By now most people have seen the new Trooper video put out by Bioware.

What I love is the action sequence starting about 55 seconds into this video. We see some kind of Sith force user getting ready for the force jump slice and hack pawnage only to be refuted cool and calmly by the grenade of the trooper. What this tells us is that Bioware is committed to some degree of balance in the game.

In the Star Wars movies, which I love, the Jedi and Sith are portrayed as powerful Super Heroes and Super Villains to everyone else. If you need proof all I need to do is remind you of how quickly Darth Vader disarmed Han Solo in Bespin. And we all know how that turned out.

Now some may argue that Jango Fett and Obi-Wan seemed to have an even fight, but I would remind you that until Boba used Slave 1’s cannons to tip the scales it was looking really bad for Jango. And we saw how quickly Jango fell to Mace Windu.

So this Force user advantage poses a serious problem for players who are not interested in being a Jedi or Sith, but would rather be like Boba Fett or Han Solo. In order for the game to work there needs to be balance between the classes so no single class can always win. It can still be balanced if certain classes play better against one class consistently, but inferior to another class consistently. The important thing is that all players feel like their class choice matters. This video hammers home that point. We see the fall of the Sith seemingly so easily. It reminds me of this scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

This commitment to balance will cause cries of not being true to the spirit of Star Wars from some fanboys, but it is important to remember that we are all playing a game, and a game has to have players starting on mostly equal footing. Imagine a game of chess where you only had your pawns and king, but the other player had all 16 pieces. It would be massively unfair, and unfun. The same feeling would be there for non-force players when looking at their friends who chose to be living Gods.