Complement your Star Wars: The Old Republic character with companions

What would Han be without Chewie, Luke without R2-D2, Robin Hood without Little John, or Hall without Oats? Pretty darn boring if you ask Bioware. This is the key reason for adding companion characters to Star Wars: The Old Republic. A lot of MMOs like to build the adventure around one lone character conquering the big bad. In a world with a lot of people who are all the best, why would anyone need anyone else? Bioware's Creative Director and Lead Designer, James Ohlen, tells IGN in an interview today, "Companion characters have a significant impact on the player's experience. They are integral to the player's storyline."

So other characters can play a significant role in storyline progression and plot. What about combat? Sure, a lot of games have characters you can talk to and interact with, but they aren't important to battling the enemy. "Each companion has a specific role, whether it be additional DPS, tanking, healing or crowd control. Companions also have special abilities that can be activated to significantly change what's going on during a battle," Ohlen says further in the article.

Read more of the article on IGN. Then let us know what role you think companions are going to play, and how you would like to see them used in SWTOR.

[Update] the official site has been updated to include companions. In KOTOR tradition they have a blue twi'lek: Vette.

Reader Comments (25)

The big key with something like that is going to be exactly how smart (or dumb) the AI on those companions is going to be, at least in terms of combat. It'd be a shame to see all that work put into them and have the companions end up being about as sharp as a sack of wet mice (always loved that line from old Looney Tunes cartoons lol).

Personally speaking I'm glad to hear that you don't HAVE to use them if you don't want to. I've never liked the idea of having to babysit or manage an NPC while in combat, I'd rather fight the fight. The closest I've come to using NPCs in combat has been the limited use summon devices in Champions Online, as they tend to be more of a "fire and forget" kind of thing, and I don't even use those very often.

As far as adding to the story, again it's probably a good thing that companions aren't going to be forced. If they were, I just have this nasty little feeling that I'd be searching for a "Shoot them in the face" option the instant the companion started annoying me with comments about my in-game decisions. Oh, the potential digital carnage that would ensue.....lol

If it can be done well and adds to the experience for those who want to use it, more power to them and the players who would enjoy it. But for me it's more or less wasted effort on their part because of my own lack of interest in that kind of gameplay.

Tali companion preorder bonus.

Calling it now.

I'm really not getting the love for this feature. Why should we remove even more player to player interaction from MMOs? Sure, it might be more convenient but it totally ruins the concept of a game about players teaming up to go on quests. I guess this game is tailored to the Guild Wars/STO semi-MMO crowd.

From everything I hear, this game is sounding like KOTOR 3: Now with better multiplayer mode. I wish they would just be honest and market it that way.

That's kind of my feeling. I'm excited to play the game, but I'm increasingly worried that this is just a single player game with some multiplayer tacked on as an afterthought.

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Complement your Star Wars: The Old Republic character with companions

Reader Comments (25)

Posted: May 27th 2010 10:47PM willflynne said

Posted: May 28th 2010 6:02AM Yue said

Posted: May 28th 2010 9:33AM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 30th 2010 5:59PM (Unverified) said

Posted: May 31st 2010 11:55PM lea said

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