Star Wars: The Old Republic fills up the city planet
by Eliot Lefebvre 
Oct 10th 2009 at 12:00PM
Filed under: Trailers, New titles, Previews, Star Wars: The Old Republic
Think for a minute about what it means to have a city taking up an entire planet. No, really, think about it. Think about the scope involved, the huge numbers of people involved, the sheer scale of any kind of project or even the most humble buildings. It's a massively dwarfing concept, which makes it all the more interesting to see the latest trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic which discusses the creation of Coruscant, capital of the Republic and home to a single, massive city.
In the trailer, the designers mention many of the issues that they faced with designing the planet, chief among them the absolute lack of any terrain on the planet due to its nature and the difficulty of relating it to real-life places and things. It also discusses the events that lead into the beginning of Star Wars: The Old Republic -- the Sith sacking of Coruscant that leaves some portions of the planet still damaged and rebuilding. Coruscant is being set up to help establish the role of the Republic and the Jedi in the larger galaxy, a symbol of everything positive in the galaxy. We also see still more vistas of the city, which retain the polish that Bioware has been long known for.
On the very real chance you're hungry for more visions of the universe after the trailer, the latest installment of Threat of Peace has also been added to the site. But that's only enough to whet our appetites for what's shaping up to be a truly massive and immersive game.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tumorseal said on 12:07PM 10-10-2009
There is no way that Coruscant will run on my computer.
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Jason said on 12:15PM 10-10-2009
How do you know? This game will have comic book looking graphics so expect the system requirements to be on the low side. Unless you have a 15 year old PC.
interitus said on 1:28PM 10-10-2009
The one thing that always kills me about Coruscant is that it's never fully there. And I mean, one can't expect it to be, to build and entire planet multiple storeys would take an immense amount of time. But seeing the video already you can tell well That building is flavour, I can't actually go into it. And I'm not sure if we can travel in hover vehicles , more like buses, elevators , ships to get from different areas of the planet. It's closer but it just kills me I can't experience Coruscant like I want. It looks nice though, a bit unsure about the whole Sith attack story. I guess that timeframe is missing large chunks of lore so they can do it
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Tyranor said on 1:30PM 10-10-2009
It's got nothing to do with missing chunks...it's canon. Play KotOR 1 + 2, they give you a pretty good overview.
MCRaider said on 1:37PM 10-10-2009
It will be a large space yes, but like interitus said, we will not be able to do a whole lot of the beaten path.
If you make a space that large, that is all accessible, then it becomes to big. Places seem very far away, key hubs and areas take many minutes to get to.
So I think we will have a very large planet but besides the three levels that were mentioned in the video and some open space I doubt we will see much more.
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max said on 1:52PM 10-10-2009
Taking time to get places is one of the things that gives something scale in an mmo. When you are literally trying to create an entire planet you want scale. Simply warping everywhere really takes breaks the immersion.
RogueJedi86 said on 3:09PM 10-10-2009
You can still make it big, just make the social area in a smaller scale. The undersewers or whatever can be huge, but leave the Spaceport as a small intimate affair. But also make sure it's big enough that 100 people running around on a busy day won't end up being all standing on top of each other.
More info can be gleaned here:
http://darthhater.com/2009/10/09/voice-dissection-for-developer-dispatch-the-making-of-coruscant/
They'll have a video dissection up Monday after BioWare puts up the high quality video of the Developer Dispatch.
onetrueping said on 3:41PM 10-10-2009
Okay, Coruscant is where I'm getting a little worried. How will they control people falling off of catwalks?
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RogueJedi86 said on 4:12PM 10-10-2009
Railings? Force Fields? Warning signs? Insurmountable Knee High Fences? I imagine it'd be fun to jump off to my death just once, though if it got real laggy, I could see that getting annoying. I'm sure they'll put barriers around the edges.
Lok1 said on 4:14PM 10-10-2009
If it's not actually immense, like Altdorf x 50(or Stormwind x 100) i'll be terribly disappointed.
And 700 streets, and no less than 200 night clubs, beside the other buildings' interiors.
It should take a month non-stop play to explore it, and i want to explore most of the buildings, i don't want the "you can't touch this" feeling i usually have.
and i'm not exaggerating with the numbers, i swear. Anything smaller than that will be a disappointment, for this "MMO capital" that is no doubt the non-plus-ultra of future city, the wet dream of any sci-fi fan AND one of those "cozy dark alley" rats, if you know what i mean.
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RogueJedi86 said on 4:33PM 10-10-2009
They could start small and expand it with expansions or something. We don't know how big any of the planets will be, so we can't say how big Coruscant is. Since we're not going to have dozens of planets, I'm sure planets will be bigger than individual zones in WoW. But beyond that, I don't have any guesses on a max size, only guesses on a minimum size. They can't be too huge, or people will lag on arrival to a planet as they load a huge area around them.
Utakata said on 4:36PM 10-10-2009
"It had buildings as far as you could see..." - Cibo, BLAME!
On more of a concerned note...this has me worried a lot. We all know what happened with Warhammer when they tried to build their "dynamic" major cities. They where forced to only release two. And there is no current plans to release the 4 others...
I understand this only one city...but it's a city the size of a planet. Likely built on a body that's has the surface area anywhere from Mercury to Earth, with every single volume covered in a sky scrapers, factories, warehouses, municpal buildings and so on...and an entire infrastruture to keep it all sustianable. And one that controls planetary forces of nature so a volcano doesn't sprout up in the middle of 5532nd Avenue during rush hour. I could go on...
And I suppose will only use barely a nano percent as a playable area...but still it appears to be massive...very massive, in what they're putting in there. So will it be ready for release? Will be able to run even on top end machines without sending them screaming? Or are the game's devs like the ones in Mythic, are having eyes are bigger than their brains?
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UltimateQ said on 5:48PM 10-10-2009
As much as I want to hate this game. It simply looks way to awesome to hate. I hope it ends up being as good as it looks.
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Ivasen said on 9:39PM 10-11-2009
This is something I wouldn't care for as it would ruin immersion and fun factor.
I have never seen a barrier or force field stop a Jedi from jumping off a building in Coruscant.
If lag is really going to be an issue with you, you should turn down your graphics or stay near the building and not wander off near the edges.
Again, the game is being designed to run on all sorts of computers, and that does not say it should look pretty if you are running it on a dell you bought four years ago. Turn down your graphics if you lag.
They could make the city as big as a full continent in WoW and it would still run fine, just as WoW is able to load a full continent and you run it seamlessly.
Pre-loading is a wonderful system
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