Exclusive SWTOR Design Q&A - Lightsabers, The Force, and Space Combat

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Exclusive SWTOR Design Q&A - Lightsabers, The Force, and Space Combat

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Posted October 23rd, 2008 by Cody Bye

The announcement of a Star Wars-based MMO from BioWare and LucasArts came as no surprised to anyone that's been following the industry for the last few months. After EA's CEO John Riccitiello made a comment to a reporter at E3 2008, the cat was undoubtedly out of the bag. However, the details of Star Wars: The Old Republic - and the official announcement - were still months away. When Ten Ton Hammer's managing editor, Cody "Micajah" Bye, was given the chance to ask a number of questions to the BioWare game designers at the official SWTOR announcement, he jumped at the chance. In the following interview, you'll find answers to questions regarding space combat, level caps, Force potential, and whether the Jedi and Sith will destroy every other character in their path. If you want gameplay based answers to your questions, this is the place to look!

You've talked about the companion characters quite a bit. Do they disappear when you're playing with other people? How do you prevent ending up playing with a small mob if you're playing with three friends?

James: You only ever have a single companion character at a given time. You may have collected more than one companion character but you can only have one with you. You can switch them out because the companion characters have different strength, weaknesses and personalities.

For example, you may have a whole bunch of companion characters, but only one companion character likes big guns. You may want to use him all the time. Or you may have a different companion character that you play with simply because you like their story and personality. Maybe you're pursuing a romance with your companion character. Or perhaps a different companion character has really compelling quests that you want to participate in.

To read the rest of our exclusive SWTOR Design Q&A, click here!

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It is very important that Bioware put clear clarification on this Jedi Alpha issue.

I'm glad Bioware is going for diversity of classes and not all Jedi.

Having equally powered heroic characters besides Jedi is key to game success. I really hope they can find a good balance of power in PvP like most other games fail to reach.

I would like to see Jedi as something that you can NOT start as. I think it would be great if it were something you have to work towards, do some high-level epic quest to unlock, your actions in-game make you in-tune to the force, or something.

Otherwise, we'll have 90% of the player base running around with lightsabers and it'll make it a very lop-sided, boring game.

Jedi from level 1 baby. I'm so looking forward to this game.

I hate when they dodge questions:

"You've talked about the companion characters quite a bit. Do they disappear when you're playing with other people?"

Still waiting for the answer.

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