Various Articles

[Xeevo]

More light reading re: classes

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20091203_002

[Orix]

I like the Game Informer video, and Darth Hater's collection of info.

Most of them are pretty redundant, once you've read a few of them, you've pretty much read them all. Kotaku's article is down right tosh, they have no idea what they're talking about, which is disappointing, as it's my main source of gaming news.

[Xeevo]

My current mission is to find any screenshot, soundbite or rumour, that eludes to playable races. Models are in, companions, but nothing except humans are playable at the mo. Will be dead dissapointed if they decide aliens will be npc and companion only - but it's not beyond the realm of possibility - and George Lucas apparantly vetod the idea of a wookie as the central character for a game (think it was Force Unleashed) based on the notion that there is less room for emotional storytelling with a seven foot tall growling carpet.

I liked the video also. Did you notice the stuff about companions being named? I think it's going to be one of those "suspend disbelief" situations after all - where we all have Bob the Mighty running around with us.

[Orix]

I missed that bit about naming companions! But that is rather cool, I liked naming the Mabari War Hound in Dragon Age, so maybe it applies to some companions instead of all? I imagine creatures and droids would be the first to get names. Names for more sentient companions may act as nicknames or something.

A piece of curious info from the Smuggler Class Trees thing on Darth Hater's site:

Dover: <snip> at the end of the presentation you said, “Players should be able to quickly get into the role that they want to get into.” Did that comment have to do with the possibility of switching between paths? <snip>

Jake Neri: Without going into a ton of detail on that, because that system is still in development, a key goal is that once you reach a certain level and you enabled those certain paths, or you experienced whatever it takes to enable those paths, you can go in between them quickly. That is the heart of what we’re saying. You can’t do everything all at once, you need to earn some of these things, but once you have done that and you are in a situation where “hey, I need this type of a gameplay/class build,” you’ll be able to go into that quickly.

So, if you want to be a supportive group member as, say a Jedi Consular, but can't decide between crowd control or healing, it's basically saying you can switch to one or the other, as long as you've unlocked them both.

Very interesting... I imgained that the two different paths would be due to force alignment, and therefore one tree would be dark, and one would be light aligned. But with the Smuggler's two different trees neither seems more lighter/darker to the other.

The ability to respec between them may be an end game thing, or may carry a penalty/cost. I can't iamgine you'll be able to swap willy nilly between them while still progressing through the trees. Guess we'll have to wait and see!

As for races, any race that's a regular sized humanoid species could be in. My current suspects are Ithorian, Mon Calamari, Torgruta, Kel'Dor, Nautolan and Twi'lek.

But Gran, Trandoshan, Neimoidian, Rakata, Bith, , Kaleesh, Cathar, Rodian, Gand, Kubindi, Sullustan, Chagrian, Arcona, Wookiees and various Droids have turned up in concept art, screenshots, forum avatars and the webcomic. Some species that have turned up (Chevin, Gamorreans, Dashade, Geonosian, Hutt, Kitonaks, Ortolan) are probabaly less likely to make it as playable species due to their physique and the amount of extra modelling it would take to armor/clothe them all for every/most classes, however many of these are probabaly quest-givers, NPCs or companions.

[Xeevo]

I missed that bit about the respec quickly idea - makes a lot of sense. More versatility in that regard not a bad thing - I don't want to be in a situation where I have thursday nights to play and I can't do anything because I can't find the right classes. That's a legacy issue from early mmos that I think should be dead by now.

May bad with the "named characters". What I meant was - the characters will be unique individuals who are locked into a story arc of their own - and come with their names attached! The opposite of what you mentioned above, I guess haha. But nevermind, I can live with it.

Taking a wild guess here - but I reckon you wont be able to be an alien. They've confirmed that each player character (each class) will be voiced. Which narrows the list of aliens that could concievably speak using that "class voice". There could be subtle variations - but think of the extra dialogue recording required if you include "wookie" as a player race? Or even Quarran? Or Kel-Dor? The former has a slobbery fish voice, the later wears a gas mask.

I could be wrong but I reckon it's a distinct possibility that players will human only (or very human-like races - Zabrak, for instance). It's also consistant with the original KOTOR games.

[Ealona]

Hands on at IGN
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/105/1051649p1.html

[Orix]

Taking a wild guess here - but I reckon you wont be able to be an alien. They've confirmed that each player character (each class) will be voiced. Which narrows the list of aliens that could concievably speak using that "class voice". There could be subtle variations - but think of the extra dialogue recording required if you include "wookie" as a player race? Or even Quarran? Or Kel-Dor? The former has a slobbery fish voice, the later wears a gas mask.

I could be wrong but I reckon it's a distinct possibility that players will human only (or very human-like races - Zabrak, for instance). It's also consistant with the original KOTOR games.

Good point about the voicework, agreed that some species could possibly be ruled out on that basis, although Kel'Dor might not be one of them, as Plo Koon on the Clone Wars cartoons has a fairly regular sounding voice.

Makes me wonder whether they'll add a filter of some sort to the recorded voices to make them sound more alien.

Also, perhaps they'll pull the same trick with playable alien characters with their own language (such as Wookiees, or species, like Rodians, speaking in Huttese) and just have them with standard phrase recordings, with different tones/moods attached to them like they did in KOTOR...

I personally hope that humans are not the only species, I'm also sure that developers have stated that other playable species are in.

[Olnando]

I wouldn't worry, of course there will be a selection of races to choose from although I assume I'm gonna be slightly disappointed that there won't be enough for my liking....I want to be a Taung!

[ki'babas]

Well, the setting is right unlike with SWG when they were extinct.
Had to look at the wookiepedia for this one I have to admit, didn't remember this original Mandalore species from the cartoons, seems it is about time to revisit them:D

[Xeevo]

Learned something new! They look cool.

[Orix]

Nothing incredibly amazing today. A small showcase of character customization is intriguing, but thats about it.

Has anyone been reading "The Threat of Peace" webcomic? I find it a little hard to follow all the characters, and some of the frames are just downright confusing, but ti looks like it's finally going places in terms of story.

[Orix]

There's quite an interesting speculation article on Darth Hater about level caps and integration of story and skill:
http://darthhater.com/2010/01/28/getting-to-the-core-of-a-class/#more-5606

[Kojack]

There are some very nice short stories on the timeline which are starting to give hints on the story to come and people you 'might' come across. Pop over to the site and take a look if your not keeping up with them people!