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TOR's conversation system rebuilt to be like Mass Effect's

by Jef Reahard on Jun 28th 2010 11:00AM

Sci-Fi, New Titles, News Items, Star Wars: The Old Republic

BioWare lead designer and storywriter Daniel Erickson drops a few interesting nuggets about Star Wars: The Old Republic's well-publicized voice system. In an interview with CVG, he gives credit to Mass Effect, BioWare's celebrated single-player RPG, for inspiring a complete change in The Old Republic's voiceover content.

"Originally the game was built far more like Dragon Age as far as [the] Conversation System went," he said. "Our player characters were not going to be voiced because it's a massively insane expenditure and hugely complicated to do. You have to cast 16 of the best actors ever and then hold them for eternity," Erickson says.

He goes on to illustrate how the original Mass Effect caused the TOR team to adjust their thinking, as it debuted very early in the latter's development cycle. You can read the full article at CVG.

Source

Tags: bioware, conversation-system, daniel-erickson, Dragon-Age, Dragon-Age-Origins, EA, mass-effect, star-wars-the-old-republic, swtor, the-old-republic

Reader Comments (38)

This game is bringing a whole new meaning to the idea of "the clone wars".

This is a post about nothing other than the fully voiced part of TOR, something no other MMO has, and you're talking about it being a clone. Go troll somewhere else.

Yes this Star Wars game is shaping up to be the ultimate WoW clone (with VO) but is that necessarily a bad thing?

Yes Renko it is a bad thing if it proves to be true. People are sick-to-death of endless (perceived as) WoW-clones. People are hopeful that this will be "new", "improved", "better". I personally seriously doubt there's going to be a "game changer" event here. I think the only likely source for real evolution will be the smaller indie development companies, but who knows. Maybe the money-men will be kept in their place for a change by someone, maybe something wonderful and revolutionary will come out of a big company....

You voted me down for pointing out the obvious in jest? They even came forward and all but said they were making a WoW clone at E3. Lighten up and take Bioware's word for it.

Except for you know.. the whole point of this article. Derpdy derp derp.

WoW does a lot of things well. It makes perfect sense to take the things WoW does really well and then build on that, add new things. It would be foolish to completely reinvent the mmo wheel so to speak.

I feel like i've heard this all before...

WAR was all about this fascinating RvR game play that never panned out because it just wasn't fun for most of us, city sieges, PQ's and all this other "new stuff"...

I am becoming very concerned that SWTOR is think that this story driven full VO content is what will keep players playing. Tell me about the core, not the trimmings. If the game plays well and is fun, then awesome, this story based game play will only improve matters.

However, if the core is boring (and the more i see, the more my excitement wanes) no amount of VO and story will save this game.

So pleeeeeease, don't forget to make the game fun...

The story, choices and voice acting ARE the core, not the trimmings.

From the very beginning, Bioware has said that they're taking MMOs and adding a great cinematic, choice-drive story experience like their single-player games.

They never promised any innovations to MMO combat, crafting, exploration or anything...but somehow a lot of people to be expecting that.

SW:TOR's thing is story. If you consider that 'trimmings', this might not be the game for you.

@Toothball - You never played a bioware game before?

@ bdew

Of course I have. I'm not saying that the VO isn't a good thing. However, If i had to choose between a game being a lot of fun to play and a game talking to me, i'd take the fun game.

I'm not saying that a game can't be both and I really hope that this game accomplishes both, but I am not going to blindly assume that every other aspect of this game is perfect and a ton of fun.

@jealouspirate, So it is basically an regular RPG with voice acting and Guild Wars style co-op that you have to pay the same price you would for a real MMO.

Don't forget the story for your character they will keep coming out with over time AKA DLC.

imo they are talking about the core the thing that always stops me playing is the fact that im doing the 300th go and collect 20 of these things with no real reason as to why ive moved from area 1 to area 2 other than the fact that the bad guys suddenly got slightly stronger

if WoW had had a narrative maybe i would have gotten further than i did each time i tried to

its one of the reasons ive clocked up so many hours on GW

the way it plays the core in your opinion doesnt concern me because most likely it will be similiar to other MMO's

as long as it doesnt feel slow and boring like WAR's ill be happy

How does including character VO = remaking mass effect? rofl

This isn't really news, we've already seen it in action plenty of times. They probably should have kept with the DA system because what happens if the actors dont want to keep doing it?

Read the title of the post again. It doesn't say "TOR rebuilt to be like Mass Effect". I think you missed a few words. For instance: "Conversation System".

Star's point still stands.

Adding a few lines of the Charactacter Voice that you get to choose at the character creation screen isn't changing the game at the grand scale of it all, it's just adding a bit more depth to making it look like a conversation instead of the NPC talking to a wall.

and Massively really need to change their system so that a single person can only vote a comment up or down once!

I'm not even sure how they would even do such a thing without heavily regulating our ability to comment.

On the upside, you might to take into account that because your opinion was voted unpopular doesn't always mean it was incorrect. Just saying...

@ Utakata Actually I wasn't referring to my own comments and I posted before any of mine had been affected by votes.

20 minutes after this article was published two comments had been grayed out and one had 3 stars!

Having to login before being able to vote up or down would end the use of InPrivate Browsing to game the voting system.

Preston/Aenorn (Same person switching names) seems to be the one messing up the ratings.

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TOR's conversation system rebuilt to be like Mass Effect's

Reader Comments (38)

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:03AM Ayenn said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:17AM Super Nerd said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:29AM Renko said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:44AM Saker said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:56AM Ayenn said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 1:31PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:38PM Jediblues said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:20AM toothball said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:31AM jealouspirate said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:51AM Unverfied B said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 12:09PM toothball said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 1:08PM Monkey D Luffy said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 9:48PM alinos said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:26AM Valentina said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:36AM Super Nerd said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:47AM Ivasen said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 11:33AM Renko said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 2:41PM Its Utakata stupid said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 4:12PM Renko said

Posted: Jun 28th 2010 5:14PM Ivasen said

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