What Lurked Behind Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Voices

So yesterday we were treated to another update on Bioware‘s Star Wars: The Old Republic – this time focusing in on the full voiceover, why they made this decision, and how they feel that the fully voiced NPCs and characterization in the game is an essential and necessary part of their intended game experience. It’s definitely worth a watch to go through the 5:38 it’ll take you, because there’s a lot to take in.

If you want to check out some of the breakdown, you can check out Moon Over Endor’s thoughts on the voice video, or SWTORBlog’s addition to a great official forum thread on the video.

This forum thread found what I thought was curious and noticeable about the documentary, taking away all the talk about voice acting – and that’s the inclusion of actual in-game footage and action. Here we have a subtle side bonus for the people who have been looking at this game, following it, and are skeptical about its look, feel, and overall presentation in mechanics. While the details are a bit sketchy – and the forum thread I linked pretty much does the obsessive breakdown better than I could (actual cooldown on abilities noted? Nice work, Ibliss) – it does show a couple of interesting things about Bioware’s marketing strategy.

The first is that the incremental reveal and tease regarding the nuts and bolts of the game continues. We haven’t heard much, but what we have seen and heard and read appears to give us just enough detail to whet the appetite but not enough for people to start coming to horrid and premature conclusions about how the game works. Though Bioware has never done an MMO before, they’re clearly aware of the sins of the past in terms of revealing certain things prior to them being ready to reveal. This is a shrewd strategy, as it teases and excites the people who are positive about the game while it holds back critics with a “wait and see” attitude. Either way, people are following the game. Well played, Bioware.

The second, which at first seems to run counter to that, is that Bioware isn’t afraid to show us what they have that is polished. From the dialogue and look, it looked like the quest with the Imperial star destroyer captain and its subsequent choices was what we were showed. This was material that Bioware has already released to the media for public consumption (see coverage from E3 for that), which means it is polished enough for them to feel confident to be put through the inevitable community blender of speculation and analysis. That we already have this kind of in-game footage is heartening for the development of the game, which means that it’s on pace and moving forward fairly well. By doing this, they’re also controlling the pace at which the aforementioned speculation is happening, allowing them to gather some subtle feedback from the impressions of the stuff that they deem fit to be seen.

So while it was great to hear about the voiceover mechanic and the talent that is to appear in it (those of you who are really geeky might have noticed the appearance of one Jennifer Hale, she of the voice of Naomi Hunter in Metal Gear Solid and Bastilla in KOTOR), I see what you did there, Bioware. Subtle, well-played, and most of all, intriguing.