PAX: SWTORCore Interview

The website Star Wars: The Old Republic Core has an interview up with Dallas Dickinson and Tim Temmerman.

Here's an excerpt:

Core: Placement of the story is very important to the fans. You've got your two major games beforehand with a lot of story, but not a whole lot of resolution. You've got Reven and the Exile both going off into Unknown Space...

Dallas: Yeah, we wanted to give ourselves enough distance from those so that it's not just those stories, that's part of the reason we're about 300 years after them. But as we've dropped hints to, and in some cases confirmed when we shouldn't have, you're going to find out a little bit about those characters, things that have happened to them, where they went, because its a follow up to Knights of the Old Republic, you can't leave people hanging. There are locations we've already revealed that are locations that you should remember from KOTOR and the same is going to be true for some of the story stuff- you're going to find out a little about what happened, but its not always going to be the most important part of the story.

Core: Lineage is very important in Star Wars Universe, you've got your Horn line, your Skywalker line- are we going to be seeing remnants of some of the characters, for instance descendants of Bastila or anything along those lines?

Tim: We're definitely using some of the characters and factions you've seen in previous games. I mean, it's kind of what drives KOTOR and makes up the universe. It wouldn't be complete if we didn't go back into that history and update things.

Dallas: Like you said, the whole universe is about lineage and these houses and how there are these far more powerful families that interweave and weave in and out, so you're definitely going to see that, you definitely going to see not just references to houses from the Old Republic area but actually there's some houses and lineages from the movie eras that you're going to see some references to already.

It's a nice interview. But one of the things that has some people take special notice to is how it seems to confirm the use of the trinity. I say "seems", because I don't actually think it does. Or, at least, it doesn't confirm that classes will be dedicated to one of the roles of the trinity. Instead it seems much more likely (and in line with what BioWare has said before) that you can 'spec' classes one way or the other. For example, I can see a Sith Warrior work as a melee damage dealer class (by focusing more on the offensive lightsaber powers) or as a tank (by focusing more on defensive Force powers).

My only, perhaps futile, hope is that as a player you don't have to lock yourself into a role; I'd like to be able to be a damage dealer one time and a tank or healer another with the same character depending on how my mood strikes me. I dislike having to pick a role and then being locked into it for the rest of your gaming career (barring creating another character, which is not really a valid option as I tend to have enough trouble keeping up with just one character).

The interview also has some further notes on alignment and the Sith Warrior, some of which is encouraging while still leaving a lot of question marks (do you have to have Force Choke? Is the gameplay still "rage"-focused? Can you actually make choices that are undoubtedly good and not just tactically advantageous? Etc), but I promised myself that after my rant I'd lay off of talking about my feelings regarding the Sith Warrior for a bit.

Either way, it's a good read even if they do still tend to be a bit vague now and then and there's a good helping of "no comment" as well.


[link] to the interview with Dallas Dickinson and Tim Temmerman.