The Old Republic’s community has been in a frenzy of activity in the past 12 hours. First leaked information about the space combat has emerged from various sources. First, German fansite got a hold of an issue of PC Action magazine (a German publication) that provided details on space combat. Our friends at Ask a Jedi had the details on this as well as the translation of the most important information in the German article.

A heated discussion ensued on the official forums. All of the space combat discussions are being consolidated by Bioware moderators into one monstrous thread with a poll that asks you “Are you happy with the Space Combat details?” (Yes/No/Need more info).

The biggest news is certainly the appearance of the scans from the upcoming PC Gamer magazine. When space combat was announced it was said that PC Gamer will have the exclusive details on the feature and this is the article that details it. There is a page missing but you can find all the most important info without trouble. The scans were found at Darth Hater’s forums

Here’s the recap of the most important info:

• Space combat is a tunnel shooter mini game (your ship is propelled along a predefined path and always moving forward while you only choose which weapons to fire and at what targets – there is no free flight like in X-Wing vs Tie Fighter)
• There will be 6 different ship types for 8 classes (Jedi Consular and Jedi Knight share the same ship type and so do the Inquisitor and Sith Warrior)
• Space combat is a single player instance (at launch at least)!
• You can collide with asteroids or other ships
• There will be a main quest that will give a token reward you can exchange for items and side quests that will rotate and feature escort missions of different ships or destroy a randomly chosen ship
• Each mission is 2-8 minutes long
• Blasters and missiles only (and only power of these can be upgraded as you earn rewards)
• Character abilities and stats do not affect space combat

That’s it folks. Two to eight minute missions with you moving your ship on X and Y axis while mouse targeting and shooting your enemies. A little action packed mini-game to break the mold. I bet all those that said space combat will resemble KOTOR’s turret mini game are doing their: “I told you so”.

My hunch is that there will be a video of the space combat missions running at GamesCom and since we will be attending we will be bringing you all of the news right from the spot.

Tags: space combat