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Star Wars: The Old Republic quests "link back up" with KOTOR
Posted: 22.08.2011 11:42 by Simon Priest Comments: 2
BioWare's Greg Zeschuk has talked a little about the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, and he promises that "real avid fans" will spot the links.

Those links are to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, BioWare's first Star Wars game. Fans of the game "get grumpy" over SWTOR, but they'll 'be pleased'.


"It’s actually really nice. I’ve recently been playing through some of the Old Republic and around the third planet you visit or so is Taris, which was in the original and was destroyed," said the BioWare co-founder, speaking about connections between the two.

"It’s cool because you go back there and it’s a destroyed city and you look at it and the art and such is totally reminiscent of the original." The world of Taris is visited by the player and ends up being reduced to rubble by the Sith fleet. SWTOR will be full of references.

"There’s other stuff on the planet as well – there’s quests that kind of link back up and there’s elements that discuss Revan in the game and his role in the universe," he continued.

"It’s kind of cool, like, KOTOR fans – they get grumpy but we tell them over and over again, and they’ll believe it when they play it – it really is like KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 literally in this one game." It has taken BioWare "literally years" to shape the narrative for the MMO.

"We were working on this for a long time. What’s interesting is that it really does work. It was challenging to make it smooth – we went through multiple iterations – there were points when we weren’t sure if we were going to do the voice thing – we were saying well, we’ll see how it goes – but at a point we committed to it and pushed it," explained Zeschuk.

"Beyond doing it solo there’s also the multiplayer conversations where collectively you’ll be talking to someone. It took a long time." When in a group each player selects their own choice for dialogue and one is randomly selected to be used as the response.

It wasn't always the plan to make a Star Wars MMO. "We were actually working on the technology for a while before that – we knew what we were doing before that."

"We didn’t say ‘Hey, let’s make a Star Wars MMO’ – we actually just said we were going to look at making an MMO and started looking at how to make that happen – it was after we started when we actually partnered with Lucas and started working on it as Star Wars."

"Trust us. Trust us with your hopes and dreams!" joked Greg Zeschuk.

Star Wars: The Old Republic releases on PC at an undisclosed date. A beta is expected to begin this Fall to test the server capabilities and the game itself before officially launching. Are you excited about this BioWare made Star Wars MMO?

Source: VG247

Comments

By nocutius (SI Elite) on Aug 22, 2011
nocutius
Well i'd still prefer an actual KOTOR3 :).

There was not one single second of grind in KOTOR, i highly doubt they can make an mmo of such intensity.

But these references are kinda nice i guess, they will help the old fans get immersed into the game easier.
By unsilviu (SI Core) on Aug 22, 2011
unsilviu
Say, I just got the best idea ever-importing our KotOR 1 saves into TOR and getting items/special quests XD For instance, if you remember, there was this lower Taris quest where you could help the inhabitants get to some "promised land".