Choreographed Combat

Through Kotaku I've been made aware of a post at VideoGaming247 where BioWare makes some brief statements about the combat in The Old Republic, stating that it'll be "choreographed":

BioWare chief Greg Zeschuk reckons traditional MMO combat - with those involved “swinging through each other” - wasn’t going to work for the newly announced Star Wars: The Old Republic, with the game needing a new, “choreographed” take on online fighting.

“Without a doubt,” he told VG247 when asked if the game’s combat had been built from the ground up. “If you recall some very specific things from the gameplay video, it was choreographed.

“One big difference, especially against the MMO space, is that typically everyone swings through each other. That’s the way it’s been done. It doesn’t look great for Star Wars.

“Star Wars is choreographed, it’s elegant; it’s big, powerful moves and lightning bolts flashing, but in a way that makes sense visually and aesthetically. One of the goals we have it to create this choreographed type of combat that looks as though it could be taking place in a Star Wars movie.”

The gameplay video showed both Jedi and Sith involved in light saber combat, and there was certainly none of the repeated fighting animations we’ve come to expect from MMOs: swords hit each other, opponent’s actions were dependent on other parties in the fight, and so on.

No date for the game as yet.

I'm not sure what to think of that. Choreographed sounds awfully... non-involved. And I don't want combat where I press a button and then watch the characters go through some choreographed combat sequence. I want to do the combat myself, make it feel like I am swinging that lightsaber or firing that blaster.

But perhaps he just means that it'll look like it's choreographed as the characters react properly to what the other characters are doing (under player control). We'll just have to wait and see.