BioWare Talks Writing for The Old Republic
By Kyle Mann | December 26, 2011 | News | No comments | Share
Star Wars: The Old Republic is alive and kicking, putting a George Lucas spin on traditional MMO structure. One of the more ambitious aspects of the project was the goal to give every character in the game his own voice acting, quite probably a first for the genre. PC Gamer got the chance to sit down with the game’s lead writer, Daniel Erickson, to find out just how BioWare’s TOR team went about writing the huge amount of dialogue for players to enjoy.
Perhaps surprisingly, dialogue is often written far later than the actual story has been hammered out, a process that ends with the narrative’s being approved by designers, artists, and animators alike to ensure the idea is doable in-game:
It starts with the plot summary which is very much like a story idea pitch. That’s written very much like a classic story – they’re going to do that in word and paragraph and whatever... We’re gonna go through that, we’re gonna see if it’s just a good story in general? Does it have the right things that you need for a Star Wars story: are there great characters? Are there great twists? Is it overly predictable?... Then it’s gonna go to the cinematic team, it’s gonna go to the art team – they’re gonna look at all the requirements, everybody gives their thumbs up, and then the writers start writing.Daniel Erickson, BioWare
Once that’s all sorted, the writing goes through another few rounds of critique, both in the game’s backend and in front of playtesters in the game’s current code. It’s an extremely intensive process, one that results in what BioWare hopes will be memorable and unique Star Wars dialogue for the MMO. Hit up the source link for Erickson’s complete comments to get a little better idea of what goes into the game’s writing.
