The other day, IGN had the privilege to speak to the two of the producers of Star Wars: The Old Republic; senior producer Dallas Dickinson and Jake Neri from LucasArts.  Over the 4 page Q&A they managed to crowbar some interesting details on the upcoming game, that I have summarised below:

How appropriate, you fight like a cow!

• The Healing System – Bioware’s system is that every class will be able to spec for healing to some degree, but they hinted that there would still be some kind of a healer class; pure, hybrid or otherwise.
• Space Combat – Non-Existent at the moment.
• Character Customisation – The degree to which you can customise your character sounds pretty extensive, so that there wont be 10 people in every meeting place that looks exactly like Boba Fett… Well, not through lack of choice anyway.
• Player Bounties – Bioware touched on this subject briefly, and it seems like they’re not committing to anything, but they haven’t ruled it out either.
• Jetpacks – Yes, you heard me, jetpacks.  They will be used to perform certain combat moves such as boosting up into the air, swooping down and then blasting rockets in some unsuspecting persons face.  I’m sold.
• Light/Dark side switching? - Not hugely clear on this because Bioware just confirmed that they had previously hinted upon this.  Basically they have hinted that there might be something similar to a karma system that would allow you to switch from Dark to Light (or vice versa), depending on your actions.  Not sure how this would affect non-force classes.
• No Rat Killing – Huzzah!  Gone are the days when you have to go out and collect 12 rat testicles for the local Quest giver!  Bioware have said that every mission should immerse you into the story, and give you a sense that you are doing something heroic in the Star Wars Galaxy.
• Companions – You will have them, and they will become your party in certain instances for the storyline.  The interesting thing here is that they will work the way companions worked in Mass Effect, so that you will build a relationship with them which will be unique to you.

All very interesting stuff, I look forward to hearing what will come out of the Comic-Con over this weekend.  More to come, I’m sure!

The guys over at PC Gamer have managed to receive a revealing presentation of The Old Republic.

The article is well written and goes into a lot of detail regarding bits of information we haven’t seen before.

Highlights include a Sith preview, mentioning the action point system requiring you to build up points as you deal damage to perform finishing moves and the following quote.

Where are the PvP arenas? Or the large, 25+ player raids? Or auction houses? Or, hey, space-combat? Vogel raises an eyebrow. “Oh, we have all that too. We’re just going to wait a little bit to show you that.

The full article can be seen at Games Radar here and is well worth a read