STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC Opening Cinematic

[filkertom]

Screw this being an MMO -- I got more juice out of this than the entire prequel trilogy. Although the facial animations were a bit stiff. I certainly care more about these characters than I ever did Anakin. And, to save you the hunt, the move you want to watch again starts at 3:02.

Comments

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Well facial animations are difficult. It's why cartoons and anime exaggerate them so much. My main concern has to do with prequels themselves. They're made when actors are older and the technology is better than the originals which happen chronologically later so you have to explain why earlier models look more advanced. It would be like having a VW Bug outrun a Ferrari.

That being said, they did a great job with the smuggler's ship being less powerful than the Falcon (the droid, autocannons, engine, etc) while still looking impressive. If only SOE didn't make it. *sigh*

[caraig.livejournal.com]

SOE isn't making Old Republic; but it's Electronic Arts, so it's not much better.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

EA canceled the first MMORPG I tried, Earth & Beyondm 7 years ago. I'm not going back to them. Besides you can only really play one MMORPG at a time and I'm not done with City of Heroes yet.

[caraig.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that the Kotaku headline is really rather accurate: This trailer is writing checks the game can't cash. I'm not certain that the medium can really handle what it is they're aiming for, and gamers are a notoriously fickle and inventive lot. They are pouring a lot of money into content what with the voiceovers. Will it translate well into an MMO? We'll have to see.

[saganth.livejournal.com]

I admit I have had some curiosity about the ancient Star Wars tales, the ones from the KotOR comics and reated materuals - there's certainly a hell of a lot of creative freedom compared to the Luke-Leia era. I am curious though as to who the Stormtrooper-like guys are--after all the Replublic, if I recall correctly, never had a standing army. This does look fascinating, especially compared to the half-rotted tripe of the prequel trilogy.

I also have to wonder why every different era of Star Wars bad guys ever put into visual format invariably use similar designs? The Sith ships here look like Empire Star Destroyers. The Republic troops (!) look like Palpatine's Clone Stormtroopers (not to mention other Sith troops I've seen depictions of-- http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sith_trooper_armor for instance). I can understand Jedi looking much alike from era to era, and I like the fact that the droid we see is clearly an ancient forerunner of R2-D2 and other "modern" astromech droids... But a little more variety, maybe?

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

The SW fanbase has always struck me as pretty conservative in terms of continuity visual and otherwise, but yeah, it did seem almost a bit silly how close the designs are despite being ages prior to the movies.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Well in a lot of SF there's ancient tech that's more advanced than the current weapons, but they never explain how this technology was lost. This could be some of it. During the war production centers could be destroyed, resources lost, manufacturing shifted and the original plans scrapped.

But yeah, overall you're right. It's silly about things from a long, LONG time ago are more sophisticated than things from a long time ago. Something like that never really happened in human history. Even during the dark ages technology advanced. They just advanced very slowly.

[writer-jack.livejournal.com]

The loss of old technology has a valid historical perspective. Even now we are just beginning to understand "Greek Fire" although archeologists are still in disagreement over whether it was a bomb or flame thrower. In either case modern weapon experts have reproduced how it "might" have been done without really knowing. We are only just beginning to appreciate the clockworks and robots of the Greeks, and the clever ways they used gravity (falling water, falling sand, etc) to power their machines. All of that technology was lost for over two thousand years and wasn't rediscovered until we had already re-invented it. We found the Antikythera mechanism over a century ago but ourselves had not yet developed the technology to truly understand what a marvel it was until recently. That's an demonstrative example in our own times that even finding old technology doesn't mean it can be understood until new technology has evolved past the old tech and spawns the tools to examine and understand the old tech. If a light saber were to fall out of the sky today, could we understand it's inner workings and reproduce it? Likely not, the power source and inner circuitry would be too dense for us to understand its construction with our current tool sets. We would have to evolve our own technology beyond light sabers to understand, appreciate and reverse engineer the Jedi toy.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

It's a strong desire to be able to say "Look, this ship design is an ancestor of the main-continuity designs you know and love!" Plus, it serves as a visual shorthand - when a big pile of wedge-shaped ships show up, you know the good guys are in trouble before the first shot is fired.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

I played both KotoR and KotoR2 and loved them, I'll almost certainly give this a go and see what they have done with it.

THere goes another chunk of free time.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Oh good. More computer-game graphics disguised as a film? (I knew I had no wish to see Phantom Menace from the preview - it looked like a game instead of a movie.)

[roman-mclaze.livejournal.com]

I'm MMOed out, but I still enjoyed the hell out of this.

Then again, it's Bioware doing SW, and KOTOR is one of my favorite games ever.

[nubianamy.livejournal.com]

I really need more dialogue. That's the best thing about Star Wars. =)