BioWare Producer on heroism and villainy in Star Wars: The Old Republic
by James Egan 
Oct 20th 2009 at 6:00PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, Classes, Game mechanics, Lore, New titles, Quests, Star Wars: The Old Republic
BioWare Producer Blaine Christine recently sat down for a Star Wars: The Old Republic interview with Steven Crews at The MMO Gamer. The interview hits on a number of facets of SWTOR's gameplay and the process of creating the title. They also discuss how BioWare is designing the game to dissuade everyone from (only) running around wielding lightsabers through the unique strengths of each class, but their talk really focuses on the game's story.
Blaine discusses how the story for SWTOR players, whether they choose to be good or evil, will always be more than kill ten rats or "collect ten boxes for some random vendor." That story you play through fits the role you've chosen for yourself. Blaine likens a player's story progression to Knights of the Old Republic. He tells The MMO Gamer, "If you look at KOTOR and how that worked out, if you played light side versus dark side, there were distinct differences in the story, and distinct differences in how your character developed. It's going to be very similar to that."
Unlike KOTOR though, Star Wars: The Old Republic's classes will have their own distinct stories, each of which changes depending upon whether a player chooses to be good or evil. Even those archetypes of Sith as villains and Jedi as heroes aren't set in stone -- the interview mentions how a Sith Warrior could go to the light side, or how a Jedi could turn to the dark side.
Check out the The MMO Gamer interview with BioWare Producer Blaine Christine for more on Star Wars: The Old Republic and what the upcoming title has to offer Star Wars fans and MMO gamers alike.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kalex said on 6:36PM 10-20-2009
This kind of thing just bugs me, because untill i start seeing technical documents and design documents on the "how" they're going to do it, its all just talk.
How is it not going to just be a guise, with timers that reset instances back to normal and such after you are done? Or you'll read it one time, and then the next 100x times you run a zone you WONT just click click click click your way through it without even reading?
And MMO's are different! they're played by real people with real impulses, not people trying to play the part of a character. Bioware games have that "A. = good guy option, B = Neutral, and C = Bad guy choices but they fail to explore the WHY of it all. WHY do people be "bad guys" and what compels them to make choices that hurt others?
Is every single power gamer running around going to be inherently evil? Cause greed in real life often equates to evil, so is that how they're going to do it? Is the game going to just judge us all, cause if its NOT going to it will all just be subterfuge.
I want to hear in interviews how they're really exploring these things cause I hate to say it but, Knights of the old republic, the MMO isn't going to work unless they've got some brilliant answers to these higher level questions.
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Ingrod said on 7:05PM 10-20-2009
Really, apparently you dont played the Bioware and KOTOR games with much attention.
Perhaps the player answers in the dialogues are a bit simple, but the storylines works good the deep reasons what makes characters act. You can understant the reason what makes Siths elect their path, and in many cases is hard to say if these reason are inherently bad or good, and you have the possibility of become neutral or a grey Jedi how was in my case.
Bioware writers cant know or decide what are the players own reasons for elect an answer or another in dialogue trees, they only put the options there, and we how players have the last decision.
Perhaps these dialogues and options need more ambiguitiy or complexity, but in Mass Effect they add a bit of complexity to player relation with other characters, you can be rude with an character or polite with another. I expect in TOR the ME dialogue trees a bit more evolved. For me how will be the system is pretty clear.
mpdivo said on 7:38PM 10-20-2009
Loot whore players are evil.
There is a social science study out there that proved that people that are loot whores in game are bad people in real life.
Mitch said on 9:58PM 10-20-2009
As a real scientist, mpdivo's comment makes me want to climb a clocktower with a rifle. Science does not prove anything ... ever. Science can only disprove, and even that might be debatable.
Assuming such study exists, I believe the educated way of saying it would be: "A social science study out there showed a correlation between being a loot whore in games and being a bad person in real life." (I tried to preserve as much of the original wording as possible)
maika said on 10:24PM 10-20-2009
lol mitch. You just said you'd kill someone based on the way they worded their sentence. mpdivo is just using a common parlance. Many people wouldn't both worrying about the subtle different between 'proved' and 'shows a correlation between'
Ragnakun said on 8:46PM 10-20-2009
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of MMO's where the player can just 'click click click his/her way through' the quest text to keep moving forward. Yet really, why does it matter if you're just doing it to get phat loots and goad them over your fellow adventurers? That stuff gets old fast and you end up missing most of the game in the process.
I'm a Star Wars fan, tried Galaxies and it made my eyes hurt. I love the route they're taking in both setting and art direction. Also, this is freakin' Bioware. They didn't make their name in the business by half-assing things and coming up short with content or not keeping their word about their products. Sure, it looks nice on paper, tons of things do but the bigger you get in the business the more you get in resources and talent.
Sure, getting caught up in the hype-machine is a horrible idea. It's counter-productive because it leaves embittered people in the release day wake. Yet really.. if anyone can put their money where their mouth is, it's Bioware.
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maika said on 10:41PM 10-20-2009
For everything they're saying, it still sounds like it's going to be a single player MMO. By 'single player' I think most people are including 2-4 players as well. Or, simply multiplayer - rather than massively multiplayer. In my mind, massively multiplayer means that a massive number of people actually playing together, not just in communications range talking about how they're all playing alone, or with one or two friends. They pretty much said "its not going to be single player because you can have two or three or even four! people involved at one". That's not massively multiplayer, especially if it isn't required. (as in, most instances can't be soloed, but in TOR they apparently can be, or can be done with 2 people only not a specialized team built for instancing)
They've shown nothing of endgame - I still have no idea why companies do this, avoid talking about the most important part of an MMO. I also don't understand the interviewer. "What's the endgame going to be like" would be my second, if not my first, question. Endgame keeps people playing. I don't care how fun the leveling period is, if they endgame isn't a center-point, then you're not making a MMORPG. :\
And I agree with the first comment. "How?" Is a burning question about the entire game. And not in an interested way, but in a worried - if you don't tell me how I'll probably think twice about buying the game kind of way.
Also! I never believed that playing a Jedi would be truly better than the other classes, the worry is that everyone, despite the equality, will still be playing jedi because they are, in fact, 'cooler'.
Bioware is obviously trying to make money, and what better way then to pander to the people who want to solo through a MMORPG. >.> It's not the right genre. Just make a console RPG in which you can play online with other people who have the game.
I'm not trying to be negative, I'm just saying. The interview didn't clear anything up. It just felt like he was dancing around everything important. I get that they "can't say much" but they have to realize, if they keep talking without saying anything at all, people are going to get annoyed.
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Tom said on 8:43AM 10-21-2009
"For everything they're saying, it still sounds like it's going to be a single player MMO. By 'single player' I think most people are including 2-4 players as well. Or, simply multiplayer - rather than massively multiplayer. In my mind, massively multiplayer means that a massive number of people actually playing together, not just in communications range talking about how they're all playing alone, or with one or two friends."
Tell me honestly that a "single-player MMO" isn't the way MOST "Massively Multiplayer Online" games are played these days?
WoW and LotRO and most of the others are built on a bedrock of single-player/small group play. Very few games are really "massive" in the sense that massive numbers of players are doing the same quest simultaneously.
And this approach works fine -- certainly it has for Blizzard. What percentage of WoW is played, for all intents and purposes, as a single-player game? 90%? 95%? Most MMOs are a mixed bag -- probably 90-95% single-player, 5-10% limited multiplayer (i.e., 2 to 4 people), and maybe 1% (if that) is actually epically MASSIVELY multiplayer in the sense you are describing.
For my money, SWTOR sounds just about perfect in design; if that means they have to drop the first "M" off of "MMORPG", I'm fine with that -- as long as they drop the same "M" from LotRO, WoW, EQ, and all the others.
What it sounds like to me is that Bioware has jettisoned the fiction of the "many" in favor of enhancing the gameplay of the "one or two". They are wrapping their game design around the way people actually play, and it will be a terrific game as a result.
Cyspeth said on 11:55AM 10-21-2009
Originally all you could do was grind, questy types wanted to quest all the way up.
Now we have just grind quests.
My utmost hope is that Bioware does something with MMO quests that makes it almost impossible for MMO dev's to return to this current formula and changes the genre.
SO sick of quests that are nothing but a time waster/money waster meant to control and in some cases impeed my progress and in almost all cases are insanely boring as well.
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