If you haven’t seen it yet, the latest trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic is a video documentary showing off the voice-overs and how they’re recorded.
It looks and sounds fantastic, I’m sold. Even the wacky part where the director asks the actor to do “Darth Maul, but Welsh” hasn’t yet deterred me from the game. In fact, it’s a tribute to the pulling power of the video that it’s only afterwards that you stop to think ‘Wait, isn’t that kind of dumb?’ – might as well get Dave Prowse to do the voices and have done with it.
I’m also now sold on the idea of having a fully voiced game. Even in the video you can see how immersive the soundscape can be, and maybe since I’m playing through Mass Effect at the moment I’m inclined to want more of the same. Sure, there are issues with this. How will the game play for deaf players? Will you be able to skip the sound files if you want to play through again on an alt? But those are soluble. Less easy will be the issue of whether they translate it for foreign markets – if not, then this game may be for English speakers only and that cuts down the potential audience right from the start.
But what I haven’t seen yet from the SW:TOR team is any compelling reason they decided to make their game an MMO. What is it that really comes alive when you have massive amounts of players in the same gameworld? WAR, Darkfall, and Aion sold us on the huge PvP battles. That might work here too, although I’m not sure I see it as a big PvP game. Will there be massed space battles (because that’s probably what players want) or will we have to go to Jumpgate: Evolution or EVE for that? Maybe there will be a complex, fully functional economy – that needs lots of players to really make it sing. Or raids perhaps?
So far I feel as though I’m being sold SW:TOR as a single player/ small group game. Which is fine, but doesn’t answer why it’s being created as a MMO.
But maybe the clue is in the welsh accent. Competitive multiplayer sheepdog trials? That must be it!
Welcome to Spinksville! 
It’s definitely looking like KotOR 3 at the moment, going to be interesting to see if there really is a “massive” component, or it’s more a way of getting a subscription fee out of people… Mind you, I’d totally sign up for One Man And His Droid…
*whistles*
Come by! Come by!
*whistles*
Staaand!
*whistles*
Way to me! Way to me!
“But what I haven’t seen yet from the SW:TOR team is any compelling reason they decided to make their game an MMO.”
Money?
I’m hopeful that SWtOR will have good PvP – there’s certainly a good lore basis for it after all. Both ground battles and space battles fit the setting well.
As for deaf players… subtitles aren’t that tough to implement.
smakendahead, if it’s just a money thing, which is entirely possible, I’ll just voice that I would have bought a great KOTOR 3 with little qualms, but absolutely will not buy a subscription version of the same.
We don’t really know what charging model they’re planning to use though. It may be RMT of some sort.
The “Darth Maul, but Welsh” comment cracked me up too. I wonder if they just put it into the video for a joke.
As for why SW:TOR is being made as a MMO instead of a single player game… it’s a jolly good question. I guess money is the answer?
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that Bioware was looking at RMT for a good portion of SW:TOR so hopefully they’ll do it F2P with a store or some other RMT model and no sub.
I fear they do not really need voice acting if they do not seriously improve the graphics. Neither style nor technology behind the engine are today’s standard, and the game is not even out yet.
I want to second your notion, it seems to be more like KOTOR than a MMO.
This reminds me on Jeff Kaplan’s statement that players do not want to read text. OK, mainly because quest tasks are usually mundane and boring. But do they want to go back to the “interactive movie” time where gameplay frequently gets paused for video scenes, rendered ingame or not does not matter? I do not think so. This trailer also screams of heavily instanced solo gameplay.
I often thought the same of Age of Conan: This game could have rocked as more open-ended adventure game with tighter story direction.
So I fear We Fly Spitfires is right, money seems to be the answer why SWTOR is a MMO and not single player.
I am afraid Bioware are experts for RPGs, but noobs when it comes to MMO-RPGs.
But I would be happy if they prove me wrong, though I admit I enjoy fantasy settings more than Scifi MMOs.
As Chris F over at ihaspc has noted, making your game online-only is also a less divisive anti-piracy measure than DRM.
In MMO’s I’m generally a solo player which prompts a lot of people to ask “so why don’t you just play a single player game?”. Just because I’m not fond of grouping doesn’t mean I don’t want the immersion & the feel of a living world around me. Since playing MMO’s I have difficulty really getting into single player games again. I miss the people around me, not to mention the content updates. MMO’s have more replayability than single player games, more content for your main, events, players roleplaying around you (or even just being idiots).
That’s why I’m not suprised that this game will be an MMO & not a single player game. I’ll be more inclined to get this game, and yes pay them more money, than I would if it was a single player.