BioWare details SWTOR Companions

By Robert Purchese Published 28 May, 2010

Friends, lovers, even enemies.

Star Wars: The Old Republic uses an Affection system for Companion Characters "loosely" based on the one used in Dragon Age.

This allows some Companion Characters to be "twisted" to the darkside while others can be "redeemed". And some companions can gain strength and independence while others can be beaten into subservience.

Affection will be altered through conversations, events and gifts.

"While travelling the galaxy, your Companion Characters will provide commentary, information on plots and directions to points of interest - all from their own unique perspectives. Companion Characters may act as your conscience, and try to influence your decisions. In turn, you will influence them, and change how they develop as the story progresses," read a BioWare post on IGN.

"Based on your choices, some Companions will become your closest friends, others may become your lovers, and a few may even become your enemies!"

Every class has their own set of Companion Characters to compliment their abilities. Tank classes, for instance, won't be offered tank companions.

Your first Companion joins the story early-on, but soon you'll have enough allies that squads will have to be thought-out depending on the mission at hand.

How much direct control you'll have over Companions remains a hazy issue. The post mentions "activating" Companion abilities, and reveals that by altering Companion equipment you can effectively change their behaviour.

Companion Characters also have stories of their own than can be explored through various quests offering different rewards.

Examples of Companions given were an "honourable princess" and a "roguish pirate". Hmm, sounds familiar.

"With Star Wars: The Old Republic we had to solve for the fact that this is the first BioWare (MMO)RPG that is entirely real-time," concluded lead designer Josh Ohlen. "All of our previous RPGs allow the player to pause the game. We have had to approach how a player controls his companion much differently than before."

Star Wars: The Old Republic will be released sometime next year. And we're still anxious to find out more about the "(MMO)" side of the game.

Head into our SWTOR gamepage below for the story so far.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • LHH #1 2 years ago

    I'm not sure about this. Been wanting to try an MMO for a while but prefer my sci fi settings. Just I'm not all keen on the Jedi / Sith thing the Star Wars universe has.
    I reckon they should make a Mass Effect MMO...

  • Bodd #2 2 years ago

    The more I hear about SWTOR, the less like an MMO it sounds. I mean, I'll still buy it, and happily play it, because Bioware make fantastic single player RPGs - but I've seen nothing in the press releases that suggests any reason to subscribe past the first month.

  • Fleisch #3 2 years ago

    ruh-oh!

    Not sure this is a good move for an MMO, a lot of the joy that the genre has is exploration and discovery by yourself or with your mates, not with AI in tow. However, if these chappies just let you run instances w/o a full complement of humans, before disappearing again, then maybe it'll be ok.....

  • login_name #4 2 years ago

    We can all pretty much guess what the companion system will be like, the story, the dialogue choices etc., it's a Bioware game. They really need to start talking about the MMO side of things.

    I'm still interested in this, it's a KOTOR sequel after all, but the Guild Wars 2 info is making this look old and tired. I'm starting to get bored and I haven't even killed my first womp rat.

  • WinterSnowblind #5 2 years ago

    @Bodd
    This is because the haven't talked about the MMO aspects at all yet, they want it to be a very story driven experience, much like the new Guild Wars, but the multiplayer aspects are (allegedly) still there.

    Personally, I'm hoping for an option to NOT subscribe and be able to play through much of this single player content, as if it were a KotOR III. It's the MMO side of things that's turning me off the game.

  • iamian #6 2 years ago

    It really does sound like KOTOR III.
    As a first foray into MMOs it will probably be a decent effort but the companies that have already published MMOs (in my opinion) already know the pitfalls and expanding the genre - something that this doesn;t sound like doing...

  • GamesConnoisseur #7 2 years ago

    Problem for me is that I never have time or inclination to try MMO, as bad enough with what I m doing in my spare times.

    So I m pretty sure this is an experience I will miss out on, even though loved and played through twice both SP KOTOR games on xbox.

    Still good for Bioware to try to translate the good points from SP and their other games into the game and making it stands out more from the other MMO games.

  • Inigo #8 2 years ago

    The Affection system sounds a lot like Obsidians influence system from KOTOR2. It was pretty cool being able to turn your companions to the dark side.

    I have no interest in the MMO side, i went on the SWTOR forums once and its a scary place.
    Edited by 1 at 28/05/10 @ 09:53

  • Shikasama #9 2 years ago

    Why are they so hung up on 'the MMO' side of things?

    It is far more interesting to think of KOTOR as a primarily single player experience paid through a subscription for regular updates.

    The one thing WoW has taught me is that the worst things about MMOs are the other players. Personally I'll be glad if the forced interaction is severely limited.

  • iamian #10 2 years ago

    Why are they so hung up on 'the MMO' side of things?

    Ermm, cos' it's an MMO ?

  • nuanimal #11 2 years ago

    I think it could be quite fun seducing an Ewok...

  • Shikasama #12 2 years ago

    iamian - And a quick look at other 'MMOs' out there should you that the moniker covers a very large range of games that all work in a multitude of different ways.

    Personally, I'm looking forward to an 'MMO' that actually puts some effort into the 'RPG' side of their games and doesn't require me to spend farm the same instance over and over so I can do the next one, while being at the mercy of 9 or 24 other random people.

  • hiddenranbir #13 2 years ago

    Ugh, they still use "tanks! and stuff? This really is going to be a play-it-safe MMO isn't it? With the choices you make in instances and those exact same choices being presented to other players...Then we see Guild Wars where every player's unique story quest will go across the game in a variety of different ways.

    Sigh.

  • sneetch #14 2 years ago

    @Shikasama
    Why are they so hung up on 'the MMO' side of things?

    Because (IMO) if there's no dependency on and requirement to group up with other people then people won't group up, if they don't group up then they won't really form communities (guilds or whatever they're called), if they don't form communities then they probably won't hang around all that long. Which means the game will die off pretty quickly.

  • WinterSnowblind #15 2 years ago

    @sneetch
    Again, back to Guild Wars, which I think has found a very neat way of making players work together in a community, without eliminating the possibility to play solo, if that's what you'd prefer.

    It's nice to see at least one developer out there has realized that there's quite a population of MMO players out there that would prefer to remain isolated at least in their small band of one or two friends. I think other MMO's like WoW, and FFXI, etc are losing a lot of subscribers because of this.

    For me, MMO's create a great atmosphere with a lot of other players.. But I don't necessarily want to have to interact with them all the time.

  • Horse #16 2 years ago

    I'd be much more likely to buy this if it wasn't an MMO.

  • dagas #17 2 years ago

    Bodd: You are right that it seems a lot like a SPRPG. "GREAT!" is what I say. It sets out to fix every problem I have with MMO's. The more I hear about this game to more exited I am. I don't know how much you can play in a month, but for me it will take at least a year before I've played through the game with all the different classes (Remember that the story change depending on your class)

  • RodHull #18 2 years ago

    If you play as an evil Sith lord do you still get a whiney kiss-ass companion? If so can I have Nick Clegg?

  • Shikasama #19 2 years ago

    I genuinley do think this might be a taster for subscription based single player games. This isn't me trying to say that 'KOTOR is a single player game' at all.

    But it is something to consider and something I assume the industry would like to think about. If i paid say, 6 quid a month, it takes 7 months to pay the price of a new full game. If they can deliver new content the likes of WoW content patches every 4 or 5 months then, assuming the quality is there, that's something I would be very interested in.

    I'm preparing for the negative karma.

  • Nighthaunter #20 2 years ago

    Seems strange that most people commentng on this game seem to have little to no interest in the mmo side of things, I wonder if this is what Bioware was hoping for. I personally think it will be a solid game but I'm not sure if it will do enough to lure people away from wow or keep star wars/bioware fans playing for more than a month or 2. Still, it's early days and hopefully there's more information coming at E3.

  • levitate #21 2 years ago

    I'm still confused about whether this is a MMO with single player influence or a single player game with MMO influence.

  • Bodd #22 2 years ago

    I can appreciate the idea of a subscription to get regular updates to a solo game, in principle. However, given the dubious quality of the DLC Bioware have knocked out for DA and ME2 I'm not sold in this case.

  • Shikasama #23 2 years ago

    Thats a very good point Bodd

  • Azgarth #24 2 years ago

    I suspect this will be an MMO on the same line as Age of Conan, in the sense that it has content to play solo - story and companions - and with friends online - without companions and content directed to the background story of the game and not the character itself. The solo content of Conan is pretty good in my opinion.
    This might very well be one of the best incoming MMOs - I can see myself busy with interesting character story when I am waiting for my friends to come online, and interesting background story to play with them without help from the AI group.
    I just hope the companions of character story have better AI then Jack on Mass Effect, cause she's a bit like the infamous Jeroy Jenkins :)
    I can't wait for this game - but wasnt this suposedly delayed to 2013?

  • goldenballs1988 #25 2 years ago

    From day one it was an mmo, so people saying they want it more without mmo are daft that was the key idea in the 1st place. And all this money isn't spent on allowing single player playhrough with optional subscription. Subscribing will be a requirement!!!

  • djed #26 2 years ago

    Here you go Pogo, have a fast car!

  • Cosquae #27 2 years ago

    So this is going to be a Bioware predominantly single player RPG game (good)

    with multiplayer/mmo accessibility (meh)

    and mmo subscription fees on top of purchasing the game (bad)