Playable Races

[EnTaroRaynor]

Wow, so what is it that Yoda says "Truly amazing the mind of a child is." or something of that nature, I agree with what your saying, there should be more playable races. I personally would play a Mon Calamari if the option was there. But dude you just bad mouthed some of the coolest races in star Wars, Sith Pureblood.... yeah? lol. Miriluka... yeah, Just a little bit of advice for the future just because a race doesn't look different doesn't mean that it has no story out side of insert color human. Read up on some of the races that your hatin on dude if you like Star Wars lore at all you will probably like some of them.

[Logisitcs]

From the Star Wars media (includes movies, books, shows, video games):

Gungan - Side kick material only

Wookie - Side kick material only, can't even speak basic, no companion is going to be bossed around by a wookie PLEASE

Kel Dor - Supporting cast member, not main character material because they scare those not used to their race, main characters shouldn't be scaring everyone they meet

Droid - Comic relief, definitely not main character material

Rodian - Supporting cast member, not main character material, meant to aid the hero/villain, not be one

Trandoshan - See Rodian

Jawa - You can't be serious, comic relief, not even side-kick material! No one is going to take a Jawa seriously. Also, this does not sound right, "Wow, a JAWA took out Darth Malgus/Revan/The Emperor" Plot armor can only do so much

Gamorrean - Ummmm, would only work if only on Empire and a BH, and that's a stretch, so supporting character

 

Races have to have the "main character" appeal to them, and that tag usually comes with the humanoid ones. The racial diversity works in WoW for two reasons, Blizzard has done a good job of creating heroes and story for all the different races, (though with the Dranei and the Worgens that can be debated) and there isn't much of a personal story (saving the galaxy single-handedly and all that jazz) to your toon. The media for everything SW has humans and humanoids as the lead, and this game isn't going to be any different

[Sparkeh]

When I first started beta testing I too thought the variation of races to be poor. My favourites being the Sith Pureblood and Chiss. Bit of a shame considoring I was thinking of rolling and Republic and did in live.

 

That being said I currently love my Miraluka Jedi so im happy.

 

What would have pleased me however is if I had the option to go for a more exotic race.

 

I played a Rodian in SWG so id definately choose one of those again. Story wise they make sense for the Bounty Hunter and Smuggler.

 

Nautolans I also rate highly in my favourite race list. They just look awesome.

 

Devonians are also pretty neat.

 

I could go on about this for a long time however. The only thing I do hope they don't do is add naff races and screw around with the lore. Having lucas arts involved should mean they can't do that. Jedi wookie for example. Yes there has been a Jedi wookie although im not sure thats 100% canon and even so Lucas said he wants no more wookies. I can see why...

 

Love the race but seriously. No...

[Kassai]

Except for Thrawn, name me a Chiss character who was an important character and not a very minor one.

 

That's not the point. They exist, whether as a protagonist/antagonist or just as support characters. They have made many appearances throughout the EU, more than enough to get them noticed. This is a story-driven game, not just go-out-and-troll-the-mobs. The Chiss play an important role in Star Wars lore and history, specifically as intelligence agents for the True Sith empire. Without the Chiss, the Empire may have been devastated during the war. Therefore it is only right to pay homage to them and make them a playable race, not to mention that they were Imperial Intelligence's best of the best.

 

And to the OP, your ignorance and self-righteousness is disgusting. Each one of those races is an established part of Star Wars lore; many of them play important roles. Sith Purebloods (a.k.a. Red Sith, True Sith, etc.) are the basis for the entire existence of the Sith Order. Marka Ragnos, Naga Sadow, Ludo Kressh; without them there would be no Sith as we know them. Rattataki (a.k.a. the race of Asajj Ventress before her change) have influenced the realm of bounty hunters for centuries, and have sent powerful contenders through the Great Hunt. Not to mention the repercussions of the work of Asajj Ventress (without which the Clone Wars may have been completely one-sided, the Bando Gora cult may still be around, and Count Dooku would have had less influence on galactic events). Without Miriluka Jerec would never have existed, and the Valley of the Jedi would still be an unknown. Without Mirialans Barriss Offee and Luminara Unduli would be non-existent, and the Clone Wars could have been won by the Separatists at the Battle of Geonosis; not to mention the prime architect on the Death Star was a Mirialan.

 

Each one of these races contributes to the development of one's character's background, and seeing as everything is story-driven, I think that counts for something. Each one has the same basic body shape because 98% of species in Star Wars have the same body shape; why did humans evolve the way we did? Because our morphology has proven to work, so why couldn't it work in 98% of everywhere else? Next time you rant about something, you can be self-righteous, but make sure you aren't in supreme ignorance at the same time.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Kassai

[jaszunne]

I like the playable races but I would like to see some new ones. I. Want. To. Play. A. Togruta. RAWR. >.>

 

Anyway, a lot of people aren't considering what a female version of certain aliens would look like. Ever seen a female wookie? 'Cause I haven't. And I'm not saying they don't exist, just that they obviously aren't around / noboby actually has thought of what one would like like. This is a reason why Togruta (and several other races) would work: because we see both female and male characters. Plus they're already in the game, so that makes it even easier.

 

Also, what's with the male Twi'lek ears? I mean... why are they so human, especially compared to female's? Is there a lore reason for this or just fluke / it being easier to use already existing models.

 

I am really hoping that with a later expansion pack we get new playable races

[Saeria]

Except for Thrawn, name me a Chiss character who was an important character and not a very minor one.

 

Does it matter? The Chiss Ascendancy is a major faction in the universe.

 

They're far stronger and more influential than the Hutt, and can easily rival the Empire or the Republic.

[Dartholga]

The main problem with the species in this game is that they are just all the same with different colors. If BioWare at least had taken the time to make each species unique with different faces and unique character characteristics then maybe it would have been okay. I don't know if it's due to a lack of time or just pure lazyness but I made a quick drawing in photoshop to show what I mean.

 

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/9845/lazyfaces.jpg

 

Now that picture took me ten minutes to draw and to be honest its not THAT far stretched from the truth. Now imagine the budget and time BioWare had to make this character creation. Also from what I heard the Chiss species did not even exist in the old republic era but thats for another thread if anything.

 

I mean can you imagine if Darth Maul had the same face as Obi-Wan but with red skin and horns? The races choices are alright I guess.. cyborg seems just super lazy and same with the blind dudes but if they had at least thrown different faces on there it would have been somewhat acceptable, and they kinda did with the sith purebloods but they have like 4 face options for some reason. Especially in a game where you stare at those faces in every cutscene.. you don't feel unique when there is a green version of you standing right next to you in a flashpoint.

[Krijgsheer]

Lorewise there's nothing wrong with the current races.

I do agree that the races look less awesome. Pretty much the reason I play humans only.

 

I would love if they implemented a couple of races in the future: I want Togruta!!!

[Izorii]

I am still hoping legacy will unlock some species. Now I have been playing for a while I think it would be a cool idea to have Legacy unlock more alien species. Like Gran, Gand, Mn'Cal, Kel'Dor etc. It would give an incentive to get a legacy going and it would be cool to have the first of a decent alien species on a server. Well here's hoping.

[Rokstaradgjm]

i wanna play as a voss

[Kharnis]

Does it matter? The Chiss Ascendancy is a major faction in the universe.

 

They're far stronger and more influential than the Hutt, and can easily rival the Empire or the Republic.

 

It does matter. The Chiss are mentioned by one author, featured in one trilogy, and completely pushed aside after that. With the exception of throwaway characters that appear for one or two scenes, and have no lines whatsoever, the Chiss aren't some "unbelievably memorable species." For someone to then come into the thread and snidely claim that he stopped reading because someone dared to say they didn't recognise the Chiss is nothing short of laughable. He might as well have said, "You call yourself a nerd? Why I bet you don't even know the difference between a dilithium crystal and an adegan crystal."

 

The Ascendancy is a major faction in the Star Wars universe only because Bioware made them one. Until this game came along, the Chiss were irrelevant, both in universe and out of universe. For anyone to claim that Bioware included the Chiss because they were some iconic species to the Star Wars universe are either fooling themselves severely, or are trying way too hard to justify what was clearly a single writer's (that would be Drew Karpyshyn) like of the Chiss. That's not a bad reason to include them in the game and I'm not looking down my nose at the devs, but the Chiss fanboys can at least be honest about it.

[VoxTheHero]

While we're on the subject of Arkanians, Why did Arca Jeth have irises/pupils and 5 fingers when he appeared in the Noetikon on Coruscant for the Consular? I was like "Whaaaat? Do you have any idea what he looked like at all!?"

[usmarshal]

It does matter. The Chiss are mentioned by one author, featured in one trilogy, and completely pushed aside after that. With the exception of throwaway characters that appear for one or two scenes, and have no lines whatsoever, the Chiss aren't some "unbelievably memorable species." For someone to then come into the thread and snidely claim that he stopped reading because someone dared to say they didn't recognise the Chiss is nothing short of laughable. He might as well have said, "You call yourself a nerd? Why I bet you don't even know the difference between a dilithium crystal and an adegan crystal."

 

The Ascendancy is a major faction in the Star Wars universe only because Bioware made them one. Until this game came along, the Chiss were irrelevant, both in universe and out of universe. For anyone to claim that Bioware included the Chiss because they were some iconic species to the Star Wars universe are either fooling themselves severely, or are trying way too hard to justify what was clearly a single writer's (that would be Drew Karpyshyn) like of the Chiss. That's not a bad reason to include them in the game and I'm not looking down my nose at the devs, but the Chiss fanboys can at least be honest about it.

 

The Chiss are featured in the New Jedi Order series and RPG material heavily fleshes out the Ascendancy.

[santin]

I really want to see the Nautolan as a playable race, i mean they already have the Devs for it. I don't see a reason why not, same along with the Nikto among others.

[Izorii]

Given the number of species who can be compaions and the work which has gone into them, most of which can wear a lot of different amour types, I would hope to see some of the ones who can speak basic as playable choices. If they can sort out helmets for the Devaroian/Mon Cal NPC why not for a Devaroian/Mon Cal PC. We know both species can speak basic.

[TurboCoward]

That's just sad. I read Heir to the Empire when it was first published and it is the worst written drivel I've ever read.

 

I had a guy I worked with suggest these books. He handed me this trilogy and said he couldn t wait to talk to me about them. So I read them rather than tell him they were written so ridiculously poorly, even for a Star Wars pulp novel, that I often burst out laughing. I remember distinctly that different characters were described as curling their lip as a facial response to what another person said. Not only is that an absurd thing to write, it was a recurring phrase!

[Agonisis]

right now i would pay money to change my main from twi'lek to togruta,(Thats right BioWare i said pay money, charge me $25 dollars and ill pay it) thought the twi'lek would be cool but alas no. And no special voice overs are needed, just restrict the race to jedi and sith, maybe trooper, oh and rodians, come on rodian hunters and smugglers are everywhere. And to be honest, lets do something about the race emotes. Emotes? give us a reason to play a race other than a special dance or to make your companion woot

[Jellison]

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.

 

so...much...crying...

[Izorii]

right now i would pay money to change my main from twi'lek to togruta,(Thats right BioWare i said pay money, charge me $25 dollars and ill pay it) thought the twi'lek would be cool but alas no. And no special voice overs are needed, just restrict the race to jedi and sith, maybe trooper, oh and rodians, come on rodian hunters and smugglers are everywhere. And to be honest, lets do something about the race emotes. Emotes? give us a reason to play a race other than a special dance or to make your companion woot

 

I hate to say it but I would also pay to play a species I wanted to. If I had to pay 25 bucks for downloadable content to open Gran, or a Kel'dor I would. This of course would probably not make much business sence as most people would be out raged at having to pay more to play their desired species I would.

[Jerross]

And finally. Why should Bioware put the time and energy into making these exotic races and a whole new class and story to go with it? Have you taken a look in-game? The vast majority of player characters that I see are white skinned humans with dark hair. Basically, most people are modelling their characters after themselves, after humans I probably see the most Miraluka who are basically humans with eyepatches, then cyborgs, and then the more alien races start appearing, with Chiss and Mirialans probably bringing up the rear.

 

So if most people can't even get themselves to make Zabraks, Mirialans or Chiss... then why in the blazes should Bioware waste the effort to make playable Gamorreans if 0.5% of the playerbase will actually use them?

 

I kinda laugh at this. Sure, I have only made human toons, but for 1 reason only. The other races suck IMO. I play Republic, if I was a Sith I would probably play the Sith, but Jedi don't really have an ultimate Jedi race so whatever. If, however, they gave some alien races to play, I would have all my characters I would be playing a different one for each.

Sure I could play a twilek, but the human faces ported onto them look a tad lame to me. In all honesty, I want to play a Jawa ever since I heard about this game 4 years ago. I mean, I don't play on an RP server so I could care less about all the reasons they wouldn't work. I play games to have fun, and I would have more fun playing as an alien species in a STAR WARS game. The only let down I had with the original kotor games was I had to be human, in a STAR WARS game. Storyline and that aside, I do understand the need for it, but as soon as the mods came out to make me a different race, I had them installed.

Again, this is all just my opinion, but I think they need more races. Alien races, not just humans with different colored skin or eye patches. Sure, the lore is there and you can scream that forever, sure they needed the romance options (I could care less about romance, I play on a PVP server, I just wanna kill people) and you can keep saying that too. But really, they are humans who can wear the same armor and reduce the work that needed to be done. Not saying Bioware is lazy, just saying they did it to reduce time.

 

Hopefully, we will all see the races we want to play eventually, and I will continue to hold out hope of playing my Jedi Jawa, but I also know there is very little chance of that ever happening. I can still hope though.

[gaskull]

Sith Pureblood/Rattataki & Chiss is pretty much what I play as ,would've been sweet if I could be a "true sith"/"massassi" though.

 

Well, there's tons of races/species in SW, I tend to like the reptilian-humanoids, Trandoshans, Faleen & Barabel's the most and would love to see them as playable-options [though it seems very unlikely].

 

Btw, on Trandoshans, since there are VO's for them and they are in game, would it be possible for BW, to lay their "generic " Trandoshan VO on top of the basic BH-VO ? Should be feasible at least, the only "real issue" I can see is that there are no female Trandoshans around yet, and a VO for them might require some extensive work

Edited February 10, 2012 by gaskull

[Izorii]

I agree the lack of alien species is terrible. But I suspect this was intended from day 1. We were meant to play a human because the dialog fitted in best with humans, the added species are just here to make us feel like we have a choice. JUst like when we have a choice in dialog "Thats a great Idea" "Thats a Brilliant idea" "I love the idea" and which ever one we pick the character says "I like that idea".

 

Hopefully the legacy system will introduce more iconic species.