30 minutes had passed since my insectoid ally had asked me. It was a simple question ”did I intend to resist his claim to this land?”, made complicated by the previous eight hours of politics, betrayal, espionage, and war. I didn't know what to do. After consulting five different people (including my wife over the phone), I reluctantly made my choice on the familiar BioWare dialog wheel and betrayed my always-faithful insectoid allies in order to defend the man who'd just slain his own wife to prove his loyalty. I felt used. I immediately wanted to load a quicksave and reverse my decision, but I couldn't ”unlike BioWare's library of other RPGs, The Old Republic is an MMO and everything you do here is permanent, with unavoidable consequences. An abandoned friend suffers his ineluctable fate; a rescued child remains grateful and secure. It's an unexpected tool that BioWare uses to leverage player emotion and create some of the most engaging, moving story moments I've ever played in an RPG ”moments that are light-years beyond what we've seen in MMOs so far. All 17 of the game's worlds are brought to life with evocative architecture, meticulous set design, and a convincing population. Many quest hubs are the size of small cities with over a hundred soldiers, merchants, doctors, civvies, and the rest going about their business inside. While most of these tertiary characters stay in a single location (we aren't talking Skyrim here), they're almost always acting out a scene ”a Jawa trying to protect his droids from Imperial harassers at a starport, soldiers training with a drill sergeant, or a woman receiving saddening news from a friend ”and they make destinations feel like places with both a deep past and a future. There is some repetition of environmental models and building layouts, but it's wisely kept to a minimum. TOR is a BioWare RPG through and through, so you'll be doing the standard BioWare RPG stuff: gathering a crew, meeting interesting people, making moral choices, killing stuff, and upgrading gear. Combat relies on the traditional trinity setup, so you can choose to focus on healing, tanking, or DPS as one of the eight advanced classes available to each faction. A few class designs do break the mold a bit, such as ranged and stealth tanks, but most fall in line with traditional archetypes. The pool of playable species, however, is miniscule ”you'll be disappointed if you were dead-set on playing a freaky-looking alien. I like the game's graphics style, very reminiscent of the Knights of the Old Republic series though the light-hearted look won't be to everyone's tastes. I think BioWare's bet was a sound one, and there will be plenty of folks more than happy to trade in their bows and arrows for blaster rifles. The sci-fi setting is put to terrific use in the game's consistently dazzling animations and spell effects. The traditional gold sparkles of fantasy game healing spells are replaced by my Agent's floating probes that fall down and rotate around my target, spraying him or her with healing kolto fluid. Blown grenades send enemies sprawling over railings. When I stab an enemy with an electrified dagger, it actually sticks in their chest as their body helplessly convulses and crackles with electricity. And, of course, every blaster blast and saber swing is enhanced with the familiar sound effects and music that the official license grants to TOR. Not so fresh are the game's quest mechanics, which are rudimentary and mostly drawn from the oldest tricks in the book: kill X, use Y, or talk to Z. In my