Is there going to be any
outlet for
players that are less interested in the grand drama between the Empire
and the Republic? Maybe some of the criminal aspects of the Star Wars
universe?



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There will be other ways to play through SWTOR than simply as a Jedi or a Sith.

Daniel:
Absolutely. One of the
things that we talk about is the fact that there are a lot of
"fantasies" about Star Wars, and they're certainly not all focused on
Jedi and Sith. There's absolutely going to be classes that are based
around the other archetypal fantasies that you'll have and many of
those take you into very different places.



Also, there are people out there who adore Baldur's Gate II, but aren't
into story at all. They play by hitting "1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1" because they
are tactical D&D guys. Bioware has always had great
progressions
systems, and we hope that we can convert some of those guys. During our
play tests, we've actually had guys come in who are openly hostile to
stories in MMOs, and they come out and give us perfect scores. They
didn't even expect that that was possible in an MMO.



It's really about story not getting in the way. Some of you have heard
the horrors of the Bioware training program and the hiring that we go
through. Yes - there is over three months past the initial testing
where you don't even get to touch the game. You're just training to be
a Bioware writer.



If you're writing a class, which is the most sacred of
responsibilities, it's incredibly important to get that right. If
you're writing a Sith, I may have to write up on our white board: And
then Darth Vader helped a farmer save his tractor. The rest of the
writers will then mock you. Then it doesn't go in our game.



In SW: TOR, you will never go into a cantina and poke a random person
to see if you can solve their problems for a few credits. You will
never have some stranger on the street ask you to save their cat.



This is something that we really started to push with Dragon Age. We
have to keep pushing forward. The level of writing and quest building
that was acceptable in Knights of the Old Republic would not be
accepted in SW: TOR. Mass Effect came out and absolutely set a new bar
for this. We're coming out and saying that we can push that even
further.



I always tell my writers, imagine the first response you can ever
choose in any quest you write is, "Excuse me, I'm saving the world. Is
this important?" And then, does it fit? The Jedi guy may be convinced
to go save the cat. But Vader? That's why I said there was no faction
cross over. I've never found a single example where it worked. I've
never found a story where Ben Kenobi would do something that Vader
would be down with.


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The character stories in SWTOR will be appropriate, heroic, and epic.

Does ths mean you won't
be asking Jedi to go out and kill nine rats or nerfs?




Daniel:
Here's a great example.
In the videos and in the concept art, one of the first things you saw
was a K'lor Slug. It was very important to me to not create when we can
take. Lucas has such a huge backlog of great, exciting stuff, so when
of the first things I asked for was the art team to make the Dejarik
set. The point to that is this: the K'lor Slug is twenty feet tall,
horrible and can eat your whole face. That's what you fight as level 1
as a Sith.



The first thing you ever fight in the game is that thing. You never do
anything less heroic than that. There are no bunnies. There are no
rats. There are no snakes. At no point will your Sith be sitting down
with thread and needles wondering how he's going to make a pair of
shoes.



There ar a huge number of incredibly non-heroic things that are
traditionally in MMOs simply because there was no contextualization to
deny them.



When you're playing an
evil character,
often you end up doing quasi-good things. How do you make characters
into the ultimate bad asses in the galaxy? How do we do anti-heroic
things?




Daniel:
Let's talk about Vader. In the context of Vader's Emperor and Empire,
does he do heroic things?



Hell yes he does.



Daniel: He
takes down the
largest threat to the entire galaxy, in his perspective. He tries to
turn them over to his side. It all about contextualization. Now if you
were Vader and a random Imperial ran up to you and said, "There's a
fire on the aft deck! Come help us Vader!" He'd probably get killed.
Right?



On of the things that's very important is for the contextualization to
make sense. You do big, epic things that feel heroic because the odds
are going against you. The first thing Vader does when he finds out
they're trying to blow up the Death Star is grab two guys and puts his
own ass on the line and jump in a ship and go out and kill that little
kid.



He goes after 'em personally and goes out and dominates. You can go out
and experience heroic, epic things that are not in anyway good or nice.




Finally, you haven't
talked about Mandalorians yet. Are they in the game and are we going to
see Mandalore again?




Daniel: We
can't talk about this yet, but I can say that I love Mandalorians. I'll
leave it at that.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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