That’s what this weeks Friday release showed us. It showed us what goes into making one of these ships and just how much detail has to go into it. In the studio insider, BioWare went into a tremendous amount of detail showing exactly what goes into making the ship. It’s not so simple as just making the graphic and hoping it works out. BioWare wants an amazing experience for us and that’s what they’re making.

I think what I liked so much was how they were able to narrow down exactly what the ship was going to look like. It takes a really creative individual to create all of those different concepts and then to narrow it down to just one really can be tricky. However, they go from all of those concepts and then narrow it down to just one.

Once that is done, detail goes into all of the outside of the ship. Every little detail is covered; nothing is not important. I think that’s why the ships look so nice. They pay attention to detail.

The same can be said about the interior. They make sure that they make the interior look perfect. However, what was interesting was their discussion of making it work for the camera.

“With a much smaller interior space than seen in the rest of the game, it was important that the doors were wide enough for players to enter and that the ceilings were just high enough to avoid problems with the camera,” it said in the article. It’d be pretty funny if we got stuck trying to get out of the ship.

All in all, the ships look like they are going to come out nicely. Obviously the graphics will be a lot nicer when we are just walking around our ship than when in space combat, but that’s besides the point. What does matter is that I finally get my own space ship! Any comments?

In the excerpt I read on the website, I got a bit more of a taste about the way things are going to work in regard to space combat. Ohlen said, “We modelled the gameplay after classic Star Wars games like Rogue Squadron. You’re not just flying around in three-dimensional space not knowing what to do. You’re given a specific mission and you fly along a set path.” Now, we obviously know that. It created a lot of frustration amongst players–me included.

He went on to say, “This part of the game involves aiming with your mouse and more hand-eye coordination. We have different levels of difficulty, so if you’re not the greatest space shooter, you’re still going to be able to have fun. You’ll just have to stick to the hot spots that are more [for] your skill set. If you’re an expert, you’ll eventually graduate to the most difficult of the space battle zones.”

At this point, I am starting to warm up to the idea of this type of space combat. While I’d obviously love free roaming, I really did love the Rogue Squadron games and since this aspect of the game is built on being more about skill than anything else, it’ll allow some of us to really excel. One of my complaints with MMOs is how if you push a button, you attack. With this, you’ll actually have to be somewhat tactical and know how to do it.

The one other thing I really liked were the descriptions he gave about the different moves each class could do. He only gave one per, but they were still fun. “A Jedi Knight can leap through the air and attack an enemy. A Jedi Consular can lift an enemy up in the air using his telekinetics and slam them into the ground. A Sith Warrior can lift an enemy up and choke them. A bounty hunter can fly into the air and fire missiles down on an enemy. Those are just examples of one ability for each class. Each class has dozens of different abilities.”

Other than that, the article just talks about things we already know. I don’t get Star Wars Insider, so I only got to read the excerpts. However, if anyone here read it, leave a comment with anything you liked. I’d love to hear from you.

If you head over to the starships page and look at the cut outs, it’s pretty easy to determine which of the ships are going to be for which class. If you look at the top three ships, from left to right, you’ve got the Bounty Hunter ship, the Sith Fury and the Trooper Ship. On the bottom three ships, from left to right, you’ve got the Imperial Inquisitor ship, the Smuggler ship and then the Jedi Defender.

When looking at the video–check out the first link above for it–you can see these ships in action and the colors and the such are what make me believe that those ships are what they are. I might be wrong, but just the structure and colors support that.

Right now, those are the only six available ships–which will be the ones released at launch–but chances are, there might be other ships released. It would be nice to see the Jedi and Sith classes get their own ships separate from each other. For now, though, we already know that there are only going to be the six ships available.

I am liking that they keep releasing more holonet information. I want to know as much as I can before the game is released, but it makes me wonder what the last question mark is. We’ve got the classes, planets, allegiances, etc, etc. But, what’s that last question mark? I guess we’ll have to wait a little longer to find out.

They talked about a lot of different things in the video. First, space combat won’t be entirely optional which makes sense. I always think of Obi Wan Kenobi saying, “Flying is for droids.” He hates flying, but sometimes he has to do it. That’s what the game will be like–or, that’s what Erickson thinks it’ll be like. However, he does explain that it won’t be as tactical and strategic as normal space combat game play because he doesn’t want anyone getting stuck there.

Another thing that was interesting was that he did say, “you can upgrade your ship.” I know it’s been confirmed, but then at the same time, confirmation was always shady. Hearing him say “upgrade your ship” is pretty confirming to me.

With less than a year before the game comes out, it sounds like they’re rounding things up nicely and are now in the stages of tweaking. They need to balance the characters out and Erickson admits that they’re no where near close to that. That’s fine because that’s probably one of the latter parts of development. I just hope they do it right because there’s nothing more frustrating than an obvious super character.

The companions were discussed a bit and how they can act any way you want them to based on what kits you give them. That means any companion can become a healer if you choose for them to. That makes for an interesting way of getting healers when you don’t want to play as one.

Overall, it was a cool interview. I’m looking forward to seeing other interviews pop up as GamesCom 2010 continues. Any comments about what was discussed?

However, space combat is in The Old Republic. I purchased a copy of PC Gamer and went through it, tearing it apart, finding all the little details. And then, BioWare released a short little clip that showed what space combat was like. So, I wanted to give a run down of what it’s going to be like. While I haven’t played it yet–obviously–we can get a better idea of what game play will be like.

Space Combat in The Old Republic

It should be noted from the absolute beginning that space combat, as mentioned in PC Gamer, will not be “a revival of the class X-Wing s TIE Fighter space-combat games.” Much to my own frustration, this is the case. Jake Neri, LucasArts Producer told PC Gamer that, “we didn’t set out to make a full ‘go anywhere’ space game. It’s important for us to be true to the core of this game, and we didn’t feel that was the right decision based on our experience with other games we’ve built around here.”

That means that space combat is going to be a tunnel shooter. For those that don’t know, a tunnel shooter means that you travel along a predetermined track. However, you can move your ship up and down the Y axis and left and right on the X axis and you might be able to move diagonal, but that might just be a movement of the X and Y. Neri explained the gameplay as “the most cinematic moments that we can create. We want players to get in and feel like they’re in the movies. It’s about highly cinematic controlled combat moments…very heroic, action packed, exciting, visceral and dangerous encounters that’ll make you pee your pants.” You decide.

That’s great and I’ll be honest…Watching that really was an exciting experience. It does leave a few questions in my mind, but I’ll save that for another post when more is confirmed. It’s just questions on PvP and other people being a part of it.

Looking at that clip, though, we can all agree that there is a lot going on. And that’s the point. BioWare wasn’t going to make a full on flight simulator, but they still wanted you to feel heroic. And they still wanted you to die if you failed. Kevin Barrett, the executive producer at BioWare Edmonton told PC Gamer that they wanted players to die. They want it to be really hard to beat the mission.

So, you fly through an asteroid field–but you’re not actually flying because the tunnel is doing it for you–and then you target different ships. You might have to destroy a series of fighters and at the same time, blow up a capital ship. So, you shoot your lasers–which sound very familiar to the movie sounds–and destroy fighters. Then, you use your missiles and destroy the capital ship. That’s what we know so far. Will more be revealed? One can hope.

Now, one last thing does stand out in this clip. There are six different ships shown. Now, I can comfortably gauge which one is which. We know the Jedi and Sith ship, but then there are four others. The sleek silver one that looks similar to the Naboo ship is probably the Imperial Agents. The one with the green boosters is probably the Bounty Hunter. The one that looks very similar to the Ebon Hawk is for the smuggler. Finally, the ship that has the two wings coming off the main body look to it is for the Trooper.

Are these confirmed? No. But, there’s a very good chance, just by thinking about who the characters are, that this will be the way it is structured. Space combat is an interesting thing. I hoped for it to be one way, but perhaps my frustrations won’t go unheard. Maybe it will be amazing? But, for now, I am a little let down. Any opinions?

But, the problem I find is that PC Gamer won’t have their October issue our for another few weeks. This means I have to wait to find out what type of space combat there is going to be. And I just couldn’t have that. So, I began to speculate. I’ve come up with my own speculation on what space combat is going to look like. To begin with, though, we have to consider what space flight might be like. To have combat, one must first have flight.

The space flight, in my opinion, is going to be free to an extent. One of the things people talk about is flying around the galaxy freely. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible. The galaxy is massive, so to fly around freely would take forever. Legitimately, it would take many life times. Therefore, space travel will be free flying around the planet. If you want to fly around the planet and see other people flying around as well, all the better. But, if you are on Coruscant and you want to go to Alderaan, you’ll have to enter hyperspace. This will be similar to how travel was done in KOTOR and in Mass Effect.

So, what happens when there is a space battle going on? Good question.

Sean, the community manager at SWTOR, mentioned in the thread that you “fly” to the combat hot spot. “In space combat, you fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map,” Sean said. That would suggest control over the ship on your way to combat. So, you leave hyper space and then you fly to the hot spot on the map, enter it and voila, combat begins. But, what will combat look like?

Space combat will be a mouse and keyboard operation. While many people have been hoping and praying for a joystick game, the truth is, this is a MMO, not a flight simulator. We’re going to be getting space combat to begin with, so I think that’s plenty. Maybe in future expansions BioWare will make it with a joystick, but right now, it won’t be.

Combat will probably be similar to what it looked like in Star Wars Galaxies. You’ll fly around in your ship and you’ll do damage to ships bigger than yours and smaller. It might not be as good–I’ve heard great things about it–but the space combat, overall, will probably be like that. They can’t do something more basic because people are hardcore expecting to enjoy the space combat. If they do something simple like an asteroids game, people will be very upset. I know I would be.

Because ship customization is going to be added to the game, this is where you’ll be able to make your ship stronger. While you will be able to make it look cool, you’ll also be able to add stronger shields, better weapons, and other things to make you a more formidable opponent in space. So, if you have the credits, you might be able to buy a stronger shield generator.

This is speculative. While I think the above might be what they do–it just seems like a basic, but still enjoyable experience–BioWare can really surprise us sometimes. I don’t think it’ll be a stupid mini-game, but it might not be as extravagant as I described. We’ll have to wait until PC Gamer releases their next issue so we can be better learned on what space combat is going to be all about.

I’ll touch more on the space combat at a later point–PC Gamer is doing an exclusive on it–so for now, let’s focus on what was revealed at “Crafting the Multiplayer Story.”

• Each of the classes in SWTOR have enough content to fill an entire KOTOR. While this is nothing new, it really is amazing to imagine how much content that means. There are currently eight classes and that means, in theory, they’ve created eight KOTORs for this game. That’s pretty sweet in my opinion.
• The story arcs are both worldly and galactic. What this means is that some of the quest arcs that you’ll be doing will be specific to the planet you are on. But, others that you will be doing are galactic.
• Your ship is customizable. This goes hand in hand with everything they’ve been talking about. They want you to truly appreciate your experience. I actually had some notes prepared about Fatal Alliance that fit in with this. There was too much mention of “modified ships,” but we’ll get to that when I finish.
• There is space combat. It should be noted, though, that the space combat doesn’t appear to be free-roaming. So, don’t expect to fly through space, happen upon a Sith/Jedi ship and open fire. Sean described it as, “Space combat is an alternative gameplay experience to the primary game of storytelling, questing, and ground-based combat. In space combat, you fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map. From there, you will blast your way through asteroid fields, enemy fighters, frigates, destroyers, and a variety of other obstacles that will evoke memories of some of the great Star Wars™ space battles.” So, maybe I’ll be sitting in my cockpit dog fighting? We’ll have to wait and see.
• Once you are a part of a faction, you cannot switch. This, too, was also a question of mine. I’m at the part of the book where Shigar Konshi is with Darth Chratis and it’s obvious Chratis is trying to turn Konshi to the dark side. That would suggest faction change, but according to this panel, that is simply not possible.
• Not every class can play every race. This could potentially go against what I wrote about yesterday pertaining to aliens being open to mane different races, but we’ll have to wait and see. It could also suggest that they are, in fact, releasing races that are not force sensitives. We’ll have to wait and see on this. They wouldn’t reveal any other races, though.
• Mandalorians will play a huge part in this game. They are definitely going to be an interesting addition to the game.
• Progression is important. Crafting, tons of gear and other things. There are rewards for all of this.
• When grouping, if the group does something bad, if you choose good, you get light side points. This was an issue some were concerned about. When in a group, if three chose to do an evil act and you chose to do a good act, the evil act would be done. But, you’d get light side points for wanting to do the good act.
• Alderaan’s families are split. Family Organa is on the Republic’s side. Family Thulu is on the Sith side. Easily a great way for there to be serious problems.
• Lightsabers will be visually restricting. Double bladed Jedi Consular is a DPSer. Therefore, if you see a single bladed Jedi Consular, that means that they are geared toward something else.

This whole event turned into a huge Q&A which is always cool. Very little was provided about the overall “multiplayer” experience, but at least we know that there isn’t a problem if you choose to do something light sided and the rest of the team does something dark. This will put some people’s fears to rest. And, most importantly, there’s space combat! Wait until August when PC Gamer’s issue comes out. You can bet I’ll devour that for information for you guys!

Unfortunately, I don’t have a definite answer for you because the game is not out. However, I went digging and I think I might have come across a little information that might make it “likely” that The Old Republic will have space travel. It’s not a definite and BioWare could pull back at the last minute saying, “it just doesn’t work.” But, I think there is some evidence to suggest that space travel is very likely.

The first bit of information, albeit the lesser of the two, was found in an interview Dan Erickson – lead writer of TOR – said to Edge Online. In it, he specifically said, “We are building many many worlds and you can travel between them, but what happens then we’re not talking about.” He goes on to say, when he was pushed on space travel, that “we’re not talking about anything to do with space today.” I can handle that. I dig it. No need to reveal information too early.

But, that had me wondering…There has to be a way to get from planet A to planet B. More importantly, there needs to be some sort of combat in space. It’s Star Wars for Pete’s sake. It’s not Planet Wars. We take to space, baby!

The second bit of evidence I happened across was a little peaking around in the Holonet. When you look at the entry on the Jedi Knight, you see a page that is full of information. But, what is most important to see is that the holonet has a background designed for it. Now, with that in mind, consider this next link. It leads to a blank page, but has the holonet background. The keyword in URL is space. Check it out here. Please pay careful attention to the background and what it looks like.

The argument that was presented to me when I first found this was: “So what?” Well, I decided to do a little looking around. With the look of the holonet background in mind, visit this page with the keyword in the URL being shirt. Check it out here. That takes you to an error page that was created in case someone makes a mistake in the URL and there is nothing there. It’s a redirect. Compare it to TOR Universe’s “this doesn’t exist page.”

In other words, this might be some sort of a suggestion that they plan on adding space travel to the game. They created a folder specifically for it because if they hadn’t, typing in space after the holonet section of the URL would simply lead to the error page. Therefore, it is my honest belief – with what Dan Erickson said and this information about the URLs – that there will be space travel in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I am confident of this.

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think about space travel, think it’ll be probably and most importantly, what aspects of it you’re most interested in.