Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

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?

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.

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.