E3 2009: Star Wars: The Old Republic is world's first 'fully-voiced' MMO
by Lesley Smith 
Jun 1st 2009 at 7:30PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, Trailers, Star Wars: The Old Republic
The two companies touted the game as 'the largest voice over project in the history of games and maybe across all areas of entertainment'. As well as premiering a new Jedi versus Sith trailer (which you can see after the jump), they revealed that every class has its own unique storyline.
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Massively is on the ground in Los Angeles this week and covering all the latest E3 MMO news coming from the convention. Check out our breaking coverage (or all the Joystiq network E3 reporting) and keep your eye on Massively's front page for the latest developments. |
"If you play the entire game as a bountry hunter, an Empire class, and then play the game again as a trooper, a Republic class, your game play experience will be completely different. As you can tell story means a lot to us. Until now MMO games have shown an impressive commitment to the classic RPG features of combat, exploration and progression, what we call the 'three pillars'. What we're adding is something that's fundamental to success of great entertainment in general: story."
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Zediker said on 7:37PM 6-01-2009
Um... isnt EQ2 the first fully voiced MMO...
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Roadkill said on 7:47PM 6-01-2009
No, EQ2 only had a few voice-overs.
UltimateQ said on 9:38PM 6-01-2009
EQ2 has a TON of voice overs. But if I recall correctly, they had intended to make it "fully voiced". Mind you, they still failed.
Jack said on 7:39PM 6-01-2009
Well this is just great, I always hate to have to read tons of text to can enjoy the story of a mmo.... But knowing Bioware games I kind of was hoping they where going this way! More voice overs in mmo make the game feel more real!
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Jerry said on 7:48PM 6-01-2009
Finally, I see Jedi getting slaughtered. My skin is tingling : )
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Jaiyeson said on 8:14PM 6-01-2009
Thats cause you need to take a shower you sith scumbag!
Smitt said on 7:48PM 6-01-2009
I wonder which class that Twi'lek is supposed to be? The Empire counterpart to the smuggler? Or is she supposed to represent a companion character like the droid cameo?
Oh, and that was an awesome lightsaber fight. The battles in the movies should have been more like that.
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Seare said on 6:54AM 6-02-2009
Agreed, the combat in this video was freaking awesome. It was the kind of combat I envisioned for Episodes 1, 2, and 3, but was disappointed never came true. This video was great.
RogueJedi86 said on 7:48PM 6-01-2009
I saw the trailer on G4, very cool(albeit too biased for Sith). I heard EQ2 was fully voiced, but this is still a nice surprise for TOR. I like unique stories for each class, but I hope they don't neglect story at end-game. What happens when you hit level cap and did all the quests, but don't want to reroll another for another story? Will you still have quests to do?
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hayesryan said on 8:50PM 6-01-2009
well i think it has to be, seeing as its the fall of coroscant (sp?) where the sith, lets face it, kicked the republics collective a**
derella said on 8:54PM 6-01-2009
Well, the trailer is depicting the Sith attack of the Jedi Temple of Coruscant. The attack was successful according to Bioware's comic, so a Sith-bias should be expected. I'm sure they'll release something where the good guys win too :)
Anonymous said on 8:00PM 6-01-2009
As soon as I read the title "Star Wars: The Old Republic is world's first fully-voiced MMO" - I was hooked. Definitely looking forward to this game now. Always wanted an MMO with voice over's so I can feel more involved in the game!
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Jargo said on 8:20PM 6-01-2009
"No, EQ2 only had a few voice-overs."
Actually, damn near every quest has a voice over now. Most of them at any rate.
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Darkthunder said on 9:09PM 6-01-2009
They might have voice-overs now. But they didn't have so much when it was new.
Am I the only one thinking this is actually set more in the "episode 3-4 era", rather than the KOTOR-era? I saw star-destroyers that looked almost exactly like the ones from the new trilogy, and the saber fight was very reminiscent of the Vader/Anakin - Obi Wan fight.
RogueJedi86 said on 9:28PM 6-01-2009
Darkthunder, that's intentional, to hark back to the original movies. Since it's thousands of years before the movies, they can chalk it up to the people of the original movies' era drawing on ancient designs for their ship/armor designs.
Notice they did that in KotOR all the time, with the Sith Empire's star destroyers, their fighters, their trooper designs, the Jawa Sandcrawlers, the Tusken Raider masks, etc.
starzzareblind said on 8:45PM 6-01-2009
What they mean by "fully" voiced over is that each bit of text/dialogue will be spoken vocally as well. EQ2 does not have this.
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ww2jacob said on 9:35PM 6-01-2009
Including what your character says as well, a la Mass Effect.
bak said on 8:48PM 6-01-2009
Impressive... most impressive.
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Bryan said on 8:49PM 6-01-2009
This sounds great...except..now I have to go buy a new LARGER hard drive as voice over files take up ALOT of space.
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craylon said on 5:11AM 6-02-2009
omg i really love that they are doing full vo
i enjoyed it so much in aoc and was so dissapointed when it stopped after tarantia. for me it adds a lot to immersion and atmosphere and as a fan of playing games in stereovision (with shutter glasses like nvidias 3d vision) the less text the better.
as you can pack thounsands of hours of hq music on a few gb i think medium quality speech wont blow up the game by large proportions.
viewing it from the producers perspective its also a very good move to add to the quality of the game without making the code overcomplicated. it should be a lot easier to outsource some voice acting for your game then for example do complicated animations or embed new game mechanics into the core.