PAX: Interview With BioWare's Blaine Christine
To kick off our time at PAX and tide us over until tomorrow's presentation, BioWare's Blaine Christine spoke with us for a bit about the differences and similarities of Advanced Classes, plus the various multi-player aspects of questing, companions, and exploration. Of course, we couldn't resist asking about a few other controversial things such as their view of the community uproar over the naming of the Jedi Wizard, or what drove the decision to implement class trainers.
We just came back from Gamescom where you all were talking mostly about Game Systems. What is one of the things you would like to talk about here at PAX 2010?
Blaine Christine: The big stuff is really coming tomorrow (Saturday) at our stage show with myself and Dallas Dickenson walking people through the game, so that is where the real meat is going to be as far as new content.
The coolest thing is that we have consumers getting hands on for the first time at Gamescom in Europe, and now here. PAX is such a great show because it is awesome to be among fans instead of only talking or showing the game to just sales people or press. It is cool to interact with people who love the game and are ultimately going to be the real players of the game and see how they react to it for the first time in the US.
Are there are any common class design choices you made throughout all the Advanced Classes regarding combat roles?
Blaine Christine: It is the same as how we started out with the base eight classes. We don't go at it from the standpoint of what we need to have in a MMO. It is more about what is interesting from a Star Wars standpoint, what are the iconic characters and classes, and how does that fit in the overall picture of our game.
In this case, we give the example of the Jedi Knight where the Jedi Guardian is much more like Obi Wan from the Clone Wars. He is wearing heavy armor, he is leading the charge, he is at the front of the battle, and he is a leader of men. In true MMO terms, he is basically a melee tank. But then if you take the Jedi Sentinel class, then you are more of a melee DPS. You are not going to wear the heavy armor, you get to dual wield sabers and you do lots and lots of damage with both of those sabers.
What is the difference between the kind of tanking abilities the Bounty Hunter would do in contrast to the Jedi Knight or other tank classes?
Blaine Christine: Well, the Jedi Knight is easy because you are talking about a ranged tank versus him... what is what he winds up being. There are parallels because if you look at the demo we did for Gamescom and E3, we had the Trooper wearing heavy armor soaking up, and acting as the tank even though he is ranged. So there are parallels on either side, but again, it starts with the iconic idea of what we want to play, what we see in the movies, and how does that play out in the game.
We heard a lot more about the Imperial Agent these last couple of weeks than we have in months. Can you explain the gameplay differences between the two Advanced Classes of the Imperial Agent?
Blaine Christine: One of them is more based around stealth, and the other one is a little bit more about ranged DPS. So stealth... you are going to be using elements of stealth, but we really haven't talked in detail about how that works yet. Basically, you are going to be using stealth to move up closer on enemies. You have one ability that we talked about that is Shiv, which is a close range melee attack, so you are focused on that sort of element. The other path is really focused on really heavy-hitting ranged DPS shots with your sniper rifle.
There is really a controversy on the forums right now about the Jedi Wizard, and the meanings behind that name and why it was chosen.
Blaine Christine: I'm not intimately involved with that particular naming process, but all I can say at this point is we watched the forums closely... the Darth Hater forums, our forums, and we paid attention to what the community was saying. We certainly noticed the frenzy around that particular name, and there may be some announcements forthcoming in the future around that particular name.
You also spoke a bit more about companions and how they will work in group combat. How are they going to work with all the roles of every Advanced Classes? Are there going to be different specs for them?
Blaine Christine: Not necessarily. You have to consider companions separately from your class, so they aren't heavily impacted by the Advanced Class you take. You have multiple companion characters, and they each are sort of a specialist in a particular area.
We showed the Dashade for the Sith Inquisitor, and he is a big tough guy. With his different AI kits, you can actually outfit him to fulfill various roles, and augment your abilities. "Kits" is just terminology we are using, but what it means is that I want to make sure my Dashade is working like a true melee tank, so I'm going to make sure his outfit or kit is going to allow him to soak up more damage, and maybe he isn't going to deal out as much damage. But I may have a different type of kit that will allow me to outfit him with abilities to have him do more melee DPS. He can sort of specialize in different areas.
As far as the thought process of implementing trainers in a story-based game, will you also gain abilities through story elements?
Blaine Christine: There are definitely story ties to your abilities. And that should quell some people's fears around that. As you move through as a Jedi Padawan, there are key moments as you level up that will be tied to abilities you have and certain other elements, and to sort of hint around certain things, possibly even weapons that you gain.
You have to realize that through our course of design, we consider many different options and how those things will work. But there are certain things that make sense from a game design perspective, and yes, we realize it doesn't perfectly fit in with the story of how a Jedi would evolve if you were doing a movie. But we're not doing a movie, we're doing a MMO, and there are certain game conventions that just work. We certainly explored other avenues besides trainers, and we came to the decision that is what works. It does tie into the story in a very unique way, and I think people will be happy about that, but ultimately that is what works best for the game.
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Posted 9/4/2010 8:18:21 PMJames: Because we are making a Star Wars game, we have to have space combat. The way we decided to implement it was to give each player his own starship, because that is a big fantasy - owning your own Millennium Falcon. We also wanted to give the player the ability to travel the galaxy. So, when he gets on his starship, he can choose which planets he wants to go to using a beautiful galaxy map that allows him to travel from star system to star system. Then, once you have your own starship, you are going to want to get involved in battles so we decided to add a combat portion to it.
Keep in mind, our game is all about cinematic storytelling and taking the best cinematic moments from the movies and recreating them. When we decided to add space combat to the game, we wanted to maintain this cinematic quality. To do this, we thought of the most exciting moments in the movies: The Return of the Jedi final battle, the original battle in Episode IV on the Death Star, Han Solo escaping the Imperial fleet in The Empire Strikes Back, Obi Wan battling against Jango Fett in the asteroid field in Episode II. Those are the kind of moments we decided we want to recreate. That is why we chose to go the route we did and to build the game the way we did. We built more of a crafted experience for the player, so that he doesn't have to go looking for the excitement in space combat. We did not want to create a game where you had to fly around in 3D space and try to find your excitement; you go directly into the space fighter game and the excitement is right there. It's like a moment from the Star Wars movies.
From the DH Interview of James Ohlen at Gamescom. I don't know what else you want them to ask, seems pretty straight forward there.
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Posted 9/4/2010 9:31:32 AMI just hope they are not catering to RP'ers, Crafters, and Solo'ers to such a giant extent.