JOE meets the Bioware creators to discuss Star Wars: The Old Republic

JOE was lucky enough to sit down with the Canadian doctors behind Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate and the Dragon Age series' to discuss Star Wars: The Old Republic.

By Emmet Purcell

This week Electronic Arts took over the 2,600-capacity Matter London at the O2 Arena to deliver the EA Winter Showcase. Despite the huge wealth of titles available, it was still unsurprising that Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic was the title on the tip of every gamer's tongue.

With Bioware further solidifying their reputation as perhaps the most consistent developers in the industry with this year's early game of the year contender, Mass Effect 2, players worldwide are excited and staggered at the scope of The Old Republic - an incredibly ambitious MMORPG that hopes to combine the sterling reputations of Bioware and the Knights of the Old Republic series with the unmistakable iconography of Star Wars to potentially turn the heads of World of Warcraft veterans and MMO newbies alike.

JOE was lucky enough to sit down with Bioware creators Dr. Greg Zeschuk BMSc, MD, MBA and Dr. Ray Muzyka BMSc, MD, CCFP, MBA to discuss the challenge of winning new and existing MMO fans, their favourite Old Republic planets and even the doctors' Mass Effect 2 endings. Here's how it went:

JOE.ie: Thank you for your time today guys. I suppose the biggest question I have is about the reason that everyone is really here today (the EA Winter Games Showcase), and that's definitely Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Now in my opinion, and I've always been a console gamer, I think that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) was the best RPG of the last console generation and I think Mass Effect 2 may even be the defining RPG of this generation. So with that in mind, what was the main part of the decision process to step away from consoles for The Old Republic and move in the MMO arena? Bearing in mind that people such as myself aren't hugely familiar with MMOs to begin with.

Ray Muzyka: Well we're still doing console games obviously. It's funny to be asked this question because we've been asked it a few times today, only this time it's from the other side. Normally, we're asked "Are you still supporting PC games?" and now we're being asked "Are you still supporting consoles games?" The answer is "absolutely, yes" to both, we're supporting PC and console. PC seems the natural platform for something like The Old Republic, it feels like it's ideally suited, so we haven't stepped aside from consoles so much as just recognising that the next step in Bioware's evolution is in building an MMO. It feels like the right thing for us to do right now.

We've been doing this for 15+ years and so it feels like building an MMO in the Star Wars world with the Bioware quality in story, exploration, combat, progress and customisation, it feels like we're finally up to that challenge. It's a big challenge, but we feel like we're ready for it now

Ray and Greg on one particularly jolly day

JOE.ie: So what do you think is going to be the main enticement for gamers regarding The Old Republic. The Star Wars license or do you think it's the Bioware name?

Greg Zeschuk: I'd like to think that it's a combination of both. As you point out, there's a lot of love for our work on KOTOR. It's historically seen as one of the really important games of the last generation. I think there are a lot of fans that are unhappy that it's not KOTOR, it's like they're saying, "Why are you giving me this? I want that!", and what they don't realise is that, while it's not KOTOR exactly, it's going to be very, very reminiscent.

In a way, it's even more advanced because you have the whole character voicing (Old Republic is the first ever MMO to have full character voice acting) and better cinematics. It's funny, because it's always hard to go back to your own work, so when we see KOTOR we might think "Ooh, that part's rough", but at the time it was absolutely state-of-the-art.

Ray Muzyka: People shouldn't worry because if they love KOTOR and play The Old Republic they'll really get the KOTOR experience - it'll be like playing parts 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 all in the one game. And you can play it when you want with your friends and have a great social experience.

We know that 60% of MMO players play MMOs solo, so this is the kind of game that actually totally enables that style of play too. It has the heroes journey, you can trying soloing if you want, you can jump in with your friends in the middle of a quest as well and you can still do all the MMO things, but you're really not losing anything from KOTOR that you won't be able to do in The Old Republic. The fact is it's got so much more, a much broader feature set than we had in Knights of the Old Republic.

JOE.ie: As I mentioned, I've never actually played an MMO myself. Now MMOs typically have a very rabid fanbase, a very demanding fanbase, so is it a tightrope that you have to walk at all times - show unfamiliar console gamers how this genre has enraptured so many people, but also not alienate those already familiar?

Greg Zeschuk: Yeah, it's interesting because we still start every game the same way - with the assumption that no-one knows how to play it. What's interesting and important is that MMOs have had years of refining to get where they are today, in terms of interface and all that sort of stuff, so we don't do things that are radically different from the standard, so the fact that there is a standard is proof that that's an established success. That said, we are really against the concept of narrowing the focus of your game to appeal to only the core.

This game in particular is designed to have the broadest possible appeal to have successful, easy to use controls but also with the content itself, giving you lots of options that aren't super competitive. As Ray said, you can literally play this game all by yourself or with a friend and never have to do PvP (Player vs Player), never have to do the things that people find absolutely daunting in MMOs and have an amazing experience. So the key thing for us is to make sure we have that accessible ease of use but also have a lot of depth, but that happens over time. Within a month of playing it, you should have mastered it, so that's entirely reasonable for folks.

This is one of those games that in all likelihood, you're going to have players that may have only played a small number of games but also think "oh my god, I love Star Wars more than anything and I've heard this is a great new Star Wars experience. I've got to try it". So it can be a game that works for that person too.

No, it's not Boba Fett in the background... next question?

Ray Muzyka: And it has to appeal to MMO players, who have very high expectations and it has to appeal to Bioware players, who come with a certain expectation set from playing Bioware games, so it's a challenging mix. You have to bring in MMO players that may or may not know much about Star Wars and appeal to people that love the series that love Bioware games. It's daunting but it's really neat because when you play it... we think we've achieved that and we've continuously tested it against Star Wars groups as well to make sure it's in line with what they're looking for.

So it's got a lot of depth, a lot of richness and all the MMO features you'd expect. And it's got all the stuff you'd expect from the iconic, aspirational, heroic moments from the Star Wars movies. It's the classes you want to play and the moments, like Luke staring at the skies of Tatooine, not Luke literally, obviously, but those kinds of things are there. Those moments where you expect Star Wars goodness, we put them in the game. It's a lot of fun, but it's a big challenge.

JOE.ie: We were talking to Blaine (Bioware producer Blaine Christine) about the size of this project earlier and we said that he believes people should not think of Old Republic as something as simplistic as KOTOR 3, it could be KOTOR 3,4,5,6,7 and 8“ that's how big the project is.

Greg Zeschuk: And 9 and 10 (laughs). Well there's eight character classes and each class has its own defining story. It could be you as the Jedi Knight or you as the Bounty Hunter and then your story. It's actually a large game unto itself, even bigger than Dragon Age.

Ray Muzyka: Each of them (character class stories) is multiple times longer than KOTOR and there's a lot of replayability in terms of a lot of things we haven't announced yet.

Greg Zeschuk: And there's flying your spaceship, PvP missions in warzones if you want to do that, so really it's astonishing. It's funny for us because we've built some pretty big games, Dragon Age, the original Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 were enormous but this dwarfs them all. It's also exciting because we feel like we're making great headway and a lot of stuff is actually built, so right now we're assembling it, testing it and trying it with fans.

Ray Muzyka: It's starting to take shape now. The clay is being moulded and it's starting to look pretty good.

JOE.ie: The delegation in The Old Republic (where your companions will mine resources while your game is turned off for example), was that a game where you felt, one of the image problems that MMOs have is the impression that people have to keep playing them at all times, was that a conscious decision to say "we'll handle this, you can come back later on?"

Ray Muzyka: Well yeah, we want the game to be accessible and allow you to play the game in the timeframe that you want and play in short bursts or long sessions so you can send off your crew members and companions to do cool things while you're offline and still feel like you're making progress and there's some other things we've got in the works that we haven't announced yet in that same vein. It's very much a conscious decision.

Greg Zeschuk: It sort of solved another problem for us, not necessarily a problem but it was a solution and that's that we always knew we wanted companions and had the story side covered, but what else can they do? Well they help you in combat, you can dress them up arm them and customise, there's all this cool stuff but what else? So we came up with crew skills, the crafting, sending them... well not as bad as sending them to do your laundry!

JOE.ie: Space laundry.

Greg Zeschuk: (Laughs) Yeah, yeah, so we thought "well, wait a minute - why not?" If they're part of your group and they have different skills, and then we thought "wow, this is actually a very exciting set of features".

JOE.ie: And how many companions can you have at any one time?

Greg Zeschuk: Well, there's definitely a set number but we haven't announced it yet.

Wookie campanions = Day one purchase

JOE.ie: In my mind, what really fleshed out the companion characters in Mass Effect 2 for example, was that you actually knew at the denouement that some people were going to survive and some people weren't - there was going to be loss and consequences. Whereas, with an MMO it's never fully finite, so do you think it's going to be more difficult to flesh out characters as you've done before?

Ray Muzyka: Well there is the impact and choices and irreversible decisions you make as part of your heroes journey and personal story arc, and there's no save games, you can't reload if you wish you hadn't gone down that path, so there actually are permanent decisions that you make that impact you and your companion characters that are hard to predict

JOE.ie: That was pretty much my way of segueing back to the Mass Effect 2 ending and asking,“ is there any way I can bring back Mordin?

Ray Muzyka: Mordin Solus?

JOE.ie: I really miss that guy.

Greg Zeschuk: (Laughs) You gotta play again.

Ray Muzyka: Mordin Solus is one of my favourite characters.

Greg Zeschuk: Ironically for me, he was one of the one's that survived and I lost a bunch of other ones.

Ray Muzyka: I reloaded to make sure I had a perfect walkthrough.

JOE.ie: So just in terms of some bare facts regarding The Old Republic, maybe you can't answer them all but do you know what the total level cap is yet?

Ray Muzyka: (To Greg) Have we announced that yet?

Greg Zeschuk: I don't know!

Ray Muzyka: Actually we do know, but that's still to come.

JOE.ie: Finally, one of the things to people are most exciting about is exploring the galaxy and the iconography of Star Wars, so in terms of your own experiences, is there any planet in particular that you're most excited for players to visit?

Greg Zeschuk: There's a bunch of planet that we've announced and there's one that we haven't. Two for me are Tatooine and Hoth. Hoth is just totally killer and it's interesting because you wouldn't think that a big planet of ice would be really, really cool!

Ray Muzyka: And the Jedi and the Sith home planets - for me, it's the core worlds of Korriban and Tython (the respective Sith and Jedi home worlds). Korriban was one of one of my favourites from KOTOR, the tombs, Sith everywhere. You feel cool walking around there. They're all cool worlds actually, very distinctive and unique.

Greg Zeschuk: And Alderaan is actually one you can see (laughs), until a few thousands years and then "boom".

JOE.ie: Well again, we really appreciate your time today guys and definitely looking forward to the release, thanks again.