BioWare CEOs talk KotOR with IGN
BioWare CEOs talk KotOR with IGN
Interview - posted by Saint_Proverbius on Tue 15 April 2003, 03:50:31
Tags: Star Wars: Knights of the Old RepublicThere's a neat interview with BioWare CEOs, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk over at the XBox part of IGN, though I'm sure most of the questions apply to the PC version too. Here's a part on freedom to role play:
IGN: There's every indication that KOTOR is going to offer tremendous freedom for role playing fans and it just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. What kind of limits to this freedom can we expect?
Ray Muzyka: We really tried to identify some fun paths for players to play through and I think there are at least three ways players can approach the game in terms of "replayability." One of the ways is in terms of the Dark side and Light side of The Force. They can play the main character they create as either a Light side guy or a Dark side guy and the game will have a different play pattern and even a different ending depending on what they choose. Another difference in play pattern is which skills they choose for their party members and how they choose to approach the world with those skills. For example, with computer use and repair you might be able to hack a computer or build a droid to attack your enemies. Maybe you'll be able to persuade your enemies in a conversation rather than fighting them or you might choose just to fight them. Another approach might be just to use stealth and sneak past them. So those skills will provide quite a measure of replayability for the way you want to approach problem solving. The third kind of replayability is kind of more for fun than anything else. Sometimes you have different options in dialogue and some of them are chosen for you based on your class and some are based on your gender. Gender particularly, there's a few conversations in cantinas for example where you get treated differently depending on if you're male or female. That's just subtle thing, it doesn't really affect the gameplay in a big way. But it's really fun because you might be talking with a buddy about how you saw something cool in the cantina and he'll say "I didn't see that, I saw this." You'll develop some differences in play style that you'll be able to talk about with your friends, hopefully. I know I have with people in the office who end up surprised with a few things. They're both fun and offer exciting things to see so you almost want to create a different gender character, try different sides of The Force approach and try replaying it different ways different times.
Let's break those three replayability points down..
Spotted this at HomeLAN Fed.
IGN: There's every indication that KOTOR is going to offer tremendous freedom for role playing fans and it just happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. What kind of limits to this freedom can we expect?
Ray Muzyka: We really tried to identify some fun paths for players to play through and I think there are at least three ways players can approach the game in terms of "replayability." One of the ways is in terms of the Dark side and Light side of The Force. They can play the main character they create as either a Light side guy or a Dark side guy and the game will have a different play pattern and even a different ending depending on what they choose. Another difference in play pattern is which skills they choose for their party members and how they choose to approach the world with those skills. For example, with computer use and repair you might be able to hack a computer or build a droid to attack your enemies. Maybe you'll be able to persuade your enemies in a conversation rather than fighting them or you might choose just to fight them. Another approach might be just to use stealth and sneak past them. So those skills will provide quite a measure of replayability for the way you want to approach problem solving. The third kind of replayability is kind of more for fun than anything else. Sometimes you have different options in dialogue and some of them are chosen for you based on your class and some are based on your gender. Gender particularly, there's a few conversations in cantinas for example where you get treated differently depending on if you're male or female. That's just subtle thing, it doesn't really affect the gameplay in a big way. But it's really fun because you might be talking with a buddy about how you saw something cool in the cantina and he'll say "I didn't see that, I saw this." You'll develop some differences in play style that you'll be able to talk about with your friends, hopefully. I know I have with people in the office who end up surprised with a few things. They're both fun and offer exciting things to see so you almost want to create a different gender character, try different sides of The Force approach and try replaying it different ways different times.
Let's break those three replayability points down..
- Light vs. Dark still results in the same save-the-world story, just with moral relativism. They've already said that in previews on PC.IGN.
- Skills impacting gameplay might actually be pretty cool, but they promised things like this in Neverwinter Nights, and I didn't see it there.
- Gender dialogue just affects bar conversations, that's it?
Spotted this at HomeLAN Fed.
