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The combat is faster, even though it’s still kind of boring, and I don’t have to grind and complete every quest on each planet to move ahead. BioWare Austin has gone back to sand down the rough edges of the game, and to improve all the issues that kept me away before. The Old Republic is better at scratching those itches than I remember. I craved player agency, conflict between me and my friends, and feeling like one protagonist of a story I played through with others. Now, in 2019, I find myself eagerly playing through Star Wars : The Old Republic. Star Wars: The Old Republic deserves a second chance It often felt like work, and many players had moved on by the time the game went free-to-play in 2012. The game was also chock full of grinding, combat was slow and unwieldy, and story quests were locked behind countless side-quests. The MMORPG was backed by a massive budget, high-quality cinematics, and a promise of eight full BioWare campaigns - one for each character class - for players to enjoy. The Old Republic is the MMORPG that serves as a sequel to the Knights of the Old Republic RPG games, one of which was developed by BioWare and the other by Obsidian Entertainment. I walked away from Anthem feeling disappointed, and I found refuge in a different cooperative BioWare title: Star Wars: The Old Republic. The main selling point of the game, cooperative play, didn’t influence my Freelancer’s story or how I felt about the world. The narrative was confusing and poorly conveyed through cutscenes, emails, and radio chatter that weren’t connected to the action.
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One of the issues I heard from players repeatedly when they discussed Anthem was that it just wasn’t what they wanted, or expected, from a BioWare game. Anthem made only a brief appearance at E3 2019, and it seems like the game is going to be out of the spotlight for some time while BioWare works on retooling the game and addressing player concerns.
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