tell his father he cried before he was killed.
So when I got to his dad and had him at lightsaber's reach I couldn't help myself but lie. Was this genuinely because I felt guilt about killing an NPC who was so utterly minor in the story I haven't bothered to remember what he's even called? Or was this because I cared about fixing my relationship with my companion character after the dip in points from the killing?
If I'm honest, the MMO player in me responded as follows because having a background of min/maxing my way through WoW, the primordial reptile part of my brain responds to minus-points badly.
I said the kid had been brave, which Vette approved of, still standing with hand-on-hip disinterest at the goings-on but calling out "+15" affection points.
The world was right again.
It's through this series of events that I get to know Quinn, TOR's resident fop and my second and newest companion. He has worked with me as a delegate, handing me quests and then humouring me by reminding Glucas which baddy to hit at the right times.
Quinn's mannequin-face glistened up at me in plain, meditative silence for a moment after asking if he could join my ship. Quinn shares the same annoying earnestness of a C-3PO; a flitty interpretation of an Englishman trapped in a world of androids and lasers. The comedy value was palpable so Glucas agreed to the union. Forget that I had just killed a kid and proved to be a liar to get on my slave-intern's good side, I had somehow managed to convince him I was this galaxy's foremost Boss of the Year and he showed interest in exploring planets by my side.
"I am at your disposal," he says.
"Loosen up," Glucas says.
My intimate relationship with Star Wars: The Old Republic has led me into jaded waters since our courtship began last December. Forget the dance around morality and suggestions of racism and sexism which the user is ingratiated with. BioWare offers semi-intellectualised themes to mainstream gamers - stuff that outside of the game are almost always worthwhile. But once Star Wars gets a hold of them and has a chance to chew on these, once they flow through its digestive tract, they're expelled as awkwardly as they can be.
Star Wars is an act of sticking a finger into a nerve-ending of a player and twisting for effect. And now somewhere in between contrived kid-killing and the illusion of companions that care about my actions I'm beginning to fall out of love with the idea that this is a thinking man's narrative-MMO. Certainly in my case it still comes down to accumulating points in the end.
