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Knight
11-14-2002, 02:36 PM
INTERVIEW: BUMP IN THE OLD REPUBLIC KNIGHTS

BioWare head honcho Raymond Muzyka talks about PC and Xbox RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

17:59 At a recent Activision event over at its UK headquarters we got the chance to have a chat with Raymond Muzyka, joint CEO at developer BioWare. Anyone into their role-playing games will be well aware that BioWare is highly regarded in the genre. The Canadian outfit made Baldur's Gate, for God's sake.
Couple this talent to Star Wars and you'll realise why everyone is looking forward to its PC and Xbox title Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Suffice to say that the chance to chat to Muzyka about the title was very welcome indeed. But before the interview, let's get some blurb on the game.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is set 4000 years before the universe we know from the movies, the time of epic struggle between the Jedi and forces of the Sith. Into the maelstrom the player is thrust, attempting to survive this colossal, galactic war while determining their Jedi destiny.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic begins where all good RPGs should, with the character creation stage. For plot purposes you can only be a male or female human - although other races, such as Wookies for example, can join your party and become controllable later on - and then pick one of three basic classes, Scoundrel, Soldier or Scout.

Aware that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is coming to both console and PC, BioWare has made the statistics and skills section of character generation as easy or hardcore as you want. "Recommended" buttons allow you to create your character almost instantly, while the more experienced RPG'er will likely delve into the point allocation system that's also on offer.

Travelling with up to three party members as you follow the game's storyline and progress across its six worlds, you get to visit a massive variety of locales. So far we've seen a beautifully rendered planet surface, and underwater complex and even adventuring on the seabed.

BioWare is rightly proud of the engine it's developed for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Not only is it visually impressive, boasting similar lighting effects to Halo 2, but it also has superb environmental physics, with grass waving in the wind, dust blowing across the dry landscape of Tatooine and the like.

Such is the attention to detail visually that even the passage of the character disturbs the air, pushing aside foliage; or feet bringing up little puffs of sand as you walk across a seabed.

Despite Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic's third-person, over-the-shoulder viewpoint, the title is very much an RPG, being based on the rule-set from Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars pen and paper game. In combat, for example, you run in and let the underlying system take care of hits and misses. You can choose attack moves or Force powers from a selection menu during the action, but it's perhaps not as interactive as you might think.

Surprisingly though, the fighting in the game is very engaging, and you still have to keep on your toes.

As you might expect, as you go about your business in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic you're going to have to make decisions that affect your standing with either the Light or Dark side of the Force. In some instances this comes through conversation, where your answers can relay good or evil intent, or in other instances through the ways in which you decide to complete a mission.

According to BioWare, while trying to be the "good guy" will be that much harder, perseverance will be rewarded; we've been lead to believe that Light Force powers, while being more difficult to acquire, will be more powerful than Dark.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is going to offer 40 to 60 hours gameplay, and that's if you only follow the main storyline. The game has numerous submissions and mini-games that'll no doubt eat up the minutes for those who have to taste absolutely everything on offer.

The game will arrive on Xbox next spring, with the PC version to follow "a few months after". Apparently the PC version of the game will also come with content not appearing in the Xbox version, although BioWare is considering making such content available to owners of Microsoft's console via Xbox Live.

We caught up with Ray Muzyka to find out some more particulars on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

When you started out on the game, did you consider doing an isometric-style RPG like Baldur's Gate, or did you always intend it to be third-person?

Muzyka: No, We always wanted the game to have a cinematic feel, where you could see what your character was doing, where you could see the other members of your party. So we had it down as a third-person game from the beginning.

You've said that setting the game 4,000 years prior to the Star Wars universe as we know it from the movies has allowed you to flex your creative fingers a bit. Was it your decision to use such a time period to give you this "breathing space", or did LucasArts come to you and say, "This is when we want Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic to be set"?

Muzyka: We actually had a choice. LucasArts came to us and said that we could do an Episode II game - the first role playing game in the Star Wars universe. We could have made it Episode II if we'd wanted to. Or LucasArts said we could go 4,000 years back, which is a period that's hardly been covered before.

So we chose, in partnership with LucasArts, to set Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 4,000 years before the Star Wars universe portrayed in the movies.

How much new content would you say that you've generated for the Star Wars universe?

Muzyka: Well, it's not complete freedom obviously - we always have to consult on things. All this huge pile of concept stuff we did had to be sent back to "the ranch" as they call it, and then someone at the ranch looks at every piece and says "yes" or "no". George [Lucas] did actually look at some of our stuff. I think he touches everything that goes through on the Star Wars universe to some extent.

One of the reasons that we really enjoyed working on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was because of the freedom we were actually given. We were told that, "hey, if you do some cool stuff it will become part of the official Star Wars canon."

There're three levels to the Star Wars universe: canon, stuff that's really Star Wars but doesn't have the stamp of approval and then non-official. The stuff that we've done in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is in the first two categories.

Did you find much coming back rejected?

Muzyka: No, not much at all; only maybe a few percent. Things weren't rejected. It was more like, "Can you just make his head like this rather than like that." So it was all very feasible. There were good suggestions made and they made the game better, so we were happy to do them. It was a good process really and I think we were pleasantly surprised how easy LucasArts was to work with.

In terms of actual Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic gameplay, with the combat and the Force powers, did you ever consider making it more arcade-like, or were you always planning to base it on the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars rule-set?

Muzyka: Yeah, we always wanted it based on a rule-set. The option was there to use the Wizards of the Coast rule-set or make our own. We explored doing our own stuff, but then we picked up the Wizards RPG and thought, "This is pretty fun."

And of course, we've worked on Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate at BioWare, and the Wizards Star Wars RPG rule-set is pretty similar, so we were familiar with that.

Is the whole game actually planet based, with no space combat? Why has ship combat not been included?

Muzyka: No, there's no point where you get to engage in space combat. To make a game that actually had a good flight simulator section - that would be a whole new engine. We didn't think we could do that and make it at a high quality level, so we wanted to make sure that the engine we developed was as good as possible.

Many games allow you that taste of being in space or doing the pod racing and everything, but they're really secondary, they're not the primaries.

One thing that you were talking about is how you want to use Xbox Live to provide extra content for the Xbox version of the game. Is that a definite plan?

Muzyka: Nothing's definite until the game ships, but I think that we're very interested in it.

If you did go ahead with offering Xbox owners new content via Xbox Live, would it be a free thing or would you charge for it?

Muzyka: That would probably be decided in collaboration with LucasArts. We want to achieve a nice balance between the different types of free versus paid content, make sure it's the right thing for the game and the fans.

Now that you've developed this new engine for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, are we going to see third-person fantasy RPGs from BioWare in the same style?

Muzyka: Maybe. The problem is that engines are very customised. So would we re-use it? Maybe, but maybe not in that form.

But would you consider doing that kind of third-person fantasy RPG?

Muzyka: Maybe. I mean, for example, Neverwinter Nights was more of an isometric view than third-person, but you could pull the camera down pretty close and angle it down a little bit, but not as much as this.

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Knight
11-14-2002, 02:37 PM
OK, moving swiftly on to the final question: what would you say is the thing you're most proud of in Knights of the Old Republic?

Muzyka: The people working on it, because they care about what they're doing and they go that extra mile to make sure that they understand the universe. Out of that flows the results, and it's going to be the best game that BioWare's ever made.

That's not to say that we think badly of the previous games that we've done, it just means that every new game has to be better than all the games we've done before, or at least the last one.

Dre
11-14-2002, 04:03 PM
Wow... I'm speechless. I NEED to play this game now more than ever. I hadn't had an update in a while but this was just the sort of thing I wanted to hear. Thanks for the info Knight!!!