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Interview: Story In-Depth With Daniel Erickson

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Are there some parts of the story where it is supposed to be with multiple people?

Daniel Erickson: Well, all of the world content -- which is a huge, huge amount of the content. That is what I'm saying in the Bespin example. In that stuff, if you're going to do multiplayer and do multiplayer storytelling and the stuff you saw, then yeah you get to have arguments and you get to go different directions. Some of the most fun stuff is to write is party chatter. People will actually address you instead of her and you can actually call them back and be like "Hey, excuse me I'm the Sith Lord. You don't talk to the Bounty Hunter -- you talk to me."

And you have decisions where it goes to the decision making process , and one person loses. You decided to kill that person, and your Bounty Hunter friend gets mad. And he is like "hey -- you killed them" And you're like "well, alright, but they are dead, so what do you want me to do about it exactly?" That dynamic is actually really fun.

One of the things we really wanted to try to create when we first started was... we keep saying role playing game and we've been saying this for years. But one of the things we never hit is the feel of playing an old party pen & paper based game, one where usually you have a pretty mixed party, and a bunch of different ideas.

And it is the same thing when you watch Star Wars. Eventually Han gets good guy'd by Leia and Luke, and that they end up pretty much in sync later. But when they start up, their decisions are never in the same place.

Is there any class where you started out writing a class story a certain way, then it somehow went way off the charts, and was not what you expected at the end?

Daniel Erickson: I think the class that surprised us the most was the Imperial Agent. And it wasn't that we started writing, but we definitely started planning it one way. We wanted to have a class that would sort of balance out and give us perspective on the Sith that was not Sith, and a perspective on the Empire. What were the people like? We didn't want to do -- you know, we've got the bucketheads in there -- we've got our sort of Storm Troopers. We didn't want to do that because we felt like we'd just end up back with the Trooper.



So we thought "okay, Imperial Intelligence is something that is very them." We get these great KGB or SS sort of feels. But we kept saying "he is a spy, he is this, he is that." Even though it is the Empire, we had a very sort of James Bond-feel to it when we were conceiving it.

And then Alex Freed (who is the writer for the Imperial Agent) came on board, started looking at it, and really helped develop what the Empire was and really changed it. He came to James Ohlen and I, and said "no, no. This guy has got to be 24, Bourne Identity." This is a very different sort of Agent: he is going to live in this world, and deal with these people and make these decisions. Yes, he is going to have scenes where he's got to seduce someone to do this, and yes he is going to have crazy gadgets. But tone-wise and feel, this is not the type of spy we're talking about. We're talking about something closer to, in a Star Wars cinematic perspective, what it would feel like to be a CIA agent. And yeah, that one turned out to be one of our great surprise hits. But it is not where we thought it was going to go at the beginning.

Was there anything that you said to yourself "well, this is kind of boring?"

Daniel Erickson: No, no. (laughs) Well, yes, but it's all been rewritten.

Is there a planet that you had a challenge developing or coming up with the writing for? Maybe it was something that nobody touched before?

Daniel Erickson: Those are the best and the easiest ones to do. And the thing is, it doesn't work that way because it is not like somebody said "you have to write this planet." We picked the planets because we wanted to put things on those planets.

So the planets in-game are all ones that have been super exciting, and obviously the ones where we've got some stuff we've not got to talk about yet. The big passions were definitely the totally original pieces that we got to do which are really exciting, and I think people are going to freak out about them. And the places where we got to go and touch things near and dear to our hearts. And obviously, the big one we just talked about for that was Taris, and getting to say "hey, what would 300 years after you demolished everything on a city world look like?" And Taris very nearly didn't make it. Taris is an extremely difficult art and technical challenge. But everybody really wanted it. And there were a lot of revisions of Taris before you got to see what you got now.



Are we going to see some very familiar BioWare tropes, like where you go to a far off place to maybe discover some things, and it is an awesome place?

Daniel Erickson: Well, the sort of the final note on this is that one of the things people kept getting concerned about, and rightly so, is we showed flashpoints and that sort of stuff.

One of the real things we wanted to show at GDC this year is that our worlds are huge, actually. They are giant, you can explore. They are massive. You can just wander off one direction and go forever. There is tons of content there.

Many MMOs are sort of flat or rolling plains with points of interest inside them. Our stuff is hand crafted in every foot, and there's detail and interest in every foot. And the ability to do this, as opposed to BioWare tropes, is one of the things I'd put out there as a hint of things to come.

Because we have so many planets, because we have more companion characters than we've ever had to do in anything, because there are so many romances in this game -- we have the ability to do things that are not your standard pieces. We can cover the standard pieces like this is fantasy fulfillment, and this is something you got to have in your game. And then we still have tons more content to do.

So we can say "here is a great piece that I never got to see." And when you add the class stories in, the class stories allow us to do individual story-telling. Every BioWare game has always had to work for any class you could possibly choose. So now we get to do the Smuggler action-comedy, the Bounty Hunter western, etc. So it's far outside the BioWare tropes.

Thank you, Daniel. Thank you so much for everything.

Comments

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  • Mythanotos's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #32 Mythanotos Posted 3/30/2010 8:16:15 PM
    I'm pretty excited... not gonna lie. I want more info though... more to tie me over. I'm waiting on info on Guilds, housing (as in guild storage and/or personal spacecraft to travel and "live" in), more fighting/gameplay dynamics to come out.
  • ArcherAvatar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #30 ArcherAvatar Posted 3/26/2010 1:34:40 PM
    It really looks like the fantastic depth of immersion that will be possible because of the "tailored" individual class story arcs will set a new watermark for the MMO genre. I am constantly blown away by the mind-boggling attention to detail that is on display with the development of this game.

    P.S. special thanx to Emlaeh for the outstanding work at GDC but especially for the reporting on the Hands-on with the Trooper. The information you brought back for us about the AI of the mobs in particular was fantastic, and the news about the size/scope of the planets was mind-blowing... I'm still trying to wrap my head around just how freakin' huge (literally) this game is going to be. Thanx Em
  • emlaeh's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 987
    #31 emlaeh Posted 3/28/2010 6:27:27 AM
    Thanks, but it was the whole team that did this -- not just me.

    I said this on the podcast, but the game gives a feeling that everything is done over the top. I half-ass wish something appeared so I could say "what were they thinking?" so we could be more believable. Yeah, there were bugs in the demo but nothing earth shattering.

    If you take the blue line map I saw and then tried to match the Ord Mantell screenshots to it in your head, then that is how I got the impression there were a lot of big zones on that planet. And I kinda freaked when Jake Neri said that was a smaller origin planet.
  • Keegan-Vol's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 120
    #29 Keegan-Vol Posted 3/18/2010 11:59:33 PM
    Thanks Daniel for your insites and your time, I enjoyed the info on world vs class story. It will be nice to see if whole guilds become involved in world story and quests. Patiently we await.
  • Jigglypuff's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #27 Jigglypuff Posted 3/16/2010 3:41:31 PM
    Cant wait, I must have tha game NOW! =)
  • feo__'s avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #25 feo__ Posted 3/16/2010 6:55:26 AM
    lol @ the comma lolcats link.
  • Korrick's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #23 Korrick Posted 3/16/2010 4:29:23 AM
    "So there are two very separate things that we have going on: your personal story, which is your class story, and then the world stories."

    I love how you have your own story and decisions, and then were also going to have world quests that groups can also decide on the out come together. I was scared when they first showed that video at Pax with the sith and BH but this comment put all my fears to rest.
  • indusan's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 73
    #21 indusan Posted 3/16/2010 4:00:21 AM
    "the Separatist people didn't wake up in the morning and say "we hates some people" You have to have continuity, and especially a motivation." - easy on the brothers American History X.

    I think deciding on a class is going to be horribly annoying for all the right reasons.
  • bioni's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #19 bioni Posted 3/15/2010 10:30:37 PM
    "One of the real things we wanted to show at GDC this year is that our worlds are huge, actually. They are giant, you can explore. They are massive. You can just wander off one direction and go forever. There is tons of content there."

    This, this made me emotional!

    Great interview again DH
  • DarthLovie's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #17 DarthLovie Posted 3/15/2010 9:23:28 PM
    A free roaming world would be amazing.

    The whole speech about the Imperial agent has me more interested in that class then i was before
  • Elkesai's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 230
    #16 Elkesai Posted 3/15/2010 9:23:24 PM
    Yet more evidence of a large-scale world in that last part. My concerns about this are pretty much gone now.

    By the way, the Lolcats song I found in that comma sucked everything I just read right out of my brain, and I had to start the damned article over again. But that's not really a bad thing. The article, I mean. The song is horrid.
  • Xavier's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 497
    #15 Xavier Posted 3/15/2010 8:27:23 PM
    "One of the real things we wanted to show at GDC this year is that our worlds are huge, actually. They are giant, you can explore. They are massive. You can just wander off one direction and go forever. There is tons of content there."

    This quote makes me do my happy dance...and no you probably don't want to see. I can't dance worth a damn.
  • JediCosmin's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #24 JediCosmin Posted 3/16/2010 4:38:08 AM
    "The world is flat." - they really eliminated this notion :D woot!
  • Zioni's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 61
    #14 Zioni Posted 3/15/2010 7:34:02 PM
    Great Interview DH. Very in depth and informative. Sounds like BW is on the right track. I really like the decision wheel in groups. Sounds like a lotta fun where the ppl you group with's actions able to actually affect the story. Good stuff.
  • Macer's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #13 Macer Posted 3/15/2010 7:25:04 PM
    Very articulate and finesse' in your thought process of giving us a well-detailed view of how they want the game to be perceived as. The questions pretty much answered most of the issues that most whiners and SW advocates would deem to exaggerate too much on. BioWare, on these two interviews (demo), is really keen on what consumers want and how to make things do not feel boring, monotonous, and obvious to general eye. Eml and the DH crew know their stuff, and I recommend people to really link to this site if necessary. I had been using viral marketing to spread amongst my bloggers and SW fans all over the world about this site, and I hope people can avoid the trash of the official forums about certain lies and troll manipulation, which can make or break games.

    For now, keep up the good work guys. I'll see you on vent. :P



    -Macer
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