Nothing much changes in 3000 years?

[LizardSF]

Somewhat related to this, it's interesting how many Imperials (currently playing a BH, have no idea what the Republic side is like) keep talking about the Republic as "The Rebels".

 

I really can be of two minds about this. On the one hand, on the RP level, to our characters, this is "The Present" and we have no idea what the future will be. On the other hand, on the meta-level, there's very little sense to me of being in "the past", and I think this is deliberate. As many note, people want to play a very recognizable Star Wars, so there's a solid marketing reason for this, and I can't criticize anyone who makes the kind of investment Bioware has for going for the option that will help them recoup it. I'm hoping, though, as the game begins to take on more of its own identity, that we'll see more things that feel unique to this incarnation of the SW universe and more clearly set it apart from the future. (Tip of the hat: In one quest, I met a protocol droid who bragged about speaking "one hundred languages", as compared to C-3PO's six million. Kind of like watching an old computer advertisement which boasted "a mind-boggling 128K of RAM!". I'd like to see more stuff like that, and perhaps there is more I haven't seen, hidden away.)

[emhak]

There is some technological advancements, planetary shields didn't exist in TOR yet (Black Talon flashpoint: The General was saying how both sides were developing shields that could encompass the entire planet), well all the numerous superweapons that Star Wars has created through all the wars and events, it is quite an advancement to go from a station hurling asteroids (Hammer Station) to a battlemoon capable to blowing up planets to a tiny little ship with the ability to blow up stars.

 

Of course, through all this? No one...Absolutely no one has decided to fix the blue hologram flickering thingy.

[GCRust]

Tip of the hat: In one quest, I met a protocol droid who bragged about speaking "one hundred languages", as compared to C-3PO's six million.

 

Wasn't he voiced by the same guy, too?

[Gooric]

If you did the quests, you find that infinite Empire was around 10k years before this game was set, and they were the most powerful race ever (in lore it seems). All the games ancient artifacts/sites are mainly created by them.

 

Force curropted them and they lost their power.

 

The world has gone back in time, trying to find lost glories.

 

 

The SW universe is one that has reached its zenith, and aims to smoe day get there again...much like human dark ages, huamsn went from huge cities -> small villages (for the most part) after the fall of the Roamn civilization...

 

Now back to huge cities...

 

 

World evolves. Once you have all the tech, not much else for them to have ><

[Ituhata]

I can think of one major difference between then and now. I'd show you, but when we got there Obi Wan would have to ominously tell me that's no moon.

[blooddodo]

If you did the quests, you find that infinite Empire was around 10k years before this game was set, and they were the most powerful race ever (in lore it seems). All the games ancient artifacts/sites are mainly created by them.

From the little we know, almost all the ancient civilizations (Celestials, Gree, Kwa, Infinite empire) put to shame both Old and New Republic tech.

There was an interesting bit in the Crosscurrent novel where Old Republic tech comes face to face with NJO stuff - both lightsabers and ships

[DrDavidLopan]

 

.. and Tatooine is a lush agricultural world,

 

 

Massive global climate change of that scale could not occur in 3000 years. Just saying.

 

Personally, and this is just my opinion, but I would not have played this game if it did not resemble the galaxy as portrayed in the films. Those first 3 movies are classics and my only view into the Star Wars universe, and that is what I want to see when I play.

 

I completely understand if people feel the exact opposite way, but this is how I personally feel.

[RiledRodian]

A lot can occur in 3,000 years, including major steps backwards. Take for example our history. We lost almost 1,000 years of technological innovation because Greece and Rome both collapsed culturally. We lost written language, historical context to our past, and scientific innovation, all within one singular moment.

 

The Star Wars universe has already had dark ages and periods of great calamity that stagnated progress and pushed cultures back. The entire galaxy forgot about the enslavement of the Infinite Empire, for example. As for dark ages, not much is known between this time period now and until Darth Bane. It could have been the result of a major disaster, a plague, a great world that disrupted major civilizations, or it could have even been a political movement that erased a part of history entirely. (We already have seen evidence of that occurring by the Jedi Orders hand in Episode II.)

 

As for technology, there are scientists that already theorize that there exists plateaus to technological innovation. One such hurtle is coming up in the next couple years with computers. circuitry is becoming too small to pass electrons back and forth. Until that hurtle is overcome, there will be no more growth in computer based technology. I can only imagine what plateaus a space faring civilization would reach. It is quite possible that it looks like not much has changed in 3000 years because, well, nothing may have really changed.

[Arnokar]

How about the simple fact that, how far technologically can you go once you have faster than light speed, flying cars, laser weapons, robots space stations, artificial gravity and so on and so on...

 

Really where can you go from there? You just make it better is all.

[Cromagnum]

OK, I'll buy that in terms of the background fiction, but how much of it do we see? For example, do we see different fleet strategies or ship types because of inferior weapons, or are the main battle ships noticeably smaller than the Clone-era cruisers? Does anything in-game indicate, "Hey, if this were 3000 years later, you'd have been healed by now"? From a game mechanic perspective, it seems we still have instant healing, the droids don't seem different (to me) from the later era droids, etc. (Caveat: Some of them do look bulkier/larger, which is nice, implying more primitive technology. I guess I'd like to see more obvious things. For example, compare the Star Trek TOS communicators to the Next Gen communicators -- you instantly see, "Hey, this is a LOT more advanced".)

 

Due mostly to the limits of SFX budgets, the technology of the first movie looks a lot more primitive than the technology of TOR.

 

Don't get me wrong.... I'm having a lot of fun in the game. I just wish there was more a sense of "This is the distant past of the galaxy". Perhaps I'm asking for something that can't be feasibly done within the constraints of making a playable game; it wouldn't be the first time, and playability must always be the primary concern.

 

The thing you don't understand is that with inferior weapons comes inferior defenses. I mean in all the years on earth a helmet is still a helmet. It might look different but it fulfills the same purpose. The helmets have gotten better but so have the weapons. So it is actually quite realistic.

[LizardSF]

How about the simple fact that, how far technologically can you go once you have faster than light speed, flying cars, laser weapons, robots space stations, artificial gravity and so on and so on...

 

Really where can you go from there? You just make it better is all.

 

This is sensible, except for the tremendous technological leaps in the clone wars and movie era. "Executor" type star destroyers are tremendously more advanced than standard star destroyers, and TIE fighters made multi-generational shifts in power, not just minor incremental changes, in a handful of years... one model barely got off the assembly line before a much more powerful, upgraded, model came out, and the post-movie era had even more "leapfrogging" technology.

 

(This is a common pattern in a LOT of F and SF settings. "For ten thousand years, nothing changes. Then, over the decade covered by the media, everything changes over and over." Hell, the Forgotten Realms has had its entire *cosmology* altered multiple times in the span of a decade or two, and these were in-universe changes, not retcons.)

 

Also, I'm always leery of "What more can you possibly invent?", since people have been asking that since the mid-1800s. Try telling someone in, oh, 1970 that by the year 2010, virtually all Americans will own multiple lasers. (Count your CD/DVD/Blu-Ray players...)

 

Oh, as a side note, given that large areas of present-day desert was fertile farmland less than 3000 years ago, I have very little trouble imagining that industrial technology on the SW scale could transform an ecosystem in much less time. Slash-and-burn agriculture can deforest a continent in a few centuries, after all. (Tatooine's oxygen atmosphere HAD to come from somewhere; a stable O2 atmosphere can only exist in an active biosphere, which is why if we ever see a spectrographic reading of a world with a decent amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, we've found life. For Tatooine to be have an atmosphere now, it must have had a lot more plant life in the past, and the not-too-distant past, as oxygen has this tendency to bond with things. Likewise, think what kind of prey you'd need to support a predator like a krayt dragon. (Come to think of it, this applies to Hoth as well; it must have been warmer and wetter relatively recently.))

[Wickedcarny]

Im sorry, when did we find life on other planets? When did we find life on other planets and Oxygen? Did I miss something??

 

Basically the reason why technology did/did not advance in 3000 years is for the same reason the tech in Ep1-III was more advanced than Ep Iv-VI. Tech is worse in the OT because George Lucas doesn't care about Star Wars fans.. George Lucas ruined Star Wars in the late 90s.

 

Instead of planning out the prequals better or taking the time to really think the story through, he just made 3 CGIgasm films.

 

TOR just follows in this process. Really TOR is exactly like the prequals, except it is set thousands of years in the past. Is it really though? TO me, it is the same time period just with different character names, and slightly different designed ships/droids. The ships don't look older, and the droids look maybe 50 years older. Everything else could have been in EpI-III.

 

Of all the technology to not advance in 3000, droids really havent. Like REALLY havent. Also in 3k years, they pretty much look and act exactly the same? No one thought astro droids should talk...or protocol droids have slightly more mobility than that of a person with ALL their joints fused together and a giant rod up there butt.

 

Just saying, i don't think too much thought was put into the "why" or "how". It is what it is, and really atleast it is a good solid Star Wars game to play. To me this replaces EPI-III. Hell, the opening movies were cooler than anything in the 7 hours of those combined films

[LizardSF]

Im sorry, when did we find life on other planets? When did we find life on other planets and Oxygen? Did I miss something??

 

Not yet. But if we detect an oxygen atmosphere on another world, via spectrography, it will be an extremely strong indicator of some kind of active biosphere. Oxygen is too active to stick around without being constantly replenished. So, if a world has enough free oxygen in the atmosphere to breathe, it probably has a very rich biosphere: Plants to produce oxygen, and something else to turn the oxygen back into CO2 for the plants. Anaerobic life is certainly possible, but it's considered unlikely it would advance very far, Larry Niven's "Green Plague" notwithstanding.

 

Just saying, i don't think too much thought was put into the "why" or "how". It is what it is, and really atleast it is a good solid Star Wars game to play. To me this replaces EPI-III. Hell, the opening movies were cooler than anything in the 7 hours of those combined films

 

Can't disagree with that.

 

Bioware was undoubtedly given a lot of constraints by LucasFilms, and had even more due to the need to make an accessible, iconic, game that could reliably recoup their huge investment in it. Given that, they've done an outstanding job.

[Wickedcarny]

Not yet. But if we detect an oxygen atmosphere on another world, via spectrography, it will be an extremely strong indicator of some kind of active biosphere. Oxygen is too active to stick around without being constantly replenished. So, if a world has enough free oxygen in the atmosphere to breathe, it probably has a very rich biosphere: Plants to produce oxygen, and something else to turn the oxygen back into CO2 for the plants. Anaerobic life is certainly possible, but it's considered unlikely it would advance very far, Larry Niven's "Green Plague" notwithstanding.

 

 

Ok I see what you meant. Just how you worded it originally was odd to me. This is of course assuming that the lifeform in question 1.)respirates gas, and 2.)that gas is oxygen.

[LizardSF]

 

Ok I see what you meant. Just how you worded it originally was odd to me. This is of course assuming that the lifeform in question 1.)respirates gas, and 2.)that gas is oxygen.

 

The lack of an oxygen atmosphere does not preclude life, but the presence of one virtually guarantees it. By definition, we can't yet look for "Life, Jim, but not as we know it", because we don't know what to look for, what kind of traces it might leave that we can detect from umpty-light years away. The mere fact it's very reasonable to expect we'll be able to do spectrographic analysis of Earth-sized worlds within 5-10 years is effin' awesome. Insert metaphor about seeing a fly walking across a searchlight in New York while you're in LA here.

 

Anyway...

 

It's easier to accept the nature of Old Republic universe is, as others have said, you think of it as basically a fantasy universe, rather than science fiction one. In fantasy, you can get away with things not changing for thousands of years, and that creates a particularly epic atmosphere. I think it's interesting that a lot of the backstory for TOR focuses on "even OLDER stuff", with the worlds filled with lost ruins, abandoned cities, and ancient artifacts.

 

Ultimately, though, I wish it somehow felt more like "3000 years before the movies" and less like "About a hundred years before the movies". Then again, I'm not sure how you could "roll back" the technology and look enough to convey that; it may be an impossibility and I'm wasting my time pondering it hit.

[Gasaraki-]

My issue is not with the technology not advancing, sketchy as it is you can retcon that.

 

But smugglers are all good? and bounty hunters are all evil? If anything, BHs side themselves with established goverments so should be republic. Vader employs BHs in the films because the Empire is the established government.

 

Smugglers work against established governements so should be empire aligned.

 

Why does the trooper in the cinematic trailer look like a jango clone trooper.

Why does the smuggler get a Wookiee companion.

 

Hutt crimelords have a habit of freezing enemies in carbonite? No - Han was frozen because he happened to be on Bespin where they had a carbon freezing chamber, it wasnt even commonplace in the films.

 

Most of the imperial missions ive done refer to the enemy as REBELS.

 

There are loads more...

 

 

The issue here for me is that this feels more like a reboot than part of a cannonical universe in an established timeline.

Yes yes, the game is fun, but I wanted an EXPANDED universe, not a re-hashed one!

 

 

Yes, you are on Dromund Kaas. They are rebels on that planet. It's not a mistake. Nowhere else are they called rebels.

[dynamofan]

To us 3000 yrs is along time. To the Star Wars universe 300 yrs is like 3 parsecs. Whole planets and races can not change in 300 yrs.

[Wickedcarny]

Ultimately, though, I wish it somehow felt more like "3000 years before the movies" and less like "About a hundred years before the movies". Then again, I'm not sure how you could "roll back" the technology and look enough to convey that; it may be an impossibility and I'm wasting my time pondering it hit.

 

Agreed. I understand why for KOTOR they placed it thousands of years before, to create the lore, and have it far enough removed from Star Wars as everyone knew it to avoid such comparisions and discussions. However, 3000 years seems a bit dramatic of a number. 300-500 years would have been cool. Or at most since the republic saw 1000 years of peace, these events took place right before that galactic peace. Still would have been a hard pill to swollow in tech/advancement wise, but it would atleast have been a gel cap.

 

To those comments about technology reaching a limit and peaking. Certain tech yes, absolutely. Not with everything. Im stuck on the droids, but I equate them to a cell phone. 15-20 years ago cells were bulky and huge with limited features. Look how far they have advanced in that time. Droids in TOR to droids in EpI? Thats more like an upgrade from Android 2.1 to Android 4.0. 3000 years and they are only slightly more advanced versions of what are seen in the films??

 

Also as for the "helmet" comment: Yes, helmets essentialyl do the same thing but the technology is WAY different and serve a slightly different purpose. I am just talking the last 100 years, im not going back to Rome or medievel. Original steel helmets were pretty much designed to protect against falling debris etc. As time went on, designs protected more of the head/neck and added addtional saftey features. Most modern designed helmets are based off of the german WWi/WWii helmet. US Army wise, as time went on they added layers of kevlar etc to them. Today the ACH (advanced combat helmet) is made of kevlar, designed to protect against falling debris, shrapnel and to a degree lower caliber weapons. The padding and chin strap system is designed to protect against concussion inside and as well be more comfortable and keep the helmet in the correct position as to provide constant adequate protection. Also portions of the helmet are designed to accomodate NVG nightvision mounts, Infared IR devices, goggle straps etc. Just in the last 20 years from the advancement from the "kevlar" helmet to the ACh, there is a VERy noticable difference.

 

So the point was to clarify whoever said that original statement AND to point out that sometimes a higher advanced form of something may look similiar to something older. The shape of the helmet is pretty solid, but the materials and features contained within can be different. This could apply to most things found in the SW universe.

[LizardSF]

To us 3000 yrs is along time. To the Star Wars universe 300 yrs is like 3 parsecs. Whole planets and races can not change in 300 yrs.

 

And a week is like, two feet.

[Wickedcarny]

And a week is like, two feet.

 

roflcopter. pwned.

[Cloakedfigure]

We are currently living in a time period with massive innovations going on, Technology is improving rapidly. This has not always been the case, From reign of the Pharaohs to the Roman empire how much did technology really increase? Then after Rome and Greece fell we had a dark age period lasting around 1,000 years of almost no innovation what so ever.

 

I'm not saying technology did not improve in the past, it's just the rapid rate of improvement we are currently living with has not been the norm throughout human history. Growing up in this time period we are bias to believe that technology will continue to advance at this rapid rate. It's entirely possible we will hit a plateau were there will be very little innovation for a longer period time. Or that some disaster will happen and technological advancements will be lost.

[Sandmanmr]

So... nothing much changes in 3000 years?

 

As I understand it, the Old Republic era is about 3000 years prior to the battle of Yaavin/the original movies.

 

The spacecraft, droids, weapons, and even clothing and hairstyles barely look any different.

 

The hutts are all corrupt gangsters in the movie era; they're all corrupt gangsters here. The same races that are dominant 3000 years from now (except the Sith, of course) are dominant now. Whatever a world will be like 3000 years in the future, it's like now.

 

If one character did something, wore something, or said something in the movies, it seems that it's become a universal trait of their entire race. Every Hutt preserves people in carbonite and has a fetish for humanoid women and a rancor pit. Every Rodian is a sleazy wannabe tough guy.

 

It's kind of like setting a game in Ancient Rome... except that it's the United States of Rome, which is in a cold war with the Union Of Soviet Socialist Visigoths, and everyone has 9mm automatics, flies in jet planes, and drives a car.

 

I don't blame Bioware for this; they got their marching orders from Lucasfilms when it comes to creating backstory. It just seems like it's a hell of a missed opportunity. Instead of a Star Wars universe that's almost unrecognizable (maybe droid technology is very primitive, and Tatooine is a lush agricultural world, and races we've never heard of have political dominance while common races like Wookies haven't even been contacted yet), it's pretty much identical to the movie-era universe. About the only reason I see for the Old Republic existing, for gaming purposes, is that it lets there be Jedi everywhere, one of the problems with SWG in terms of being set in the original trilogy era.

 

This doesn't make the game any less fun or hinder my enjoyment much; I'd just like to know what everyone was doing for 3000 years. No scientists, engineers, or inventors? The same staticy holograms, the same weapon technology, the same types of droids?

 

ancient rome and the USA really are not so different as many tend to believe, only ancient rome was powerful for 1000ends of years

[LizardSF]

To be more clear, it's not just technology, but everything -- political factions, important planets, even hair and clothing styles.

 

The same worlds that are prominent in the movie era are prominent in TOR; the factions are mostly the same. (The fact the Sith Empire is virtually the same as the Empire-Empire of the movies is particularly disappointing: Mussolini copied a lot of the iconography of Rome, but you'd never confuse the Italian Army of WW2 for the legions of Caesar.)

 

After periods of dark ages and lost knowledge, it's very common for cultures to incorporate the styles and imagery of older, presumably "superior" cultures, in their own. During the early 20th century, copying Egyptian icons and architecture was big in America and Europe as the pyramids were explored, and of course the Renaissance imitated Roman styles in art and architecture, but never to the extent of making exact copies of the uniforms, clothes, buildings, and so on. To use a simple example: The red/blue/yellow square icons used to signify rank on imperial uniforms. That's a very recognizable image from the movies. So why not make them ROUND in this era? Or Hexagonal? Or use different colors? That would say, "Hey, this is the kind of rank symbol the Emperor was inspired by 3000 years from now, but he didn't just copy it."

 

An axe is an axe and a helmet is a helmet, but anyone trained in the appropriate fields can look at two axes and identify the different cultures that made them, and often date them to within a century or less of their construction based on minor changes in style, materials, and workmanship.

 

It seems there's room in the setting to be both recognizable and unique, and I hope that as time goes on and the game establishes itself as its own entity, that BioWare will use the fact they've got a galaxy of a million worlds to show us some things we haven't seen before. There should be, at the least, some smaller (only a few hundred worlds, compared to the hundreds of thousands of the Empire and the Republic) stellar nations which don't exist in the future, having long since been thoroughly absorbed. (As per the Han Solo novels by AC Crispin, "Hutt Space" is pretty much the same in the movie era as it is now; the Empire leaves the slugs alone.)

[CptManco]

People really shouldn't use the "Dark Ages" as an example.

It was both very localized; China, India, the Muslim empires and even the Eastern Roman Empire never suffered from it; and not terribly accurate, theoretical knowledge and advancement might have suffered, but if you look a bit deeper there's in fact a vast amount of practical knowledge and advancement. And perhaps more importantly a far wider permeation of them through society (remember that many of the Greek and Roman inventions were quite rare to actually see in effect, while for example wind-and watermills were ubiquitous during the Middle Ages)

[LizardSF]

People really shouldn't use the "Dark Ages" as an example.

It was both very localized; China, India, the Muslim empires and even the Eastern Roman Empire never suffered from it; and not terribly accurate, theoretical knowledge and advancement might have suffered, but if you look a bit deeper there's in fact a vast amount of practical knowledge and advancement. And perhaps more importantly a far wider permeation of them through society (remember that many of the Greek and Roman inventions were quite rare to actually see in effect, while for example wind-and watermills were ubiquitous during the Middle Ages)

 

Good points, but:

a)Most people with even a borderline Western education, which means, most people posting on these (English) forums, will know about the fall of Rome and the Dark Ages and the Renaissance in at least some kind of vague and inchoate way, and that makes it a good touchstone to use as examples most participants will understand. (As another example. the Harry Potter books were hardly the first or the last tale of a young person learning at a magical school, but they're so well known that they're a good touchstone when discussing OTHER works in the same genre; they provide a common point of reference and comparison.)

 

b)Lucas has himself said he based a lot of the setting's history on Rome, specifically the transition from a democracy to a dictatorship (let's not discuss how much that oversimplifies Roman history, shall we? I know *just* enough about Rome to know that's a gross oversimplification, but NOT enough to discuss it in more detail, and I don't want to embarrass myself too much.)

 

c)The "cyclic rise and fall of empire" is an important part of Western mythology/iconography. It may or may not be part of other culture's storytelling tropes; I honestly don't know. (I'm not claiming I'm an expert on Western/European myth, either. Like most folks on the net, I'm a dilettante who has absorbed enough by osmosis to pass for someone who might know what he's talking about, at least until I meet someone who actually does.) Thus, it makes sense to me this theme is incorporated in SW, especially when you consider it really embodies fantasy tropes with sci-fi costuming much more than true science fiction tropes and theme. More Arthurian Romance than Arthur Clarke, if you get me.

 

Ultimate summary of my viewpoint: Even within the limits of needing a recognizeable setting to make the game successful and appealing to Star Wars fans, they could have gone further than they did in making it unique or bringing in elements that don't directly mirror movie-era equivalents. It is my sincere hope this will change as development inevitably progresses, and my justifiable fear that BioWare may go the other way to satisfy fan's demands for this- or that- element from the movies and movie era/post movie era EU media.