Star Wars: The Old Republic Exhaustive Q&A

IGN is offering up a well-described “exhaustive” Star Wars: The Old Republic Q&A with BioWare Austin’s Dallas Dickinson and LucasArts’ Jake Neri.

IGN: (laughs) Moving on, can you guys explain the combat system at all; does it resemble a traditional MMO or more of a turn-based, KOTOR-style game, or is it a mixture of everything like Mass Effect? What’s the system looking like?

Jake Neri: I think right off the bat that people have picked up on is that we’re going for high-action, fast-paced, Star Wars cinematic-style combat. So while the mechanics of it might be rooted in what you expect from an MMO, what we’re seeing right now is a level of visceral action that doesn’t exist in any MMO yet. That’s coming across in the stuff that we’re showing. Dallas, what do you think?

Dallas Dickinson: Yeah, I think that’s a fair way of describing it. That underneath, under the hood, there’s a whole lot of MMO stuff going on, but the feel to the player–and this is in the feedback that we’ve received from everybody who’s touched the game–is that it feels a lot more action based. It feels a lot more cinematic. Again, it’s that Star Wars heroic feel that we’re really striving for right now.

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IGN: Someone specifically wanted to know what happened to Revan in the Unknown Regions since The Old Republic is set 300 years after KOTOR? Will it explain what happens? Or will it only give hints; did he die? Get trapped? Also, that’s a bigger question: How does this fit in the universe of KOTOR?

Dallas Dickinson: To answer the first question, not to be snarky, but you have to play the game to find out. But we’ve told people the time setting; we’re 300 years after the events of the original Knights of the Old Republic. So there will be events, there will be locations, [and] there will be all sorts of elements that you will recognize had you played Knights of the Old Republic beforehand. You will get to find out some of what happens through playing the game.

Jake Neri: Part of the unique opportunity though is that it is wide open, and we’re taking full advantage of that and creating a really compelling new piece of the canon.

Dallas Dickinson: Yeah, and it’s something that the players right now–and I’m sure that these players have done so–but anybody who sees this question and wants to know the answer, we have a web comic right now that’s telling a lot of the linking details. And there’s already been some references. We have a character, Satele, that’s a descendent of one of the main characters in the Knights of the Old republic. You should read the web comic, you should listen to the timeline pieces, you should check all that stuff out on the web site because it’s going to provide a lot of the context and a lot of the linking stories that lets those who were real big fans of Knights of the Old Republic understand where we’re coming from.

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IGN: How do keep Jedi knights versus other classes from getting out of balance? When people think about Jedi knights, they’re complete bad-asses.

Jake Neri: We don’t have any specifics on any of the Jedi classes, so it’s hard to answer that. I guess I have heard that people are confused about how a Force wielding class wouldn’t just overwhelm a bounty hunter. I think at some point, as the folks making this game, there’s a tremendous amount of interest in classes like the bounty hunter and the trooper, so those classes will absolutely be competitive with any Force wielding class. I think that it will feel very natural and will make a lot of sense. It’s interesting that people are speculating about that, but I don’t think we would ever try to make just one overpowered class that just has its way with anybody else just because they are Force wielding.

Dallas Dickinson: I think the other differentiator there with the combat mechanics is that we’re going to make a balanced game. It does come back to story. I have a feeling that when people start the game (and this is the way that I and a lot of people play these games) they’re going to sample. They’re going to check a few out. They might come in with an impression of what class they’re going to end up playing but I think when you play the stories, even the first few quests on each storyline, you’re going to get a much deeper impression of this class.

I know that I had a thought about what my favorite class was going to be and then I played the smuggler and thought, “Wow. I think I want to play the smuggler.” Then I played the bounty hunter with the full VO and thought, “Oh boy, this bounty hunter is awesome.” And then I played the trooper. The trooper is fantastic. It has a very different feel. You’re a very different guy. You’re a military operative and you see things the way a military operative would. There are iconic roles throughout film history that you can apply to these characters, and not just the Star Wars film history. When you play a class like the smuggler, you’re going to feel all of those things and it’s compelling and really exciting and you want to see how the story turns out.