Last week, LucasArts & BioWare extended an invitation to Darth Hater for another round of Star Wars: The Old Republic hands-on game play at the beautiful Presidio campus in San Francisco. Eager to take another look, Meg and I left GDC and made our way to Lucasfilm where we were treated to playing Level 6 Troopers on Ord Mantell, and also spoke in depth with Jake Neri of LucasArts and Daniel Erickson of BioWare.

While talking with Jake Neri about the Trooper, we decided to use the opportunity to gather more information about Star Wars: The Old Republic. The LucasArts producer offered what limited insight he could into BioWare's James Ohlen and his recent comments on endgame.

The podcast team is on holiday break this week but we wanted to bring you something special to fill the void until next week's podcast. We have an audio interview with Darragh O'Farrell and Jake Neri of LucasArts. The questions/poll for this week's podcast will be held over for next week's episode. Next week's episode already looks to be a packed one. Until then, Happy Holidays.



Transcription of the audio interview is after the jump.

Note: Just because the podcast team is on break doesn't mean the editorial staff is. ;)

The history of the audio department at LucasArts is full of iconic video game moments. From Monkey Island to Knights of the Old Republic, the sounds coming from this studio tend to stand out. Thanks to Jake Neri, we were lucky enough to meet a few members of the LucasArts Audio Team while in California. In addition to a brief clip that will be featured on next week's podcast, they agreed to give us a written interview. We are pleased to bring you our interview with LucasArts on the audio of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

As we touched on in our previous article, we believe all the developers public statements solidified BioWare's direction of class design. We searched high and low looking for clues, kicked around hypotheses, made charts and graphs, followed several threads in the Character Class section of the Star Wars: The Old Republic official forums and we discovered that the answer to every class two paths were possibly outlined plain as day in the Holonet.

By: Emlaeh & Zenkei

"Eight unique classes" is a statement BioWare often repeats in multiple interviews, as it illustrates the solid theme they are using to approach designing the combat of the classes of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

This very clear statement is starting to get muddied when speculating upon how the various classes will specialize themselves and work together in a group.

Today is the day The Information Extravaganza has begun Below you will find links to all of the articles posted on December 3rd pertaining to what we learned at LucasArts about Star Wars: The Old Republic. This includes information regarding the Jedi Consular, Sith Inquisitor, Smuggler class trees, second part of our interview with Jake Neri, other general information learned during the hands-on demo, and our take on the four force users debate.

Character advancement and customization are integral parts of all RPGs and many titles have succeeded or failed solely because of their approach to these mechanics. For over a year now, we have waited patiently for the first hints of how we will customize our characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic and now the first official clues are being revealed. During our time at LucasArts we were able to see a small example of how advancement and customization will be handled in TOR.

Over the years, MMOs have replicated many aspects of single player RPGs, and BioWare is continuing that trend with the addition of companion characters. A hallmark of BioWares previous titles, these characters are designed to develop story lines and assist in combat. During the presentation in San Francisco we were given two examples of the type of companions we will see in The Old Republic.

A couple weeks ago we released the first part of our interview with Jake Neri and now we can finally bring you the second half. We used many different sections of this interview in our other articles, but this is the complete transcript for context.

While we were in San Francisco we were able to talk with many of the employees working hard on Star Wars: The Old Republic. You got to hear us talk with Jake Neri, Producer at LucasArts, on the last podcast, and here is a preview of the second half of that interview. In this brief excerpt he describes the thought process behind the Sith Inquisitor and Jedi Consular.

Jake Neri: I think you know when we looked out at all the possibilities when we talk about Star Warsthere are lots and lots of directions we could go.

At the forefront of this we know there is a hearty passion for Jedi vs. Sith and that just seems to be a religion in a way. People are lining up Im gonna be Jedi, I hate Sith or Im gonna be Sith, I hate Jedi and so that maybe informed the decision a bit.

Mostly (in) Star Wars, a lot of it is about is about lightsabers and its about really amazing force abilities and it fit with what weve been trying to do from day one, which is to bring action packed star wars combat to a MMO. We really wanted to have the opportunity to challenge ourselves to do force classes that also had lightsabers and were effective somewhat with both. It was a natural thing. There is a tremendous amount of passion for the force and the force has been working so lets go with that So that is sort of how we got at that.


There was a lot of debate on this for a long time. I'm sure over time we will talk about things that didn't make the game, but there was plenty of other classes on the table. And at the end of the day, these just made the most sense. Were looking at having a round group of classes.

We talked a lot today about being able to customize your classes in a number of different directions. When you think of Sith Inquisitor, you're thinking about how were talking about him today in the Emperor Palpatine mold, the force lightning using guy. But as time goes on, we will show you other ways to customize that class that will give you a different gameplay style. We thought as core classes the Consular and the Inquisitor made the most sense. We thought they balanced well against the other two. You can think of the Jedi Knight and the Sith Warrior as more of a melee-style Jedi, and the other two maybe more of the ranged-style Jedi. I think it made a lot of sense.

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Keep an eye on your browser and watch for the full interview with Jake Neri,our impressions of the two classes, and a lot more. As soon as we can, we'll bring you the in depth, dissected coverage you have come to expect from us here at Darth Hater.

One of the mantras of the marketing team behind Star Wars: The Old Republic has been "the four pillars" that make up an MMO: exploration, advancement, combat and story. TOR has made a splash in the MMO community with a marketing emphasis on story, however the recent change in direction, hinted at by Jake Neri, is what we should be paying attention to. With many months of narrative buzz words behind us, we may be entering a new phase in the news coming out of Austin. Could it be that we are finally approaching the second pillar?