The Art Direction of The Old Republic - or, Why Doesn't Stuff Look Older?

[Zhukov]

Because they want Star Wars to look like Star Wars.

Kind of a shame. I might actually be able to get excited about a lower-tech version of the SW setting.

Then again, not being a SW fan I'm not the target audience, so maybe I'm missing the point.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

It is because people are lazy. The game has to appeal to folks who've only seen the films, and folks who have played KOTOR. So it means that there isn't a lick of originality in any of the designs, they all have to reference the movies because Bioware and EA think that you are a moron who won't be able to tell the difference without broadcasting it over a loudspeaker for you.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

check out these old-ass lightsabers

Spoiler

Spoiler

Awesome.

Those aren't from TOR, those lightsabers were out of date hundreds of years before the first Knights of the old Republic.

 

[The Forces of Chaos]

It's using the same look as was set in the old republic at the time. Deus Ex : HR used to have people with modem day clothing and the pro augmented future types wearing renaissance style clothing and rooms. Aesthetics change over time and can be recycled by later generations.

 

[octafish]

Because progress isn't always a straight line, because there was a dark age, because The Old Republic is set in a Golden Age?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Yeah I agree. It just seems odd. Same thing with the force powers. It seems they get stronger the farther back in time you go.

I think they were. I pretty sure in KoTOR 2 they said that the Sith lords force powers were much stronger in the past then they are now. Don't know if that applies to jedi's though.

If it weren't for the fact that the Sith were declining too, I'd be tempted to guess that it may have something to do with Jedi restrictions on attachment (and therefore marriage and having children.) I know in the Wheel of Time series, it's explained that the main reason channelers have been getting weaker ever since the age of legends is that the ability to channel is effectively being bred out of the population; male channelers tend to die before they reproduce, and female channelers (at least amongst the Aes Sedai) tend to be celibate. Most of the truly strong chanelers who show up over the course of the series come either from cultures that don't have a problem with allowing their female chanelers to get married, or from backwoods areas where nobody knows enough about the one power to actually identify chanelers, so they just live out their lives as normal peasants, getting married and having children. Even in the areas that have a lot of powerful female channelers, the ability to use the one power has declined over time, because it's only the women who are passing on their genes. All this wall of text to basically say, that's probably what was happening in Star Wars, too.

 

[ThaBenMan]

Here's [http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=158000] a lengthy but interesting thread on the same topic in the SWTOR forums.

 

[Ryotknife]

according to random crotchety geezers, everything was better in the old days. maybe swtor is proof?

 

[Neverhoodian]

Ah, this bugs me all the damn time.

I am not so big into sci-fi so the most recent offender for me is Halo Reach. It takes place BEFORE Combat Evolved, right? Then why the fuck is everything more advanced? I dont get it. From weapons to combat armor, Reach features the most advanced technology seen in any Halo game. But its a prequel.

What in the actual fuck.

That's because Reach was the UNSC's main military stronghold and manufacturing center. It housed many top-secret projects with high-tech prototypes for Noble Team to use. By contrast the Master Chief had to make do with mostly standard UNSC weapons and equipment in the other games.

[/nerdyexplanation]

As for KOTOR and TOR, Bioware made the aesthetic change to have it look "iconic" (e.g. instantly recognizable by non-fans). It probably helped that very few people remember the Tales of the Jedi series anymore. And let's face it, this isn't the first time Star Wars has been massively retconned ("Leia, do you remember your mother? Your REAL mother?").

 

[Thamous]

If I recall LucasArts (read: George) has always maintained that for the most part has been fairly stagnant in terms of its technological progress so it would make sense for TOR to look startlingly similar to the movies.