Daniel Erickson talks Sith Inquisitor
Recently the blog The Sith Inquirer was able to get some answers out of Lead Writer Daniel Erickson about the storyline for the Sith Inquisitor. While the Inquisitor’s story was written by former BioWare employee Rebecca Harwick, Erickson was the one to help flesh out all the loose ends. Topics Erickson covers include inspirations for the Inquisitor’s story, companions, and even revealing the voice actors for the class: Euan Morton and Xanthe Elbrick for male and female characters, respectively. Check out an excerpt below.
Rebecca Harwick was the writer for the entirety of the Sith Inquisitor. She’s gone on to her dream of getting a masters in ancient Byzantine history (yes, really) but as I helped flesh out all the stories I can speak to this one. First and foremost was the Emperor/Palpatine inspiration. To be just bat-**** insane or to be subtle and clever. On top of that there was a bit of Raistlin Majere, some Moriarty and just a smidge of Dr. Belloq. You’re the one who knows what’s really happening, who has seen enough of the galaxy to grow wise or insane.
Check out the entire interview at The Sith Inquirer.
E3 2011: No Open Beta Planned
During an impromptu interview during GameSpot’s “LiveCam” tour of E3, Daniel Erickson Lead Writer for SWTOR, confirmed that an open beta is not very likely. Erickson also mentioned that if there were going to be a closed beta it would be very close to the release date of the game.
Jump to 1:24 to hear what Erickson has to say…
There are a lot more questions that are answered during the interview, but if you’ve been following The Old Republic it should all be old news to you. However, if you’re just now punching your ticket aboard the hype train, then the full video may be worth a watch to help you get caught up on some of the details we know about the game thus far.
E3 2011: Tatooine Live Stream Recap
Earlier today, BioWare streamed live gameplay along with a Q&A sessions with Daniel Erickson, lead writer on The Old Republic. This was the first time Tatooine had been shown playable in the game. If you weren’t able to catch the play session live, we’ve got you covered with what you missed.
Daniel played a Rattataki Bounty Hunter at level 26. The demo focused on showing off different areas of Tatooine, and we also got to take a look at player speeders. The main quest accepted had to do with finding out information on Czerka Corp., which you may remember from the original KotOR. There were also optional quests to kill Sand People.
One of the first reveals in the demo was the companion being taken along: Blizz, a jawa. Blizz seemed to be able to hold his own in combat, though it was jokingly (or not) noted that Blizz will not be a romance option in the game.
While zooming around on his speeder, Daniel answered some questions from stream viewers. The first question asked had to do with whether other classes would have access to Blizz or other jawa companions. Daniel reminded us that each of the companions in the game are class-specific and thus Blizz will not be available to other classes. He also confirms that there will, in fact, be no Ewok companions, much to the disappointment of many.
When it comes to player speeders, the one shown in this demo will not be the only one available in the game. There will be multiple speeder designs meant for either the Republic or the Empire, but by difficult means, players will be able to obtain the opposing side’s speeder. The reason for not going with the more traditional sit-down style speeder such as what was seen on Endor in Return of the Jedi is because they became too bulky in crowded areas. Remember that the more traditional speeder design is being used for fast travel in the game. In the current build of the game, vehicles are becoming available to players at level 25, but of course this is subject to change.
While Daniel was not super focused on combat in this demo as he was answering questions while playing, there were still a few interesting tidbits confirmed. For example, auto-looting is in the game by right clicking or shift-clicking.
Another point of note of this demo was that the graphics of the game were not set on high settings. Shadows were missing and other settings weren’t on full. This was simply to get as high performance as possible while streaming the game. So this was not a good example of the game’s looks. From the recent screenshots released, the game is looking great.
It was confirmed that once players unlock their personal ships, they will be able to travel to whatever planet they choose. “If you want to march off to Corelia and just run around the warzone and get completely destroyed, you absolutely can,” said Erickson. “Story is an important thing but we never want it to be something that limits the base use of an MMO.” Beforehand, elements like shuttle passes are required to keep you on the right track.
Later in the demo, death was demonstrated. After dying, players are given two choices: have a medical probe revive you, or return to the nearest medcenter. If the option to be revived by a probe is selected, after a few seconds the player will be revived and placed within a stealth mode to get to safety. The more often you die, the longer it takes for the medical probe to appear.
A few more notes from the stream:
- The game will have world bosses
- Ships and other objects in the game are to scale (read: ships are huge).
- You cannot completely level and progress with PvP.
- Mounts/vehicles will have different speeds, feels and costs
- Companions can be resurrected as long as the player lives
- Some companions such as Blizz will not change with their equipment, but instead will have several variant appearances. Human companions will usually change with their equipment.
Make sure to check out the posted video to hear all of what Daniel had to say and see Tatooine for yourself. You can follow all of our E3 coverage by visiting our E3 2011 page.
Sith Inquisitor revealed
The TOR team have given Gamespot an in depth look at the Sith Inquisitor class, as well as a Q&A on the class with Daniel Erickson (writing director) George Zoeller (lead combat designer).
We’ve already covered much of the early game and have spent time with many of its professions, but this time around, writing director Daniel Erickson and principal lead combat designer George Zoeller have shared new details on the Sith inquisitor class with us. This powerful profession was originally based on the character of Emperor Palpatine, the decrepit and thoroughly evil Sith master from Return of the Jedi, but as the BioWare staffers explain, Sith inquisitors start in a very dark place, but they don’t necessarily have to stay there throughout their adventuring careers.
You can read the rest of the Q&A here.
Friday Update: Studio Insider and Fan Friday
Studio Insider is a new feature update on the official website where the developers give fans quick looks at work-in-progress art and other assets. This week we’re given a look at the progress on Flesh Raiders.
Check out what the devs have to say here.
A community Q & A session with Daniel Erickson is also featured:
Q: What happens when a group member leaves during a quest, or even in the middle of a dialog *disconnects*? Will any AI take over?
A: No AI takeovers, the quest or conversation continues without them. You can hit escape and leave a conversation (multiplayer or otherwise) whenever you like.
Q: When getting a group quest, can you get 4 Bounty Hunters or do you have a specific class requirement to start the quest? How will we know which quest we need?
A: You can make a group of any mix of classes, including four of the same. There are several play groups here that enjoy doing just that. Full Trooper groups seem to be the most popular and look pretty amazing coming over a hill.
Q: Can I turn my helmet on/off?
A: Helmets will be on a toggle so you can show or not as you like. The cinematic team has an additional override control they can use to turn it off in conversation (in case you like to keep your Trooper helmet on with the awesome voice processing). That way they can override it occasionally to keep you from wearing your helmet during your romantic kiss scene (bonk!).
Q: Will the Advanced Classes be locked into a particular role, for example: Will a Juggernaut be locked to only a tank, or if he could fulfill other roles as well?
A: Each of the advanced classes is a full, flexible class with various trees that allow specialization. So although the Juggernaut is perhaps best suited to play a ‘tanking’ role, a player could specialize in other roles depending on what skills they choose and the tactics they use with their companions.
Q: Are the origin planets simply starting grounds, or will we come back to them past level 10?
A: You definitely have reasons to come back. Korriban, for instance, is where the Dark Council often meets. There are also reasons later for all of the classes to go to some of the other classes’ origin worlds. It’s important to us that lower level characters get to see some high level players strutting their stuff early on.
There is also a fan friday post this week with lots of great community-made art, fan fiction, and even costumes to check out. In addition there are new wallpapers and forum avatars, as well as this amazing smilie:
Daniel Erikson Clears Up Playable Species Questions
After some booth chatter at PAX last week lead to some confusion on the official forums, Daniel Erickson stepped in to clarify some matters about what type of character the player character is supposed to be.
Hey Folks,
Sorry for the confusion. Booth chat is, let’s be clear, not an official information release. What you got was one line of an extended conversation that was had between me and one of the players at the booth. We started talking about what made a hero in Star Wars and then, once that was clear, there were some jokes about what the romances would look like had we gone for the toybox approach of letting you play anything in the action figure line. That’s the part of the conversation the quote came from.
The first part was merely a repetition of something we’ve said before. Namely that lead characters in an RPG must be something the player can relate to. There has never been a movie or major Star Wars series with a complete freak job as the lead and that’s because dramatically it doesn’t work. We don’t understand what it means to be a giant lizard or a droid or a walking ball of jelly. We love the weird characters but they are always the sidekicks, not the emotional connection in the movie. To do an RPG that way every NPC you ran into would have to react to you depending on their own cultural bias and the entire “into the strange” adventure that is Star Wars would be lost as you would be the strangest thing in the room. People would constantly be asking you for information about your weird species and their emotional content that the vast majority of players simply wouldn’t have and their ability to really BE this character would be nil.
So whether it’s Dragon Age, Mass Effect or The Old Republic, PCs are near enough to humans for us to crawl into their skin. They have generally understandable facial expressions, they don’t look ludicrous speaking the basic language, they can interact with the rest of the galaxy without a constant “what the heck?” reaction from the NPCs. The freaks, the droids, the weird that we get to know and learn about–that’s where our companions come in.
It’s okay to turn to your companions and say “What are you supposed to be?” It’s not okay to look in the mirror and say that.
In the future I can see a day where we would do a Trandoshan or Wookiee type story but it would have to be just that. Not a simple graphic swap where now your smuggler is a giant lizard man and nobody notices but a full class story where you learn what it means to be this strange alien and deal with the rest of the galaxy and their reactions. For the present, however, our heroes are our projections of self, headed into a galaxy of wonders and adventures.
I know that this isn’t what some people want but I hope it helps them understand that game design isn’t simply throwing random features into a game because they seem cool. You have to have a goal, a final holistic ideal that you’re trying to hit. The Old Republic is, and always has been, about starring in your own version of a Star Wars movie. Not playing a background character from scene 5, not about living a humdrum day to day existence in the Star Wars worlds (there are no refreshers–sorry!) and not about pulling out the extended action figure line and getting to use it as virtual costume party. None of these are, by themselves, bad goals and could absolutely be fun in a very different sort of game. But in TOR they would work directly against what we were trying to achieve.
So did we limit species choice for romances? No. Did we limit them for our goal of bringing cinematic storytelling and the dream of living the Star Wars movies to the MMO space? Absolutely.
Hope that helps!
Daniel
PAX Interview with Daniel Erikson
Star Wars: The Old Republic guild website Guildumbra got the chance to interview Daniel Erikson from BioWare at PAX this past weekend and has made the interview available as video online. You can view it at Jedi Archive Online.
Daniel Erickson Discusses BioWare Dialogue Systems
BioWare is known for its dialogue systems in games and TOR will be no different, especially in the MMO space. Below, Daniel Erickson discusses where TOR stands when compared to their other recent games’ dialogue systems.
The Mass Effect dialogue system worked exceptionally well for keeping the game fast and action-oriented, which is always that team’s target. On Dragon Age we went for a more classic RPG approach with more options and the ability to dig into all the little details. The first option in dialogue was usually the most sensible one for a reasonable person in the situation. SWTOR is somewhere in the middle. We keep the story moving (nobody wants to sit there in a multiplayer game while their party member begs an NPC for more backstory) but we present the options based on the situation and the class or faction.
So in the Flashpoint that Altyrell mentioned, the kill option was on the top because it was an Imperial quest and being darkside is the default for their big faction choices. In the same manner the top option for Smugglers tends to be funny or flirty, Bounty Hunters tend to be all business, Consulars tend to be questioning and wise, etc. Then, of course, the rest of the options enable players to do something totally different with their characters. Want to be a hardcase Smuggler? A wry action hero Bounty Hunter? A charming Inquisitor? Choices are much broader than just good and evil.
Hope that helps!
Daniel Erickson Clears Up Darth Revan Backstory
There has been much discussion on our forums as well as the official forums after Daniel Erickson, lead writer on SW:TOR, discussed Revan’s fate with GameInformer at a press event last month. Erickson has since made a post to clear up some misconceptions of what he said:
Wow. Great thread. It’s fantastic to see all the excitement around the KOTOR lore. There is much that we obviously aren’t revealing but I did want to clear up any misconceptions about what I was talking about in the interview.
- Revan and Malak went into deep space and met the Sith Emperor. They were turned and sent back to prepare the way for the return of the true Sith.
- Being Sith and away from the Emperor’s direct influence neither Revan nor Malak followed orders exactly as they were supposed to. Then, of course, Malak betrayed Revan.
- The Jedi took in Revan and returned him to the light, though as it was not a natural turn for him when he went dark, there was much they couldn’t undo and they decided to remove his memories and hopefully his taint with it. Yes, Revan’s return to the light (and his gender as male) are canon.
- Later Revan returned to deep space to confront what he knew was out there but how much he actually remembered and how clearly he remembered it is still a mystery, as are the events that followed. What we do know is that it took hundreds of years for the Sith to re-emerge as originally planned.
The rest is all speculation and have fun with that. For those of you convinced that somehow we’re going to destroy KOTOR, I ask you to remember that the creative team (including the lead writer and lead designer) that was in charge of KOTOR’s story is on this staff, working on this game. Trust us that our investment in this lore is at least as strong as yours.
Hints Dropped About Level Cap
Recently there has been talk about what the level cap will be in The Old Republic and how relative the characters we’ve seen in the developer walkthrough are to that cap. Well both Sean Dahlberg and Daniel Erickson have given us something to discuss on the matter. On the SWTOR official forums, Sean Dahlberg had this to say:
…
Yes, there is a bigger difference between characters that are Level 3 and 8 than you will see at the “high” levels. That’s because the first few levels are there more to teach you general game mechanics and then we start showing you how “your” character plays. (source)
In addition to that, Daniel Erickson talked about the game in an interview with G4 at GamesCom.
“We have this very long story arc that we can bring things back to. You may have completely forgotten that when you were at level eight, that you killed this guy you didn’t need to kill. His family hasn’t forgotten it and they’re going to find you 20 hours later and hunt you down, and you’re going to have to deal with the ramifications. One of the really fun things there is that you may be a completely different person at that point. You might have decided to give up your crazy ways from when you were a kid. And now at level 40, you’re a pretty good and these guys come to you. You have to decide, ‘Okay, am I going to cover that up? How am I going to handle it?’ These are the things that really make the galaxy feel alive.”
So now we know the game will have at least 40 levels. What the max level will be is up to speculation for now.
