The next best thing to experiencing the awesomeness of Star Wars: The Old Republic is reading about it as much as we can! The folks at BioWare take mercy upon us every Friday (usually) and give the fans a much coveted bit of lore, images, or dev blog that stave us off for yet another week. This week developer Rebecca Harwick shares about the story and development of Ord Mantell. We saw the screenshots a couple of weeks ago, now read about it's background and creation!

One of our earliest story designs for Ord Mantell even saw the Empire in control of the planet, fighting off Jedi-backed rebels—a very different Ord Mantell from the Republic-controlled world we ultimately decided to write.

As with any shift in design, there are a number of reasons why our conception of Ord Mantell changed. We had to consider the needs of the individual class stories and the needs of the game as a whole. Our designs for other worlds changed, making them a better fit for the “Imperials versus rebels” focus we had originally planned. Ord Mantell itself has a history of being a Republic world populated by rough underworld figures and settlers from Corellia, so in many ways Ord Mantell was better suited to being a Republic-held world under threat. The new version of Ord Mantell also provided a unique blend of Republic and underworld influence that was missing from worlds like Tython or Hutta, which skew strongly toward one or the other.

All of this decision-making happened before there was a single quest designed for the planet, or a single piece of art created.

To read more on the creation of Ord Mantell please visit BioWare's official SWTOR website!


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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