GameStreet – Star Wars: The Old Republic News

IGN’s Exhaustive Community Q

IGN wasn’t kidding when they said they would be taking questions from the community straight to the folks at BioWare, and the results are in. The resulting Q&A numbers 4 pages in length, and contains an assortment of new information and hints. Fielding the questions are senior content producer Dallas Dickinson from BioWare Austin, and Jake Neri, producer at LucasArts.

Some stand-outs below:

On healing:

IGN: A lot of people wanted to know about the healing system. Will The Old Republic use a trinity system; the tank, healer, and the DPS class. Will the healer play a massive role, or will groups be able to go with no healing?

Dallas Dickinson: We want to make sure that we have many, many MMO roles filled there, but it’s really important to us that players are able to actually play their experience either as a group or as a solo. So there are a number of ways that healing comes into the game. Several of our classes have healing branches that they can follow that will have some specific healing powers, but we don’t want to make it a requirement for the base core game. That said, you’re obviously going to be better off, especially when you get into higher-level stuff and into PvP, if you have healers on your side.

Jake Neri: I think we have a unique sort of twist on how healing works. I don’t think we’re speaking in total detail about it, but I think the people will be excited for it, and it’s definitely a unique function of our game.

On space, and customization:

IGN: This is from Mitchell in Texas. I would like to know if you guys are implementing space combat. There are a lot of people asking about space combat, and what type of combat will it be? Will there be dogfights, capital ships? And he says I want to feel like a Star Wars adventurer in the fray, not just another Boba Fett lookalike. Do you guys plan on allowing the player to customize their weapon, armor, and body features with a lot of variety.

Dallas Dickinson: The first one is that we’re not talking about space combat yet. The second one is absolutely. We know that customization is a key to MMOs. It’s one of the things that players strive for. It’s one of the things that makes your gameplay experience unique. Throughout your characters life you’re going to be able to find upgrades, you’re going to be able to find some custom equipment, so that you will look different, you will feel different. People will be able to identify you by your achievements because they’ll say, "Holy cow, you have that helmet. You must have completed this part of the game!" And it’ll be a badge of honor.

Some other things covered include the issue of balance between force-wielding and non-force wielding classes, the possibility of player bounties, and more. But mostly, the answers were relatively thin on questions not involving what appears to be the focus for The Old Republic’s marketing at the moment: the story.

For the full Q&A, head on over to IGN

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Comic Con Interview

MMORPG.com’s Carolyn Koh recently attended the San Diego Comic Con. While there, she had the opportunity to speak with Alexander Freed and Dallas Dickinson of BioWare about the highly anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The time period of Star Wars: The Old Republic was chosen as deliberately as that of Knights of the Old Republic. Set 3,000 years before Darth Vader and 300 years after KotOR, Bioware is able to move around in the time line while keeping the continuity of the Star Wars expanded universe in mind as they write their story.

"Being set in a new time period, we can use the content to weave a new story," said Alexander Freed. "We are telling the story of the origins of the Sith Empire." A different empire than the one of KotOR or the one run by Emperor Palpatine, in SWTOR, the gamer will see the different strata of the Sith Empire; the slaves, the imperial families, the regular middle class, the conquered planets, and of course the upper echelon, the Sith themselves.

Read the Comic Con Interview

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First Public Demo to Debut at GamesCom

Today is "Fan Friday" for Star Wars: The Old Republic. As part of Fan Friday, a number of community contributions are highlighted, including an impressive series of art pieces done by fan RiaStarchild, as well as an excellent roleplay story written by fan ArikVandar.

But nestled between all this community goodness was a little gem of new information: the first public demo of Star Wars: The Old Republic will debut at this year’s GamesCom convention in Cologne, Germany, which takes place from August 19-24.  

The demo will also be shown at this year’s PAX Seattle, which will take place from September 4-6th.

For the full Fan Friday update, go here

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Taris in The Old Republic?

Taris, the planet you begin your adventure on in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, may also be a location in The Old Republic. The Darth Hater blog has come upon a telling screen grab of dialogue from the recently released video documentary that reads: "Taris is a dangerous place. What are you doing here?"

Credit goes to Mfavila from the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forums for the keen-eye.

Anyone else excited to possibly see Taris 300+ years later?

Via Darth Hater

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Dice Rolls in Multiplayer Dialogue?

One issue that has many fans wondering is how Star Wars: The Old Republic will be handling their "interactive dialogue system" aka multiplayer dialogue. Who speaks? When? How do I stop someone from griefing my story? These are all questions that come up when contemplating this feature. While it is unique to say the least, it’s obviously also a can of worms.

The latest video documentary for The Old Republic focusing on the voice-over on the game may give us some clues as to how this system will work.

A blog following The Old Republic known as "Darth Hater" has gone and dissected the latest video documentary, and among all the little tidbits of information one in particular stood out: when two players are involved in a dialogue there are apparently dice rolls going on alongside the character portraits in the group window.

This leads the blogger, as well as myself, to wonder: Will dice rolls be handling who speaks in a group dialogue situation?

What do you make of it? Let us know in the comments.

 Check out the full video dissection over at the Darth Hater blog

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Video Documentary #3: Voices of SW: TOR

A new video documentary is now available on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website. The new video doc focuses on the voice acting in the game, featuring in-game footage of the conversations of the game and interactions the player can have with the NPCs in the game.

All characters, NPCs, companion characters, even the player character will be fully voiced in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The result of this? Thousands of speaking roles, and hundreds of thousands of voiced lines of dialogue.

Also in the documentary is entirely new gameplay footage, including glimpses of the UI, and a healthy dosage of combat footage.

The developers also make note of the interactive dialogue system which will take into account other players accompanying you and tweak the storyline based on the classes present.

Check out Video Documentary #3: The Voices of the Old Republic here

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The Threat of Peace No. 11

The eleventh issue of Threat of Peace™ captures the scene on Coruscant, where Senator Paran Am-Ris is in the difficult position of delivering distressing news to a fellow Senator and to Jedi Master Zym. Even while digesting the delayed reconstruction of the Jedi Temple, Master Zym sends Orgus and Tavus on a critical mission to Balmorra. Meantime, halfway across the galaxy, a ruthless Imperial Captain tortures and interrogates Jedi Master Dar’Nala, seeking answers as to why her ship fired upon his.

Read the full story here.

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IGN Taking Community Questions

The guys at IGN will be talking to BioWare next week and they’re interested in asking them your most pressing questions about the game. If you’d like a shot at getting your question answered by the developers themselves, head on over to IGN!

IGN will choose the best questions submitted and present them to the panelists at next weeks San Diego Comic Con. 

Got a question? Submit it here

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Developer Blog #10

In this latest dev blog on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website, we’re given a peek into the process behind the massive undertaking that is committing to full voice-over in The Old Republic.

The blog gives us some backstory to the concept of including  full voice over in the game by giving us a peek at  what is essentially a phone log discussing the idea. Of course, just as most of us thought when we heard the idea, the guys behind the game thought it was just as crazy.

Nevertheless, both BioWare and LucasArts are committed to this and the general process involves BioWare writing out the scripts and the guys at LucasArts doing the recording.

The game is described as having enough voice-over to span ten KOTOR’s. Voicework is recorded in at least five cities, they’ve worked with hundreds of actors so far, and there is over 40+ novels of content. They say the hardest part of it all is maintaining consistency. For example, there are many ways to pronounce "Thul" or "Holo" projector, and so they have maintained an audio pronunciation guide to help with that.

For much more information, dig into the full dev blog here

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Mythic to Assist in Development

According to an interview with Dr. Greg Zeschuk at Eurogamer, Mythic will definitely assist BioWare in the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic:

"I think we always have lots of opinions to share, Ray and I," said Zeschuk in an interview published today. "We’ve both played Warhammer, and actually I’ve still been playing it on and off for a while, so I think for us it’s not to much a popularity boost as just the fact that we can probably bring perspectives to the table that will be new and perhaps helpful to the guys from Mythic in the same way from an online perspective they can certainly share with us.

"To give credit to the Austin team [making Star Wars: The Old Republic], we have a number of serious MMO veterans on there, so it’s certainly not neophytes, but there’s absolutely opportunities to share and learn things back and forth."

How do you think this partnership will affect the development of both Warhammer Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic? Let us know in the comments!

For the full story, go here

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The Return of the Mandalorians

Lance Henriksen, an actor famed for his role as Bishop in the Alien franchise films, reprises his role as Keeper of the Jedi Archives in this latest holorecord entry on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website.

The new entry, entitled The Return of the Mandalorians, details the renewed role of the Mandalorians in the war between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic. The resurgence of Mandalorian involvement in the conflict is marked by the ascension of a young warrior from the Gladatorial arenas of Geonosis as the new Mandalore.

The new Mandalore has organized a large army to challenge the Jedi Order, and their recent blockade of Republic supplies along the Hydian Way supply route served as a major setback to the Galactic Republic, who, up until now had been experiencing some momentum in the conflict.

Though the Jedi fleet that had been dispatched  to deal with the Mandalorian blockade was defeated, they were fortunate enough to be rescued by smugglers who did indeed break up the blockade. Where the Mandalorians will turn up next is anyone’s guess, but what is clear is that they are here to stay.

Check out the holorecord here

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Threat of Peace Act II

The tenth issue of the Threat of Peace web-comic is now available on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website. This newest issue marks the opening of Act II, entitled New Galactic Order.

The new issue centers around the ceding of the planet Balmorra to the Sith Empire, and the story of Jedi Knight Fortris Gall, who defiant of his orders, endeavors to rescue his Republic comrades.

Read Threat of Peace: Act II: New Galactic Order, here

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Behind the Scenes Interview

Derron Ross, Animation Supervisor at Blur Studio takes us behind the scenes on the development of the "Deceived" trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic in this latest video interview featured over at IGN.

Blur Studio is known for their amazing cinematics and in addition to the Deceived trailer, Blur has most recently worked on cinematics for the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game, as well as Prototype, and even the upcoming BioWare RPG Dragon Age.

Check out the full video interview over at IGN

For more information on Blur Studio, check out their website here

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Twelve Possible Classes

MMORPG.com’s Michael Bitton writes this week’s list with a rundown of twelve different classes that could be included in BioWare’s upcoming MMORPG, Star Wars: the Old Republic.

The hype-level for Star Wars: The Old Republic is through the roof and some might consider this curious. After all, according to an article on Kotaku, our most accurate timeframe for a release is "less than a decade," but that hasn’t stopped skeptics and fans alike from speculating wildly about the game.

Of course, one of the most contentious issues is that of the classes to be featured in The Old Republic. The developers at BioWare have stated that they want fans of Star Wars at every level to be able to recognize and much more importantly, identify, with the available classes in the game. Indeed, the most recent class unveilings have easily recognizable analogues to characters from the films, and BioWare hasn’t been shy about the fact these analogues played an important role in determining the implementation of the game’s classes. The problem then, is this: there are five classes left to officially reveal (we know Jedi and Sith are coming, come on) but there aren’t many "classes" in the films that would make sense while also filling out important roles in gameplay. This isn’t to say that BioWare will only stick to the films for their class choices, I do definitely think they will both pull from their own previous Star Wars games, other existing Star Wars games, and of course the Expanded Universe. But there is a definite sense they are going for the "iconic" classes where possible.

Read Twelve Possible Classes

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E3 2009 Preview

We saw Star Wars: The Old Republic at E3 and now we bring you our impressions of this upcoming Bioware MMO, as well as a video interview with Executive Producer Tom Nichols.

“No one has made [story] the central pillar of the game as we have,” explained Senior Producer Dallas Dickenson during their lavish E3 presentation. “Story drives choice and choice drives action.”

The Old Republic looks and feels far more like a single player RPG than an MMO. The quests they showed could have been straight out of Mass Effect. They were fully voice acted – in fact the entirety of The Old Republic is voiced – and cinematic in nature. This includes the player character, who responds with a dialogue wheel, virtually identical to the on Bioware used in Mass Effect.

Read the article here

Watch the interview here

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