Darth Hater

Star Wars: The Old Republic News, Interviews, Media & Podcast

PAX East 2011: Panel Compilation Highlights

The enormous presence of Star Wars: The Old Republic at PAX East 2011 was like a convention of its own, as it kept Darth Hater and the BioWare staff moving the entire weekend. Between the 45 minute play sessions, developer meet and greet, Q&A opportunities, plus a host of other activities, some of the developers from BioWare found time to appear in a few panels. Darth Hater brings you the highlights from the panels after the jump.
In one of the very first panels, BioWare's Creative Services Manager Rob Chestney spoke about video game comics. The panel, Video Game Comics: Lifting the Curse, focused on the concepts behind video game comics and what may be holding back their appeal to a greater market. Chestney, who wrote the Star Wars: The Old Republic comic Threat of Peace, wasted no time in discussing the unique nature of developing a comic for The Old Republic.

Introducing a new era of Star Wars history made it a little different. We really wanted to establish that story line. Particularly, some of the questions about the critical event before the game Star Wars: The Old Republic. Which is this peace treaty between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic. Which is insane to think about. The Jedi agreeing to a treaty with Darth Vader.

As a follow up, Chestney described the reasons why developers chose the comic book as a medium to deliver part of the game's story.

I thought a big wall of text on our website telling the back story of the game could be kind of boring. And obviously there's only so much we can do in big expensive CG trailers.

The next comic series coming up for the The Old Republic is The Lost Suns written by Alexander Freed. When asked about The Lost Suns, Chestney deferred more in-depth comments to Freed, but did have some insight into the comic's relation to the game.

It plays with some of the same characters that are in Threat of Peace. It's a new story that is actually going on at the same time as the game. That's what is cool about that one. It's not back story.

Lead Writer on Star Wars: The Old Republic Daniel Erickson took part in the Interactive Drama and Dialogue as Gameplay panel on the first day of PAX East. He reiterated the BioWare stance on The Old Republic when it came to what exactly they are trying to accomplish with in-game dialogue.

What we've really been working hard at over the years, is trying to make the dialogue experience in games more fun. To do more of what it's supposed to do. And for us what it's always supposed to do, really, is depending on the piece, The Old Republic is supposed to recreate feeling like your starring in a Star Wars movie.

Daniel Erickson also pointed out some of the negative feedback that BioWare gets from time-to-time and why they prefer what some consider, to be a simpler plot in their games.

People have slammed BioWare stuff before, one of the few things we always get is, you know their always sort of the big classic, pretty easy to understand plots. And that's because if you do the super complicated plot, if you do all the ins-and-outs and all this stuff, what you're saying is, the plot isn't [...]. Right, a player has to understand their choices to give them agency. So for us, always self-expression and the ability for the player to feel like their making the decisions is far more important than were going to write the thing were going to think as writers is awesome.

Lead Designer, James Ohlen took part in the MMORPG.com Panel on PAX East Saturday. During the course of the panel, he mentioned a fifteen dollar a month pricing model if you wanted to compete with the likes of World of Warcraft.

We used to say developers had a choice, if you're going to go after World of Warcraft, you're going to need a subscription based game where you have to spend $15 a month to play it. Then yes, you are going to have to put in a lot of money.


Contributors: Klipto and Thergood
Copy Editor: Cherith

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