Star Wars: The Old Republic… Information and Looking Pretty Good…

All I can say, after following the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, it seemed like the hype of the game just exploded!! I couldn’t believe all the sites that had information up, including screenshots, inside information, story plots ect.. it was crazy, I couldn’t even keep up. Not long after the announcement as well, the official site went up. It was weird, not knowing anything about the game and then all of a sudden, bam!, we know lots.

So far i’ve heard mixed reactions, which is to be expected. A lot of people love the idea that it is going to be a MMO and a lot are despised at the fact. It would be nice to have both a MMO and a single player version offline, but guess what, I doubt that’s going to happen.

Here’s some additional information so far on the game:

Shacknews.com also examines companion characters. Excerpt below:

‘”Companion characters–we want them to be more than pets,” said creative designer James Ohlen. “We want them to be virtual friends. We want you to interact with them and become friends with them.”

There will also be plenty of interaction between the player and the companions. “You’ll be able to form friendships, romance companion characters, or even to trade them,” added Ohlen.”

1up.com covers the possiblity of a future console version of TOR:

‘”We’re definitely looking at the opportunity to bring the MMO experience to console, without question,” Gibeau said when speaking to Eurogamer. (Frank Gibeau is president of the EA Games label) “We’ve got this product, and we’ve got Warhammer at play. So we’re trying to look at the primary research required to understand how would you deploy it, what the client size looks like, how big is the back-end, what the play experience looks like… Once we’ve got some of those questions answered, we’ll be able to decide which is the right play to go after.”

When pressed whether he was specifically talking about the potential of console versions for both WAR and TOR (those acronyms fit together nicely, huh?), Gibeau replied, “They’re both under consideration,” although he also added, “We’re not really in a place to commit or announce anything specific with regards to those.” But by the sound of it, it sure seems as if there’s a high probability we’ll be seeing a console version of at least one of these games eventually.”

Source: TheForce.net

Shortly after the announcement, GameSpot.com came out with a great article as well as some video coverage of the game.

According to BioWare cofounder Dr. Ray Muzyka, although the traditional massively multiplayer game focuses on such things as combat, exploration, and character progression, the new game will attempt to introduce a “fourth pillar–story.” Indeed, story will play a significant role in the game and will drive the motivations of all characters, including your own. In addition to choosing a profession from what LucasArts refers to as “a variety of…classic Star Wars roles,” your character will also be able to pursue an education in the mysterious ways of the Force, either as a Jedi padawan learning the Light Side, or as a Sith apprentice, learning the ways of the Dark Side. The game will also feature “companion” characters that will join you in your quest and either fight alongside you, or betray you, depending on their motives…and yours.

Because the game takes place in the universe of KOTOR, fans of that game can expect to see people, places, things, and story elements they may already be familiar with. The game takes place in the wake of what is considered in the Star Wars universe to be a controversial political decision–the Treaty of Coruscant, which called for an uneasy peace between the once-united Republic and the increasingly powerful Sith Empire, led by Emperor Naga Sadow. Unfortunately for the Republic, the treaty was more or less a surrender agreement that ceded control of many planets to the growing forces of the Dark Side, even as the many defeats that the Republic suffered at the hands of the Sith divided the hearts and minds of Republic citizens across the galaxy, even going so far as to foster mistrust of the Republic’s traditional guardians, the mystical Jedi Knights. The inscrutable Jedi, themselves, have withdrawn their central council from the planet of Coruscant to the traditional Jedi homeworld of Tython, where a new council grapples with the Republic’s loss of faith in the Order, as well as with the discovery of ancient ruins that may house dark secrets, and an incursion of settlers of the Twi’lek race (the race of humanoids with long tentacles extending from their heads, such as Bib Fortuna from Return of the Jedi and Mission Vao from the KOTOR game)

The press conference then showed off a gameplay trailer, which showed brief looks at the revealed worlds of Tython and Korriban, the latter of which resembles a more-developed version of what we saw in the original KOTOR. Like in that game, the world includes a desert valley leading to the tombs of fallen Sith Lords, but to help indicate that the new game takes place 300 years after the events in the original KOTOR games, the valley is far more developed and has more and larger mining machinery to excavate the relics from the Sith tombs. It also showed several combat sequences, including a duel between a Light side jedi and what appeared to be an alien bounty hunter with a wrist-mounted flamethrower

Check out the full article here.