Comic-Con and Star Wars go hand in hand, so it is no surprise that BioWare and LucasArts were hyping up their newest Star Wars installment: The Old Republic with all sorts of freebies, t-shirt hand-outs and a ginormous (as in a 100+ foot projector screen with amazing bass) viewing of the now famous E3 trailer of the game.
The real highlight of the hype was a panel about the development process and the work that went into and continues to go into this ambitious MMO project. It began with another viewing of the awesome E3 trailer (if you have not seen it, click here), and then the orator quickly began throwing questions at the four developers that were on-hand.
Their first response was in relation to the sheer size of the game, and the amount of voice work being done for it (another interesting video relating to the VO below). One of the developers was a highly experienced MMO producer that was brought on the team to over see the production of the project, and he began admitting to the audience that he thought what BioWare was doing was absolutely nuts. Full voice over? No way. Branching story arches? That is crazy. What actually convinced him into believing in the project was "about two weeks after being on the team, I played a demo for the smuggler class, and after experiencing that I was a believer".
What was astonishing to hear is that all the game's classes have congruent stories that, even though they can be very different and unique, will connect and overlap as each player progresses through the game. One developer noted that playing one class is like playing a full Knights of the Old Republic game, but with even more content and story. They approximate that to fully "max out" and complete a class' story, you will have had to put in something like forty hours of gameplay. Incredible, I know. It doesn't stop there, though. Even if you play entirely through the game as one class Light Side, and then go back and play it again Light Side, chances are you are still going to see some different things happen. This game is going to be incredibly dynamic.
Of course, what would be a KotOR based game without choices? The Old Republic features a real time player decision system similar to the original KotOR games, but this time around you can't reload the game. No do overs. They also confirmed group decisions, so if you happen to be grouped with a few of your buddies, you all must vote on a response together.
Other things like the ability to play the game "grey", a bit dark side and a bit light side, will be a possibility. And so far, BioWare will not confirm anymore playable races, but from what they hinted at, expect to see a solid variety of them available to choose from (see Star Wars Galaxies). All the standard MMO attributes will be in place like trading systems, crafting, guilds and other things of that nature. End game content was also confirmed, with an emphasis on PvP and miscellaneous side-stories.
Unfortunately, I couldn't take any snapshots of any of the cool art they were showing off, but seeing and hearing these guys spill their guts on the game has reassured me that BioWare is not kidding around with The Old Republic.
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