Star Wars: The Old Republic Interview

MTV Multiplayer has interviewed BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk on Star Wars: The Old Republic and, as expected, they’re bringing us the interview in fragments. Combat is comparable to WoW, Age of Conan, Force Unleashed:

MTV Multiplayer: Would you consider it action-oriented? More hands-on?

Zeschuk: That’s a tough one. I mean, I think the main goal, the key thing we’re trying to solve, is that.does it look, from the user’s perspective, that it could be cut from the movie? That’s the very first thing, and then how we got there.to certain degrees, it’s yet to be determined. We have a system that works and ‘˜hey, it looks like the movie’ but what do you to get there is the key next question. I don’t think we have a good answer for that yet. The way we tend to develop is we hit one goal and then we go, ‘˜okay, let’s start iterating.’

The Old Republic will bring consequences back:

(As an attempt to appeal to a broader and broader audience, consequence has left gaming,) said BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk to me after unveiling his MMO this week. (Everything is very low impact and there’s no real negative result that can occur. We’re going to start bringing that back but in a rational way, a way that doesn’t punish the player but puts them on the spot.)

The issue of inconsequential decision-making isn’t just something limited to offline experiences, however, argued Zeschuk. Online games are guilty of it, too.

And a one-liner from lead writer Daniel Erickson:

([After being hired] there [are] over three months after the multiple tests [you take] that you spend before you ever get to touch the game, just training to be a BioWare writer. And if you’re writing a class, which is the most sort of sacred thing to be doing, you get stuff written all over your stuff constantly that says.you pitch a plot to me, and you’re writing [a] Sith [quest] and I write on the board ‘˜And then Darth Vader.helps a farmer.to save his tractor.’ And then I point at it and then we mock you and then that doesn’t go in our game.)