Preview – Star Wars: The Old Republic

The same day I attended the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 panel at Star Wars Celebration V, I also had the opportunity to snag a seat in the Star Wars: The Old Republic panel. I’ve never really been a Massive Multiplayer Online-type of gamer, but I love Star Wars and love BioWare games. I’ve been following the production of TOR closely, and my friends and I have already decided which character classes we’ll be playing, what names we’ll give our ships, and are in talks of forming a guild. Our biggest question has always been that of TOR’s story, and the seemingly Herculean effort to write it properly. Being able to attend the TOR panel and get some of our questions addressed was one of the highlights of Celebration V, and it didn’t disappoint.

Drew Karpyshyn (Principal Writer), Hall Hood (Senior Writer), Arnie Jorgensen (Lead Concept Artist) and Clint Young (Senior Concept Artist of Environments) made up the panel. Right away, the discussion focused primarily on the game’s story. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is my favorite video game, and when the writers told the crowd how their goal all along with this game was to turn KOTOR into an MMO, I got more than a little excited. TOR will allude to events and characters from KOTOR, linking to the original game and continuing the legacy it began. TOR is BioWare’s answer to KOTOR 3, 4, 5, and 6, we were told, and the audience cheered.

TOR is set approximately 300 years after the first KOTOR, over 3,000 years before Star Wars IV: A New Hope. This setting is BioWare’s private sandbox. There aren’t the typical Star Wars problems of making sure the story doesn’t interfere with existing novels or established canon, such as the pesky Rule of Two that the Sith follow. In this timeframe, well before Lucas’s original characters hit the scene, BioWare has free reign to create the Star Wars universe they want.

TOR “dwarfs” anything BioWare’s done before, we were told. The writing staff consists of 12 members, all of whom have been on the team since the initial discussions of the game. In designing this game, the TOR writing staff has reversed the normal process; most games are written after level design, artwork and character development has taken place.  For TOR, the writing was done first. The writing staff lives and breathes Star Wars, we were told, and have the utmost respect for the legacy of the series.

And, unlike other MMOs where the class of the character is the end-all defining factor, the writers aren’t focused on creating a rote set of classes where every character has the same path set before him. They’re writing for real characters, real people, they said. An example given was the typical villain may not be so typical: Just because you play as a Sith doesn’t mean that you’re a bad guy. Choices can be made to set your Sith on a different path, just as we’re to assume making different choices as a Jedi could point your character towards the Dark Side. It was highly recommended to play the game multiple times as different classes to fully appreciate the overall story.

This brings me to the biggest question I had about TOR: How are the individual character stories going to intertwine with the group stories? It’s always seemed to me that BioWare bit off more than they could chew with their goals of how the story will play out. For months now I’ve had visions of team members coming across a specific character only to have half the team say, “Wait, I already killed this guy!”

But that’s not the case, according to the writers. We were given the analogy of Star Wars IV: A New Hope, specifically the Death Star scenes. Han, Chewbacca, and Luke team up to go rescue Princess Leia, Obi-Won Kenobi disables the tractor beam, while C-3PO and R2-D2 deal with Stormtroopers. Then later, Han and Chewbacca go one direction, Luke and Leia a second, Obi-Won a third, and C-3PO and R2-D2 a forth. Eventually they all wind up back together, but have individual adventures along the way that contribute to the overall story. I got a sense of what they were referring to with the analogy, but I still would like to see a demo to experience the storytelling for myself.

After the writers finished, the artists stepped in. There is a “ton” of artwork that needs to be created, and they have plenty of artists to help. The goal of the artists, like the writers, is to give fans the Star Wars experience, and make sure the overall look of the game matches the story and gameplay presented.

What happened next was quite possibly the coolest part of the panel discussion. During the hour-long session, Young booted up Adobe Photoshop and drew the audience a piece of concept art. He didn’t have a specific idea in mind; he just wanted to draw a planet covered in green lava. Watching Young draw was like watching Bob Ross paint: he made everything look so easy you felt like you, too, could open up Photoshop and create a masterpiece. That particular piece of concept art can be found both below and on the official TOR website:

Afterward, the four panelists held a Meet and Greet session at the Celebration V Hoth Ice Bar. Free Old Republic T-shirts and copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic – Fatal Alliance were handed out (I snagged a t-shirt), and fans got the opportunity to mix and mingle with the BioWare crew. Many had specific questions pertaining to TOR’s storyline, which were answered with, “You’ll see” and “Can’t say just yet”. Still, being able to speak with the panelists in such an informal setting was an absolutely wonderful experience. (I even got Drew Karpyshyn’s autograph, yay!)

When will TOR see store shelves? When it’s good and ready, we were told. They have to make everything “just right” first. Some fans are content with that answer. Others (read: this writer) want their beta key now.