Cameron Tofer once had an interesting idea for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
JuliusBorisov
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There's a new article by Eurogamer which contains a lot of interesting information about BioWare and their old games, mostly about KotOR, though.
"The next thing BioWare needed was a twist. This was of utmost importance. Of all the moments in the Star Wars films, Ohlen's favourite is Darth Vader telling Luke Skywalker he's his father at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. "It feels like Star Wars, an episodic movie series, needs cliffhangers and twists," he says, "so we wanted a twist from the start."
There were a lot of boxes a twist needed to tick. "We needed a twist that was incredibly epic in scope, that when it happened it was like, 'Whoa! that is going to have a big effect on the galaxy'; we wanted a twist that was personal and meant a great deal to the player; and we wanted a twist that made you feel better about things, a twist that made you cooler."
What if...? Eventually someone hit the nail on the head. "The initial idea of the player as the villain came from Cam." That's Cameron Tofer, who was going to be the executive producer on the game, but who left BioWare to co-found a small studio called Beamdog nearby (a studio which enhances some of BioWare's old games). If Tofer hadn't left, Casey Hudson wouldn't have stepped in to fill his executive producer shoes, and if Hudson hadn't stepped in then he might never have gone on to spearhead the Mass Effect series in the way he did. It might never have happened!
Tofer's initial idea was fleshed out by Hudson and lead writer Drew Karpyshyn, "and the twist," Ohlen says, "was in the very first two-page Word document for the game".
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-11-27-bioware-kotor-making-of
"The next thing BioWare needed was a twist. This was of utmost importance. Of all the moments in the Star Wars films, Ohlen's favourite is Darth Vader telling Luke Skywalker he's his father at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. "It feels like Star Wars, an episodic movie series, needs cliffhangers and twists," he says, "so we wanted a twist from the start."
There were a lot of boxes a twist needed to tick. "We needed a twist that was incredibly epic in scope, that when it happened it was like, 'Whoa! that is going to have a big effect on the galaxy'; we wanted a twist that was personal and meant a great deal to the player; and we wanted a twist that made you feel better about things, a twist that made you cooler."
What if...? Eventually someone hit the nail on the head. "The initial idea of the player as the villain came from Cam." That's Cameron Tofer, who was going to be the executive producer on the game, but who left BioWare to co-found a small studio called Beamdog nearby (a studio which enhances some of BioWare's old games). If Tofer hadn't left, Casey Hudson wouldn't have stepped in to fill his executive producer shoes, and if Hudson hadn't stepped in then he might never have gone on to spearhead the Mass Effect series in the way he did. It might never have happened!
Tofer's initial idea was fleshed out by Hudson and lead writer Drew Karpyshyn, "and the twist," Ohlen says, "was in the very first two-page Word document for the game".
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-11-27-bioware-kotor-making-of
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Comments
......I feel so disappointed right now. lol
Anyways, this was a nice read. The traitorous yoda would've been an interesting twist, but all-in-all I'm glad Obsidian got to do KOTOR2 instead of Bioware. That game is amazing (even better with the restored content mod), and better than KOTOR in several ways (worse in others, of course). Maybe they'll recycle that idea if KOTOR3 is ever made.
I found it somewhat strange that they think the battle system wasn't a good fit for the game, I thought it was downright perfect, and much better than the more action-oriented games. KOTOR1/2 are my favourite Star Wars games, and they're certainly close to the top of my all-time favourite games. Cinematic is indeed the correct word, they made me feel like I was inside one of the movies. You can feel the amount of love both games have for the source material, there's a lot of throwbacks but it never feels like a rehash. The Ebon Hawk is obviously a different version of the Millenium Falcon, but it still feels unique. Same goes for Malak being Vader. There's also a Yoda-species Jedi Master in one of the games, though I can't remember if it's in 1 or 2.
A pity we never got to play Masked Revan, heh.
Damn, now I feel like playing them again...