Future Imperial Agents, your prayers have been heard. Bioware finally released the Character Progression video for this class. We can see different skills and armor for different Advanced classes the Agent can pick (Operative or Sniper). There are some blades being pushed into people’s chest. Some orbital bombardment devastation is present. Resurrection of companions was not left out either and at the very end – I will just say “BOOM, headshot” and all you Counter Strike veterans will know. One thing about this video that really “rocked my world” was the music. It is so epic it instantly reminded me of the most epic scenes form the movie Matrix. Enjoy the video below.
Here we go with the trailers again. Just when you think they’ve shown everything they have to show in video form, sans live streaming all 50 levels of the game, Bioware starts another amazing series of trailers. New trailers, including today’s, are focusing on showcasing a single class from each side of the conflict, urging future players to “Choose their side”. Reminiscent of the epic fight between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi the first trailer pits a Jedi Knight versus a Bounty Hunter class. The trailer consists of commentaries by writers and game designers that designed these classes and we get some great in-game footage of the two fighting it out. Jedi Knight with his “up in your face” combat style and Bounty Hunter trying to keep his distance at all costs makes up for one great trailer full of action. No matter how much make up you apply to it or no matter how many great CGI cinematic you throw out, the in-game stuff is always the best part of any trailer for me. Every time I am reminded why I am a fan of the game, because all in0game footage looks exactly as I imagined it should look. Enjoy the first Choose Your Side trailer and tell me – who wins the fight – Knight or Hunter?
It seems that this trailer is actually the PAX East 2011 trailer. The only difference is the inclusion of the release date at the end of the trailer. The updated trailer was uploaded to Youtube at the time this article was posted and that got me confused as if it is a trailer following up the release date announcement. I knew that the trailer looked familiar, but I did not do my research before posting this article due to all the excitement about the release date announcement. I apologize to everyone for any inconvenience caused.
Along with the announcement of the Release date (which is Dec. 20. 2011.) there is a new SWTOR trailer available proudly displaying the release date at the end. it is combined of footage we’ve mostly seen in other trailers, nevertheless it is exciting. Enjoy Fate of the Galaxy trailer below.
We’ve heard that it was demoed the first day of GamesCom 2011. Now we get to see the demo video by ourselves in glorious HD. The pit is the latest PvP warzone we are hearing about and it is the place where Huttball matches are being held. Hutball is a vicious sport played where two sides try to pass the ball across the opponents goal line. All moves are allowed including force lightning, stabbing and cheating. See for yourselves in this fun little video showcase of the Pit. I wonder if this is the PvP arena Daniel Erickson told us about in an interview at E3. He mentioned that it is so much fun punting your opponents into fire.
There are also two pieces of news you should all check out. First is a Q&A with Bioware’s good doctors Ray and Greg. They talk about beta weekends and raids and you can check it all out at Ask A Jedi.
There was apparently an impromptu Q&A session held on Twitter with Stephen Reid and Gabe Amatangelo straght from Germany. You can check out the full transcript at Tor Wars
The long awaited Jedi Consular class trailer has finally been made available. The bulky look they gave the Consular in the trailer is really just the way I would like my character to look. I was never a particularly big fan of the Consular (played healer in all other MMOS and I am sick of it, thank you very much), but the visual representation they gave in the video is just awesome. To make the update even better Bioware also released a recap video of SWTOR’s presence at San Diego Comic Con. To see all the new media for the Jedi Consular and learn more about the Shadow and the Sage advanced classes visit the Consular Class page on the official site. You can also find out more about the Consular’s trusted Trandoshan companion, Qyzen Fess. Or you can just watch the trailers bellow.
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Month of July will be remembered as special because none of the Friday Updates were a Fan Friday (although I think Fan Site spotlights are a great idea and Biware should make sure those continue – they mean a lot to hard working fansite people). It will also be remembered as a month that ended with a 13 minute long, epic gameplay video showcasing the Esseles flashpoint. For those of you that have been following the game for a while, you’ll probably notice that Esseles turns out to be the instance they showed a part of when they first showed group content for The Old Republic.
Watching this video really made me feel like I was watching one of the scenes from the original trilogy, or, worst case, one of the Clone Wars episodes. Felt very Stars Wars-y. Also, once again, they chose the dark side option and actually flushed some people into space – sans space suits. This is one of the videos that definitely deserves your time.
In their well known fashion Bioware released another enticing video trailer to celebrate the start of their pre-orders and their presence at San Diego Comic Con. Trailer features all the playable classes delivering great one-liners that tell you straight away what that each class is about. As always, they get me excited about the game no matter what.
These class progression trailers are immense fun. They are one of the few things forum trolls do not hate or fuss much about, which just goes to prove my previous sentence. There was a big squeee in SWTOR Life virtual office because 80% of staff are planning to play Bounty Hunters at launch. SWTORCrafter even managed to play the first levels of it during the Fan Site Summit, so you can check his hands on impressions to complete your overall impression of the class.
The progression trailer shows some great footage of new armor and skills. I particularly liked the last armor they show in the video. It is very “savage” looking. There’s flamethrower AOE-ing, carbonite freezing, rocket launching, jetpack flying, knife in face action all over the place in the video and I am sure you will enjoy it. I have one objection though. I know they’ve done this only to show the skills and that action is a bit staged, but I still can’t get it out of my head. There is no way in hell that anyone or anything, including Bounty Hunters, can one shot Jedi (padawan or not).
Flack from E3 is still being published and as part of it we got the Alderaan group quest video during this Friday update. This seems to be a shorter version of the video we’ve seen during live presentation at E3. For those of you that have not been following, here’s a recap of what this video actually shows. On planet Alderaan you get a chain of quests that is only doable by a group. The last quest in this chain requests of you to kill Bouris Ulgo, the usurper of the Alderaan throne. After taking care of some trash there is a final fight with Ulgo and his adds. There is a mechanic where while fighting waves of enemies you need to pick up rocket launchers standing around and destroy 4 shield generators that protect Ulgo himself. Upon doing so you finally get a chance to take down the naughty general and claim your reward. The curious thing is that it seems we will be seeing a lot of these group quest chains with special story backgrounds throughout the game, so in addition to the instance mechanic that brings people together we will have these world quest arcs to also provide content you can beat only with your friends.
On a completely unrelated note; how about that epic beard on Dallas Dickinson?
We had three major reveals and one major trailer released from the Old Republic headquarters during this year’s E3.There were a bunch of interviews by the major media outlets, yet most of the information heard there was already known to the people that follow this game for years now. I tend to look at the fan site interviews and gameplay impressions to get the really interesting information and new reveals.
When the first cinematic trailer “Deceived” came out everyone’s minds were blown away. None expected the second trailer “Hope”, because by that time we all knew the game was still some ways off and spending even more money on a super cool trailer would seem unexpected. We all knew that there was going to be a third trailer and since it lacked that element of surprise of the first two it had to be the best in the bunch. What followed was 6 minutes of epic Star Wars cinema and “Return” made all the fans squee like little girls at a Justin Bieber concert.
The very first big piece of info came out through a Gamespot live show with Daniel Erickson where Daniel showed what is the last quest in a chain of 10 group quests on Alderaan. This is the fight with Bouris Ulgo, self proclaimed king of Alderaan himself. The interesting thing about this footage is this is not a flashpoint. It is group content that is not like your regular instance. It is just something existing in the world that you can only do with a group. This is fun because it is still a big boss fight, but not as extensive as a flashpoint. I wonder if it is repeatable? UPDATE: Lethality of askajedi.com explained to us that during his talk with Daniel he found out that this is not repeatable and it is a cinematic ending to a long quest chain, yet, you do get your own “phase” or “instance” to do the quest in so others wouldn’t mob steal your boss. Beside what looked like a fun storyline and an OK event we learned that there are item sets (the trooper had what seemed to b e a 7 piece epic gear set) that have bonuses for more pieces you wear. We also see that there are low level epics, because one of the pieces in the set was level 13.
What followed was for me the best display of SWTOR at E3. It was a live feed on EA.com with Daniel Erickson playing Tatooine and answering viewers’ questions live. For the first time we saw a Jawa companion called Blizz, which made a lot of people squee until they learned that only Bounty Hunters can have those. We also saw vehicles, a small quest line on Tatooine and just in general some fighting and questing on one of the planets. Turns out Tatooine is really huge, because Daniel spent a better part of the demo just flying on his speeder from one place to another and still, when looking at the big planet map, you could see that he traveled only a portion of the planet’s whole surface. We learned that there is a lot of PvP happening in the Dune sea and it was just fun watching the game being played for a whole hour.
The last major reveal was showing for the first time any information about raids (or operations as they are called in TOR) in a form of a teaser trailer. Not much more has been said about raids other than what we see in the trailer. We know that the operation’s name is Eternity Vault. It is located on the planet Belsavis (a prison planet) and the story behind it is that an evil ruler of the universe from 10.000 years ago is locked in that Vault, which is opened by accident. We know for sure that there are 8 player raids and that these represent the “easy mode” versions. There are going to be larger raids than this, and people have been counting the number of players in the trailer until their eyes started to bleed in order to determine exactly what is the number of players we can expect to see in a raid. The current tally is 16, but this is all subject to change through game testing.
To learn even more information about the game in its current state you should visit all the fansites that reported from the event. I’ll give you a rundown of the articles I found the most informative.
Darth Hater did a list of general things learned that sums up a lot of small things from the game they saw while playing or watching others play
