I mentioned that we've already seen faction-aligned races in the Star Wars films, but let's explore some examples of that. Wookiees, mon calamari, ewoks, and bothans (mentioned only) are distinctly set up as the "good guy" species in the original Star Wars trilogy. Humans are ubiquitous, but with the official "bad guy" faction—the Empire—as notably "human"-centric. And finally there are the "dangerous fringe" species which are most apparent on Tatooine, including threats comical, thuggish, savage, and slothful-but-malevolent. The prequels mix things up a little more (e.g., giving us a cute childhood friend of Anakin's to balance out the "bad guy" rodian race) but still have predominantly "good" or "bad" identifiers for the species (e.g., the evil neimoidians, the noble gungans) or just villains who are the only example for their species (e.g., Grievous, Darth Maul). I know that the joy of roleplaying is being able to create whatever character you can imagine, but my point is that these creatures were designed with specific themes in mind. Yes, BioWare has implied that we'll have good guys on the Sith Empire faction and bad guys on the Galactic Republic faction, but I feel it's obvious that those characters would be running against type. The problem with some races is that they're so "typed" in one direction or the other that switching it up just wouldn't work.
For the above image, I easily could have substituted the TOROCast logo, a "tough"-looking ewok with a lightsaber. That such a character was born from a joke at the species' expense illustrates the problem BioWare might have if they make some of these creatures broadly available. Just as gnomes would seem incongruous on the Horde faction, any Yoda-looking dude or dudette would stand out like a sore thumb among the Imperials. I'm not saying that every species has this issues—humans obviously don't and twi'leks seem able to swing both ways (rowr)—but for some of them it strains the theme a bit.
And faction themes definitely seem to be something that BioWare cares about considering we have faction-exclusive classes. Is it any more ridiculous to restrict, for example, trandoshans to the Imperial faction than it is "troopers" to the Republic faction? They're obviously setting character archetype limits according to what best exemplifies the faction, not by what's possible in our deepest, darkest hopes and dreams.
They could reasonably put limits on character species just as they have for "professions" (i.e., classes). And not just for the obvious faction-aligned races—like the sith race or the taung, the original Mandalorian race—but any race where the political majority sides with one faction or the other as politics dictates. As a restriction on player-characters does not constitute the entirety of the species, minority members of the species could sufficiently be represented by non-player-charactes. For example, one particular page from the Threat of Peace comic seems to hint that the rodian people were feeling snubbed and ignored by the Republic leading up to the events of the game; it's possible that they might officially sign on with the Empire, making rodians an Imperial-exclusive playable species. A similar storyline occurred in an episode of The Clone Wars (2008) cartoon, where Rodia is all but aligned with the evil "Separatists" until the timely intervention by "Master" Jar-Jar Binks. Minus the annoying, talking water-rabbit, I wouldn't mind if they carried out a similar storyline for TOR.
But then there is the inevitable complaints about balance. Assuming that different species actually even provide unique abilities to your character—something I'd like to see but have doubts about—faction-exclusive species might potentially cause balance issues. Complaints about racial abilities as imbalancing have certainly been heard in other MMO games—notably World of Warcraft, but I think this will be the least of our worries in TOR. Since the Burning Crusade expansion, WoW hasn't had anything else to really complain about as far as faction balance. The faction exclusive classes—Shaman and Paladin—were evened out. In a game where every single class is faction-exclusive and relatively unique (sort-of mirrors, but each hybridized differently), should we really be worried about what will likely amount to one or two passive bonuses that don't mean jack-squat in the endgame? I would opine that, "No, it matters not."
And really, I am only talking a small percentage of faction-exclusive races here. Yes, it's possible that they could go all-out and have human as the only cross-faction species with all others as faction exclusive, but that seems far-fetched. We've already seen what looks like examples of the same class on both factions. I know that I've seen a screenshot of some sort of Sith togruta and yet we have Master Dar'nala in the webcomic. (For the record, togruta are just wannabe twi'leks.) So I don't expect too many restrictions or for race selection to really impact your character much more than cosmetically. There are simply too many potential species they could select from the lore, and I'd rather have them go for as many as possible and make them play similarly than have only a small handful of highly unique, faction-exclusive species. Regardless, I am totally going for a hot, mirialan Smuggler. Sorry, twi'leks, Hylo Visz was just to cool.
Oh, and just to get it out there, here's my short-list for what species I think will be playable in TOR:
- Human
- Bothan (gotta have a "dog" race)
- Cathar (gotta have a "cat" race, and I like any iconic "Old Republic race")
- Charigan
- Kel Dor
- Mirialan
- Mon Calamari
- Nikto
- Rodian
- Togruta
- Trandoshan
- Twi'lek
- Zabrak
- Zeltron (hey, pink humans are easy)
Some possible Imperial exclusives of:
- Dashade (we've seen a Dashade companion for the Sith Inquisitor)
- Sith
- Taung (or just the human variant of Mandalorian)
And some possible Republic exclusives:
- Arkanain (Jarael is kind of popular, and Arca Jeth was a big-wig jedi)
- Draethos (ok, so I'm phoning the Republic ones in; I like these guys!)
- Chiss (I can dream, can't I? *sigh* I just keep thinking Gungan and I'd rather not)
So What do you think about faction-exclusive species? Would it help make factions more distinct and allow BioWare to utilize some of the more "typed" races? Or would it just be a needless restriction on fun and creativity? What about the general "species" options? How many races do you expect to be able to select from total? How many of those would you expect to be faction-exclusives (assuming not "zero")? How much of an impact do you see race having on your character? Let me know!
