Tabula Rasa - The Next Big Step

Indelible — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:39:36 GMT

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been checking out Tabula Rasa thanks to Filefront, which is offering even free subscribers access to the beta servers for the game. Seeing as they have lifted the NDA on the beta I see no reason why I shouldn’t give you a little glimpse into the world of General Lord British’ Tabula Rasa.

Tabula Rasa is set a few years from now in a post-apocalyptic war for humanities survival. An alien threat, know as the Bane attacks Earth in one swift invasion, destroying cities and killing the majority of the population. In an attempt to save the human race, the governments of the world ship the smartest, strongest and fastest humans away from Earth to be transported to planets throughout the galaxy through technology discovered long ago but hidden from the public. In doing this, they leave the majority of the human race to die at the hands of the Bane. Soon, certain humans discover that through the use of Logos, they can manipulate energy and the universe around them simply with a thought and so humanity and her few allies wage war on the Bane, seeking vengeance for the destruction of Earth.

Only certain humans can take control of Logos and you are those humans. You enter the world of Tabula Rasa as a freshly transported recruit.

Firstly, character creation is very diverse but at the same time, quite limited. It allows for the customisation of feet, legs, chest, arms, lower head and upper head independently but there are very few choices for each part. There are gimmicks, such as weird goggles and sunglasses and you can alter the colour of your characters skin but apart from that, it is a very straight-forward to create your character. One notable thing to remember is that, when choosing a surname for your character, this surname will be generic to all characters on that account and this cannot be circumvented. This means that a large amount of anonymity is removed from the game, which in some ways is a good thing and in some ways is not.

The UI

Once you have created your character, you will enter the world of Tabula Rasa and play through a short tutorial that will educate you in the basic mechanics on the game. Most notable for me was the fact that there were four distinct bars located in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, representing a players armour, life, power and adrenaline. Armour is the grey bar located above the green health bar and it is this that goes down steadily before your health starts taking damage. Then there is the standard health bar and next we have the blue power bar. Think of it as a mana pool for your Logos abilities. Then we have the adrenaline bar which is the smaller orange bar located under the power bar. This corresponds to physical abilities such as sprint. Health, armour and power regenerate over a period of time but adrenaline is gained by killing things, which is quite a nice touch if you ask me.

To the right of the player stat bars, we have 5 weapon slots. Conventional guns and not Logos abilities can only take up these slots. You can have up to five guns equipped at one time and when you have a weapon selected as in-use, the relevant slot will enlarge to be bigger than the others. Weapons in Tabula Rasa aren’t, “bigger is better,” and as such, you will find that these slots come in handy for having different weapons for different situations. Moving right again we have another bank of five hotkey slots. These are used for your equipment, such as health boosters, adrenaline based abilities, such as sprint, and Logos based abilities. You may think this is a lot of things for one five-key bar. Don’t panic: You will be able to set up five different bars to scroll through as and when needed. The hotkey setup is very interesting and very comfortable. It gives you a convenient place to put everything, making the gaming experience far smoother.

On the right again, we have the mini-map, which displays the terrain around you in a similar way to maps today do. It will also show you friendly players, enemies, quest givers, teleporters and a host of other things that will make your life so much easier when playing the game.

There is also a standard experience bar located at the very bottom of the screen and you won’t notice this until you start killing things and even then, it is hardly noticeable unless you are looking directly at it. This is a nice touch because none of the user interface so far is distracting in any way, shape or form. It’s almost the perfect UI.

Then we run into one problem. The chat frame has been placed in the upper left hand corner of the screen and unless you are running the game at 1280 x 1024 or more, it is quite a mammoth piece of kit, taking up a good portion of that ¼ of the screen. It comes with all the standard features chat boxes usually come with and can be moved from where it is but there really isn’t a better place for it so I grind my teeth in despair when I play this on anything other than my gaming rig.

There are lots of other menus and options that can be accessed via hotkeys. For example, the K key will bring up a menu where you can add attribute points and ability points to you character, as well as check out your stats and see how your specialisation is going. The B key will bring up the inventory system, which is not bad if I do say so myself. In fact, your backpack is quite mammoth and can handle a long period of gaming without the need to revisit command posts to store or sell items. The J key will bring up what initially looks like a blank menu but upon hovering your mouse over the main black mass, you will notice barely visible symbols, which I will come onto shortly.

All in all, the user interface is very well thought out and has impressed me quite a bit. I am a minimalist at heart and the majority of the UI in TR is minimalist so it goes down well with me.

Character Control

Character control in TR is standard for the most part but there are slight differences that make it fresh and entertaining. Firstly, your character movement is controlled through standard A,S,D,W format and your mouse is used to move the camera around. I’m used to playing World of Warcraft and as such, I’m used to holding down the right mouse button to move the camera round but this isn’t needed in TR. This can sometimes be annoying because the right mouse button does have a definite and needed use in game. When you hit a hotkey such as B for your inventory, your mouse will stop moving your camera around and a mouse pointer will appear, allowing you to select items and buttons. This can also be quite annoying, as you can’t adjust things on the fly unless you are moving in a straight line. Apart from that, it’s pretty much a generic movement control system.

Now you’ll remember I told you that the first five action bar slots are for weapons and the second five are for abilities and equipment? Well this doesn’t change the way items are selected for use. In essence, 1-5 selects a weapon and 6-0 selects an item or ability. You can have 1 weapon and 1 ability or item active at one time and these can be changed in and out of combat, allowing you a lot of diversity and control. Now the mouse buttons come in very handy in these situations. Your left mouse button will fire the weapon you have active and the right mouse button, the one that was annoying me previously, will activate your ability or item. This is a nice touch because it means you don’t have to hit hotkey or even click on any of the items and weapons to use them unless you are activating them.

There is one thing that a lot of players have grieved about and that is the auto-targeting system that TR incorporates. When you have your crosshair over a target, you can hit the tab key and your weapon will automatically target the enemy, which means you are only required to press the fire button. The mistake that people make which causes grievance is that they mistakenly label TR as a third person shooter. It isn’t a third person shooter. It is a sci-fi RPG game that incorporates miniscule aesthetical similarities with the third person shooters. That said, it is no surprise that an auto-targeting system has been incorporated in the game. It allows players to play an RPG without having to be subjected to unwanted TPS elements. That doesn’t mean those who prefer TPS games don’t get a kick. You don’t have to use the auto target feature at any point. Just don’t hit the tab key. I can see where this function is needed as well, which increase my confusion at the grievance with the feature even more. When there are large groups of players killing large groups of monsters and you want a particular one dead, you can use the auto-targeting feature so that you don’t waste your ammo on the wrong monster. The auto-targeting feature only applies to your guns as your Logos based powers auto-target by default.

All in all, the basic character control functions are easy to get used to because, for the most part they are standard. Even your space bar makes you jump which is just a testimony to the standardized nature of the tried-and-tested approach the developers have obviously taken.

Logos

Originally, I wasn’t going to discuss Logos because they are a key element to the game but noticing that I have used them as examples a lot, I decided to give you a brief idea of what Logos are all about and seeing as you can pretty much find out about them from any half wit gaming site that felt like ruining the entire game for everyone, no harm done.

Firstly, the back-story behind Logos is quite interesting. Millennia ago, a superior race known as the Eloh discovered a way to manipulate universal energies simply with a thought through the use of symbols called Logos. Each Logos represents a particular power, for example power itself is represented by Logos: Power. The Eloh decided to spread this knowledge and ability through lesser life forms throughout the universe. One race called the Thrax used these abilities to wage a war on the Eloh, which in turn caused a divide in the Eloh itself. One faction wanted to continue spreading that knowledge throughout the universe and the other, called Neph, wanted to use the knowledge to influence the development of other races to ensure that the Neph would always be superior. This caused the Neph to leave the Eloh and in an attempt to destroy the Eloh, the Neph sought allies, including the defeated Thrax and formed the Bane. They first attacked the Eloh homeworld, killing most and scattering the survivors throughout the galaxy.

So that’s the back-story but what do these Logos allow us to do. Well, as you level your character you are on a constant quest to discover new Logos throughout the world. As you level up, you unlock certain abilities, which need certain Logos to use. You must find the relevant Logos to unlock these abilities. Each Logos gives you a certain understanding of a certain universal force. For example, there is a Logos: Time which represents the knowledge of time and a Logos: Damage which represents the knowledge of damage.

All in all, the Logos system is probably one of the single most innovative creations to be conceived in recent years. It just makes Tabula Rasa so much more enjoyable.

Conclusion

As you can see, I haven’t really given much away and there are still a lot of things you might be asking. I’ve done this on purpose for one reason and one reason only. Tabula Rasa is probably the best thing to happen to the MMO genre since World of Warcraft was released. Comparing it to World of Warcraft is difficult because both games are very different but my own personal preference tells me that Tabula Rasa is just a leap and a bound better than World of Warcraft will ever be. World of Warcraft combined proven concepts into one neat package which made it better than its competitors. Tabula Rasa combines proven concepts with major innovation and fast passed action. It is that innovation that makes Tabula Rasa the single best MMOG I have played in a long while.

Comparatives to World of Warcraft aside, the Science Fiction arm of the MMO genre is very much untapped. We’ve got Eve… and that’s about it. Tabula Rasa has the pleasure of a fresh genre to pin down and I feel that if they keep it updated with content, this game can’t go wrong. If you don’t like Science Fiction, Tabula Rasa is almost certain to change your mind.

If I was a game reviewer and not a voluntary blogger, I would do a much more in depth review of the game and it would probably score somewhere around the 98% mark. I sincerely believe that Tabula Rasa is the best thing to happen to the MMO genre since World of Warcraft and I sincerely believe that this is going to be the major success for next-gen MMO. Tabula Rasa will be added to World of Warcraft as one of those very few genre-defining games in recent years.

The game industry was going downhill very steadily but with game like World of warcraft, Bioshock, Crysis, Two World, Neverwinter Nights 2 and now Tabula Rasa being released I think it is safe to assume that the gaming industry has a lot more un their sleeves that they are willing to let on about.

The Daily Quest : ncsoft

Tabula Rasa - The Next Big Step