After a week with no updates last week we get two this week, the first of which can be found in the previous post. The second update we are treated to this week is a new developer blog entry by Rebecca Harwick, a writer on the SWTOR team. She writes about the vision for Ord Mantell, fleshing out the world, coming up with quests, and more. Check out her entry at the official site.

A few weeks ago we got a sneak peak at the first official Star Wars: The Old Republic class: the Bounty Hunter. Bioware Community Liason Sean Dahlberg posted an article to his blog giving us an inside scoop into the creation of the Bounty Hunter. The amount of thought and detail that went into the planning of the different SWTOR classes is very impressive and makes me want to see the rest of the classes ASAP! Here is a snippet from Dahlberg’s blog:

“There were a few decisions we made early on. First of all, there would be two distinct factions. This was Star Wars™, not Star Neutral Guy’s Adventure. When there is a war that spans an entire galaxy, nobody can stand on the sidelines. Sure Han is unaffiliated for about six minutes of the movies, but that doesn’t last long, and even if he’s not with the good guys he sure doesn’t like the Empire. The war affects everyone, even if they’d rather it didn’t.”

Visit Dahlberg’s Developer Blog for the rest of this great read.

-RoxStar

Alex Thomas, Senior Environment Artist for SWTOR, has written a new blog entry telling about the creation of Hutta. In it he discusses how they took inspiration from real-life locations to create the never before seen planet in the Star Wars universe, goes through the process of creating a piece of concept art, and getting that into the game world. Head on over to the official site to read the entire entry.

Dallas Dickinson, the Senior Content Producer for SWTOR, has written a blog entry about what it takes to create the largest LucasArts and BioWare game ever made in The Old Republic. He goes into specifics about Writing, Worldbuilding, Scripting, Environmental Art, Combat Design and many other fields. Then the actual process that was taken to create Korriban is given, from the writing team researching details about the planet all the way to the QA team testing it.

Check out the latest blog entry at the official site.

The official SWTOR site has been updated with some new content. First, Sean Dahlberg has written an article on capturing the look and feel of The Old Republic. The article details taking concept art and turning it into in-game models and other processes involved in getting the game world looking right. You can read the full article here.

Next, Mark Howe has posted a blog entry on his progress in working on the game as lead animator. He specifically talks about getting a Star Wars feel on things in the game, as well as the animations for combat. Check it out here.

Senior Writer and Managing Editor Alex Freed talks about how the writing team for the Old Republic must utilize the existing Star Wars mythos, highlighting certain important features that must be considered when crafting the story for the Old Republic.

He stresses the need to build on the movies as the ‘foundation’ and take on elements from the Expanded Universe as ‘building blocks’ all while making sure that it still has that ‘Star Wars feel’. Lastly he touches on respect for the continuity of the story, realizing that the writing team must work within the scope of all the existing Star Wars material and keep it cohesive. Fans everywhere should definitely appreciate the fact that Bioware is taking such a methodical, yet very respectful approach to the story of the Old Republic.

Read the article here.

Rob Chestney, one of BioWare’s senior writers working on The Old Republic and a former CNN producer, took some time out of his hectic schedule to release a blog you can find on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic website. In it he discusses his journey from a gamer to a BioWare employee and finally to his current post on the SW:TOR development team.

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