Star Wars: Old Republic race issues explained

Users wondering about the lack of exotic Star Wars species being made available as playable races in Star Wars: The Old Republic now have an answer from the MMO’s writer Alex Freed.

Freed told VideoGamer.com that the reason behind the largely human-looking set of playable races comes down to relatability.

“You know, the reason for our humanoid range of species, it’s a matter of relatability to a large degree. The further you get from human the more difficult it is for players to get into their mindset, the more difficult it is for all the other characters in the game to relate to them the same way. There are enormous technical obstacles, there is building all the lip synching, all the emotion into the face of the human is incredibly difficult and time consuming, doing that for something like a Wookiee – and we couldn’t half do it, we couldn’t let Wookiees be only a third as expressive as humans. At that point we’re just giving up.

“We’re building a game designed to do these things, we can’t do it in half measures. Same with customising appearances. Adding one dramatically different alien, we still need as much variety as we would need for humans. Between the relatability aspect and the technical aspect it seems best to focus on what Star Wars has always done best which is people who look like us.”

He added that if it’s not possible to create a good story with a particular race then it simply is not worth making that race playable.

“I think what a lot of those people are into is the fact that they are strange and different. So if we can’t pull that off in the storytelling. If we can’t make you feel like yes, you are a Wookiee, everyone is going to look at you differently than if you were human, your entire background is going to be very different, that’s going to shape everything you do differently. If you were doing humans with Wookiee masks in the story then I don’t think it’s going to satisfy most of the people who are going to play Wookiee.

“It’s not the aesthetic of it, it’s the whole package. It’s being the barbarian from some planet who is stronger and wilder than everyone else and who is only half understood. That’s what people love about Wookiees. We don’t have anything against that storytelling, it’s not a moral opposition to not having inhuman characters but in order to do it right you need to write a story around that character.”

Currently available on the list of species are Chiss, Cyborg, Human, Miraluka, Mirialan, Rattataki, Sith Pureblood, Twi’lek, and Zabrak.

Star Wars: The Old Republic launched December 20 in North America and Europe. For more from Freed check out the interview in full.