PAX East: Interview With Hall Hood
Darth Hater had a conversation about conversation with Hall Hood, Senior Writer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, at this year's PAX East in Boston. Hood is one of the writers involved in the story of the Jedi Knight as well as the Smuggler, and he also wrote the story for the Taral V Flashpoint available for play at the convention.As always, the transcript is available after the jump.
As Senior Writer, you worked on a lot of stuff with the game. Specifically, we saw Taral V today, and you wrote Taral V -- is that correct?
Hall Hood: I did write Taral V.
What other main facets of the game did you work on?
I am the primary writer on the Jedi Knight class, and I was co-writer of the Smuggler class.
Can you talk a little bit about how the story works in regards to the Flashpoint in general, and then also those divergent paths, and how the story affects those offshoots?
Whenever we're designing a story for the game, whether it is meant for a class or if it is meant to be played multiplayer, one of our primary goals is always make sure that it is interactive. That players have meaningful choices that they get to make in the course of the story; so that their experience is not exactly the same as the experience of other people who've played that same content. We want it to feel different, and to feel unique and to give players the ability to personalize that story to their own needs.
If you're going to a part that's not necessary for completing it, is that just filing in the blanks about Taral V in this example? Or is it brand new stuff? What is the benefit of giving the story part to the offshoots?
Let's rephrase this a little bit. The story parts of the offshoots... all of the content that we create for the game, we want it to be meaningful. We want you to feel like, "Wow, I am so glad that I played through that content." That it added so much to the experience. We want people to explore; we want people to find all of the nooks and crannies in the game and to discover all of the story that is available to them.
What are some of the difficulties, or what was the process like to create so many divergent paths of writing that have to converge back to a single point to continue the conversation?
Writing for multiplayer is extremely complex. It is a very difficult task because you have to keep track of multiple layer voices. You have to think about, "The Jedi Knight is not going to say the same thing that the Smuggler would say, or that the trooper would say, or that the consular would say." They're all going to have different ways of trying to advance a conversation and different ways of approaching NPCs. We want to make sure that the NPCs respond in kind, to how they're spoken to by the players.
A lot of the fun that comes from playing through multiplayer conversations in our game is when everybody sits there and tries to vote, and one person is like, "Nope. We're gonna say this" sort of thing, and everyone goes "No!!!" sort of deal. It is just a lot of fun being able to sort of compete to drive the direction of the conversation, and to kind of seize the spotlight.
And if you think about the movies, then that is what happens. When you get Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewie all together, they all sort of compete with each other to sort of direct the flow of where things are going. They sort of yell at each other and things like that. We want to recreate that experience in the multiplayer content for our game.
Is there anything about the conversations where who you bring with you might open up a later conversation path or open up a certain game play divergence?
We're always trying to make sure that players have a meaningful impact on the story, and feel like they drove the content in a direction they might not have otherwise seen if they hadn't been the one who won that roll to advance the conversation. So yes, we're always trying to make sure that players get that feeling of, "Ah, I'm the one who made that happen."
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Posted 3/15/2011 12:53:36 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 3/14/2011 11:18:56 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 3/14/2011 10:20:12 PMWhat's next? DH's eye in the sky copter?
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Posted 3/14/2011 9:22:37 PMThe Only thing i Disapprove of in Star wars The old Republic is not being able to heal during combat. I think all classes should have an in combat heal that would heal at least 25% of health with at least a 20 - 30 second cool down.
The combat does not seem Heroic at all when you have to run away to disengage combat to heal.
Cowards run to go and heal!
Heroes stay and fight to get the job done!
Watch the video below and you'll see my point.
The person playing must have gotten frustrated or disappointed from dying, because he or she lacked the ability to heal in combat.
http://bit.ly/goynvb
If you think that having an in combat healing ability will interfere with healer classes. It will not! I have played many MMO'S where all classes had the ability to heal in combat.
I hope Bioware will give all classes an ability to heal in combat. I want to feel heroic when i play Star Wars the old Republic. I don't want to have to run away like a coward to heal!
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Posted 3/14/2011 10:30:32 PMWhich I'm guessing will come from random drops and of course crafting:
Biochem the engineering of performance-enhancing chemical serums and biological implants
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Posted 3/14/2011 10:10:49 PMAlso I watched that video. That person was either not paying very close attention to there screen at all, or was just not very good at the game. Using that video as a reason to add a combat heal like that is completely fail.
Combat healing so you will never die once in the game wont make you feel heroic. What will make you feel heroic in the story and experience of playing the game. Not every fight that a hero goes into is winnable. Like Episode 5 when Luke fights Vader, Luke ends up running from the fight to go heal and get a new hand when he realizes he can't win.
I'm sure there's millions more reasons that in combat heals wont happen. I don't see it happening with this game and I hope I don't, it doesn't seem necessary. If you want to heal in combat, role a healer.
On topic of the interview: Great interview. I just wish we could play this game already, every interview makes me more and more excited for the game.
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Posted 3/14/2011 11:19:15 PMYou stated : Combat healing so you will never die once in the game wont make you feel heroic.
An in combat heal would help last a little longer and die a little less.
I guess when you watched episode V (5) You didn't see that luke who was not a jedi yet soloed Vader. sure he could not win, he was not a jedi . He also didn't have his companion with him spamming heal on him either.
I quess you fail to see if someone dies a lot in a game they lose desire to play it. An in combat heal would help those who don't what to be in a group or have a companion character with them all of the time when doing quest.
I for one want to solo all of my quest to lvl. I don't mind being in a group for end game stuff or instance's
I think that medpacks like in kotor 1 and 2 would be fine in Star Wars the Old Republic.
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Posted 3/15/2011 9:53:39 AMAnd every class has an out of combat healing spell, something most MMOs don't give every class, isn't that enough?
If you give everyone a heal, doesn't that risk making all classes the same? If you wanna heal in-combat, roll a class that can heal, not too hard. Like rolling a Rogue in WoW then complaining you can't rez people. If healing and rezzing is what you want to do, there are already classes that can do just that.
Plus if you keep a healing companion with you at all times, that counts as in-combat heals.
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Posted 3/14/2011 9:09:56 PMfor instance in one of the earlier videos we see a mirialan smuggler called Hylo Visz. (who may show up later in game, the way she was represented in the video definitly leaves that open) and now a mirialan smuggler was playable at pax. plus there is a ton of arubesh in the videos.
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Posted 3/14/2011 8:09:53 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 3/14/2011 6:30:24 PM