IGN (corporate beasts that they are) recently posted a very nice, four page Q&A with two of the producers for Star Wars: The Old Republic.

One of the biggest reasons that The Astringent Gaming Journal exists is to bring you unbiased gaming news. We’re tired of games with the best ad campaigns getting the most hype and the most sales, and we suspect that a few of you are too. Because of this, I’m reluctant to post anything from a website like IGN. However, they have connections that we don’t, and it’s really pretty hard to put corporate bias into a Q&A session.

Fair warning: much of what is asked of the TOR developers in the interview isn’t really answered at all. BioWare and LucasArts are being very careful with what information they let out. To help you sift through it all, here are some highlights:

“IGN: A lot of people wanted to know about the healing system. Will The Old Republic use a trinity system; the tank, healer, and the DPS class. Will the healer play a massive role, or will groups be able to go with no healing?

Dallas Dickinson: We want to make sure that we have many, many MMO roles filled there, but it’s really important to us that players are able to actually play their experience either as a group or as a solo. So there are a number of ways that healing comes into the game. Several of our classes have healing branches that they can follow that will have some specific healing powers, but we don’t want to make it a requirement for the base core game. That said, you’re obviously going to be better off, especially when you get into higher-level stuff and into PvP, if you have healers on your side.

Jake Neri: I think we have a unique sort of twist on how healing works. I don’t think we’re speaking in total detail about it, but I think the people will be excited for it, and it’s definitely a unique function of our game.”

“IGN: (laughs) Moving on, can you guys explain the combat system at all; does it resemble a traditional MMO or more of a turn-based, KOTOR-style game, or is it a mixture of everything like Mass Effect? What’s the system looking like?

Jake Neri: I think right off the bat that people have picked up on is that we’re going for high-action, fast-paced, Star Wars cinematic-style combat. So while the mechanics of it might be rooted in what you expect from an MMO, what we’re seeing right now is a level of visceral action that doesn’t exist in any MMO yet. That’s coming across in the stuff that we’re showing. Dallas, what do you think?

Dallas Dickinson: Yeah, I think that’s a fair way of describing it. That underneath, under the hood, there’s a whole lot of MMO stuff going on, but the feel to the player–and this is in the feedback that we’ve received from everybody who’s touched the game–is that it feels a lot more action based. It feels a lot more cinematic. Again, it’s that Star Wars heroic feel that we’re really striving for right now.

“IGN: Someone specifically wanted to know what happened to Revan in the Unknown Regions since The Old Republic is set 300 years after KOTOR? Will it explain what happens? Or will it only give hints; did he die? Get trapped? Also, that’s a bigger question: How does this fit in the universe of KOTOR?

Dallas Dickinson: To answer the first question, not to be snarky, but you have to play the game to find out. But we’ve told people the time setting; we’re 300 years after the events of the original Knights of the Old Republic. So there will be events, there will be locations, [and] there will be all sorts of elements that you will recognize had you played Knights of the Old Republic beforehand. You will get to find out some of what happens through playing the game.

Jake Neri: Part of the unique opportunity though is that it is wide open, and we’re taking full advantage of that and creating a really compelling new piece of the canon.

Dallas Dickinson: Yeah, and it’s something that the players right now–and I’m sure that these players have done so–but anybody who sees this question and wants to know the answer, we have a web comic right now that’s telling a lot of the linking details. And there’s already been some references. We have a character, Satele, that’s a descendent of one of the main characters in the Knights of the Old republic. You should read the web comic, you should listen to the timeline pieces, you should check all that stuff out on the web site because it’s going to provide a lot of the context and a lot of the linking stories that lets those who were real big fans of Knights of the Old Republic understand where we’re coming from.”

“IGN: Alright, very popular question here… I speak for all prospective bounty hunters when I ask this question: Will there be player bounties, and how will they be implemented?

Dallas Dickinson: (laughs) We don’t have details on player bounties. I think we do understand that people are excited about the player bounty class for a number of reasons. We’ll talk more about this later.”

“IGN: This is another very popular question regarding console or Mac versions of The Old Republic… there are a lot of Mac fans I’ve discovered in these questions — any thoughts on that?

Jake Neri: As of right now, we only have plans for PC.

Dallas Dickinson: That’s why Boot Camp was invented.”

“IGN: How will the co-op conversations work? That’s something people are curious about.

Jake Neri: This is one of the things that we’ve already shown, we’ve already revealed a little bit of. It’s a new system–it’s a system that’s never been attempted before in games anywhere, MMOs aside from other games. I actually cannot answer that; we’re iterating on it a lot, we’re testing it, [and] we’re putting it in front of people. We have a couple of ideas as to how it works; it works pretty well right now, but until we really solidify the design, we’re not going to talk about the details of it, other than to say, yes, there is multiplayer conversation and it’s awesome.”

“IGN: If somebody didn’t want to do PvP, is that completely doable in the game?

Dallas Dickinson: Absolutely. I think that has been one of our tenets from the beginning. We want this to be a game that people can enjoy the way they want to enjoy it. We know that we have a wide audience here: we have people that are MMO veterans. We also have people who aren’t MMO veterans who maybe are more on the BioWare/RPG side of things. So we want you to be able to play the way that you play. As I referred to earlier, solo play is going to be supported. So I wouldn’t expect to play solo and get ganked by a PvPer. So if you want to play your way and that involves not getting involved in PvP, you’ll absolutely be able to do that.”

“IGN: Talk about the PC specs–what’s your philosophy on the kind of machine you’ll need?

Jake Neri: We want the broadest possible audience; we don’t want the PC to be prohibitive from anybody getting in. So we’re being very hypersensitive with making sure that the game can work on a very broad sort of spec.

Dallas Dickinson: One of the things that we’ve spoken about before is actually one of the reasons we chose the art style we did, the stylized realism. The less photorealistic you go, the more leeway you have in terms of your final tech specs for your end user’s client. Choosing something that’s a bit more stylized and has an interesting flavor: not only does it make our game feel distinct, which is one of our other goals–if you look at it, you look at screenshots from our game, and you know it’s from our game–but it also makes it so our specs can be a little lower; we can hit a broader audience.”

“IGN: I think you hinted at this at E3, but is it possible to switch between dark side and light side at E3? I thought that was hinted at when you spared the captain during the demo.

Jake Neri: We did talk about that there is a dark side/light side system that is reminiscent of the one in the original Knights of the Old Republic, where your decisions will actually push you in one direction or the other. So you can make choices that push to towards the dark side and then in the same gameplay session, you can make choices that contradict that and bring you back towards the light side.”

“IGN: Have you thought about romances in the game?

Dallas Dickinson: This is something that we refer to. Companion characters are another thing that we’ve talked about a little bit –we haven’t gone into detail on–but again, if you play Bioware games, you know that there are companion characters, and you know that your behavior, your choices within conversation and within gameplay can affect those companion characters. In some cases, it leads to a betrayal by a companion character. In some cases, it leads to a companion character becoming more loyal to you, and there can also be affection. So I don’t think we’re going into more detail than that, but again, if you’ve played BioWare games in the past, you’ve seen the systems that work like this.”

“IGN: How will the physical conflict between the Republic and Sith factions and the spiritual conflict between the light and dark sides of the Force interact?

Dallas Dickinson: That’s an abstract question. Jake, you want to take a swing at it?

Jake Neri: I don’t know that there’s a ton of detail that I can be brilliant about but I think that all of those conflicts are in the user’s face as they go through the game.

Dallas Dickinson: We have said some of this before. You do have a personal story, a very class-specific story, but there’s also this conflict going on that’s more of the world’s story. You’re going to have missions and quests that are related to the one and missions and quests that are related to the other, and you’ll have some missions and quests that actually touch on both areas. Having that breadth of content allows us to interweave both of those large conflicts that you mentioned into your story experience. In some cases, you’ll be in a story that is very much about the standoff between the Sith Empire and the Republic, but in some cases you’ll be making choices that are very personal that will be driving you down this light or dark side path.

Jake Neri: That was an awesome answer.

Dallas Dickinson: Thanks, dude. I’m so full of PR. It’s awesome.”

“IGN: You said at E3 that you didn’t want this to be a game about rat killing. You wanted it from the get go to feel like an epic game. Can you talk about that?

Jake Neri: Sure. I think that’s where the story comes in, right? Instead of taking mindless quests, you’re participating in a journey to do something awesome, whether it’s becoming the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy or things along those lines. I think that’s really the spirit of what we’re talking about when we talk about that. There is combat in the game–you do fight creatures, you do fight humanoids–but at the core of it your story is taking you on your own personal epic Star Wars adventure depending on what class you are. Your experience will be different from anybody else that plays it based on your ability to make different choices of how you develop your character.

Dallas Dickinson: Jake and I sort of tag-teamed on the last question. He gave the mechanics answer and I gave the story answer. On this he’s given the story answer, so I’ll give the mechanics side of things.

We’ve talked about many-on-one combat and how different that is. It wouldn’t make sense if you were supposed to be a tough, heroic participant in this story and you went out and were taking on one rat in a corner of an alley and potentially dying. You’re going to wade into battle and taking on two or three guys at a time. And they’re two or three guys who are well equipped, who have real firepower and real abilities. We want that feeling to happen from the beginning. We want you to feel like a hero in the Star Wars universe.”

There’s probably at least twice as much on the IGN page, for those of you with an extreme interest. Just reading the above should answer quite a few of the most common questions, though. I’m a pretty hardcore Star Wars fan, so that alone is enough to get me pumped up about TOR, but every new morsel of information that reaches me makes it sound more and more like the best MMORPG currently in development. Rest assured, I’ll be doing everything I can to get into the beta and let you know as much as possible before it hits store shelves.

What do you think? Will TOR be the WoW killer? Does this Q&A session make you feel more excited for it? Less excited? Do you care at all? Let us know in the comments!