Posted by Lethality in Blue Milk & Cereal | 29 Comments
Blue Milk & Cereal: Should Light/Dark Decisions Change Your Character’s Look?
No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal. Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!
Yesterday during the Star Wars: The Old Republic panel at New York Comic Con, James Ohlen confirmed that your morality decisions will affect the appearance of your character if you go extreme. This was something that has been talked about for some time, but without any recent confirmation, fans weren’t sure whether if would make it into the game.
Then later during the Q&A sponsored by MMORPG.com, Ohlen revealed in response to a question that only Dark side appearance changes will exist:
No light side appearance change. We toyed with a “wisened old” look but scrapped it. You don’t grow angel wings.
This difference will no doubt cause controversy among some players. While I don’t think anyone wants angel wings, it would be nice to have something if you go completely Light side as well!
On the other hand, I’m not sure if I want something changing the physical appearance of my character beyond what I do in the character creator. What if I don’t like the look of the changes?
What do you guys think? Should morality decisions change the look of your character at all? Would you like to see Light side too?
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I’d like my avatar to stay the way I make her. Maybe if they do decide to offer changes, make them elective.
yes elective changes because I personally hated how in kotor if I went full on evil it didn’t make me look evil I just looked like I really needed a nap and I rant want to make a guy look awesome at the start and find the perfect look and then be forced to look a different way just so I can be dark side or light side
I think they could have a subtle change, maybe a very slight glow. At the same time, not sure that’s within the lore or even “realistic”. I like the idea of not being able to chose if your appearance changes as well – one more example of decisions have consequences.
light side looked good in kotor so it WILL look good in tor
bioware has never failed me
Yes on both from me.
Getting to either extreme of light side or dark side should certainly have consequences. Cosmetic changes will have by far the least impact on game play and will never cause concerns with balance. Besides, it is well established that beyond a certain point following the dark side has a significant, visible impact.
I do think it’d be a good idea to allow players to have a choice to the exact nature of the appearance change. Some will want to go the extreme fugly route while others will prefer subtler signs of corruption.
Light and Darkside should change your look, but all they need to do is put a toggle on/off in your options for those that do not want to have it. And why not have a few different FX available to choose from? This is already in many MMO’s as high level costume options….and example would be COH aura’s.
Hmmm I’d like to see such changes in SWTOR for both sides, but of course only if they look awesome. Need some pics of that.
No to both. It seems like implementing morality restrictions on gear is an adequate reflection of one’s choices. But really I don’t care much either way, as long as there’s a toggle to opt out for those who don’t want the appearance change forced on them.
I’m on the fence about it. One on hand, I would want my character to appear the way I wanted originally at character creation. On the other, every character I’ve ever seen in Star Wars who did fall to the dark side, ended up being at least somewhat physically corrupted, so it would fit the “lore.” But I would only want this to affect force using classes. An an example, an Imperial Agent, no matter how evil they choose to be, should remain the same. If you look at the Holonet at least, even some of the most evil people who are NOT force users retain their original appearnace (Grand Moff Kilran for example). That guy is pretty evil, but despite his scar across his face, he does not appear corrupted. And I certainly wouldn’t want Jedi’s who pursue romance to suddenly look like Darth Malgus…it should only affect those individuals who go to extremes.
Good point. Such changes do affect only those people who are closely tied to the Force.
I’d say for being a fully fledged Sith, Count Dooku looked pretty alright. =p Same with Maul, I’m sure he was considered a handsome Zabrak amongst his people.
Along with Darth Talon and Maladi, who despite being evil as the night is long both look pretty darn gorgeous.
So no, there’s just as much evidence suggesting being evil doesn’t make you ugly at all.
Yeah good point! I forgot about Dooku :)
Sure – make Dark Side ugly.
Ther Darker the uglier :P
I’m torn between Yes and No.
I spend time Making my character at the beginning of the game. I don’t know if I like the idea of it being changed to something that I might not like.
I would have to disagree with the light side receiving any change to their physical appearance unless it truly makes sense. The best I could come up with is a permanent big, toothy grin….
Also, here is a quote- the last line is the most important- from PAX East:
Question: If you have more points on the dark side and it makes you look more evil and wrinkled what if you don’t want to look evil and wrinkled?
DE: Then why were you evil? The question is: if (and we never said there was) but If we did the KOTOR thing and somehow we liked KOTOR and we made you all nasty if you were evil, would that be optional? We would never make your character look the way you didn’t want to.
The changes should be a choice of changes, or no change at all.
For me it’s lore issue. While yes some dark siders become physically corrupted not all do. I am also worried we will see none force users with characteristic that really are specific to force using characters only.
While yes I agree that being good or evil should have penalties and benefits, appearance modification seems like awful hallow manifestation of this mechanic. It should effect your story, how others treat. I can even go so far as saying some gear which has been imbued with force energy could reject or accept you depending on your force alignment.
I agree with BW on not having a light side changes. This isn’t Fable and jedi in the past never glowed or anything. The dark side however does alter your appearance, so that makes sense. For an MMO I think it would be wise to have a toggle so you could turn off appearance changes. You hide your head slot item, this should be no different. Some people take the look of their characters pretty seriously.
Yes, but only if you want it too.
Only darkside changes I can remember from the films is Sith eyes, and Sidious’s abuse of lightning damaging him.
yes but be smart: dark side BH should not get yellow eyes and pale skin make it something else, blood stains i don’t know but not sith feature on non force user class
I personally liked how they did it in Kotor 1 and 2. Where if you went darkside, you would truly see the change in your character, becoming greyer with more crackled skin. Or if lightside, your appearance would become brighter and more radiant.
I think there should be appearance changes. But I don’t think they should be facial. Maybe an aura (red or blue?) only visible to force sensitive players if they choose to enable it. I don’t think what you choose should really matter to others unless maybe you’re RP. So if your not force sensitive, you don’t really care if Mr. Evil picked and smelled a flower.
Add Force sight and have the goodies a pillar of light. Wait, that limits seeing if someone is super good to being a force user, which does not help anything.
I believe that there should be some kind of visual identifier of someone being the pinnacle of light. Though I will be playing the darkest of darkies and a Sith to boot, I just feel that people who are pro-appearance altering would like something for the lightside as well.
If there are physical changes I want them to either be optional or to be able to do the Mass Effect 2 thing and go to a plastic surgeon to undo the random outbreak of glowing scars.
You can already make your character look pretty disfigured when starting out, why should you add extra scars or whatever on top of that?
Either way I sure feel glad that I won’t be playing any overtly evil characters.
I think a good appearance change would be glowing eyes red if you are max dark and light blue or white for max light side
Clearly Jedi’s should get more beardy the more light side they go and Sith more wrinkly! This has worked for Lucas for over 30 years… ;)
Buff up armor and whiten teeth / scratch, scorch marks and extra scars for troopers
I love the idea your character changes (better than silly stuff I put there) without your consent – if you make a choice in life and it leads to an incident good or bad you are changed by it – sometimes physically – the consent you gave was saying yes or no.
Thought I would re-post a developer posting by AllisonBerryman on the swtor website for anyone who’s interested.
“Hey everyone! We’re glad to see that you’re all so enthusiastic about dark side corruption, but wanted to clarify just a little bit about it. At this time, dark side corruption is an option that you’re able to toggle on and off yourself. We’re excited to have the feature in the game, but currently the plan is to allow you to use it if you want to.”
I think they should make changes only for the darkside. As we know, there is only from the dark side corruption that the body of the siths changes. eyes getting yellow, flesh melting like palpatine’s and many more… But the light side is supposed to be “non intrusive” si no reason to change anything.