Star Wars: The Old Republic senior writer talks about writing the Jedi Knight

by Rubi Bayer Nov 8th 2009 at 12:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, Classes, New titles, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Drew Karpyshyn is the senior writer for the Star Wars: The Old Republic team with plenty of experience writing characters from the dark side, but now he's stepping out of his comfort zone to take a walk on the Jedi side. The fun he's having writing the Jedi Knight class comes through clearly in Friday's developer blog entry: "Nothing says Star Wars like a brown-robed figure brandishing a shimmering energy blade of righteous destruction."

Exploring the Jedi Knight class meant delving the Jedi Code and how it works in theory vs. how it works in practice. What happens when you take that code and mix in a hefty dose of "what if?" is a recipe for all kinds of possibilities, and Karpyshyn is having a great time exploring them. His experience writing the dark side gives his version of "what if" a little edge, exploring thoughts of renegade Jedi Knights who are willing to bend the rules for the greater good.

It's a fun read, with a great look into Karpyshyn's thoughts on the class -- you can take a look at the full entry on the official site.

Tags: bioware, classes, developer-diary, Drew-Karpyshyn, jedi-knight, lucasarts, new-titles, star-wars-the-old-republic, swtor

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

pbintx2001 said on 12:17PM 11-08-2009

i have been playing dragon age and i can't help thinking this is how TOR will play, just sub classes and think of a scifi instead of fantasy theme...this is tor :)

Jack said on 5:31PM 11-08-2009

If you do that it will be Mass Effect ;) Anyway I looking forward see the mmo part of this game in action like I still have no clue how this will work in multi player where your actions effect others peoples world?!

Brian! said on 2:16PM 11-08-2009

This picture makes me realize that I love the original star wars robots and how much I HATE the new stupid, slap-stick droids now envisioned. When the MMO comes out, I hope I can kill every damn one of those robots I see.

To think that some guy envisioned artificial intelligent droids to be bumbling idiots. If that is the future, then I hope the empire does rule the galaxy for a while. In the time it took for Luke to grow up, it seems some older robots remained whiny (C-3PO, obviously using some existing idiot/coward code that Darth Vader used as a kid to build him) the majority of droids became cool. Perhaps someone looked at the R2 units and decided they wanted their robots to grow a pair too.

Pardon me while I jump to a competitive sci-fi setting and go phaser myself on stun to calm down.

Werther said on 4:08PM 11-08-2009

Very impressed so far by Dragon Age: Origins. Can´t wait for SWTOR!

JP said on 7:23PM 11-08-2009

Drew wrote for Mass Effect, the orignal KOTOR, and ME2 before moving over to SWTOR. He's also written two (and a third to release in Dec) Star Wars books about Darth Bane, which proceeds the events of KOTOR and TOR. It also has nothing to do w/ the Skywalker bloodline and are fantastic reads. He's a huge HUGW asset to the TOR writing team, and will make Jedi's story incredible.

RogueJedi86 said on 8:48PM 11-08-2009

Didn't he move from BioWare's Edmonton studios down to Austin TX just to work on TOR? I heard as such, and I'd call that real dedication.

Hypester said on 8:44AM 11-09-2009

What they've talking about is "phasing", in so much as some of your actions only affect your world. You could be running through an area and in the background see a temple that you've destroyed. The person next to you hasn't completed that mission, or completed it differently, so they don't see the temple as destroyed. At least, that's what I understand from what they've said.