Gamertell

Those who attended Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic presentation at Penny Arcade Expo were treated to some minor revelations about the upcoming MMO:

• Coruscant will be a playable location
• A first look at a Female Bounty Hunter player character
• The original Knights of the Old Republic is being released via Steam

And that’s pretty much it. The presenters opened up by showing the “Deceived” trailer that premiered at E3, then walked the audience through much of the same material seen in developers walkthrough from GamesCom.

The basic abilities of the Bounty Hunter, Smuggler and Sith Warrior were demoed, along with a repeated emphasis on the fully voiced nature of all the characters and how your choices will affect the kind of story you get to play. The claim was made that, depending on the characters you play with and the choices you make, you could see a completely different game (in terms of available missions) than another party.

The Old Republic was stated to be so massive in terms of potential game play that it was like three new Knights of the Old Republic games.

A significant difference between the gameplay shown and that from GamesCom was that here, the Sith Warrior and Bounty Hunter chose to spare the life of the rogue Imperial Captain, leading to a slightly different showdown as you were assaulted by the Republic ship: taking place in the landing bay rather than the engineering section.

The rest of the demonstration was a comedic tease as it was “revealed” that Jar-Jar Binks was a Sith Lord, and a threat from a “sniper from marketing” prevented them from revealing anything about playable species or level caps. What was confirmed was that the game will have standard MMO features like PvP, an auction house, and social/chat functions.

There was no mention of a release date.

Read [Gamertell] Site [Star Wars: The Old Republic] Site [PAX 2009]