The Old Republic Script Is the Size of 10 KOTORs, 40 Novels

Outamyhead

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pigeon_of_doom said:
paulgruberman said:
According to the devs in this E3 interview they have many hundreds of voice actors on the project.
Excellent. Now all I have to worry about in this regard is the quality of the writing and the voice actors.
I know one of them is most likely Lance Henriksen (the guy who was Bishop in all the Alien movies, and agent Frank Black in the Millennium series), because he is the narrator of the Holonet timeline and information segments.

I think he's a pretty good actor, sounds alright for narration and voice acting so far.
 

NickCaligo42

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Agayek said:
If memory serves, the script for Jade Empire and Mass Effect was fairly different from KotOR, in the details if not thematically, and that's the only games of theirs since the original KotOR as far as I know.
You know, you could argue the same thing about Pixar films, but I find it all comes from a recycling of the same formula. With Bioware's games it always felt like I was playing the exact same game with a different skin on it. I know it wasn't the exact dialogue, but it always seemed like the exact same characters--each of them all-too-neatly stereotyped. Mass Effect even had every race's representative neatly LAY OUT the stereotypes the player could expect to encounter all over the galaxy. "Statement of fact: All Elicoor are very gregarious and friendly towards humans." "And all (insert name of pudgy toad race here) are money-grubbing mistrustful bastards!" And sure enough, all Elicoor are gregarious and friendly without exception and all the pudgy toad guys are money-grubbing mistrustful bastards without exception and you are doomed to confront the same two characters across the galaxy repeatedly. Meanwhile Wrex/Canderous continues to act macho even though he's really dead inside over his race being pushed around and Bastila/Liara studies the very thing that the bad guys are using against the heroes and gets in a romantic relationship with the generically characterized protagonist in her off-hours. Maybe I'm willing to admit that Bastila and Liara are very, very different people personality-wise, with Bastila being headstrong and self-assured and Liara being kind of submissive, but Wrex/Canderous just pushes it over the edge of suspicion for me, along with the mild-mannered but stable and reliable alternate love interest Ashley/Kaidan/Carth.

Thematically, true enough Shepard isn't Revan, but it's the same kind of situation, right? Always there's this confrontation of the self, the admission of great power, and the question of how you plan to use it. With Revan it was insane Force potential, the knowledge that you WERE the Dark Lord of the Sith that everybody's talking about, and the question of how you plan to use all that power. Do you turn back to the light side or do you go back to being evil and bring yourself to Malak's level? With Shepard it was about being a SPECTER, sitting in the same position of power that Saren abused to get where he is and trying to figure out how you plan to use it. Do you become as bad as him and hunt him down like the Dirty Harry of space or do things by the book? I'll grant that there's slightly different spins going on here, but the star map/Prothean beacon pushed me over the edge on hating Bioware's writers. On one hand: bits of a map to the Star Forge, where Malak's hiding out and outfitting his potentially infinite armies. Recovery of each one reveals bits and pieces of a mystical vision which holds the key to Revan's identity and the Galaxy's future. On the other: The Prothean beacon gradually reveals bits and pieces of a mystical vision, which holds the key to the Reapers and the Galaxy's future. The worst thing about it? All of this is lifted further STILL from Baldur's Gate, which at least had Minsc going for it. I only saw the last few hours of Jade Empire in motion, but it was more than enough to make me pretty confident that I know what I'm in for from that game too. Probably something where the hero questions his/her morality and the responsibility that goes with great power while the main villain turns out to be a little too close to home for comfort.

Maybe I'm exaggerating the degree to which they seem to recycle their ideas in some ways, but I can hardly think of them as "esteemed scribes" when THIS MUCH material seems to be re-used between two games. The only difference I can see between Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic is that one's a snappier dresser while the other one's got an ever-so-slightly more interesting plot. Granted, it takes a ton of work to push out the sheer AMOUNT of different situations and dialogues that they do for each game and I can't blame them for the sameness, especially when Square-Enix and Nintendo both are THRIVING on it, but there gets to a point when it feels like quantity over quality, and no matter who it's coming from I find it a bit of a disagreeable habit.
 

EMFCRACKSHOT

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Oh wow. Thats settles it, this is definately going to be the first mmo i will pay to play. Its gonna be so awesome
 

CUnk

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Is this really what people expect from MMOs these days? All this content and effort focused on making it feel like a single player game? Why not just produce another KOTOR like game?

Seriously, good MMOs don't need all this stuff. They just need good game mechanics that encourage cooperation, competition, and conflict amongst the players.
 

Scrythe

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Jun 23, 2009
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As long as "more dialoge" =/= "every NPC gives you their life story at the drop of a hat", but rather, "more dialoge" = "equal or greater amount of fun gameplay" then consider me sold.
 

Eldritch Warlord

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With Shepard it was about being a SPECTER
SpecTRe (Special Tactics and Reconnaissance)

You many notice that I didn't attribute this quote, it indicates that I'm not terribly concerned about it.

Darth Pope said:
Jesus on a fu**ing pogo stick. Let's hope that alien languages don't have the same few looped lines of diologe like the first two KOTORS.
Yeah, I remember from KotOR 2 (never played the original) that Ithorians had about 4 lines, 3 normal and a frightened one.

Gets rather annoying when they start having protracted exposition sequences and they're saying "Gloka cree gluka clill blocka cloofna, gra borin bla" every other line.
 

Red Albatross

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If TOR can live up to half its expectations, it may be a good game and I'll definitely be trying it, although I have to say that voice overs aren't the most critical part of an MMO, and can even be highly irritating. One example that comes to mind is any NPCs on the docks of Qeynos in EQ2, spouting the same damn lines every time you zoned in. "Bah! No fish! Where are all the darn fish!?" "Bah! No fish! Where are all the darn fish!?" "Bah! No fish! Where are all the darn -" /wrist

On an only slightly related note, I love people that complain about subscription fees. Find a cheaper hobby, I dare you. I just paid about $1500 for a kayak and gear to go whitewater kayaking, MMOs are a very inexpensive hobby.
 

Faeanor

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Anachronism said:
Holy crap... how much space is this going to take up on my hard drive? Oblivion is the closest comparison I can think of in terms of voiced NPCs, and that took up 4.6 GB. Of course, that was back in 2006, and games have got a lot bigger since then. I think I saw somewhere that Dragon Age would take up 10+ GB, so I don't even want to think about how much space this would take up.
I was wondering this myself. Maybe they'll have to ship it on a hard drive instead of a on DVDs or something.
 

Aedrial

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Anachronism said:
Holy crap... how much space is this going to take up on my hard drive? Oblivion is the closest comparison I can think of in terms of voiced NPCs, and that took up 4.6 GB. Of course, that was back in 2006, and games have got a lot bigger since then. I think I saw somewhere that Dragon Age would take up 10+ GB, so I don't even want to think about how much space this would take up.

This is one of the few MMOs I'm actually interested in, and it looks like it's going to be good. Having it fully-voiced would add a hell of a lot to the experience, but I'm a little concerned that BioWare are biting off more than they can chew with this one.
I thought Morrowind had more voice-actors. Each race at least sounded different.
In oblivion they sounded the same.

All the same, I'm really psyched for this game, it better not suck!
 

Kiutu

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pigeon_of_doom said:
Fucking hell. As long as they don't fall into the same trap Oblivion did in using a small pool of VA's then this is a very impressive achievement. If they've just locked 10 VAs in a cellar with 500 novels to record lines from at random then it's much less so. Given how unprecedented this is, I have no idea how they intend to maintain QC with this amount of content.
The same few actors is not always bad, if they had the right people. Imagine if everyone was played by Patrick Stewart, Liam Neilson, and Morgan Freeman?

Or for me, Steve Blum, Wendee Lee, H. Jon Benjamin, and Patrick Warburton.
 

HaruHearts

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Since they are putting so much into the voice acting I do wonder if they have thoguht about the combat SW has always bee nabout combat ok well killing. Supposibly the Sith best move is force choke which in my opinion is pants Force crush or Force lightning would most likely be the best move and apparently Force push is the Jedi best move. And to be honest does anyone actually liston to people when they talk in games I'd rather read the subtitles than hear the voices of people frsh out of LA trying to make it big.
 

Juraz

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May 31, 2009
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For the love of all that is sacred to gaming jeebus PLEASE DON'T RUSH IT. I wouldn't mind if Liam Neeson did 100% of the voice acting =D
 

Sevre

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I don't even care if I never get to play it I'll still pre-order the collectors edition.