SWTOR's lead writer describes BioWare's ambitious storytelling initiative

by Samuel Axon on Oct 31st 2008 7:00PM

Sci-Fi, Game Mechanics, Interviews, MMO Industry, New Titles, Star Wars: The Old Republic

The biggest selling point of Star Wars: The Old Republic seems to be its focus on storytelling. Interactive stories have always been BioWare's particular claim to fame, so we're not surprised at the focus, but we will admit to being a little surprised at just how hardcore they are about it. In an interview with Gamasutra, BioWare Austin lead writer Daniel Erickson described the company's process for hiring and managing the writing staff, which includes more than a dozen people who went through a three-month training program, and who have now been working on the game for several years.

What's interesting to us about the interview (most of it focuses on professional questions, not on gameplay -- check out the info from our own encounter with Erickson for more on that) is that unlike with other MMOs, the development process began with writing. The stories created by the writers are the foundation of the game design and experience to come -- at least according to Erickson.

There's also a bit in there about the challenges of innovation in the MMO industry, and the need to make individual game features -- such as combat or story -- as solid as they are in single-player titles.

Source

Tags: bioware, bioware-austin, daniel-erickson, development, ea, interview, star-wars, star-wars-the-old-republic, storytelling, swtor, the-old-republic, tor, writer, writing

Reader Comments (1)

I'm wondering if Bioware might actually do SW:TOR in a Guild Wars style (rather than a SW:G or WoW style). That is, with essentially the whole world being instanced.

That instanced style of play allows for much more story telling than a shared world approach (particularly if you don't let players go back to instances that they've already done) because you can actually have things dramatically change because of player actions (which is almost impossible with a true shared world approach).

For example, see the upcoming Death Knight starting quests in WotLK (phasing, instancing, whatever). People in the WotLK beta said that they really liked the story in the Death Knight starting zone, but that was because Blizz dialed back the "shared" and dialed up the "instanced".

Now, there is the point that the more you instance your world, the less it is actually an MMO. Arguably Guild Wars isn't an MMO, it's a 2,4,8 player game with a graphical player matching lobby. But people still call it an MMO. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see something similar from Bioware because it would play to their strengths.