The Empire Changes Strategy [Star Wars: The Old Republic]

Here's the official synopsis from the site, and yes if you were wondering that video is narrated by Lance "Bishop" Henriksen.

The Keeper of the Jedi Archives has entered a new holorecord. Continuing his investigation, Master Gnost-Dural delves deeper into the history of the galaxy after discovering that the blockade that Hylo Visz helped end was a result of the actions of the new Mandalore.

BTC 8 – During a Republic resurgence in the Great War, a bold young warrior rose to fame in the Gladiatorial arenas on Geonosis. Adopting the ancient and infamous title of Mandalore, this young leader amassed an army of Mandalorian mercenaries and bounty hunters. The new Mandalore led his forces to form a blockade and challenge the Jedi Order, effectively turning the tide of the war back in the Sith Empire's favor.

In other, very exciting news, TV Squad is hearing rumors are being leaked the George Lucas may stop by San Diego Comic Con to talk about the live action Star Wars television series supposedly gearing up to shoot in Australia as we speak. Or at the very least, Lucas may be piped in via videoconference. Let's hope he doesn't show up empty handed.

Describing smugglers as "slick, sneaky and street-smart," it's almost as if they're daring you not to want to play this particular class, even before you get to the outfits inspired by Lando Calrissian. Who would want to be a Jedi when you can be one of these guys, instead?

Smuggler [Star Wars: The Old Republic]

The story picks up a bit afterStar Wars: Knights Of The Republic ended (but about 3,000 years before the movies' timelines). The story unfolds during the war between the Galactic Republic (Jedis and friends) and the Sith Empire. And from the looks of things, the Siths are winning. While there isn't much out there yet, but this footage is lovely, especially for an MMO. But it sounds like it will be a long while until the game is released.

Would-be players were discussing in the MMO's forums how the game might handle future gay and lesbian relationships - and Bioware freaked out, shutting down those discussion threads and banning the words "gay," "lesbian" and "homosexual." Says community manager Sean Dahlberg:

As I have stated before, these are terms that do not exist in Star Wars.

Thread closed.

Have these people learned nothing from the World Of Warcraft fiasco a few years ago? [Kotaku]

Star Wars: The Old Republic may - or may not - be released next year; both BioWare and Lucasarts have been very open with the fact that the game won't be released until they're satisfied with it.

Video Documentary [The Old Republic]

Somehow I was expecting something a bit more obviously evil, I have to admit.

[Star Wars: The Old Republic]

Talking at last week's press junket to launch The Old Republic, BioWare's Dobson admitted that Lucasarts had been surprisingly hands-off in terms of the visual design of the groundbreaking MMO, giving only one specific design mandate: "Make sure that it's Star Wars-y." But what does that really mean? "Star Wars has a look and feel unlike anything else in science fiction," Dobson said, adding that "we've got a great team of guys who understand the Star Wars feel," but if pressed to come up with a specific definition of the Star Wars Style, he's still stumped. It's true; while everyone knows what looks "right" when it comes to Star Wars, it's hard to sum it all up into one easy explanation. Not that that stopped him from coming up with some guidelines to keep everyone on the right track:
Keep It Dirty
"Star Wars to [the design team's generation] is [Episodes] 4, 5 and 6," he explains, and it's the particular aesthetic of those movies is what the core Star Wars look boils down to for him. "[It's] the dirty sci-fi, it's not a polished and clean sci-fi. It's grittier [and] lived in."

Mix And Match
One of Dobson's favorite aspects of the movies is the incongruity created by (the then-necessity) of limited set-dressing meaning that pre-existing locations like the Skywalker Moisture Farm combined genuine old architecture with prop technology, something that he called "the practicality of ancientness mixed with technology." "We want to take things that exist and put [our] own spin on it," he added.

Start Small
The creation of new planets for the game started with the basics. "I'd tell [the designers], come up with two colors. What two colors is this planet based around?" Dobson said, admitting that this was as much the fine artist in him as the designer speaking. But keeping the palette simple helped differentiate all the different worlds in the game, and also helped the game be playable on older machines: "I want it to look right, and I want it to run on everyone's machine... It's a driving factor on everything we do that it's going to run on everyone's machine. When you only run on those high-end machines, I think you're shorting people."
Don't Be Afraid To Change Things
The larger Star Wars universe may be full of somewhat... unexpected concepts, but that doesn't mean that they're not savable. "Watching the Star Wars brand evolve... gave us a lot of confidence to try new stuff and think you know how that was over the top in the cartoon and worked? Let's do that... There's some wacky stuff in the [Expanded Universe]... The more outlandish stuff it is, the core of the canon, the movies, is cool. The stuff that's on the fringes, you can really make changes on it. It's boiling things down to its essence, that's your framework."

Ultimately, however, Dobson's aim is simple:

I want to design something that's bulletproof to people just trying to look bad [through customizing their character]. It's like you're trying to ruin someone else's experience. We're trying to make something where you'll be bulletproof cool.

[Star Wars: The Old Republic]

It's not just size that's important, of course, but how awesome your lightsaber will be in the game is just one way that Old Republic players will be boast about their experience and length of time they've been playing. As lead designer Jeff Dobson explains,

It's very important for us to show the [mindset of] 'I've been playing this game for 70 hours, so I should look cooler than that guy. We don't want you to look like junk when you start, but we want you to look awesome after you've been playing for awhile.

And part of that...? The size of your lightsaber. Promising that sabers will be customizable throughout the game, Dobson said that even though lightsabers (and all weapons in the game, in fact) will start out oversized for visual impact, they'll still be able to grow as you get more experience. "How can we show that my lightsaber is cooler than yours because I've been playing for three months?" he asked, before promising that the lightsaber you start the game with will definitely not be the one you'll have at the end. Which, when you take the phallic metaphor to its logical conclusion suddenly gets a little bit disturbing.

[Star Wars: The Old Republic]

The phrase heard most often at the press launch for The Old Republic was "We can't tell you that yet." Questions about the gameplay, scale, price, delivery system and release date of the game were all answered with those frustrating words, but at least BioWare's Gordon Walton acknowledged how frustrating he knew it was:

A lot of the things we're not talking about is not because we're teases or because we don't know yet, it's because it's not settled... At this point of time, [anything we tell you about the release date] would be a lie. It's all about the quality, and until we get close, we don't know yet. We don't want to overhype [the game]. No games are overhyped like MMOs are overhyped, and a Star Wars MMO may be hyped the most of all.

So what do we know about the game? Well, it'll be a cross-platform MMO. taking place 3,600 years before the movies — and 300 years after the Knights of the Old Republic games — where players will decide upfront on what "faction" their character is. (The only two were were told of were Jedi or Sith, but others were promised. "Not everyone's fantasy is to be a Jedi," said lead writer Daniel Erickson). You'll also decide on your character's class and race, as well as whether you're good or evil.

From there, the players will get to explore new worlds, complete tasks and — unusually for an MMO — experience a story. As BioWare's Co-CEO Ray Muzyka explained, the addition of a story to the MMO format is a groundbreaking — and, in his eyes, necessary — move, adding "emotionally compelling storytelling" to create something unique. (Lead writer Erickson agreed, saying that story was a central concept of "every RPG until we went to MMO-space, and then something fell off the truck").

While staying unsurprisingly cagey about the amount of work that's already gone into the game, BioWare's lead designer on the project, James Ohlen, admitted that the game is the equivalent to not just one sequel to Knights of The Old Republic 1 and 2, but several; "[The Old Republic] is the equivalent of every other BioWare game ever released, combined," he explained.

The game will offer players the chance to travel between worlds and interact with AI-driven companion characters as well as other players. ("What would Han be without Chewbacca?" said Muzyka when asked about the role of companions in the game. "What would Luke be without R2?" But don't worry; you can kill them if they annoy you). You can also choose between following the light or dark sides and, maybe most importantly, have awesome lightsaber battles.

Ohlen said that BioWare and Lucasarts' aim with the game was to "allow players to carve out their own epic stories - and that's important, because Star Wars is all about epic stories." Muzyka perhaps put it more succinctly:

We're going to allow you to experience the great moments of Star Wars... What are the cool things that you've seen in the movies? If you can do it in the movies, we're trying to do that in the game.