MER Episode 15 – Gee Dee Cee You At PAX East!

After taking a month off, we knew you guys would want a packed show…and we’ve delivered! Beyond catching up on all the recent news like Belsavis and the Consular developer blog, Darth Hater’s Emlaeh joined us to talk about her hands-on experience with the Trooper last week at LucasArts. We also get to the listener questions that have been sitting in the inbox for a while, and our pal JD joins us for an Old Republic class March Madness! Hope you all enjoy the long format, and we look forward to bringing you our experience at PAX East next week.

Also, we want to extend a huge thanks to Jaysen71581 for taking the time to leave us a review on iTunes!

Music for this show was provided by General Fuzz. Check out more of his work at generalfuzz.net

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News from the Galactic Republic
Fan Friday Update: Fan Site Kit, Trooper Animation, Rancor Render

Developer Video: Returning to Taris

Developer Blog: Finding Balance in the Force

New Webcomic with Dark Horse: Blood of the Empire

New Playable Planet: Belsavis
-Info from Wookiepedia

Stories from the Outer Rim
Trooper Gameplay @ Darth Hater

Be sure to check out the rest of the GDC coverage from Darth Hater!

Pre-Episode Poll
Which Unannounced KOTOR planet should be added to the game?
-Kashyyyk (36%, 24 Votes)
-Dantooine (27%, 18 Votes)
-Yavin System (19%, 13 Votes)
-Manaan (13%, 9 Votes)
-Rakata Prime (Lehon) (5%, 3 Votes)

“I’d love to see them explore Dantooine where it says “Buried beneath the deserted Enclave was a hidden facility in which the ancient Jedi Knights carried on mysterious cloning experiments.” in the wiki link. I love the idea of the serene planet surface, but beneath the surface are either jedi ghosts or decayed jedi walking around doing immoral experiments for warped and skewed reasons that were at one time good. And hell, if the Empire could somehow be behind this corruption… all the better.”
-Lazenca

“I’d like it to be a time when the wookiees are “free” from outside influence, and have fallen into a civil war.”
-Axe Faktor

Listener Questions
What are your opinions on flyable ships as opposed to the system in KOTOR where you were automatically taken to another planet?
-Sith Tyro Revan
Check out Gordon Walton’s thoughts on space combat

So I have played (and will play again) the Star Wars pencil and paper D20 RPG game. It plays really similarly to D&D and both KOTORs adapt a bunch of their play styles from it. The big difference between it and D&D is the weapon damage. You would have similar HP, but the weapons just shell out tons of damage, both for the heroes and mobs. Do you think this would be an appropriate play style for SWTOR? Having tons of damage dealt from you and to you, speeding up the game play. Or do you think it should be slowed down to match other MMORPG’s?
-Peter Corey

Hi guys great cast been listening for a few months now. Just wondered what you guys think the planet areas are going to be like and what you will be hoping for in respect to size and exploration. Obviously there will be a lot of instances within open areas for solo and different size groups/raids but what would you like from the open areas? You talked a little about exploration with regards to SWG and Krayt dragons and a little on easter eggs which will be cool to come across but what would you really like from the open areas with respect to size/ random spawns/ gated areas or not?/ random,scripted,GM events/ cool things/ crafting nodes and drops…….etc.
-Kojack

March Madness!!!!

MER Episode 05b – KOTOR Giveaway!

With the slow stream of news in the past couple of weeks, we thought it best to push back episode 6 by a week. What better way to make up for the delay than by giving away two free copies of Knights of the Old Republic via Steam! Make sure to go sign up for a steam account here if you don’t already have one, and then listen to the show for details on how to enter. We’ll be announcing the winners on next week’s episode!

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Companion Characters in SWTOR

The folks over at Bioware have confirmed a number of times via the official site, interviews, and panels that companion characters are going to be a part of the game and have an influence on our experience in the world of The Old Republic. But from what I can tell, we don’t really know much about how these NPCs will actually change the game. They are said to have their own story and their own path down the light or dark side.

These guys are truly hideous. Are we going to pick our companion?

Obviously, the dev team is going to draw heavily from their past experience with companion characters in games like KOTOR and Mass Effect. Those seemed to work pretty well, right? And they were integrated into the game in a way that didn’t detract from your story. Let’s just hope we don’t end up with the paper cut-outs like in Guild Wars.

Are you even remotely excited about companion characters in an MMO setting? Vote in the poll and leave us details in the comments!

[poll id="2"]

Voicing Star Wars The Old Republic

Last week Developer Blog #10 popped up on the official site, going into great detail about the process for the extremely daunting task of recording voice over for The Old Republic. It’s been known for some time that all NPCs and quest-related information will be listened to and not read. In fact, this is one of the core elements of Bioware Austin’s new “story” pillar of MMORPGs. While the concept alone is enough to excite the legions of Knights of Old Republic fans, there is a scale and dedication to their craft present that I’m not sure everyone fully understands.

Let’s look at some of the facts: The Old Republic is the size of at least 10 KOTORs recorded back to back and the voice-over has been recorded in 5 different cities: Los Angeles , London, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto, by hundreds of different actors. First and foremost, if anyone has taken a close look at the audio files for KOTOR, the dialog alone accounts for about 550MB of space. Multiplying that by 10, we get an astonishing 5.5GB of data just for voice. Factoring in music and environmental sounds, and without an elaborate compression scheme, it’s likely that all audio related content for The Old Republic could take upwards of 7-8GB of storage on your machine.

View of Skywalker Sound’s Akira Kurosawa dubbing stage with the Neve DFC console.

What really speaks to Bioware and LucasArt’s dedication to this game is the task of working with so many voice actors at so many locations. The act of recording that much audio alone is astonishing, but when the whole process is considered, it’s no surprise that the team went to Skywalker Sound, one of the heaviest hitters in movie and video game industry. Before even a single line is recorded, scripts are laid out, voice directors are met with, actors have practice groups, and engineers consider all the editing and processing that will need to be done. Once the first track is laid, then comes the grueling task of assuring consistency in volume, pitch, and even pronunciation, as dynamic storylines require each individual line to be played on the fly based on a player’s choices.

As a gamer and an audio engineer, I couldn’t be more excited about what this means for both The Old Republic and the gaming industry in general. With this release, the teams at Bioware and LucasArts will set the bar for video game audio, and a very high one at that.

How do you feel about all quest and NPC-related content being spoken and not read?