Star Wars: The Old Republic
Feel the force of BioWare's biggest game ever
This is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game with more story content than every other BioWare game combined. That got you interested, didn't it? That unbelievable boast (from the mouth of Rich Vogel, studio director at BioWare) encompasses classic RPG serials Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect and Jade Empire.
Star Wars: The Old Republic will be huge. Set 300 years after Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, it'll also wrap up any loose ends you may have been fretting over. You'll discover what became of Revan, Bastila and our twittering robo-chum T3-M4. BioWare are keen to allay any fears that by taking the MMO route they will dispose of Star Wars mythos which fans have come to love. Instead, The Old Republic will be built on the tenets BioWare are famous for: deep storylines, fully realised and meticulously scripted companion characters, branching dialogue trees and player choice.
But that sort of narrative doesn't work in the MMOs we're used to playing. You couldn't have the trolls and dwarves of Warcraft embarking on identical story arcs. You couldn't have every inhabitant of the Warhammer universe chasing down a single nemesis and keep it feeling personal and unique at every point along the way. There's no 'twist' in City of Heroes. How can BioWare properly weave a story into an MMO?
Well, most notably they're giving every class their own storyline and overall quest, each with their own starting planet, villains and game content. From the moment you start a new character you can expect a lengthier story arc than any other BioWare game, and that's just for your chosen class. Start over as a different class (Sith, Jedi, and others) and you'll be approaching the game from another angle, with an entirely distinct story and agenda.
"Imagine playing KOTOR," offers Daniel Erickson, lead writer at BioWare, "and then playing Mass Effect in the very same game. That's the kind of scope we're after. A role-playing game has four pillars: you've got exploration, combat, progression and story. For whatever reason, MMOs seem to leave story behind. Our speciality at the studio has always been putting story into these games.
So one of the things we talked about really early on was how to bring back that fourth pillar. How do we bring story, which belongs in an RPG, into the MMO space?"
"Our solution was to have your chosen class define your story," continues Erickson. "So if you're playing a Jedi you're going to have a completely different experience than if you're playing a Sith. You can't have all these people going forward and having the same, unified experience.
"You can't build a storyline for both the guy dreaming of becoming Darth Vader, and the guy dreaming of being Luke - it wouldn't make any sense."
"Once you've chosen your class," adds Vogel, "you've got something larger than KOTOR, just for your class. We like to think of it as each class getting its own trilogy of movies, essentially."
"And inside of that," claims Erickson, "you've got all of the player choices, all of the light and dark side decisions, all of the quests which have choices both big and small that effect what happens in your story and where your story goes."
While BioWare won't yet divulge exactly how many classes to expect, they happily state that each class will be associated with "heroic roles" from the first and second movie trilogies.
"We also want to make sure that the conflict is between dark and light," claims Ohlen, "so we can confirm we'll have Sith and Jedi in the game. But we also want to ensure other popular heroes from the movies are represented, and you can probably guess at what those might be."
So expect archetypes Luke (nice Jedi) and Vader (naughty Jedi turned Sith), along with Han Solo (rogue explorer), Boba Fett (bounty hunter), and Darth Maul (total Sith) to name a few obvious fellows.
I leave out Chewie, because it's likely the character creator will allow you to choose a species within a class, doubtlessly leading to terrifying Wookiee Jedi and Twi'lek bounty hunters not seen outside Star Wars' Expanded Universe.
This isn't the first time Lucas' epic has entered the MMO arena. 2003's Star Wars Galaxies was a wonderful social experiment in which folk were given the choice of being Rodian dancers, occasional Force-enlightened supermen, or seven-foot-tall bears. BioWare claim to have learned a lot of lessons from Sony's failed outing.
"We're not in Sony's restricted space," assures Erickson, "Star Wars Galaxies ran up against the problem of setting itself in a time period that didn't have Jedi. We do not have that issue whatsoever, as people saw from KOTOR. Our time period has tons of Jedi and tons of Sith, so we escaped that problem entirely."
An interconnected collection of planets and all the space in between acts as the backdrop to all this adventuring. Familiar locations from KOTOR will appear alongside planets drawn from the wealth of Star Wars fiction already out there. For instance, Sith players will begin their game on the Sith homeworld, Korriban, their opening quests carefully guiding them through the required training before they may leave the planet.
The planet Tython, from the rich Expanded Universe, is the birthplace of the Force - it's here where the Sith and Jedi originated, split and went their separate ways. With the Jedi's temple having been smashed to bits in KOTOR, the order have returned to occupy
the planet. The total number of planets isn't being spoken about, and neither is the sort of scale we can expect once you arrive on the surface, but exploration will be a key component in The Old Republic.
Space will exist in some fashion too (rather than being a mere swooshy loading screen between locations), but again BioWare aren't keen to lift the lid on exactly how it will be implemented. One thing is certain, and that is that there'll be times when you'll be flying in space. If that's not enough information for you, well I honestly don't know what to say.
You'll be visiting all of Star Wars' most iconic worlds, in care-free Han Solo-esque romps across the galaxy.
"It's not just KOTOR stuff either," insists James Ohlen, creative director. "It's stuff from the movies and the Expanded Universe. If you love Star Wars, we want you recognise that this is the Star Wars you love. We're not forcing KOTOR on new players, but all the unanswered questions are there to discover if you want."
From Baldur's Gate right through to Mass Effect, companion characters have been a staple of BioWare's games. The expertly constructed NPCs (from sassy assassin droids to intemperate hulking aliens) will fight alongside you, offering a helping hand when it's needed and engaging in awkward elevator conversations while the game loads the next area. They act as conduits for relating story too, at any point you can strike up a chat with a companion and they'll have at least a snippet of character-infused narrative to fire at you.
Nothing's changing with The Old Republic. "Companion characters are a big part of how we do our storytelling," claims Erickson. "There'll be a very large variety and amount of companion characters that are available for all of the different classes. Everybody will be adventuring with companions. They won't be like World of Warcraft pets - they'll be people you interact with, like in a typical BioWare game."
A writing team four times larger than BioWare's standard (which is already significantly girthier than your typical game writing team, being in the "double figures") drawing from all of the developer's past titles ensures there'll be wealth of different characters in The Old Republic. Though how you'll meet them and how they'll stay unique to you is unclear. "We had a challenge when we realised that players running about in a public world will eventually see their companion running about with another player," admits Ohlen. "Athough we've solved it." How? Procedurally generated party hats? He laughs: "I can't tell you how, but we've solved it."
If you think this is sounding more like a single player RPG than a persistent online game, that's because it really does, The Old Republic is deeply rooted in BioWare's experience in offline adventuring. Even the company's morality system has survived the genre transition, pegging you as a light or dark character based on your actions, regardless of your chosen faction. Even in the first few hours of the game the quests will have multiple outcomes based on player choice. Those outcomes will impact on the story, something no popular MMO has ever attempted.
The delineation of sides won't be as neat as your usual Alliance and Horde division. As in KOTOR, you'll find Dark Jedi trying to spoil their faction's well-preened image. Similarly, Sith characters can do good deeds like any other, even if they'll presumably have less lightning at their fingertips.
Whether or not BioWare will employ KOTOR's sliding scale of morality (in which good deeds negate bad) or Mass Effect's cumulative one (in which both good and bad deeds aggregate) isn't known. Fans seem to have favoured Mass Effect's system, as it made a great deal more sense, so it seems a safe bet that it'll reappear in The Old Republic.
A fog of rude mystery currently hangs over the specifics of The Old Republic's more traditional MMO features. Crafting will be in there, as well as PvP, with ongoing battles of an unknown scale taking place between the Sith Empire and the Old Republic.
Character development will be "familiar to BioWare fans and MMO fans alike", and when pressed for information on how classes will differ in terms of skills and abilities, BioWare simply nod and say, "Have we told you about our companion characters yet?"
Clearly it's early days for The Old Republic, and the company's priority is placating an already vocal crowd of fans who think KOTOR's about to be diluted in the vast lake of Worlds of Warcrafts, Warhammer Onlines and Ages of Conans.
"We'll have thousands of players in a persistent world," assures Ohlen. "We're building an MMO for MMO players, but we're also appealing to BioWare fans through the story systems we've built.
"We're giving you the Hero's Journey. We're creating an MMO that will be able to do everything you can do in other MMOs." So there'll be no skimping on the essentials then? "No way, if you come to The Old Republic looking for Star Wars, you'll get it," adds Erickson. "If you come looking for an MMO, you'll get that too."
Going hand-in-hand with character progression are the ways in which it is rendered visually. You only have to look at the recent Warhammer Online to see how precious and particular players can be when it comes to the look of their characters - it's important to have an avatar that reflects not only the time you've spent playing, but the choices you've made along the way.
"We spent a lot of time ensuring that progression is rewarded visually," explains art director, Jeff Dobson. "A level one guy lends himself well to a simpler outfit, regardless of your background. "As you progress you'll recover things or find loot, that sort of thing - you'll basically look flashier and cooler. We take characters from the movie and think, what level is that guy? And that becomes the target: Darth Vader is your top level Sith dude. Luke on Tatooine, he's a level one anything, you know? He's just getting started!"
"There's so much room for customisation," adds Erickson, "and different paths to take. Something our art team's worked really hard on is making your character not just say, 'Hey, look at me I'm really high level' but 'This is how I choose to play my guy.' If you choose to play a dark side Jedi and approach the world in that way, you'll look like somebody you shouldn't screw with."
Stylised realism is the term BioWare are using to describe their visual style, a sort of halfway house between World of Warcraft's system-friendly environments and City of Heroes' colourful characters. "We wanted to make sure we had a unique look," explains Dobson. "We didn't want to look like anything else out there. At the same time we didn't want to cross the line and become too cartoony or so stylised that people couldn't relate to it. We really strive to make our game look like our concept art. Quite often I'll walk
past somebody's PC and see some nice concept art suddenly begin to move on their screen."
BioWare promise that the combat itself is being built with attention paid to that all-important authentic Star Wars feel.Lightsabers will connect properly and blaster bolts will be deflected. Steps are being taken to avoid the floatiness of animation usually associated with MMOs.
"With our combat system," explains Ohlen, "we wanted it to feel different to other MMOs, we wanted it to feel like Star Wars combat. With a lot of other games, combat is too slow-paced and non-interactive. I can't go into too much detail, but we're ensuring it looks and feels like Star Wars." "Oh, it's also real time, all the time," laughs Ohlen. "You can't pause the server to queue up moves."
With an impeccable sense of self-awareness, BioWare are carefully navigating the expectations of millions of RPG fans. The shift into a multiplayer gear will be jarring news for some, casting doubt on whether we'll ever see a 'proper' single-player KOTOR 3, but The Old Republic is already promising to deliver far more than that. Almost certainly the biggest writing team in the industry is creating a series of intertwining legends in the Star Wars universe, creating more story content than every other BioWare game combined, and what they've revealed so far is hugely exciting. But no pausing mid-battle?Pfft, not interested.
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*pray*
könnten sowas eigentlich bei allen games machen^^
