Tabula Rasa Previews

Several hands-on previews of Tabula Rasa have made their way to the web, all of which are based on a visit to NCsoft’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. The first is at GameSpot:

Garriott suggests that other games of this sort focus strongly on combat. Specifically, in other games, the focus is on pressing different buttons to use different character abilities in the right order to deal the most damage over time. The idea in Tabula Rasa is instead to focus your attention on the action onscreen because your primary attacks will simply be using whichever weapon you have equipped (including a great variety of futuristic guns) by left-clicking your mouse and using whichever special “Logos” powers your character has discovered by right-clicking your mouse. According to the game’s lore, Logos is an ancient runic language that consists of characters which, when placed together, form composite meanings that create powerful effects, such as hurling bolts of lightning or summoning stationary gun turrets. Your character can discover new Logos characters out in the wild or while performing quests; well-traveled adventurers will have discovered dozens of letters of this mystical language that can be combined to create many different and powerful effects.

The second is at GameSpy:

At its heart, Tabula Rasa remains an RPG with RPG-style statistics-based combat. That means that when Ilyana fires a rifle at a Bane soldier, the game juggles a whole lot of character skill numbers really fast to determine if the shot hits or misses, how much damage it does and whether it causes any secondary effects. The difference is that the pacing — the “pulse” of combat — is placed under the player’s control. Players want to keep moving and utilize cover not to mess up an opponent’s aim, but because all of these effects are taken into account when the computer rolls its virtual dice. Combat is more about situational awareness and timing than either twitch reflexes or speccing out maximum DPS. Winning a fight means holding fire until various parameters snap into place that maximize the chance to inflict damage. Many of the monsters in the game are built to take advantage of this system. One of the Bane’s floating gun platforms (called a “Predator”), for example, is essentially unkillable from the front and will require coordinated effort from a team to hit the platform in its weaker rear armor.

The third is at IGN:

Players who are sick of spawn camping or shadowing other players through dungeons will appreciate Tabula Rasa’s attempts to create instanced spaces. While the battlefields are large public spaces, the instances, much like in other MMOs, are private areas when players can adventure without worrying that competing players are going to ruin the experience for them. This is the third area in which the game hopes to stand apart from the crowd.

The fourth is at 1Up:

Garriott’s interest in putting ethical parables into games started way back in Ultima IV. From the way he talks about his approach to designing games, by creating a rich world backdrop (with research put into it about everything from evolution to ancient Chinese) and then using that to tell relevant contemporary stories, it’s obvious he wants players to identify with their characters. Players can expect to use the cloning system not only to experience all of the different classes and builds of the game, but also to experiment with different mission options.

And the fifth is at GameZone:

Another innovative idea that Tabula Rasa will bring to the fore is allowing players to save their character before they branch into detailing their profession. Characters saved can be cloned and other profession branches can be explored. For example, at level 5 you get to select your first career path. You can clone your character, take the soldier route with the original character and then go back and take an engineer path with the clone. This will enable players to explore new profession paths without having to start all over from level one.