Tag Archive for 'Star Wars'

Reflecting On ‘Star Wars Galaxies’

Published
on January 30, 2009
in Review
. 9 Comments

As much as some would like to forget, BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic is not the first massively multiplayer online game to tread the waters of the galaxy far far away. Sony Online Entertainment’s Star Wars Galaxies was the first MMO I ever played, and the oddball experience has colored my approach to every MMO after.

My love for the franchise compelled me to start playing SWG in the final stages of the beta, where everything was still broken as hell. Characters who sat in a certain chair in a campground would teleport to the exact middle of the world, where a set of women’s underwear hung in the air and graphic glitches played off the plains like thunder. It was charming as hell.

The game encompassed ten planets, all rendered as wide-open 15 km by 15 km squares of terrain. You could go anywhere, walk up any surface, swim across any body of water. Each planet featured a few movie landmarks — Jabba the Hutt’s palace and the droid’s escape pod on Tatooine, the lakes of Naboo, the Massassi temples on Yavin IV, and the Ewok village on Endor, to name a few.

They were fun to explore, but more like theme parks than anything else. The game had a few World of Warcraft style quests, but most players turned to the mission assignments for money and experience. Computer terminals randomly assigned a mob lair to destroy, which could be Womp Rats on Tatooine, smugglers on Corellia, or Rancors on Dathomir.

I loved the beta and all its flaws so much that I picked up SWG when it was released on June 26, 2003, and started playing the next day (the log-in servers were tellingly broken on the first day). I joined the Damorian Corporation, which constructed the first guild hall on the Chilastra server and later spawned Nova Enterprises.

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BioWare Brings Companions, Epic Combat to ‘The Old Republic’

Published
on December 4, 2008
in Preview
. 0 Comments

An Edge magazine preview of the new Star Wars MMO The Old Republic has new details on how BioWare’s first attempt at a massively multiplayer game will differ from the competition in atmosphere and play style, including the use of companion characters.

“This is a faster-paced system that focuses on making the player feel like a hero,” said Creative Designer James Ohlen. “Four players all beating on one enemy; that’s not what you think of as heroic. It’s usually the heroes who are outnumbered, and that’s the kind of feeling we’re going for.”

BioWare is trying to integrate the epic, personal, and ascending narratives of their single player titles into the MMO genre, where individual players are normally cogs in a massive machine and one hero among thousands.

Lead Writer Daniel Erickson said that players would have to make big, character-defining choices and live with the consequences, but could not say if or how those choices would change the game world.

The Edge mentioned companion characters as one BioWare mainstay making its way into the game. A single ally can fight alongside a player character, and these allies have opinions and backstories.

Their role is to continually comment on, and presumably try to influence, your behaviour. Greg Zeschuk (BioWare’s president and co-founder) describes them as “the lens through which you see the world,” and they won’t hesitate to make their feelings known, good or bad, and will even abandon you if you’re constantly doing things they object to.

The article also gives early impressions of the new game’s art style.

The game takes a few visual cues from the new Clone Wars aesthetic introduced by the recent film and TV series: characters have simplified body structures, bright flat colors and the odd exaggerated feature. Each asset is hand-painted rather than using photo-sourced textures, giving everything a slightly unreal and highly distinctive sheen.

This is the same approach that Blizzard took with World of Warcraft. They compensated for aging graphics with unique art and design that kept everything fresh. Its the most economic plan for MMOs because it allows for stunning visuals and an expansive user base to play on low-end machines.

BioWare Pushes MMO Storytelling With ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’

Published
on November 13, 2008
in News
. 0 Comments

It came as no surprise that Electronic Arts, LucasArts, and BioWare put World of Warcraft on notice when they announced Star Wars: The Old Republic late last month.

Every MMO released this year has tried to distinguish itself from Blizzard’s monolith in some aspect, and with The Old Republic, BioWare is focusing on storytelling, their realm of expertise.

Developers from BioWare Austin talked about how they will address this chronically underserved aspect of the genre at a round-table discussion, covered by Joystiq. Most of all, they want to treat the player as seriously as if this were a single-player experience.

“You will never in the game go into a cantina and poke a random person to see if you can solve their problems and they’ll give you money,” said Lead Writer Daniel Erickson. “You will never have some stranger on the street ask you to save their cat. You do large, heroic things.

“I always tell my writers,” Erickson continued, “to imagine if the very first response you could ever choose to any quest they might pitch is, ‘Excuse me, I’m saving the world. Is this important?’”

According to BioWare, The Old Republic contains more dialog and content than all its past titles combined.

“If you roll a Jedi character and you play them from the first level to the last level, and then you roll a Sith and you play them from the first level to the last level, you will not see one repeated quest, line of dialogue, or piece of content,” said Erickson. “It is a 100% different story experience.”

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