Star Wars: The Old Republic Interview

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.

VideoGamer.com: The game is fully voice acted, including your character. That seems like an insane thing to do for an MMO. How challenging is it to achieve that?

BC: The bottom line is we saw that as a unique opportunity. It’s something BioWare has done, obviously not quite on this scale before, but that’s what we do. We create games, and have been for quite a while, that have voiceover and incredible amounts of story content. We went into it knowing what that meant. That said it is a huge challenge. There was a key decision along the way where we said, okay, do we want to do player voice or do we not? We felt it added enough to the experience of the player that it was worth pursuing that. At this point, all of our internal play tests, that’s definitely paying off. We feel it’s the right decision.

It’s a different type of experience, right? If you look at other BioWare games, you have Dragon Age, which allows you to customise your character a little bit more, and so it doesn’t necessarily make as much sense to have a player voice because it may not fit your idea of what your character is. But since we have defined classes and a defined story, we’re able to say, yes, you can still customise your character but your story experience is going to fit with this character, therefore we can add a player voice.

VideoGamer.com: I recently interviewed Craig Zinkievich, executive producer at Cryptic Studios of Star Trek Online, and he said voice acting all of the text in The Old Republic doesn’t give “that big a bang for your buck”. What do you say to that?

BC: In our opinion, we wouldn’t have made the decision if we didn’t think that it was. For us, it changes the entire dynamic. But again, it’s because of our storytelling style. That’s not necessarily true for all MMOs. We’re not saying everybody should do that. It’s just BioWare’s way of telling a story. We felt that was important to give not only a BioWare experience but to give a true Star Wars experience. To create those memorable moments and those characters, it has to be cinematic. We wanted to create those cinematic moments.

VideoGamer.com: How will the cinematic storytelling work when you’re in a group situation? How will the story cope with multiple players perhaps wanting to tear the story in different directions?

BC: That’s obviously a major challenge. Were you at GamesCom?

VideoGamer.com: I was. It was unclear how decisions will be resolved.

BC: We still don’t want to go into great detail, but suffice it to say that we recognise that as a challenge, and if you watch that demo you see that we do support groups within a given conversation. In that particular instance we just had a group of two, you had your Bounty Hunter and your Sith Warrior. But both of those players were actually making real-time decisions that influence the way that conversation went. That is something that, at the moment, we’re still testing out exactly how the background of that is going to work. But, what I can say at this point is it’s incredibly fun already. We get in there and it almost becomes a mini-game to itself, where if you’re chatting over voice-chat or talking to someone next to you you’re like, no I wanted to go this way! It’s like, do we want to kill the captain or save the captain? It adds another dynamic to the social element, too. It’s a real group. You have to figure those things out together, like how you’re going to go through certain scenarios and situations.

VideoGamer.com: One of the things I was thinking about was perhaps your influence in determining how a conversation will go is affected by character abilities, so it’s more than just a dice roll. Is that the kind of thing you’re considering at the moment?

BC: I would say it’s a possibility, but we haven’t committed to anything like that yet.

VideoGamer.com: In most MMOs, you’ll do something heroic and part of the central plot, but five minutes later the server will reset and the mobs will respawn, and it’s as if the event never happened. How will The Old Republic remember the choices you make during the central plot line and how does that impact on other players and what they see in the world?

BC: First of all I want to point out you bring up an excellent point. Throughout the course of each one of the class stories, so each of our eight classes, there are significant choices as there would be in other BioWare games, that do have a dramatic impact on the outcome of your story. A lot of the way that’s driven is through instancing. A lot of your key decisions and key characters you interact with may occur in instances. That way we’re able to control what you’re seeing as a player. And it also means you’re not going to see other random people running through the scene as you’re conversing with whatever character or going through particularly impactful moments.

VideoGamer.com: So there’s a distinction between the experiences?

BC: Well yes, but with that said, it doesn’t mean that if you’re in a group, that group obviously can go into that instanced area as well. What you’ll see is we’re using those instances maybe more and in different ways than what you would normally think of. Normally players are like, okay, I’m going into a dungeon or whatever and I’ll be there for a couple of hours. In this case we’re using them very quickly. In some cases you’ll be like, I’m in an instance, I have my conversation, now I’m back in the real world.

VideoGamer.com: Can the companion characters replace human-controlled characters in a raid of an instance?

BC: They’re not meant as replacements. If you’re in a group, each one of the group members could still have a companion character. It’s an augmentation, but that works with the solo game as well. So really they’re there for you to be used when and how you see fit. Similar to other BioWare games, we don’t necessarily force companion characters on you. It’s a way to augment your play style.

VideoGamer.com: How many companion characters will you be able to use at the same time?

BC: One at a time.

VideoGamer.com: How many will you be able to have in reserve?

BC: We haven’t announced that yet. All I will say is there are multiple companion characters for each class, and unique to each class.

VideoGamer.com: If two players are playing the same class, they’ll have the same companions?

BC: Available, yes.

VideoGamer.com: Are you able to interact with them? Will you be able to talk to them?

BC: Yes, absolutely. The companion characters have their own stories, and those stories will be integral. Again, it goes back to traditional BioWare gameplay and storytelling, where companion characters have an influence. If you have a certain companion character with you at a given time, they may open up and say something. It changes your gameplay experience based on which companion character you have with you. They can augment the story in different ways. You’re also able to potentially romance certain companion characters as you’ve been able to in other BioWare games as well.

VideoGamer.com: I imagine there will be less sex in The Old Republic than we’ve seen in Dragon Age!

BC: Right!

VideoGamer.com: Do you intend for The Old Republic to be a BioWare game that’s also an MMO, in that order?

BC: Let me put it this way, we intend for it to be a Star Wars game that is also a BioWare game, probably somewhere in that order but those are fairly equal, because storytelling is just as important to LucasArts as it is to us. That’s the approach. Coming at it from that and then, yes it is an MMO. Really that’s repeating what I said about characters. We didn’t come at it from, it’s an MMO, what classes do we need to have? It was, it’s a Star Wars game, what classes do we need to have? And then we figure out how to make that work intelligently in an MMO setting.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is due out exclusively on the PC. No release date has been set.