Well, it appears that gaming’s most open secret is finally confirmed proper-like. Bioware KOTOR (+300 years) MMO, The Old Republic, has been announced today. There’s plenty more screens on the site and I’ll lob the press release beneath the cut, but this is really the sort of thing which makes me think creating an RPS code where if we print rumours and use a certain code word (”Tartan”) it means we know this rumour is totally true and you shouldn’t even consider any other possibilities. Less cynically, they’ll be more theorising around it in the next few days – and I suspect more than a little in the comments thread. Until then, examine the press release or devour all the info on their site to feed your own theories.
LUCASARTS AND BIOWARE REVEAL STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC
OCTOBER 21, SAN FRANCISCO – LucasArts and BioWare™, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), today announced the development of Star Wars®: The Old Republic™, a story-driven massively multiplayer online PC game set in the timeframe of the Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™ franchise. Star Wars: The Old Republic, being developed and published by BioWare and LucasArts, represents an innovative approach to interactive entertainment, featuring immersive storytelling, dynamic combat and intelligent companion characters.In Star Wars: The Old Republic, players will explore an age thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader when war between the Old Republic and the Sith Empire divides the galaxy. Players can choose to play as Jedi, Sith, or a variety of other classic Star Wars roles, defining their personal story and determining their path down the light or dark side of the Force. Along the way, players will befriend courageous companions who will fight at their side or possibly betray them, based on the players’ actions. Players can also choose to team up with friends to battle enemies and overcome incredible challenges using dynamic Star Wars combat.
“Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is the most critically acclaimed Star Wars game in LucasArts history and a preeminent example of our company’s interactive storytelling heritage,” said Darrell Rodriguez, President of LucasArts. “For a long time, we’ve wanted to return to the franchise in a grand way, and we felt that the best setting for it was an online world that would allow millions of people to participate in the experience together. We knew that the developer capable of working with us to deliver an engrossing story with a fully-realized online world was BioWare.”
“Traditionally, massively multiplayer online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder and General Manager/CEO of BioWare and General Manager/Vice President of Electronic Arts Inc., “In Star Wars: The Old Republic, we’re fusing BioWare’s heritage of critically-acclaimed storytelling with the amazing pedigree of Lucasfilm and LucasArts, and adding a brand-new fourth pillar to the equation – story. At the same time, we will still deliver all the fun features and activities that fans have come to expect in a triple-A massively multiplayer online game. To top it all off, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set in a very exciting, dynamic period in the Star Wars universe.”
Added Dr. Greg Zeschuk, Co-Founder and Vice President Development Operations, BioWare and Vice President, Electronic Arts Inc., “Star Wars: The Old Republic is set roughly 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic, a timeframe that is completely unexplored in the lore. BioWare has been able to add to the Star Wars history in developing the game’s story and has created an overarching narrative that players can enjoy, regardless of their play style. Our goal is to offer players an emotionally rewarding experience that combines the traditional elements of MMO gameplay with innovations in story and character development.”
Additional details on Star Wars: The Old Republic features, gameplay and release date will be announced at a later time. For more information about Star Wars: The Old Republic and to sign up for future product updates, please visit www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com.
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argh no edit…
I agree with your last point
“What we need to do is tie that mechanic of wanting to do some simple repetitive task for some virtual bar of gold into finding a cure for cancer or something. Like that image tag guessing game did.”
Or the folding@home stuff – turning peoples hobby (making their computers go faster), into a competative sport whilst simultaineously helping medical research (in theory).
@mandrill
Actually, SW:TOR would be pronounced ‘Sootor’ , because that ‘W’ is, after all, a double u sound (think Welsh like ‘cwm’) :)
Does any one else feel dirty when they said “Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™ franchise”
I feel monetised in a bad way.
Well, I’m going to be that bad guy here and say I’m extremely excited. I love the Old Republic setting, for one, and Bioware has an awesome track record.
I liked the fleshed out EU, it’s much better than evil dude’s committing evil for no other purpose than to be dicks. Moral relativism gets tedious, but I’d rather suffer wades of that, than;
Joe Schmo: Why’d you blow up my planet!?
Sith: ’cause we are teh sith!1! gimme more monies!! grr!
In any case, as long as they have a reason for 100 Jedi’s running around I’m one foot on board.
@teo a while back
You mention the contrast between scripted and more dynamic narratives and bring up Dwarf Fortress as an example. Yes, its a good example, but my problem is that it the only example I can think of where an evolving narrative has truly worked. I know some people claimed to get that feeling from the free form bits of Oblivion, but I’m afraid I just didn’t feel it.
I feel one way Dwarf Fortress managed to achieve this was by making everything yours, the world, the dwarves, the fortress, the history. It also forces you forward, and encourages risk taking and possible failure. When I flooded a bit of my fortress I didn’t just shrug and re-load but fought to save it. And similarly when an invasion triggered a spiral of depression I ended up laughing as my woodcutter broke into a party in the main hall and killed everyone there. The fact that it was MY main hall, MY Woodcutter and in a world which would forever more be mine it felt important. I never connected with Oblivion in the same way.
I really love some of the major stories that come out of Eve, and for that reason it will be my favourite game I’ll never play. The mechanics don’t appeal to me, and the grunt-work that I’d inevitably end up involved in doesn’t interest, but there is certainly an inspiration there.
However ultimately I disagree that scripted narrative does not belong in games. While the sheer complexity of Dwarf Fortress means that the randomiser can actually produce an interesting history (especially with some of the more recent changes) it will never quite capture some of the intricacies a more scripted narrative can provide. Any attempts at analogy, symbolism, or to a lesser extent foreshadowing, are going to be extraordinarily difficult to achieve in a dynamic manner. I realise that games aren’t books, and don’t have to follow the same rules, but just because they don’t have to, doesn’t necessarily mean they shouldn’t. However this comes from someone who is still a great fan of the old graphic adventure, a genre which embodies game mechanic at the service of pre-scripted narrative more than any other. (Although I actually do enjoy the game mechanic as well, at least in a well designed adventure. Although they did suffer the growth of the Internet, especially if Alt-Tab works)
I agree that it’s a pity that other developers don’t look at the Eve model of ongoing persistence, but at the same time one of the reasons I’ve never really given it much of a look myself is because it is just one great big improv playpen, and in such affairs in order to be truly influential the necessary personal investment firmly crosses the line of obsession in my experience. Sure it would be great to lead a clan to stunning success and weave tales of personal glory and ‘I was there’ camaraderie into a unique narrative that other MMO games simply can’t achieve, but the time sink is unhealthy.
DF is great on many levels. One important thing that it does is that it forsakes graphics for gameplay. The gameplay in most modern games is limited by presentation standards. For example, you cannot have fully destructible scenery in a shooter because you simply cannot visualize it. You can only have scripted conversations and stories because you can’t generate speech procedurally.
Look at Spore. One of the biggest technical challenges in that game was the procedural animation. They did a good job, but there’s so much more that could’ve been done if your creature didn’t have to be an animated 3D model.
I played Crysis maxed out. I didn’t enjoy it more than I do Half-Life on my 10th play through. Graphics don’t matter to me, I think that they should be subordinate to gameplay. Whatever I’m seeing on the screen is never real. However real it looks I still have to use my imagination.
When I mentioned non-scripted narrative I didn’t mean the backstory of your DF world. Of course that isn’t going to be as interesting as a story written by a writer. With non-scripted narrative I mean stories that emerge as you play the game and with scripted narrative I mean something written by a writer (just so we’re on the same page! I’m sure you got it anyway :p)
What do I mean with scripted narrative not belonging in games? Well, I think that games can have story to give context to gameplay but games aren’t about story and no one has figured out how to tell stories in games. Until someone does, I don’t think they belong.
If you look at games and then gradually introduce story you realize how absurd it is. Games are about gameplay, about playing the game. If you look at a really simple game, say Tetris, then the gameplay is all there is. It can be fun and it contains the fundamentals of what a game is. If the gameplay isn’t fun in a game then it is, in my opinion, a bad game. A lot of games have forgotten that. Designing fun gameplay is incredibly hard and not many people know how to.
Adding a story to Tetris is absurd, I’m sure you would agree. It’s just a game, like table tennis. Adding a story to a table tennis match would be equally absurd. Now, take something like an FPS. It’s also a game and it should be about gameplay. The fundamental interaction is the point of the software. Running around shooting dudes is a game just like Tetris is, but then games stick movies in between levels. To me it’s just as absurd as sticking movies in between Tetris levels, table tennis sets, or chapters in a book.
To me it just makes no sense to stick movies and books in the middle of games, which is just what games do all the time. Games telling stories today isn’t games telling stories it’s books and movies interrupting games to tell stories. Some games do tell stories though, but not the ones we’re used to.
Here’s one:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=21845.0
If you’ve played an MMO then I’m sure that you have lots of stories of stuff that just happened. If you’ve raided you will remember stories from that. If you’ve played a competitive game you will have stories from matches you played. Even in something ’story driven’ like Deus Ex the interesting stories are the ones of how you chose to infiltrate the NSF base and not the fact that you did.
Games are about interactivity and they tell their own stories that way. Not scripted stories.
And about gameplay… most games seem to have forgotten what it is. Some games are fun just on the strength of their gameplay, the Civilization series for example, or Quake 3. Blizzard’s games are also good examples. What they do is that they tweak the gameplay until it is fun! Just having a bunch of “wouldn’t it be cool if”-ideas doesn’t make for fun gameplay. Too many games are only enjoyable until the novelty wears off.
When developers do find fun gameplay the results are incredible. Look at CoD4, people are playing it like crazy, because they actually made a game that’s fun to play on a fundamental level, and that doesn’t get old. That’s good gameplay.
Now that’s what I call a blanket statement. Story doesn’t belong in books either, because books are about educating the reader.
Or maybe, just maybe, there are multiple *types* of books, and similarly, multiple *types* of games. No, story doesn’t belong in Tetris or Pong. But Fallout would feel pretty shallow without a story. So would KOTOR, and for that matter, Half-life, Alpha Centauri and many many other games. All these games have scripted stories, and are all the better for it. Just because it’s a game doesn’t mean that static pre-generated content is banned. A game can be all sorts of things. Half the “off-line” games we played with our friends as kids had fairly intricate stories too. Surely there’s room for both types within the term “games”. Surely we can have both procedural/dynamic games where everything happens on the fly, and games that someone have actually designed to offer a specific experience, and tell a specific story.
I’ve seen plenty of examples of the latter, and a few that successfully pulled off the former as well. So why shouldn’t *both* “belong in games”?
Tell me a scripted narrative in a game that wasn’t told through books or movies
Portal maybe, but that’s an exceptional game
I liked the story in KotOR, but if I were to reason with the principles I established then it’s a bad game. The gameplay is bad, it really is. The UI is horrible.
Presumably the story would’ve been presented better in a different medium because KotOR doesn’t take advantage over the fact that it’s a game. Being Revan makes you feel like a badass (in theory at least) but that’s the gameplay taking advantage of the story and no the other way around
Couldn’t the same question be applied to any medium though? I mean I can’t see anyone suggesting that there shouldn’t be a film because there’s a book with a similar plot. Perhaps I’m missing your point.
But in answer to your question I’d argue that Photopia was a heavily scripted game which would not have had the same impact in a non-interactive medium. The changing first person narrative forced you to look at the situation through a number of different peoples eyes, and the relationship was strengthened through the interactive element. Furthermore, the short length of game, and non-linear nature of the story made a replay highly profitable. Where this differed from a film such as memento, is that the constrained interactivity gave the player a sense of helplessness should they try to avoid the inevitable.
And I disagree that the gameplay in KotOR was terrible, but I’m not sure how that relates to your argument. If the story weren’t scripted this wouldn’t result in the gameplay suddenly improving, and without a significant ammount of work, it would result in an inferior narrative experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I think a smoother intergration of gameplay and story will almost always be a Good Thing(TM), however I disagree that a complete movement away from scripted narrative is the way to achieve this. I also think that to have cohesive and meaningful stories arrise out of gameplay alone is a vastly more difficult task that you seem to be implying.
The story makes the game for me, unless the gameplay is top notch. Like Peggle and such. A strong score in one field makes up for a potentially failing other.
Tetris is perfect as is, so it really doesn’t need a story.
Kotor, I’d agree needs work, but story is great so I enjoy the game greatly. More so with 2.
I would hesitate to recommend DMC to anyone, because while I think it’s fun, I think Dante is an unlikable douche.
“I mean I can’t see anyone suggesting that there shouldn’t be a film because there’s a book with a similar plot. Perhaps I’m missing your point.” I suppose that’s a fair point. But a book would tell it in a way that’s different from a movie. I don’t feel that games really do. Whenever there’s storytelling the game part tends to go out the window. I don’t want long cutscenes in a game because I want to play the game not watch the movie of the game!
“And I disagree that the gameplay in KotOR was terrible, but I’m not sure how that relates to your argument. If the story weren’t scripted this wouldn’t result in the gameplay suddenly improving, and without a significant ammount of work, it would result in an inferior narrative experience.”
Yes it would! But why is it a game? If the game part of the game is rubbish then it shouldn’t be a game. Some people love JRPGs even though they admit that they only play the game for the story. Why are they playing a game then? If you want good stories games aren’t the place to get them
Of course the narrative experience would most likely suffer if you took out the took out the scripted narrative! But my point is that you should be playing a game because the gameplay is good. If you have a good story but bad gameplay then the story is better told elsewhere.
No you won’t get a story like KotOR’s from emergent gameplay, but you’ll still get stories that can be meaningful. I think that games don’t tell traditional stories as well as other mediums, because they just shoehorn other mediums in. Maybe they can tell them as well, but we’ll have to wait and see
Also, I know I’m talking in extremes, but that’s just because I want to convey how absurd I think cutscenes and the like are in games. I’ll have to check out that game you mentioned
“Yes it would! But why is it a game? If the game part of the game is rubbish then it shouldn’t be a game. Some people love JRPGs even though they admit that they only play the game for the story. Why are they playing a game then? If you want good stories games aren’t the place to get them”
Ehh, people play games for a myriad of reasons. I play games to be entertained and one of my friends plays to win. Winning is entertaining him, even if it’s something as minor as flash games on Newgrounds. He did not like FF12 because the time put into it isn’t worth the victory.
I can’t explain why I played so many JRPG’s over the years rather than read a book, I suspect it’s close to the reason why plenty of people who buy NFL/NBA/NHL 200X don’t play actual sports when they’re perfectly capable.
Their chance getting into a league is more plausible than me saving the world with an enchanted sword or even observing it.
But would you argue that if you took the story out of something like Half-Life it would improve the game?
Would you honestly prefer it, if instead of the Black Mesa introductory tram ride it just plonked you into the middle of an exploding lab with a crowbar and said “off you go then”. Is the narrative experience not part of the overall ‘package’?
Half-Life’s storytelling is very un-intrusive
A story can make a game better, I don’t deny that :p
Half-Life doesn’t decide to play you a movie or show you a book. The story mostly serves as the context, the game isn’t about the story. It’s all good!