In terms of movement, characters have the floaty-footed quality common to MMOGs, but the combat does seem to pack a little more of a wallop than usual. “It plays to the strengths of the medium a lot more. We’re proud of felt it wasn’t as action-packed as it could have been,” says James Ohlen, TOR’s creative designer. “This is a faster-paced system that focuses on making the player feel like a hero – four players all beating on one enemy; that’s not what you think of as heroic. It’s usually the heroes who are outnumbered, and that’s the kind of feeling we’re going for.”

The combat is realtime (previous KOTOR games stopped the action while you selected attacks, obviously impossible in an MMOG), and while there’s still a slight sense of enemies dancing in front of one another rather than engaging in a fight to the death, there’s no denying the work that’s gone into the visual effects: blaster shots fizz, electricity crackles and Lightsabers clash.

How much of the latter is actually under the player’s direct control is unanswered for now, but the importance placed on Lightsaber duels in screenshots and the fact it was generally addressed (without any details, naturally) in interviews suggests BioWare is focusing considerable resources on this interaction, and may come up with something surprising. The biggest claim for TOR, however, is that while it will have all of the usual elements associated with the MMOG genre, it will combine this with the strong narratives BioWare prides itself on.

This raises some intriguing problems. How can decisions in an MMOG be of galaxy-changing importance? How can one player feel like the hero in a game composed of thousands of players?

“If you’ve played BioWare games you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the story’s structured,” begins Daniel Erickson, the game’s chief writer. “But we’re always trying to make storytelling more cinematic, and quicker. It’s separated into fairly discernible chunks like the movies, and the stuff that’s part and parcel of your world does stay – you make big choices, stuff happens and it stays that way.”

This doesn’t quite answer the big question: how can individuals all be making world-changing decisions in a world that is shared? If the whole galaxy isn’t in peril and you, solely you, isn’t about to save it, then the traditional BioWare method won’t work. “I think about New York City à la Marvel comics,” counters Erickson. “If one of the 20 superheroes doesn’t show up then the world is doomed. You’re all doing your own thing, but somehow coincide for the big moments.”