Star Wars: The Old Republic documentary shows voice work, gameplay

by Griffin McElroy { Jul 18th 2009 at 2:30PM }

You may be sick of hearing about the extensive work BioWare is putting into supplying the voices for the countless characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Even if that's the case, you should still watch the video posted after the jump -- in addition to boasting about the game's beefy vocals, it shows the brief gameplay demo we got to see at E3. Watch as a Sith and a Bounty Hunter wreck shop up on an Imperial vessel, and just try not to get all antsy for this game. If you can pull that off, we're revoking your nerd card.

Tags: bioware, ea, lucasarts, mmo, mmorpg, pc, star-wars, star-wars-the-old-republic

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tank @ Jul 18th 2009 2:37PM

This is going to be a day one buy for me... Its Star Wars, and Bioware together again.

The fact that its an MMO doesn't bother me at all...I had fun during my time with WoW and so far this seems like a nice step forward.

The only question remaining is if I'm going to continue to play beyond the requisite first month.

tmacairjordan87 (aka Mr. Negativity) @ Jul 18th 2009 2:45PM

This might be the first MMO to pull me in other than WoW, if only because it's Bioware. Hoping the combat is a lot less like Kotor and more like WoW though (from the looks of the video, it appears to be like WoW but it's hard to tell).

One thing I hope they do is something that Blizzard has tried a little with The Lich King expansion, where they can put you in an area where only people who have either done a particular quest line or are on the same part as you can be seen. It helps cut down the traffic problem in certain areas, thus also cutting down the number of assholes. I'm also hoping it's very single player friendly, as I don't usually like questing with other people, just instances/raids.

ifalldownstairs @ Jul 19th 2009 12:09AM

Really? Why would you want the combat to be like WoW? One of the worst things about most MMOs is their insistence on following those that came before and being afraid to experiment. World of Warcraft's combat is completely mindless much of the time, especially during questing. I'd much rather Bioware kept some of KOTOR's combat systems than utilize the boring and overdone click and spam of games like WoW (yeah, I realize there is some strategy to PvP and endgame raids, i've partaken in such things, but WoW's combat system is a game of luck and numbers rather than skill.

tmacairjordan87 (aka Mr. Negativity) @ Jul 19th 2009 12:15AM

And Kotor's wasn't? All you did in Kotor was click a move and watch your guy spam attack. At least with classes in WoW like the rogue you can chain together attacks, and if you're good your opponent won't even touch you.

Bioware has poor combat in every single one of their games. Mass Effect was a good step forward, but even that's behind other 3rd person action games. So this will probably have poor combat too, but I'm hoping not.

ifalldownstairs @ Jul 19th 2009 3:51AM

that's all you do in WoW too, except you have cast times and a few things to keep track of (mana, rage, combo points depending on class). maybe i have an unreasonable dislike of WoW's combat system because the game as a whole bored me to tears, but i don't think its unreasonable to say the the genre as a whole needs a major makeover. If Age of Conan hadn't lost most of its goodwill with a buggy, unfinished launch, its combat system could have pushed MMOs in an interesting direction. As is, with WoW continuing to dominate the charts, the entire genre is mostly stagnant. Spamming, skill-less combat that requires only the least amount of strategy and an extensive knowledge inane things like crit multipliers and armor penetration needs to die and be replaced by something that requires at least a bit of skill.

Ihavepants @ Jul 19th 2009 5:52AM

@ifalldown Take a look at Darkfall

SantaDuJuan @ Jul 18th 2009 2:48PM

My question is end game and other playable races then humans.

Tony Montana @ Jul 18th 2009 3:04PM

I think people who are anti-MMO will be surprised by this game.

This game seems like it will be heavily instanced so in other words when you go do a story mission you'll be alone in your own little world but when you go back to cities you will see other players there.

It means you can live out your single player story quests just like you would in an offline game and you only encounter other players when you come out of the "instance" and go into the game world with others.

The benefit of course is that with an MMO since Bioware will be getting subscriptions they can afford to make the game much longer and they can do many frequent and big upgrades.

Each expansion for The Old Republic could have twice the story content of your average KOTOR game and the entire story in The Old Republic could be dozens of times bigger than any KOTOR game.

Since its all being paid for with subscriptions you dont get a one off fee for the game you get the one off fee plus 15 dollars every month(the average game developer only takes in 5 or so dollars per game so a million subs is like selling 3 million copies a month).

This is probably THE game on the horizon right now.

Amoveo @ Jul 18th 2009 5:52PM

I for one don't really like the idea of a heavily instanced MMO. Guild Wars was like that and it didn't really feel like an MMO. I like meeting new people when I'm out questing or harvesting, it makes me feel like I'm in an actual world. Sure there are assholes, but there are plenty of friendly helpful people as well.

If I wanted to play a game with a bunch of separate disjointed rooms I'd go play a first person shooter.

VGSFTW @ Jul 18th 2009 3:10PM

Old news? Darkfall scores a 2 out of a possible 10. Eurogamer reviewers hardly played the game based on the server logs.

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=185060

j.howlett @ Jul 18th 2009 4:30PM

i read it got a re review and scored 4/10

majorfalcon @ Jul 18th 2009 3:11PM

Dont much like the UI

The Dark Wayne @ Jul 18th 2009 3:20PM

OH MY GOD! THE DROID IS VOICED BY 343!! That is so epic! I'm also almost positive the player character in this is wolverine from hulk vs

DeluvianKing @ Jul 18th 2009 7:37PM

Yea, that's Steve Blum. He's in pretty much everything these days. >P

Great video, this game is going to blow the our minds.

squeehunter @ Jul 18th 2009 3:24PM

I'm not so much a fan of the art style. Does it look a little cartoony or have I just not seen enough of it. Other than that, I think all of the voice acting is really going to sell this game to me. It's the lack of a real story in MMO's that always turned me off.

Nick8708 @ Jul 20th 2009 12:23AM

I believe the graphics have been "stylized" intentionally to be a little more on the cartoony side than photorealistic. If I remember correctly Bioware said this was done to create a certain feel, but more than likely the decision was mostly driven by a need to lower the hardware requirements so as to be playable by a larger audience. I'm all for that if it means the game has a greater chance of being successful in the long run, even though I'd personally prefer it to look less cartoony and more realistic.

Wolfgun @ Jul 18th 2009 3:25PM

I hope that there will be different voices to choose from for your character. The voice that they had being used for the bounty hunter character in the video was....grating to say the least.

Blank-Mage @ Jul 18th 2009 3:34PM

Steve Blum is like the Waldo of the voice acting world. I'm looking forward to finding him.

The Dark Wayne @ Jul 18th 2009 3:47PM

yeah im pretty sure he was the guy who's "just here to kill people" there's tons of people like that, like Jennifer Hale, Robin Atkin Downes, Fred Tatasciore, and a whole lot more. I love voice actors

Mazrael @ Jul 18th 2009 3:46PM

...Copy paste Mass effect & KotOR much...

The Dark Wayne @ Jul 18th 2009 3:48PM

KOTOR yes, because that's the god damn point, Mass Effect, aside from the dialogue wheel not really

Mazrael @ Jul 18th 2009 4:31PM

a few of those chat animations looked familier, before I saw the wheel.. didn't look like they'd bothered to update the KotOR animations.. Might keep an eye on this to see if I can just play it on y own, just like WoW

BlaqueBeird @ Jul 19th 2009 4:43PM

You play WoW alone? Talk about wasting money.

Mazrael @ Jul 20th 2009 7:19AM

I'm not subscribing at the moment... I have a pet spider, very occassionly someone will be in the same cave, I'll stick with them, but as soon as they get what they need, that's it

Bubbameister33 @ Jul 18th 2009 3:49PM

When does this come out?

Mats @ Jul 18th 2009 6:57PM

Fisq.year 2010.

Rhamsey @ Jul 18th 2009 7:09PM

And this is why Bioware is so fucking amazing.

ganrob @ Jul 18th 2009 8:00PM

the gameplay has to be airtight to get people hooked. If it feels stiff like Kotor (which were really great games), it won't translate into a good MMO experience.

Also, the stats have to be displayed like in WOW, with an extensive website for world information and stat viewing. If they have a crappy inventory like in Kotor it will take a big chunk of the MMO appeal, but if they nail those parts it should be really great.

Jak @ Jul 18th 2009 8:41PM

So are they going to record all these hundreds of thousands of lines of voice in multiple languages, or is this game going to be strictly english-speaking?

Nick8708 @ Jul 20th 2009 12:25AM

That is a very good question. I'm curious about that myself now.

hhserv @ Jul 18th 2009 9:06PM

God no...so close to an MMO I'd want to play...
the bloody combat.
I got absurdly bored of the cooldown rotation mashing of CoH (WoW was a little better, but I'm still not a fan), and I was really hoping this would be a more fast past game, play a little bit more like a 3rd person shooter or a less button-mashy brawler.
WoW had the addictiveness going for it, so I still played after a few years, but I do not enjoy generic cooldown based combat, and I HATE targeting systems such as the one on display here. This pisses me off beyond belief.

Note @ Jul 18th 2009 9:51PM

Seconded! I just left a comment to much the same effect on Massively.

Not that they'll change it now, I was just a little disappointed that they stuck to the tried and true MMO combat mould with this one.

nyknicker13 @ Jul 19th 2009 10:59AM

I'm just anxious to get my hand on The Old Republic and all this other talk is just making my anticipation that much more intolerable.

BTW... The video was nice too.

Kael @ Jul 19th 2009 12:53PM

Looks great! Well, maybe "look" is the wrong word. I'm sure the game will play and sound amazing, and I'm definitely going to be playing from the start and probably love it, but man, I don't like the look of it at all. At all. The Clone Wars cartoons look much better, and I still think those look bad.

I get that MMOs have to run on ancient laptops in order to let their user-base be as large as it can be, and that heavily-stylized visuals mostly manage to preserve their intended look when suffering from small texture sizes and low polygon-counts, but that doesn't mean they have to go so completely overboard with it, or choose such a repulsive cartoon style to go overboard with. Ah, but like with Diablo 3, it's too late for that to change, and no amount of internet petitions will amount to anything; I'm just expressing my disappointment that the game's look is really turning me off, that's all.