takes place 3000 years BEFORE Star Wars?

[MustrumRidcully]

I'm a firm believer, that if the universe ever reached the level of technology that is portrayed in the game, there would be a plateau. And in the case of the game and the way the storylines work, 3000 years isn't that long of a time frame.

 

Yes, I realize Earth's technology has changed DRASTICALLY over the past 3000 years, but we are one planet. With a universe, I do think it would slow way down at some point.

 

But the universe itself is kinda inconsistent on this, because there are several missions that involve finding new, more advanced technology. They must offer some level of improvement - but apparantly nothing that can be noted from the outside.

 

A lot of "advanced technology" lies in the past, not in the future. The Rakata seemed to be way beyond the Republic/Empire technology - admittedly, they were also a race where every member was force sensitive and they combined force and tech in ways that don't make sense if only a minority of your population is force sensitive (and consequently lead to their downfall when they lost their force connection).

The Rakata tech advantage seems to be explainable with that, but the rest...

[sinfulace]

star destroyers are way bigger than anyship in this game

 

THE FRIGGIN DEATH STAR

 

and the super star destroyers

 

 

 

that's not advanced?

[KremlinKOA]

Do you like how in Empire Strikes Back Vader had to test carbonite freezing on Han to see if a person could survive it even though 3000 years before it was so common that people had the walls of their offices decorated in frozen people and it was belsavis' primarily form of incarceration for violent prisoners?

 

Bespin's carbomnite freezer was for gas use and not rated for lifeforms. Vader had his people adjust it and test it to make sure the tweaks were done right. He didn't want to risk his kid.

[Obadaya]

Agree completely with the OP.

 

I expected there to be some Dark Age where tech was lost and society had to rebuild, but so far I don't see any mention of that happening. Just looking at the drastic changes in fashion and technology in the last 100 years of real life, I'd have expected 3000 years in the past to look a lot different.

 

I'd have expected the 300 year difference in time of TOR and KOTOR to make the two time periods look different.

 

Who knows, maybe the similarities are all marketing. Maybe all the underlying tech is vastly different but just looks the same so consumers will buy it.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Obadaya

[Kellan]

She'll make .5 past lightspeed. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts.

 

 

Han Solo said it all.

[LyriaFrost]

The universe that SW is set in is fairly stagnant. Improvements come EXTREMELY few and far between, and it seems like a lot of people have just devolved to a certain point that they're not even intellectually curious about improving the technology.

 

You have NPCs asking you to dig up 300+ year old technology because it's better than what they have now. The society in SW has just kind of settled into this lazy, uninspired stagnation.

 

You'd think there would be a market for high-quality holographic displays, right? Everybody uses them to communicate, store records, etc. Why are they still grainy and glitchy, if they're a 20,000+ year old technology?

 

You have entire security centers that release all their prisoners because there's a power outage (batteries, anyone? UPS?). Computers that explode due to a power surge from a generator a mile away (fuses?!). Yet this is the same culture that created faster than light travel thousands of years ago, droids that can last for thousands of years without maintenance (THEY certainly seem to have batteries!), sentient robots/computers, etc.

 

There are just a lot of dichotomies in the SW universe. For the MOST part I can suspend my disbelief, but there are times when it just leaps out and smacks me, and makes me go "dubya tee eff, mate?"

[Scaras]

I didn't see anyone else mention it, sorry if it has, but there was a 1,000 year period of warfare between the sith and jedi known as The New Sith Wars. Wookiepedia mentions plagues that wipe out large populations and the republic being nearly destroyed many times, i suspect from this that many inventions would have been lost and a large period between the end of that war and the movies was re-inventing old inventions.

 

Here is the wookiepedia link: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/New_Sith_Wars

 

Plus its also a marketing thing

[Wheezal]

As Lyria states, there is a sort of stupid dichotomy in place for technology.

 

But casting that aside for the moment, there are probably advancements in technology that are very difficult to perceive. My guess (based on very little evidence, and only to play devil's advocate here) is that a single fighter craft from the OT could wreak havoc on multiple capital scale warships from the old republic era. How do you show weapons gaining power when escalation is constantly occuring as well (like stronger shields that neutralize the overall appearance of the effect)?

 

I know it's probably not canon, but in the old West End Games rulebooks, Republic era vessels were far inferior to the Alliance/Imperial era craft of the same type. And that was just meant to show off a few decades of difference, they never really went into the old republic or infinite empire era's of many millenia before.

 

power packs may be far more efficient, perhaps a blaster can fire 50 shots before needing a new pack, whereas the more powerful OT blaster can fire 1000 or more? I'll leave it to other's better than i am at hunting these kinds of things down, but the point being, it's really difficult, if not impossible, to show off that level of refinement over time. The core technology is still around, but in some aspect its easier to use, more efficient, more readily available, cheaper to produce, etc.

 

just my 2 cents.

[Krusedullfaen]

As Lyria states, there is a sort of stupid dichotomy in place for technology.

 

But casting that aside for the moment, there are probably advancements in technology that are very difficult to perceive. My guess (based on very little evidence, and only to play devil's advocate here) is that a single fighter craft from the OT could wreak havoc on multiple capital scale warships from the old republic era. How do you show weapons gaining power when escalation is constantly occuring as well (like stronger shields that neutralize the overall appearance of the effect)?

 

I know it's probably not canon, but in the old West End Games rulebooks, Republic era vessels were far inferior to the Alliance/Imperial era craft of the same type. And that was just meant to show off a few decades of difference, they never really went into the old republic or infinite empire era's of many millenia before.

 

power packs may be far more efficient, perhaps a blaster can fire 50 shots before needing a new pack, whereas the more powerful OT blaster can fire 1000 or more? I'll leave it to other's better than i am at hunting these kinds of things down, but the point being, it's really difficult, if not impossible, to show off that level of refinement over time. The core technology is still around, but in some aspect its easier to use, more efficient, more readily available, cheaper to produce, etc.

 

just my 2 cents.

 

Fairly reasonable assumption if you ask me. Another thing to note is that you don't really need to change the appearance of for example a starship just because you give it a better engine or better weapons. Aerodynamics are meaningless in space, the reason Star Destroyers look the way they do is all about image, they are intimidating by design and it makes sense to carry that design over from generation to generation.

[mminczes]

I understand how the technology might not have advanced very much in a couple of milennia, but the fact that the fashion and style of things in the SW universe has not changed is absurd. Speeders look nigh identical to the ones in the films, republic soldier armor is incredibly close to the clone/stormtrooper armor, the style in imperial architecture with the metal grates with lights behind them, and so on. I can understand how they would want to maintain a sense of continuity, so people know it's star wars, but to be the fact that the aesthetic style of the universe in this game is the same as the films is totally absurd and immersion breaking, considering the 3000 year gap

[Wheezal]

I understand how the technology might not have advanced very much in a couple of milennia, but the fact that the fashion and style of things in the SW universe has not changed is absurd. Speeders look nigh identical to the ones in the films, republic soldier armor is incredibly close to the clone/stormtrooper armor, the style in imperial architecture with the metal grates with lights behind them, and so on. I can understand how they would want to maintain a sense of continuity, so people know it's star wars, but to be the fact that the aesthetic style of the universe in this game is the same as the films is totally absurd and immersion breaking, considering the 3000 year gap

 

oh now that is something else, so i probably misread the original intent of this thread.

 

i do recall, when playing KoTOR and KoTOR II, that the style seemed ... older... in the games, it had a star warsy feel to them but without being drastically the same as what i had seen before in the movies. but i'm under the impression some of that may have been retconned for this MMO specifically for the reason you state: people familiar with only the movies want to see something they can recognize. most likely, there aren't as many Star Wars fanatics like us than there are casual players in the game, so having some sense of identity with the one medium that even the most casual fan would be familiar with (the movies) is beneficial to the overall bottom line.

[jayderyu]

I've commented on this before. It's not.

 

Bioware likes the Tales of the Jedi era. They want to follow up KoTOR. However Lucas Arts is not a company that creates anything that isn't directly tied to the movies.

 

So what we have is a game that's just before the movies, but being thrown into the past. For simplicity. Just say it's 300. It works soooo much better. 3000... no, just no

[Uluain]

i thought it was about 1000 years before "phantom menace", not 3000

The game is set 10-30 years (unspecified) after the Treaty of Coruscant, which was 3,653 years BBY (before the Battle of Yavin). So the game is set somewhere about 3,600 years before The Phantom Menace.

[Enochx]

people it makes perfect sense if you think about it. up until the last 150 to 200 years OUR civilization was very similar for thousands of years. How many hundreds or thousands of years were we riding horses? farming the same way? fighting with swords. Bronze, iron, steel.....a sword still looks like a sword.

 

My point is perhaps civilazation makes periodic LEAPS in short periods of time i.e. our last 150 to 200 years. But after that giant leap forward in technology, it settles back down and stays relativily the same for a few thousand years before LEAPING again. Just a theory to help explain the similar tech for thousands of years. It was similar here for thousands of years as well up until the last 150 to 200 years is all I am saying.

[Lordllama]

I'm a firm believer, that if the universe ever reached the level of technology that is portrayed in the game, there would be a plateau. And in the case of the game and the way the storylines work, 3000 years isn't that long of a time frame.

 

Yes, I realize Earth's technology has changed DRASTICALLY over the past 3000 years, but we are one planet. With a universe, I do think it would slow way down at some point.

 

Indeed there would be a point where tech simpliy cantget much better i mean going lightyears in seconds... It doesnt get much better than that.

[LyriaFrost]

My biggest peeve with the game is that apparently hologram technology has not advanced AT ALL for apparently 20,000+ years. The recordings you find of "ancient" civilizations have the exact same holographic tech that "modern" holograms use.

 

During the Agent story you run into a couple of people using "advanced" hologram generators that don't have the "hazy, line-filled ghost" look. Why hasn't this become the standard of hologram technology in the last 200 centuries?

 

Certain things just don't make sense in the SW universe. It's very ... stagnant.

[ErikModi]

Well, what if those perfect holograms are good for some applications, but the flickery blue ones are good for others. Think of it this way. . . most often when we see the flickering blue holograms, they're being used as communication. Now, it may certainly be possible to transmit a perfect, full-color, hi-res, hi-def, oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-it's-not-really-him image, but is it practical? Such a hologram would certainly take a lot more bandwidth/bits/data packets/whatevers than a lower-res holoimage. Saving all that extra "space" lets you make the actual transmission more efficient, which would probably make it harder to trace/intercept/slice/scramble/jam. Not only that, but these more efficient transmissions may be able to have more "power" pumped into them, helping them overcome distance degradation and signal interference from a variety of sources, such as from energy weapons. You know, the kind that ships in Star Wars tend to shoot at each other on a fairly regular basis? And I'm sure the energy shields Star Wars ships use to protect themselves from energy weapons play merry hob with transmission signal strength.

 

The EU makes many references to holodrams, holodocumentaries, and other forms of holographic entertainment media that likely use hi-def type signals. In fact, I remember Thrawn's holographic art gallery, and in one book Pelleaon being quite surprised when the Grand Admiral "turned off" his art gallery and one sculpture remained, at least hinting at the idea that it is possible, in the OT and slightly thereafter, to generate holoimages functionally identical to actual objects.

 

Heck, even the OT itself seems to support the idea of different types of hologram for entertainment and communication. Look at the holographic dejarik pieces on the Millenium Falcon in ANH. They are still translucent, true (OOC reason, to let the audience know that these are, indeed, holograms, and not actual small monsters running around on the table) but are full-color. The transluceny can be explained in-universe, perhaps, using the same reasoning that many modern videogames, mostly of the 3D RTS variety, use when they make certain parts of the scenery translucent so the player can be aware of what's going on behind them.

[bloodygustav]

................what then? For 3000 years nobody could come up with better/different technology? I'm to expect the ships basically all look the same 3000 years before star wars? C2N2 is C3PO's great great great great great great great great uncle? Looks like they could be brothers.

 

Just sayin'

 

OP apparently is unfamiliar with the concept of a technological plateau.

/thread

[MarkusNova]

Meh, we live in a world where thousands of years later we've built pyramids in Las Vagas and Paris, a Parthenon in Washington D.C., etc. I have no trouble accepting that SW had a neoclassical revival.

 

THANK you, I was wondering if anyone was going to offer that up.

A lot of people seem to think that pointing out the need to give the game a recognizable aesthetic somehow precludes the necessity of providing that consistency along with suspension of disbelief.

Suspension of disbelief is necessary of course, but it's also true that it's the writers' job to grease the wheels of that process.

And they have done so, by introducing a fantastically advanced, ancient fallen empire. The civilization we're playing in didn't "reach" this level of technology, they found it. Then they figured out how to operate it, then produce it, then improve it. But in terms of innovation, necessity is the mother of invention, and there its no necessity in a world where FTL and datacrons have been granted to sentients on a silver platter.

 

The other factor is that creativity tends to boom when energy can adored to be diverted from the struggle for subsistence, which just isn't the case on many if these planets.

Am I just making excuses for why things are the aesthetically similar 3000 years later? Yes! I'm supporting my own suspension of disbelief with plausible possibilities grounded in my real world experience.

 

Last point: SW is not science fiction. It's techno-fantasy. Not one thing is an extrapolation of our real-worlds science. Even things as basic as their version of cell phones, we don't know what the hologram is projected by/on. Not even blaster rifles make science sense. Vibro-blades are the closest thing to science fiction in SW, and we don't even know how those work. Nothing in this world is extrapolation. That doesn't make it invalid, that makes it fantasy.

 

If you opened a swords & sorcery epic with "For three thousand years, the land of Coseideia has stagnated, its people caught in an endless cycle of war between ancient ideological enemies," or something along that line, nobody would blink.

[gixxgp]

To all those talking of a technologic plateau... How can you justify that even art stays the same for 3000 years? The "cantina" music is of the same style of the one listened in the movies...

[Enochx]

To all those talking of a technologic plateau... How can you justify that even art stays the same for 3000 years? The "cantina" music is of the same style of the one listened in the movies...

 

the classics never die dude.

[ErikModi]

Yeah, because no one on Earth listens to Bethoveen, Mozart, Bach. . .

[Toonimator]

Fashion styles come & go, and return. Musical tastes, too. SWTOR takes place in a time where music similar to the Modal Nodes' greatest hits is topping the charts, where ships that resemble the Falcon are flown everywhere (although they're all built for abnormally tall Wookiees, just with regular humanoid-sized chairs & bunks; even the space between the couch and the Dejarik table is supersized)

 

The plateau, fashion-style idea is how we've been justifying things since the first KOTOR game. It even makes sense going back to early Dark Horse Star Wars comics, like the Golden Age of the Sith with its "classical-era Earth"-inspired designs & tech. In a 20,000-plus-year-old galactic society, why would tech anywhere but the very earliest part of that timeframe look so 'ancient'? It wouldn't need to be. It's just an aesthetic.

 

Some technology itself may also come & go. Is the TIE fighter the first starfighter to make use of twin ion engines? Probably not. But it's become a popular, affordable technology by the time of Palpatine's reign, so it gets used...then some other engine will become popular for a few decades/centuries and the twin ion engine becomes a relic, only to be rediscovered a millennium later and used in all the starfighters of whatever republic/empire/alliance is in control of the galaxy at that point.

[ptoss]

It's a game. Bioware did it so that it would attract KotOR and Star Wars fans. Maybe they should have set it another 3 thousand years back. Then there wouldn't even be lightsabers. Now wouldn't that be awesome?

[gixxgp]

Yeah, because no one on Earth listens to Bethoveen, Mozart, Bach. . .

 

Those are not 3000 years old. And also are not the only music available. Also, if the best music that the SW galaxy can produce is the cantina music, that's worrying...