Star Wars: The Old Republic Preview

BioWare promises the kind of storytelling its fans are used to in the upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, but what does that mean for you, the player? After getting our hands-on with the game's final two classes, the Sith Inquisitor and the Jedi Consular, we Force Choked producer Blaine Christine and squeezed some interesting details on one of the most anticipated MMOs of all time. Read on for juicy info on solo-ing, instancing, and companion characters.

VideoGamer.com: Now that we've finally seen all of the classes, it seems to me that you based them on the most popular characters from the films. Was that the driving force behind them?

Blaine Christine: Absolutely, yeah. For us it was all about looking at the iconic moments, the iconic characters, iconic look and feel we wanted to capture from the movies, and then putting that into an MMO setting, rather than the other way around, which could have been, okay, what do we need for an MMO, and then trying to shoehorn it around Star Wars. First and foremost this is a Star Wars game. We want to make sure whatever classes we pick, we're going to have Star Wars storytelling and Star Wars combat. How do we do that? And that defined the classes.

Naturally, you're going to see things like, when we talk about the Smuggler we talk about Han Solo or how that is comparable. The story is going to be similar to that, and combat is going to be what you'd expect if you were playing Han Solo in a video game. Similarly, the recently announced Jedi Knight is going to be taken from somebody like Luke Skywalker or a young Obi-Wan.

VideoGamer.com: The story stuff you're doing seems revolutionary for the genre, but how is the combat fundamentally different from what we've seen in other MMOs?

BC: Again, it's the same sort of approach. When we looked at combat, first and foremost we said it has to feel and play like a Star Wars game and like you're in a Star Wars setting. So what you get out of that is it's much faster paced than a lot of other MMOs. You see lots of parrying going on with the lightsabers. You see those classic moments where you're deflecting blaster bolts with your lightsaber. When you're fighting somebody else that has a lightsaber, you see the classic clashes of parrying that's going on. But of course making sure that's all accessible is important to us too. Also, for traditional MMO players it's going to feel somewhat similar, because the way you operate with the game, the way you engage those powers or abilities, is done via the quick slot bar at the bottom. Of course you're going to get more powerful abilities as you progress through the game and that's the role-playing game element.

VideoGamer.com: While I was playing, not once did I feel like I might die…

BC: A couple of clarifications there: It is absolutely our mission that you feel heroic from the word go. You've seen previous demos, you're playing today, we try to get it so you're taking on groups of enemies. Usually, because you're meant to feel like a hero, if you're going one on one with a standard grunt, you should be able to take that down pretty easily, however if you've got a group, it's going to be a little bit more challenging. That's where the challenge comes in, because you're heroic.

That said, what you're playing today, for purposes of the demo, we've got you levelled a little higher than you normally would be in that area. And of course we're early in development so there's still a lot of balancing to be done. But basically, there should be more challenge in the final game than what you played today.

VideoGamer.com: Is the idea that you want players to be able to solo everything?

BC: Yes. It is in fact a goal. We recognise it as a challenge but we have to support multiple play styles. We know that there are BioWare fans out there that may play this game because it is a BioWare game and they want to experience the story, maybe they're not a traditional MMO player. So we want to be able to support that. That doesn't mean you won't ever see anyone else in the game. But it means that we will balance it in such a way that if you want to play solo, you'll be able to go through encounters and successfully beat those.

On the flip side, we know that there are people who are huge MMO fans who are going to want to be grouped, and they go into the game for the social experience. We want to support that as well. We have a number of ways of doing that. Ultimately it comes down to balancing tools and how we balance effectively.

VideoGamer.com: In a traditional MMORPG you might have a five person group that goes into an instanced area, one that would not be able to be defeated if you try it on your own. Are you suggesting then that you would be able to go into that instance with five people or on your own and it would scale accordingly?

BC: Let me put this a different way. We will have group-specific content. So there may be certain things, but that's mostly going to be things that are additional to the main story. Anything that's in your main quest line will absolutely be completed as a solo experience. That said, supporting that group dynamic, we will have content that will cater to a group experience.

VideoGamer.com: Can you talk about how grouping will work? Do you have a maximum raid size?

BC: I can't go into details on that stuff yet.

VideoGamer.com: But obviously there is grouping?

BC: Yes, absolutely.