This weekend I finally made it to Tatooine in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I suck as a blogger because I forgot to take any screenshots, but I’m guessing you know what Tatooine looks like. Twin suns, lots of desert punctuated here and there by Jawa landcrawlers.

The first time I stepped out of the Anchorhead spaceport I realized that SW:TOR had been missing something for me: the Star Wars part. Tatooine was the first environment I visited that really felt like Star Wars to me.

Now don’t get me wrong, before now the characters have at times felt Star Warsie, particularly the Force users (but I play a Trooper). It helps a lot that Bioware uses the iconic sound effects we all know from the movies. But Coruscant and Nar Shadaa were both basically corridor crawls and very very “level based.” Plus, as Scopique so aptly put it, Nar Shadaa was Coruscant with some neon lights decals applied to it. And while the design of these cities might be ‘canon’ they’re absurd, really. These places don’t feel like they could actually exist, at least not to me.

Taris was a ‘world’ but it was so segmented by impassible terrain that, again, it felt like a bunch of levels joined together. And maybe Tatooine will feel that way too as I explore it. But at least for now I can jump on my speeder and tear across the desert skirting bands of sandpeople and visiting moisture farms and finally, the game feels like Star Wars.

It’s a shame players have to wait so long to see an iconic location, but I’m glad I finally made it!