Tabula Rasa at E3
Excuse us for a moment while we wax philosophical.
Tabula Rasa, when it's not a proper noun referring to the new MMO by NCsoft, literally means "scraped tablet" or blank slate. According to the philospher John Locke, tabula rasa represented the idea that all human minds are a blank slate at birth with no pre-programmed behaviors and therefore each individual is free to author his own destiny.
John Locke would have probably liked the MMO genre, because all players enter a given virtual world as a blank slate. We create a character who enters the world naked and defenseless, and the game then teaches us how we're supposed to behave and what we're supposed to aspire to, as players.
Tabula Rasa the game is an MMO set in some far-distant future after the Earth has rendered charred and uninhabitable in an intergalactic war between hostile alien species. Surviving humans have banded together to fight against and put an end to the war, saving the universe in the process. This is one backstory that could have been popped out of the random sci-fi adventure generator, it's that hackneyed.
Luckily, the gameplay and graphics on display at E3 easily trump the story. Though the game isn't due out until February or March of next year, it's already looking fairly polished and playable. We spoke to the lead level designer about the game and he described it as "less twitch" than most typical first person shooter games, though it does have strong FPS elements to it. He also noted that the game is entirely player-versus-environment at this point though they haven't ruled out adding PvP elements later. Tabula Rasa is due in the spring of 2006. Check out the five Tabula Rasa gameplay videos here.
