This is part one of PC Zone's massive reveal of Star Wars: The Old Republic. For the second part of the reveal and exclusive screenshots pick up PC Zone issue 201, in shops now, or check back here later this week.
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."
The CEO of bioware stated that the game "may" be ported for the consoles.. so dont count it out yet. It would be foolish to produce a game nowadays with such potential, for only one platform.
Still not sure about this one. If they can really pull off a fantastic story within an MMORPG mould like they claim, then they may very well sell me on the whole KOTOR MMO idea. They would have to do away with the constant grinding of MMOs though, otherwise the story is broken by you having to spend hours/days/months levelling up your character to the required level before you can successfully complete the next arc/quest of your story. Also, the decisions you take would have to have some kind of effect in the world as a whole, otherwise the whole thing just seems static.
As an example: you raid a remote outpost and kill a general, only to have him re-spawn thirty seconds later as another group of people do the same thing. Or you end up standing around waiting for the re-spawn which another group has just taken out. It would feel very wrong in a story driven game such as Bioware are claiming this is. Instancing I think, seems to be the way to go with this one.
It's a neat idea, but very difficult to pull off in an MMO unless they throw the old MMORPG rules down the toilet (which would not be a bad thing). Still if anyone can do it, Bioware can. This is certainly a game to watch out for, but I still can't help wishing they'd made an offline RPG instead.
Just so long as I play as a tatooine moisture farmer ....
Never played a MMO before and was always keen on the single player KOTOR. I am guessing that this is the third in the trilogy if they are revealing what happened to Reven/ Ballista etc.
Does this mean a one off payment or monthly subscription? Will be keen if the former... less keen on the later. Feelin slightly grumpy at the moment
Just so long as I can play as a tatooine moisture farmer ....
Never played a MMO before and was always keen on the single player KOTOR. I am guessing that this is the third in the trilogy if they are revealing what happened to Reven/ Ballista etc.
Does this mean a one off payment or monthly subscription? Will be keen if the former... less keen on the later. Feelin slightly grumpy at the moment
Tough s**t ensabahnur - we PC users don't get Force Unleased, so I guess that's fair enough!
i would enjoy going pvp style against some nooby console gamer (esp xbots who pay double per month for a game lol) ..it wud be easy mode having a mouse against a slow a** control pad noob! then seen video's from pc gamers with insanely high res and graphic differences from what crap consoles can do
Tough s**t ensabahnur - we PC users don't get Force Unleased, so I guess that's fair enough!
To be fair, Force Unleashed was frustratingly disappointing. Mr Apprentice was about as graceful as a fat man running over an icy lake with banana peels for shoes.
1) I have not yet submitted myself to an MMO that I have to pay for per month on top of the full retail price (give it away for free and require monthly payments to play and that seems a bit more balanced,) nor do I feel inclined to do so any time soon.
2) One of the things I really enjoyed about KoTOR 1 & 2 was that I could submerge myself in what gave the illusion of a living universe without requiring other human players to be around. At this stage I'm unsure just how much of a "KoTOR" feel this so-called "KoTOR 3" will have when all is said and done.
3) BioWare is owned by EA and given EA's oh-so-exemplary record lately of using abhorrent and outright damaging versions of SecuROM along with limited activations and I have absolutely no reason to expect that they will do anything differently with KoTOR 3 despite it being designed as MMO. This last point is, and always will be on my behalf, an instant deal breaker resulting in a black listing of said title and any others that follow suit. This point is non-negotiable. End of discussion.
Hello KoTOR3 and goodbye KoTOR3. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out...
3) BioWare is owned by EA and given EA's oh-so-exemplary record lately of using abhorrent and outright damaging versions of SecuROM along with limited activations and I have absolutely no reason to expect that they will do anything differently with KoTOR 3 despite it being designed as MMO. This last point is, and always will be on my behalf, an instant deal breaker resulting in a black listing of said title and any others that follow suit. This point is non-negotiable. End of discussion.
This point made me cry. As a Bioware fan I still feel betrayed.
Thinking about it too, Mass Effect was the last game Bioware made before EA got their grubby mitts on them. Since then they have released Sonic Chronicles...the first game in their history I believe to not score 9/10.
Sign of things to come? It's happened so many times before.
Mass Effect was released by BioWare after they joined EA...Which may account for the atrocious DRM SecuROM with limited activations scheme that game shipped with. Whatever the case, it's history now and I no longer trust BioWare products. A shame; some of my greatest PC gaming moments were with BioWare titles.
Ive never been able to attach myself to a MMO at all always go back to a console game but with this article It brings me high hopes for the game I hope they port it to the 360 but I will play it on the PC just out of love for the series I Have very high hopes for it.
count ME in if EA doesn't hold a gun to their heads to meet a ridiculous deadline. this is a very delicate project, and if they know what's good for them and their evil empire, they will leave them the hell alone and let them do their thing so they can work their magic. if they can do that, then everybody wins.
They would have to do away with the constant grinding of MMOs though, otherwise the story is broken by you having to spend hours/days/months levelling up your character to the required level before you can successfully complete the next arc/quest of your story.
But then you're effectively saying that you want your character to become uber powerful overnight without ever training, seems a bit silly to me that. Grinding is just part and parcel of MMO's. And of course this being an MMO it would have to last longer than the offline 1st and 2nd games, otherwise why would anyone ever subscribe? What you're asking for is to be able to play all the way through the story without ever having to stop and level up your character, but then how would Bioware ship out content to keep up with this?
IF you don't like the way the new KoTOR is going then don't buy it. Stick to the offline ones.
Instancing I think, seems to be the way to go with this one.
Basically making this KoTOR:GW Edition. Which again would suck. You wouldn't mix with the inhabitants of the world if constantly in instances for every quest. I wouldn't have met the people that I ended up forming a guild with in WoW all those years ago if all quests were only passable in instances.
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thats just ruined my day
As a Bioware fan I still feel betrayed.
