news: Star Wars: The Old Republic E3 Demo Preview

[True_Avery]

Jeff and I were the first to see this Demo, and the only ones who were able to see the Demo twice. Here is what we saw, as this was a watch only Demo:

 

OLD REPUBLIC DEMO

 

The Demo started off with the devs telling us about the flexibility of time in the Old Republic, and how the 300 year gap allowed both Bioware and Lucasarts to fill in the gaps of history and begin to fully imagine the Star Wars timeline.

 

After a brief description of the time frame, we were shown the "Sacking of Coruscant" video in HD. After the video it was explain to us that they wanted a similar feeling of action, story, and so on all working at once to create a masterpiece to behold. As they put it, "Choice drives Story, Story drives Action."

 

After this, we moved onto the in-game demo:

 

BOUNTY HUNTER

This was the first class we were shown, and it has been confirmed that this class starts on Hutta, a planet stolen by the Hutts and basically claimed as their home planet.

 

The main quest we were on at the moment was the "Great Hunt", a hunting competition held by the Mandalorians to find the best hunters in the galaxy.

 

To start this quest off, we went into the first ever live showing of the dialogue system:

 

DIALOGUE:

Welcome to Mass Effect multiplayer.

 

Went up to an NPC and instead of the text box appearing, a mini cinematic appeared of us talking to them Mass Effect/KOTOR style. There was a man in charge, his female assistant, and an alien hunter on the side. The three of them moved, talked, and had full body/facial expressions while speaking. After a few lines were thrown back and forth between them and to us, we had a chance to talk.

 

What would happen to appear?

 

A Mass Effect dialogue wheel. We chose an option and low and behold, our character was fully voiced (by the wonderful Steven Blum, well known for his portrayal of characters like Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop) with his own expressions and so on. This continued for a few more lines before we were sent off to do our duty.

 

Now, the system is, as they say, indeed fully voiced. There are optional subtitles as well. As was stated by the devs, both male and female characters have the choice between multiple voice actors to portray their character so that everyone does not sound the same.

 

GRAPHICS

We ran outside of our base to see Hutta in all glory. It was about now that the Stylized realism was explained, and that they were going for a unique, almost concept art feel which was portrayed amazingly well. It was indeed like being in a 3d painting and the colors, shapes, and so on were all easy on the eyes.

 

COMBAT:

Outside, we saw the massive palace of the local Hutt lord and his many cronies littering the area. So, obviously, we attacked them.

 

I will expand upon this further down, but the combat does not often have you fighting 1 person at a time. Like KOTOR, you often fight multiple enemies at once to portray you as an above the norm type of character, or "Hero" as they put it.

 

We started off by fighting groups of 3, all of which had blasters. We ran close, then uploaded our blaster Pistol. Now, what really sold the guns were the amazing sounds provided by LucasArts, and when he fired he would fire a small volley of shots to the person, often knocking them down or causing them to flinch in pain. As was shown, the Bounty Hunter was capable of firing his gun while moving in any direction.

 

We then tested out some of his gadgets. The hunter fired a wrist mounted rocket at the thugs, which exploded and knocked the target on his back and did quite a bit of damage. After a few more shots we ran up and unloaded a flamethrower stream on their puny bodies. The stream worked upon a counter bar that quickly extinguished. As the flames hit them, they went up in flames and tried to put themselves out while also trying to attack you.

 

We then backed up and unloaded on them. Two of them died pretty quickly and the last tried to find cover. He died pretty quickly with a rocket to the face.

 

We then posed, then the screen went black. Next, Smuggler:

 

SMUGGLER

This was an E3 reveal, but as they said a very poorly kept secret.

 

We went right into combat with the Smuggler. He was equipped with a pistol and we killed guy right off the bat. The Dev noted that the Smuggler was capable of firing behind his back while running, shooting around corners, from cover, and so on. Generally, they wanted to base the class off of the Coward like combat of Han Solo. Since the class itself is not heavily armored and limited in range, they chose this style to balance the odds against heavier opponents by basically being underhanded as hell.

 

How underhanded?

 

The smugger starts out on Ord Mantel in the Demo.

 

The Smuggler is capable of using cover. How this works is that when you walk up to certain objects like corners, trees, boxes, and so on a little green silhouette will appear. You click on this silhouette and he will take the position, hiding by either crouching or standing depending and firing at his opponent. This system was pretty fluid in the Alpha version we watched.

 

Not much else was particularly said about this class till the end when Melee moves were confirmed. The Smuggler ran up to a weakened thug, and then magic happened. He kicked in square in the groin, then shot him in the head to finish him. Yep, you read that correctly.

 

After this, the Smuggler screen went black as the Smuggler waves.

 

Now onto Sith:

 

SITH, FLASH POINTS, AND CO-OP:

This next demo was based upon many things happening at once.

 

The main char, now a moderately level Sith, is with another player character Bounty Hunter. We walked up to a Captain to ask him a few questions, as we have been told that he refused to follow orders to find a Jedi in his sector.

 

The two walked up to him, and the conversation mini-scene began. As with the first conversation, we talked to multiple people on the bridge at once and every single one of them was voice acted with movement and expressions. The Sith questioned him on the situation, and then something interesting happened:

 

DIALOGUE:

SWTOR is the first RPG to allow co-op/multi-player conversations. The Sith was the character to talk to the Captain, but both the Sith and Bounty Hunter were given the options to talk one at a time. The Sith asked a question, the Captain responded, and then the Bounty Hunter commented on the situation.

 

For most Press, they were allowed to choose only one of the outcomes. One outcome is that we let the Captain live, and the other was to let him Die. Jeff and I were allowed to see both, so here is what happened:

 

KILL THE CAPTAIN:

In this sequence, Bounty Hunter or the Sith executes the Captain. If the Sith, he pulls his sabre out and cuts him down. If the Bounty Hunter, he hits him to his knees and shoots him in the head, the Captain off camera. This was interesting, as we both assumed the decision was going to be based off of the Sith as he was the one to initiate conversation.

 

We then proclaimed our dominance. The crew bowed to our will, and a nearby droid confirmed that, by Sith law, we were now captain and owners of this vessel.

 

We then jumped to hyperspace only to be attacked by a Republic transport. Boarding parties came towards the ship and the two of us told the crew we would take care of it.

 

The vessel we are on is massive. About the size of the ravager, expect with larger halls and so on. We ran to the halls and boarding pods smashed through the walls and Republic Troops piled out.

 

The game then became very similar to BattleFront, as there were maybe 10 or more people attacking the two of them at once. The Sith used a Force ability to quickly force jump right into the group and do an AOE lightning attack. We then got to see some lightsabre combat.

 

The attack bars gave multiple abilities of attack. Regular attack just had him casually fighting the troopers with his sabre, but using some abilities had him either attacking much faster with quick slices, or strong and slow attacks. The combat was similar to KOTOR's, but with a looser, almost Battlefront feel to it.

 

At the end of every Trooper's life, the Sith would perform an execution. This usually involved stabbing the trooper through the chest in some elaborate manner. Troopers would pull out a sword when confronted with Melee and would parry and attack, but in the end were no match.

 

What is interesting to note, however, is that while sword fighting the character would throw his sword to the side or behind him to deflect blaster bolt fire back or away from him. This gave a pretty fluid look to combat similar to that of KOTOR, but not as stiff.

 

The Bounty Hunter character was also fighting, firing rockets and blaster bolts into the groups. One of the higher level abilities we saw was the Bounty Hunter lifting off with the Jetpack and unleashing hell upon a few groups, rapidly firing blaster bolts before firing some wrist rockets their way.

 

After a few groups of this, we made our way to the Engine room which was heavily, heavily detailed with a full engine working above us. We jumped down and took out a Padawan and some troops before a full Jedi ran through the shielding and took us on. The sith deflected blaster bolts as the Jedi attacked and we fought back. After the Bounty Hunter cleaned up the troopers, he moved onto the Jedi. We then did combo moves like picking up Jedi with a Force Grip, then having the Bounty Hunter fire and wrist rocket him. The impact broke the Force Grip, but the combination did a massive amount of damage.

 

After the Jedi died, the dev took his sabre, equipped duel sabres, then the Demo was over.

 

SPARED THE CAPTAIN:

There is some overlap, but also some differences with this one. We let the captain live, who turned out to share your dislike of his superior officer and claimed that finding the Jedi was a waste of valuable resources he was saving for bigger attacks. He turned out to be reasonable, and we jumped to hyperspace before falling out and being attacked by the Transport. This time the Captain informed us of an advanced boarding party in the hanger, and the two of us headed out to clean them up. We made an ally with the Captain and crew, and gained a lightside point. Killing him gave a darkside.

 

After a few groups of boarding parties like above, we jumped into the docking bay where a Republic landing ship had arrived. We killed a Jedi Padawan at the door which was a fight that ended fairly quickly. We took out a few troops, then the ship got up and began firing upon them. The Bounty Hunter and Sith had to take cover as it fired, unloaded some Troopers and a Jedi Knight, then zoomed off.

 

The bounty hunter dev focused fire on the troopers as we charged the Jedi. After a fairly lengthy fight, we managed to take him down with a force choke, a few lightsabre exchanges, then a lightsabre stab to the gut, killing him.

 

As with above, the dev equipped the other sabre and the screen went black.

 

This confirmed looting, duel sabres, and gave a glimpse of combat from various classes.

 

MUSIC:

I noticed the music in the game was the music from K1, so expect some KOTOR/possibly TSL music to appear in the game.

 

GLITCHES:

We noticed a few glitches in the Alpha. Some minor lag in some spots, people standing up but not moving after being killed, and so on. Minor stuff, and nothing to be concerned about. We did have the game crash on us when jumping jumping to hyperdrive, but that was quickly reset and fixed for us.

 

Gaming Experience

The Flash Point scene was a private, closed off area for only you and someone you brought along from the looks of it. no other players, so it is safe to assume this was a single player area. We saw some people on Hutta, but they were just going about their normal business.

 

As the devs told us, the majority of the game can be done without a single bit of help from another player. They said that the main appeal of MMOS is the experience single player with the option of being with other players. They confirmed that names, chat, and so on could all be turned off or ignored if you really, really wanted absolutely nothing to do with other people.

 

Names:

Naming filters have been confirmed. No numbers, special characters, or Star Wars names. They emphasized the strictness of this system, as they seemed to agree on the assumption it could be immersion, if not game breaking.

 

FINAL CONFIRMATIONS:

PVP? Yes.

Jumping? Yes.

Looting? Yes.

Crafting? Yes.

Guilds? Yes.

Auction Houses? Yes.

Trading? Yes.

FINAL IMPRESSION:

Words cannot fully describe what the demo was like, but I think it was damn good and is now fully on my radar. Hope this answered some questions, and feel free to ask a few and I'll see if I can answer them. Try to keep them relevant to this article however, as I only know what I saw in the Demo.

 

via StarWarsMMO.net

[Saenjaina]

That was a really good read! Great job. Has me longing so much for this game.

 

Uhm, just really have no clue about what class I should play.

[jrrtoken]

Great preview, guys.

 

I'm not too fond of a dialogue system a la Mass Effect, though. Are the options fleshd-out sentences, or more of the general phrases and feelings in ME? Either way, now that Steve Blum is the voice of the Bounty Hunter, I find solace in the fact that I'll feel even more badass when I play as that class.

 

Still, the choices seem like pure binary; e.g. kill/help. This isn't exactly creative, as a situation will either end up in combat, or on the other hand, it won't. Hopefully, other decisions in the game are more morally ambiguous and creative, rather than the simple repeat of the standard options seen above.

[Miltiades]

Great post, Avery. I'm glad that everyone seems to agree combat is fluid and fun. I had my doubts about that, but it seems to be done right.

 

Question: Everyone also seems to agree the artistic style they took looks very good. Not everyone agrees with how the faces look, or the characters as a whole. They don't have the quality of the world that surrounds them, or just aren't done very good. It seemed to bother at least a few previewers. Any impressions of that?

[Jeff]

I'm not too fond of a dialogue system a la Mass Effect, though. Are the options fleshd-out sentences, or more of the general phrases and feelings in ME?

They were straight out of Mass Effect. General statements but the words out of your mouth were completely different.

[Hallucination]

Okay, you mentioned the combat being visually like Kotor, does it still have the whole 'I just sliced you in half but you can still run a marathon' thing to it, or are killing blows saved for only when you actually kill someone?

 

Also, if they showed you the UI, how did it look?

[Alkonium]

Two questions:

1. What side is the smuggler on?

2. Was the music similar to BioWare's videos? (a combination of John Williams' and Mark Griskey's Star Wars work)

[Hallucination]

Judging from the fact they start on a Republic world and that they have a galactic timeline saying that the Republic was helped by the smugglers, they're probably Republic.

[Alkonium]

Judging from the fact they start on a Republic world and that they have a galactic timeline saying that the Republic was helped by the smugglers, they're probably Republic.

 

That's what I've been assuming, I just want to be sure.

[Jeff]

Also, if they showed you the UI, how did it look?

They did have the UI, and in our interview with Tom Nichols he confirmed it was the final UI, and it will be customizable. If you're familiar with WoW's UI, it had the same kind of action bar with buttons mapped from 1 to =. The player portrait was actually at the bottom by the action bar, so all of the UI elements were at the bottom of the screen.

[Nedak]

I'm not a fan of the screenshots of the human models, did you see any human models that looked more realistic and less TF2ish than the screenshot models?

[True_Avery]

Okay, you mentioned the combat being visually like Kotor, does it still have the whole 'I just sliced you in half but you can still run a marathon' thing to it, or are killing blows saved for only when you actually kill someone?

In the first demo we saw some finishers hit before they died, but they told us that was a bug. Second demo through we saw the finishers hit at the end of their life, so its pretty solid when it works.

 

Also, if they showed you the UI, how did it look?

One of the better looking UI's I've seen. I drew an MS paint pic of it, and I'll post a shopped version later.

 

Two questions:

1. What side is the smuggler on?

Republic.

 

2. Was the music similar to BioWare's videos? (a combination of John Williams' and Mark Griskey's Star Wars work)

I do not recognize the TSL music, but I did hear John Williams and some Kotor music.

 

I'm not a fan of the screenshots of the human models, did you see any human models that looked more realistic and less TF2ish than the screenshot models?

The alien models we saw were fantastic. The humans vary in TF2ness, but overall what you see is what you get. The shadows, lighting, etc on the faces were better in the video, however, so they aren't that bad to look at.

 

EDIT:

 

Here is a crude mock-up of the UI:

 

Enjoy.

[JediAthos]

Nice post Avery..definitely sounds like Bioware is on to something imo. I haven't played Mass Effect, but I may have to pick it up to get an idea about some of the things you were describing.

[urluckyday]

Great work Avery...unfortunately I'll still have to wait 'til it comes out and pricing is released to even think about getting this game...

[Nedak]

thank you for all your great work

[True_Avery]

I can't believe I forgot to mention this:

 

Your character, male and female, will have multiple voice actor options for you to choose from. Steven Blum is one of the male options, but not the only one. When asked if when playing as an alien race if we would get an actor with an alien language, we were told "no comment", so that is up in the air.

 

Nice post Avery..definitely sounds like Bioware is on to something imo. I haven't played Mass Effect, but I may have to pick it up to get an idea about some of the things you were describing.

Yeah, like I said the game looked very much like a multiplayer Mass Effect. That is the best way I can put it, so at least give the game a try out or watch some videos to get an idea of what that means.

 

Great work Avery...unfortunately I'll still have to wait 'til it comes out and pricing is released to even think about getting this game...

Yes, price was something they would not comment on.

 

I'm not too fond of a dialogue system a la Mass Effect, though. Are the options fleshd-out sentences, or more of the general phrases and feelings in ME?

As Jeff said, almost straight out of Mass Effect. However, both Mass Effect 2 and SWTOR options are more specific in their meaning from what I saw so I think Bioware learned their lesson on that one.

 

Either way, now that Steve Blum is the voice of the Bounty Hunter, I find solace in the fact that I'll feel even more badass when I play as that class.

Yep, and he was in top form as well. Hopefully the other character voice actors are up to the same level of quality as what we saw.

 

Still, the choices seem like pure binary; e.g. kill/help. This isn't exactly creative, as a situation will either end up in combat, or on the other hand, it won't. Hopefully, other decisions in the game are more morally ambiguous and creative, rather than the simple repeat of the standard options seen above.

Yeah, I dunno. The kill/help thing is very Kotorish. However, killing or not killing the captain heralded combat at both turns, and I'd take a guess that not killing someone or helping someone would give experience like it did in KOTOR.

 

This situation, however, was called a Flash Point situation. As the Devs described it, Flash Points happen at very important parts of the story and force you to make a permanent choice. Seeing as they are already spreading their resources a little thin, it isn't surprising that this is a black/white choice. Choices in non-flash point missions are still unknown. This was also a Sith, and their philosophy is about as black and white as the Jedi's so it makes a little sense story wise.

[Rinku]

Great work Avery...unfortunately I'll still have to wait 'til it comes out and pricing is released to even think about getting this game...

 

Agreed...Also I am guessing that they would not comment if this was going to come out for Operating systems (other than windows, ie mac)

[Lord of Hunger]

Wow...this sounds awesome! True_Avery, I think your report disproves a lot of what the nay-sayers have been conjecturing from the fact that this is an MMO, not knowing that this being an MMO is the most significant revolution in Star Wars storyline structure since it takes away the situation of set character with minimal customization that saves the galaxy from the evil Overlord to your personal saga. This is BIG.

 

Having full voiced dialog for one's character, and multiple voice actors sounds good, I'm just worried about how much of a hell it's going to be to get everyone together again for VOs if they do expansions (I hope they do). Also, I have a feeling that user generated content (if that's even possible) will be very limited.

 

The combat system sounds excellent. The more cool combat moves the better.

 

Music from K1? **** yeah! A little TSL would be nice, but it'd have to be only certain tracks since TSL's soundtrack is a bit bland in comparison to K1's.

 

If they leave out monthly fees, I'll leap onto the TOR bandwagon the first chance I get.

[WraithPrince]

What do people got against TSL's music? I liked alot of it because it was very dark, it would be perfect for the sith worlds like korriban and maybe a bit on the more lava/ volcanic area's of Ord Mantell.

[Miltiades]

What do people got against TSL's music? I liked alot of it because it was very dark, it would be perfect for the sith worlds like korriban and maybe a bit on the more lava/ volcanic area's of Ord Mantell.

TSL's soundtrack owns K1's.

[Saenjaina]

 

If they leave out monthly fees, I'll leap onto the TOR bandwagon the first chance I get.

 

Are you really expecting that?

 

Also, SWG offered much of what you are initially talking about.

[Jeff]

If they leave out monthly fees, I'll leap onto the TOR bandwagon the first chance I get.

They have already said that pricing will be whatever the current standard for MMOs is at the time of release, which will definitely not be free.

[Hallucination]

Don't be silly, everyone knows that voice actors and game developers can photosynthesise, they don't need money!

 

Thanks for the info on the demo and all that other cool stuff. =)

 

But now I have to plan a UI for myself. >_>

[Tommycat]

Don't be silly, everyone knows that voice actors and game developers can photosynthesise, they don't need money!

I thought they were like mushrooms. kept in the dark and fed a lot of sh... manure...

[Jae Onasi]

I thought they were like mushrooms. kept in the dark and fed a lot of sh... manure...

Naw, that's only Emperor Devon.