SWTOR Studio Insider dives into opening cinematics

About once every four weeks, BioWare gives us a backstage look at what it takes to put together the monumental MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. These articles are simply called Studio Insider. This week, Senior Video Editor Brian Arndt tells us all about putting together the unique cinematics every player will see the first time he or she logs into SWTOR.

Typically, the job of video editor ends for MMOs when the trailers are produced or all the PR work is done. In TOR, it's a little bit different. This editing team actually worked on the introduction to each class in the game. Arndt explains on the official site, "Developing the text crawls and intro scenes for each of the classes was a blast for us. We so often create videos and trailers to show off all the awesome work our colleagues have developed in the game, so it was very cool for us to use those same skills to contribute something to the in-game experience as well."

After the cut we have the first part of the opening crawl to the Sith Warrior class as well as a mini-progression video of the Smuggler class intro. After you view those, visit the official Studio Insider for Arndt's complete article as well as fan questions answered by Senior Audio Artist Scott Morton.

Reader Comments (10)

Yummy! All hail the great pillar of story telling in MMO's i have long awaited your return. I am greatly encouraged to see a classic Star Wars intro will be available for the beginning of each classes journey.

@Laurs

Yeah but the more attention it draws, the more worth their while it is to get the lawyers to stomp on it.

Or at least chase down the leakers and boot them from the beta.

Especially I see when people are posting major spoilers on the official forum.

It just wouldn't be Star Wars without the scroll! They already confirmed these intros, but it's nice to see examples.

I defy anyone not to get Goosebumps when they first see their Characters scroll I haven't had a game make me feel this way since ever.

The Star Wars IP is fantastic, and the story telling will be awesome... I just wish the game mechanics were new, instead of the same mechanics we've been playing in MMO games for over a decade now. Boba Fett would not hand out boo-boo strips... even if Darth Vader had an owie.

@ArcherAvatar

Have you ever thought about what "new" actually means? Plenty of people throw the word "new" mechanics about but hardly anybody seems to have any real direction for what that means.

At what point is something new? is it a small change to a proven mechanic or a sweeping change that throws out the old mechanic and tries something nobody has done before?

Making new mechanics is no simple thing. If you can't reinvent the wheel don't expect games costing hundreds of millions to risk their money on an experiment you might hate a lot more than those same old same old mechanics proven to work time and again across dozens of mmo's.

Experiments happen only happen with your money, nobody risks their money to experiment for you. Tweaks to existing mechanics you might get but only if you ask for them early enough and you explain why the tweak would improve the existing mechanic with more than just your say so.

@FrostPaw The players ARE the investors. The capital investors are more like criminal syndicates these days.

Bioware's attempt to shoehorn a Hollywood narrative into an MMO has been ham-fisted. Look at the animations -- the cutscene animations are amazing, but the gameplay animations are stilted and lacking.

When Bioware told us that it would be too much effort to make swimming animations for everyone, it hit me -- they only know how to animate for 2D storyboard frames, and not for a 3D action world.

It's sad, not that they didn't do something new, but that they have done so little with what we've already seen. Instead of pushing their animators to learn the difference between animating for cutscene frames versus 3D simulation, they just poured on the Hollywood process.

They had more capital than they deserved to have, given what I see of the final product. All of their polish seems to have gone down a rabbit hole and left the gameplay out in the cold.

It is nice, better than most of the Friday updates, but I still want my Jedi Consular progression video :(

I really want to know what you expect Bioware to do. They have a finite amount of time to release this project. From what they've shown so far, it's pretty damn impressive considering all of the steps involved in making the game.

They can't waste anymore years refining the game, because then people will then cry about the game being dated.

The thing is I don't think players WANT any true 180 degree innovation. If any MMO developer would try to do that they'd be insane for the millions they'd be risking on what would be nothing more than a glorified experiment.

Games are iterative, they expand on existing ideas. Especially with the amount of work and TIME involved in doing them as the technology to make them become increasingly complex.

I'll happily take SWTOR to see what can be done in terms of story in an MMO. Bioware never said they were reinventing the wheel.

"Bioware never said they were reinventing the wheel."

@blackcat7k That's part of the problem.

Any good engineer knows that you must ALWAYS be in the process of reinventing the wheel, unless you expect someone else to train your employees.

180-degree innovation isn't what is expected. More attention to matters of gameplay is.

SWTOR Studio Insider dives into opening cinematics

Reader Comments (10)

Posted: Jul 15th 2011 5:43PM Bezza said

Posted: Jul 15th 2011 6:51PM Popplewell said

Posted: Jul 15th 2011 8:26PM hereafter said

Posted: Jul 16th 2011 1:06AM Dunraven said

Posted: Jul 16th 2011 3:13AM ArcherAvatar said

Posted: Jul 16th 2011 5:41AM FrostPaw said

Posted: Jul 17th 2011 10:23AM Borick said

Posted: Jul 16th 2011 5:05AM bobfish said

Posted: Jul 18th 2011 2:25AM blackcat7k said

Posted: Jul 18th 2011 3:19AM Borick said

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