Playable Races

[Kharnis]

Read the last line of my post again. Almost every race you listed isn't even remotely approaching 'near-human'.

 

Name 5 other near-humans off the top of your head, or at least to the degree of variation expressed in my original statement.

 

Ain't no thang for me, but I'm a Star Wars nerd. Joe Average may have some difficulty.

 

Whoops. Yep, you're right. I completely missed the "near-human" part. Ahem.

 

 

That being said, though, I'm still going to stand by my position that Chiss aren't exactly the iconic species that some think. Hell, I'm a pretty big Star Wars nerd myself, but I'll admit that Chiss wouldn't have even crossed my mind if told to list all the near-human species that come to mind. Still, to answer your challenge, mine would be:

 

Twi'lek (a rather obvious one)

Togruta (again, thanks to The Clone Wars)

Zabrak (it's a testament to Ray Park's fighting skills that he was able to do this with a character that had nothing really going for him other than "bad guy for Obi-wan to beat up in the end")

Zeltron (how to tell I'm an old man with fond memories of the Marvel comics?)

 

As for the fifth, you got me on that one. I can't think of one. There are a lot of people who would list "Arkanian," but to be honest, until this game the only Arkanian I saw was Master Arca, and I just thought he was an old, blind human.

[Foxfirega]

Whoops. Yep, you're right. I completely missed the "near-human" part. Ahem.

 

 

That being said, though, I'm still going to stand by my position that Chiss aren't exactly the iconic species that some think. Hell, I'm a pretty big Star Wars nerd myself, but I'll admit that Chiss wouldn't have even crossed my mind if told to list all the near-human species that come to mind. Still, to answer your challenge, mine would be:

 

Twi'lek (a rather obvious one)

Togruta (again, thanks to The Clone Wars)

Zabrak (it's a testament to Ray Park's fighting skills that he was able to do this with a character that had nothing really going for him other than "bad guy for Obi-wan to beat up in the end")

Zeltron (how to tell I'm an old man with fond memories of the Marvel comics?)

 

As for the fifth, you got me on that one. I can't think of one. There are a lot of people who would list "Arkanian," but to be honest, until this game the only Arkanian I saw was Master Arca, and I just thought he was an old, blind human.

 

Fair enough - they're still very readily identifable, though, and cult-classic level popular.

 

Also, going for all the easy ones. For shame! (DISCLAIMER: Not a serious line at all - I'm just poking fun.)

 

There's the Ubese, Umbrans, Elomin, Nagai, and depending on how we want to define 'near-human' we could throw in the Weequay, Nitko, or Cereans but we're probably better off throwing the Falleen in there. Or if we're discounting the Elomin for never really doing anything of note (fair point, that - I just like them), there's Devaronians. For the most part, all of those have had screentime at one point or another, in some form.

 

Chiss would have crossed my mind, but that's because so many people I've bumped into that are Star Wars fans have read the Thrawn trilogy. It's been absurdly common an occurance for me.

 

...now that I brought it up, though, still bummed I can't play an Elomin or Nagai. C'est la vie, I suppose.

[sbrannon]

How about Zeltrons?

[Kharnis]

Fair enough - they're still very readily identifable, though, and cult-classic level popular.

 

Also, going for all the easy ones. For shame! (DISCLAIMER: Not a serious line at all - I'm just poking fun.)

 

There's the Ubese, Umbrans, Elomin, Nagai, and depending on how we want to define 'near-human' we could throw in the Weequay, Nitko, or Cereans but we're probably better off throwing the Falleen in there. Or if we're discounting the Elomin for never really doing anything of note (fair point, that - I just like them), there's Devaronians. For the most part, all of those have had screentime at one point or another, in some form.

 

Chiss would have crossed my mind, but that's because so many people I've bumped into that are Star Wars fans have read the Thrawn trilogy. It's been absurdly common an occurance for me.

 

...now that I brought it up, though, still bummed I can't play an Elomin or Nagai. C'est la vie, I suppose.

 

Yeah, I'd originally thought of Devaronians, but I wasn't sure how close to human-like you wanted the near-humans to be. Although, now that I think about it, if I'm going to be including Twi'leks and Togrutas in my list, there's really no reason to not include Devaronians. I'm kind of shooting my argument in the foot here, aren't I?

 

And I'll admit, it never even occured to me to include Falleen. That would be an interesting species to include, I think. And though it pains me as a Star Wars nerd to admit this, I had to look up the Elomin and Nagai.

[Foxfirega]

Falleen would be interesting to see - honestly, I'm surprised we haven't really seen any at all (or maybe we have and I'm just unobservant because I'm trying not to get shot in a world where people enjoy pointing blasters at me - entirely possible scenario). Or Nagai (easiest addition ever).

 

Elomin are really obscure, though, so I'm not really upset or surprised that they're not in. Again, it's just a personal thing.

 

I figured if we weren't discounting Twi'lek and Togruta off the bat, Devaronians wouldn't be that far outside the realm of 'acceptable'. Technically we probably should be, but they do have models in game already and there'd be a number of people I'm sure that would be happy to get some Togruta options in-game at some point. Really, more options in general would be nice... But, honestly, I can wait for that.

 

There's not really a lot at the moment that I can find that says this is all we're ever getting in the history of ever, after all. Even if they don't plan to add any more (mistake if you ask me), plans can always change over time.

 

Nagai though are in a surprising number of places. Always weirds me out. Sneaky devils.

[BrigOrion]

That's your tastes. It's not my fault if according to polls and opinions of fans of the Expanded Universe, the Thrawn trilogy is the "must-read" and is so popular, and was a best-seller. But you're free not to like it, of course.

 

There are many functionally illiterate people in the world. I am not one of them.

[Hettiran]

Yah, I personally find Chiss pretty icon... but that's about 50% because Thrawn was such a bad ***. I'd like to play an Arkanian, or yah, mostly Chiss and Arkanians. Maybe a Devaronian in deference to early hyperdrives and the Butcher. It'd be cool to see some of the gender-dimorphism the Devaronians have.

[Selek]

While I am okay with the playable races, I support the notion of more playable races. One major reason (according to the Devs at least) was that you are supposed to identify yourself with your character and you can't do that if you don't know what your character's race's culture is like.

Of course that argument doesn't work at all since Rattataki have a very violent culture, and Mirilian can only see with the Force.

 

I'm sure if they add more customization/variation to Kel'dors, Togrulans, Rodians, Devorians, all in the game, they could surely be added to the game. They can all speak basic (Not sure about Rodians but I've seen Basic-speaking rodians), and you just need to toy around with a voice filter to alter the class-specific voice for the race's needs.

And these species' cultures are more similiar to the human one than a Rattataki's or Mirilian's.

[Crymthann]

I have always wanted to play a Rodian or a Nautilan personally.I dont think it would have added that much time to release to come up with Head armor option for these races.

[Punkre]

The races have to have a few things to even qualify for this game:

 

1. They needed to be able to speak basic, sorry Wookie fans, but they didn't want people to listen to MUUURGGGGGHHHH! for 29 hours of Voice over.

 

2. They needed to be humanoid enough to be acceptable as a romance character. This means no Ithorians, and Keldors.

 

That doesn't mean I like the races that they currently have in the game:

 

1. Miraluka were actually a pretty cool race, but they gave them only to republic, gave no additional storyline to them as opposed to a normal human, and gave us the crappiest eye covers to work with.

 

2. CYBORGS.... ENOUGH SAID.

 

3. Sith Pure Blood: Have you seen the Original Sith? They are soo much cooler than these pathetic things. They are like Red Orcs that mated with Hairless Gorillas, and would have been the perfect "big race" for the game.

 

My biggest problem with the game is actually the lack of size races. The thing that makes other MMO's so varied is the ability to have the biggest of the big races next to the smallest race, instead they gave us a size option with fat guys as a choice...

[Evolvana]

Oh yes, Arkanians are cool. Especially when you read the comics of KOTOR

 

I'm very happy they included the Chiss. It's my favorite specie in Star wars.

[wolala]

Whatever those Chiss things are, or those rattakis are, they simply don't look good in this game. My biggest problem with them is not that they don't belong in the Star Wars universe, but how they are very poorly represented in the game. There are no perks for playing different races, and they all seem to be way underdeveloped.

 

When Star Wars already got so many iconic races in their universe, why Bioware just had to pick the most unknown, and uninteresting races is beyond me.

 

I see what people are saying about bioware's reasoning behind only letting humanoids to be playable. But Chewy never had trouble communicating his emotions with his roars and wooos, and I connect with him more than any of them in the movies.

 

But I guess they really can't please everyone,

I just thought it would've been nice to see more ailien races playing, that was all

[kaoticdrake]

Wookies, really? Can you just imagine the annoying dialog you would get out of them.

 

edit: Just as a side note I would of liked the Nautolan as a playable race

 

Agreed. I can have them as a forum option, but not a character option. Makes me sad.

 

As for the OP:

The races have existed in the Expanded Universe for a lot longer than this game has been in the minds of Bioware. Sorry that you didn't know that. By the way, most of the species in the Expanded Universe are human-esque, it's just naturally true of pretty much all science fiction.

 

Also, the reason that most people play humans is a psychological one, that being that they are human and feel more in tune with humanity. They do not understand the culture of the other races and because of that, the small visual differences make them unappealing because that is the only difference most players see/feel.

 

Although, I will agree that I think they could provide much better options for creating characters. I want to see a character creation system more like the one in Skyrim. Where you can cycle through various head/face/hair/nose/eye/mouth sliders. You don't have massive customization like in Oblivion and that one space ship MMO game, can't remember the name off the top of my head. Still it would be something nice though, even if I understand that it's difficult to implement with an MMO that has various races to tamper with. Although honestly, as I've noticed thus far, the races are really all given the same face/body options with different skin colors/tattoos. So even then, a more expanded character creation, with differing chin/nose/jaw/eye/forehead options would make me hella happy.

 

As it stands now I only find three of the 20 or so head options appealing. The others I find quite unattractive. I've only made males, all the female heads seem to be fine for the most part.

[shamrockjew]

The only race I was surprised to see left out was Cathar. Juhani was such a fun companion to mess around with in KOTOR and (although I play Empire), I couldn't help but notice a Cathar npc when messing around with the republic Smuggler story in beta.

 

I know they were almost wiped out at some point in the EU history, but I think the game is after that or during their resurgence.

[Logiick]

I would have loved to play as a Nautolan or a Togruta.

 

Same. Why aren't Togrutas a playable race? Had to settle for Twi'lek.

[Fox_McCloud]

This game has the worst choices of playable races I have seen in an mmo.

 

especially for a Star Wars game they should have paid more attention to the races the players could play.

 

I've been playing through the game and have seen almost 9:1 ratio of humans to ailien races.

 

And the reason is simple, all the other ones suck.

 

blind people are humans that are blind, not a race of their own.

 

I have no idea who the hell these "Chiss" things are. The only characteristic they got is their blue skin? really?

 

"Mirilian", okay so now we got green people,

 

"Sith Pureblood"? didnt know Star Wars had Draeneis.

 

"Rattakis"?

 

Alright that only leaves 2 other ailien races and I think they are rather ok

 

"Twileks" stay true to Star Wars lore, and so does "Zabraks". So they are alright.

 

Since there are no racial ability and attribute difference in the races, there are simply no reason to play some ugly half-assed races.

 

I realize that the game is in the old republic time line, but if you're going to introduce new races, at least do it with some love,,,

 

I mean why couldnt they just let us play Wookies? Gungans? Kel Dors?

Why add some weird scratch-made garbage races when there are already iconic races that star wars fans are dying to play?

 

Some of the races just seem so out of place, it kills the lore, I guess they won't be removing them so I hope they plan to release them in their future expansions. Or was that their initial plan?

 

maybe I've got stuff against lucas, not bioware. But if they knew some of Lucas's races sucked why did they decide to put them in the game? so in the end it is part of their fault.

 

ok thats it.

 

The races they included in this game do make sense from a lore perspective from the books and such. Those races do exist in the star wars universe. They were not just made up for this game.

 

I will agree with you however on the point that they were VERY VERY poor choices for the race selection.

 

I believe they did it for one reason and one reason only, so that gear would fit the models without them having to do extra work fitting it to anything that does not conform to the human model standard.

 

That is a very piss poor reason, and one that is not acceptable given the $80 million production value this game had in development.

 

They should not have been lazy and given real choices that players actually want.

 

1. Human - good

2. Twilek - good

3. Zabrak - good i guess

------------

4. Wookie

5. Droid

6. Trandoshan

7. Jawa

8. Gungan

9. Gamorrean

etc..

 

Those are race options that would be different from one, and not just be human clones with a horn or different color skin.

 

Those would be choices that players are interested in.

 

Bioware KNEW this, but made up reasons that are not valid for not including them such as "Oh the romance", "Oh the story", "Oh the armor models". Tough, solve it, they are not road blocks.

 

Instead they cheaped out and so we have two real choices: Human (various skin colors called different racial names), or twilek.

[DBattery]

wookies, really? Can you just imagine the annoying dialog you would get out of them.

 

Edit: Just as a side note i would of liked the nautolan as a playable race

 

no one expects kit fisto!!!!!!!!!

[Fox_McCloud]

The races have to have a few things to even qualify for this game:

 

1. They needed to be able to speak basic, sorry Wookie fans, but they didn't want people to listen to MUUURGGGGGHHHH! for 29 hours of Voice over.

 

This is a problem for very few races, as most can speak basic as well, even Trandoshans have been known to speak basic in star wars lore, or even be a jedi!

 

I see the point here but I think that some creative story telling or just sucking it up to give the fans what they want, is pretty worth while. Besides, the smuggler companion Bowdar is a wookie and he makes wookie sounds for all his conversations followed by text so you know what he said, nothing wrong with that.

 

2. They needed to be humanoid enough to be acceptable as a romance character. This means no Ithorians, and Keldors.

 

This is an irrelivant point. If the race is too freaky, and they wouldnt want to do a romance between say a trandoshan and a Jawa.. fine, then make the romance interest a trandoshan as well. Make the companion romance option based on racial selection not class selection, problem solved right there.

 

This objection was just an excuse bioware made.

[Raiellyn]

This objection was just an excuse bioware made.

 

No.

 

Think about it for just a moment before you toss the blame at Bioware being lazy.

 

It is *the standard* of story-telling to have the protagonist be someone who is relatable in some way. Star Wars had Luke. Lord of the Rings had Frodo. The list goes on and on.

 

A six-foot walking carpet is not relatable. You may find the idea fun, as a novelty. And hey, that is your individual enjoyment. But the story-telling (read; the entire selling point of this game) would take a hit as those characters.

 

The stranger species of alien are in the places they deserve; supporting roles. They are interesting as characters, but not charismatic. The support-role allows the player to discover their story through questions, conversation, and meta-informing.

[DBattery]

People interested in playing the game for the story will do so no matter what. On my second or third play through I may not want to involve myself with romance options, so why couldn't I play something off beat like a jawa or a wookie, or a nautilan(sp). On the other hand thank god there are no gungans.

[Evolvana]

Whatever those Chiss things are, or those rattakis are, they simply don't look good in this game. My biggest problem with them is not that they don't belong in the Star Wars universe, but how they are very poorly represented in the game. There are no perks for playing different races, and they all seem to be way underdeveloped.

 

When Star Wars already got so many iconic races in their universe, why Bioware just had to pick the most unknown, and uninteresting races is beyond me.

 

YOU think that the Chiss are not interesting because you don't know them, didn't read the books about them, don't know their story... I personnaly I think they look very good in that game. My Chiss female agent is more beautiful than most of the human females I could create for other classes.

 

I find them very interesting, and very mysterious. So yes, I also think that they are underdevelopped in that game, we don't see many of them as NPCs...

 

I play a Chiss and sometimes the NPCs tell me about my homeworld or my race, so if you play as any other race they won't tell you anything about the Chiss, that's for sure.

Edited January 3, 2012 by Evolvana

[DBattery]

YOU think that the Chiss are not interesting because you don't know them, didn't read the books about them, don't know their story... I personnaly I think they look very good in that game. My Chiss female agent is more beautiful than most of the human females I could create for other classes.

 

I find them very interesting, and very mysterious. So yes, I also think that they are underdevelopped in that game, we don't see many of them as NPCs...

 

I play a Chiss and sometimes the NPCs tell me about my homeworld or my race, so if you play as any other race they won't tell you anything about the Chiss, that's for sure.

 

My concern with the Chiss is, where were they given screen time?

[Foxfirega]

My concern with the Chiss is, where were they given screen time?

 

Thrawn trilogy and a lot of EU material written after that trilogy came out. That's been more then enough to get them into the 'cult classic' stage of awareness.

 

In specific, a large selection of novels, comic book appearances, and one of the more popular game series (Dark Forces/Jedi Knight).

 

IE: All over everything but televised things.

[youwillburn]

Droids should be a race

[yogarth]

although my favorite race is already there(zabrak) i would like to play as rodian and trandoshan. it would be pretty awesome to play as Yodas race lol