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Synopsis Revealed For Upcoming Revan Novel

Have you been chomping at the bit to learn more about Drew Karpyshyn’s upcoming novel Revan? Well, Random House tossed us a bone today with the release of a synopsis for the book:

There’s something out there:
a juggernaut of evil bearing down to crush the Republic—
unless one lone Jedi, shunned and reviled, can stop it.

Revan: hero, traitor, conqueror, villain, savior. A Jedi who left Coruscant to defeat Mandalorians—and returned a disciple of the dark side, bent on destroying the Republic. The Jedi Council gave Revan his life back, but the price of redemption was high. His memories have been erased. All that’s left are nightmares—and deep, abiding fear.

What exactly happened beyond the Outer Rim? Revan can’t quite remember, yet can’t entirely forget. Somehow he stumbled across a terrible secret that threatens the very existence of the Republic. With no idea what it is, or how to stop it, Revan may very well fail, for he’s never faced a more powerful and diabolic enemy. But only death can stop him from trying.

Karpyshyn’s Revan promises to tie up many of the loose ends that players of Knights Of The Old Republic may have been wondering about.

Of course, we know that Revan’s story will also showcase somehow in TOR, based on this trailer released at PAX Prime last year.

Head on over to Random House to check it out, and of course you can even pre-order Revan right now on Amazon and other retailers.The book is scheduled to be released on November 15.

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Posted by Sentinel | 7 Comments

Drew Karpyshyn Talks About Revan

Author and BioWare Senior Writer Drew Karpyshyn recently updated his blog, and he takes the opportunity to set the record about what to expect out of his upcoming novel set in The Old Republic – Revan.

Karpyshyn outlines the differences between a book character and a video game character, and tries to set expectations for fans:

To put it bluntly, Revan in the book will not be the uber-powered death machine you controlled at the end of the video game. You might have min-maxed your character to smack Darth Malak down in seconds without breaking a sweat, but in a book that battle would have been a brutal, hard fought affair spread over multiple pages.

He goes on further to assure fans that Revan is not an insignificant character, by any means:

That doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore Revan’s accomplishments as detailed in the game. The high level events and history are canon. Revan did defeat Mandalore and Darth Malak. He was an incredibly powerful Jedi. But a powerful Jedi in story terms (films, TV, books) is very different from a powerful Jedi in game terms.

Karpyshyn also made note that all of his previous Star Wars books are available now for pre-order as e-books, including the upcoming Revan. Revan is scheduled for release in the Fall.

UPDTAE: Revan publisher Del Ray has announced the release date of Revan to be November 15. Thanks to Klipto for the heads up.

Hop on over to Drew’s blog for the full read!

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Posted by Lethality | 3 Comments

Drew Karpyshyn To Pen The Old Republic Novel #3

According to the Random House electronic book catalog, Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ #3 (as it is currently being referred to) is a novel currently scheduled to be released in October of this year, the 18th to be exact.

And, as Jacob from TOR Universe speculated back in September of 2010, none other than Drew Karpyshyn will be the author!

Drew posted some information last week on his blog about his secret project being “done,” so it seems based on the production timeline he provides, this new novel set in The Old Republic is that project!

NJOE stated that the title will be revealed April 15th, and the cover will be revealed in July during ComicCon.

So, with all of these dates being thrown around, do any of them mean anything in relation to the potential release of the game? Would love to hear your thoughts, and don’t forget to put your tinfoil hat on before posting :)

UPDATE: Drew Karpyshyn has now confirmed this on his personal blog.

Thanks to Darth Hater and the New Jedi Order Encyclopedia for sources!

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Posted by Lethality | 2 Comments

Drew Karpyshyn Interview – Star Wars Celebration

Our cavalcade of Star Wars Celebration V interviews with the BioWare developer team continues today with none other than Drew Karpyshyn. For many of you, Drew needs to introduction. For everyone else, Drew is nothing less than a journeyman writer who has created not only some of the best video game stories and characters in history, he’s also penned what some consider the best Star Wars expanded universe novels in the Darth Bane series.

We sat down with Drew at Star Wars Celebration to talk about everything from the Jedi Knight to multiplayer story continuity. Once again we were joined by AAJ team member Professor Walsh who helped tackle the tougher Jedi-oriented questions, and Drew handled it all with grace (under pressure!)

This video is quite a bit longer than yesterday’s with Hall Hood, but also a bit more rough. We wanted to post it though because sometimes it’s better to hear the conversation as it was spoken rather than reading the transcribed words. Enjoy!

Ask A Jedi: In the narrative back story of TOR we see the Republic, more or less, dominated by the Sith. Are we going to see this scenario as a consistent theme in TOR or will we get the chance to see the roles reversed where the Republic is dominating the Sith on a Sith controlled planet and the Sith are “just barely holding on” while the Republic is the aggressor with the upper hand?

Drew Karpyshyn: So, what I can say is you can’t confuse marketing with the entire content of the game. It’s funny because to sort of take this and run with it, there’s been a lot of talk about the Jedi Knight class. The thing about the Jedi Knight is that it’s probably the most iconic character in Star Wars. The story has been told in various forms a lot of times and we were trying to find a fresh angle on it. So it was the hardest one to write. So one of the reasons you don’t see any of the Jedi updates is honestly because we were still working on it. Hall and I, both Senior writers, were both hammering on this thing trying to make it awesome.

The thing you have to remember is before the Empire showed up, before the Sith showed up, the Republic was the only game in town. They were just “it.” So anything that changes the status quo for them is going to be stunning and shocking.They’re gonna feel like “wow, we’re getting our asses kicked,” even if it’s basically even. I think you’re getting a little bit of that perspective too. The people who had nothing have more than they had, the people who had everything have less than they had. Even if it’s “even” now, they feel like they’re behind. Once the game comes out, you’re going to see both sides of the equation.

AAJ: James Ohlen made a comment about how the status quo had to be upheld in regards to planets changing hands/control. But if that’s the case, how will we ever see that transition?

DK: What James was saying is you can’t change it because other players coming in won’t get to experience the arc. But what we do have is the overall arc of the game. For example, you might go somewhere in a situation, and when you go back later, that situation might be different. In the fiction it’s the same world, but mechanically it wouldn’t be the same.

AAJ: So, are we looking at something like staged instances?

DK: Not exactly. I can’t say a whole lot here, but there are things we can do behind the scenes and things like that. For example, instances specific to characters, but that’s not something you want to do on a planet wide scale. But there are things we can do.

AAJ: So we will be able to see the war effort advance?

DK: Yes, definitely. Both the Imperial and Republic story arcs have a very steady progression of the war. Well, it’s technically not a war when it starts but there’s a progression of this galactic struggle for want of a better term that definitely does progress in ways that make an actual difference in what’s going on as you progress the story. Now it’s not going to change the world for someone who is at a different point in the story because they haven’t played the story. Now, not every world is like this… some worlds are more static than others.

AAJ: In the January issue of PC Gamer there was a quote that said the Sith Inquisitor was the “most dark” while the Bounty Hunter was the “least dark” class on the Sith side. This indicated that there were kind of relative benchmarks, meaning that a Bounty Hunter won’t ever be as Dark as an Inquisitor but an Inquisitor won’t be as Light as a Bounty Hunter (or a Jedi Knight) could be.

DK: I wouldn’t put the characters on a spectrum of light and dark in that regard. If you choose to play an Imperial faction, you are always going to be a part of that faction, you can’t change factions… we’re not allowing that. If you are, for example a Sith, your goal is to advance to a more powerful position. How you go about doing that is where the light side/dark side comes in. It doesn’t mean that if you play a light side Sith, you get to redeem yourself and go join the Jedi. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about thinking you have a better chance of advancing yourself through maybe instead of killing someone who is weaker than you, realizing that they can be an ally down the road.

AAJ: So, even though you might go as light side as you can, you still believe in the Sith philosophy.

DK: Yes, because the thing is that’s what you’re getting into when you’re playing that class. There’s always going to be certain core things that apply to your class. We want people to have a sense of what these are before they play the class. Yes, the Sith are about power and advancing themselves and doing it through various means that other people don’t always approve of. You’re pretty much always going to be in that role as a Sith.

AAJ: That’s one of the big debates, people we’re wondering that if they’re a light Sith, you could be light as a pure stark Jedi Knight.

DK: Yeah, the situations you’re in don’t even allow for that.

AAJ: If you like, can you simply go out into the world and “grind” your character from level 1 to max level without any quests/missions/story?

DK: Yes… if for some reason you want to skip the quests and the story you can go out and earn experience and level your character.

AAJ: Does your class story content scale? For example, if you went off to help some friends and came back to your class story a few levels higher, would your class story scale to match your new power, or simply be a little easier because you’re a high level?

DK: The various planets are all designed to be done within certain levels. There isn’t necessarily scaling in that sense. If you go off to level somewhere then when you come back to your class story, it may be a little less challenging because you’ll be a higher level.

AAJ: Are the planets designed for a specific level range? In other words, will there be reasons to go back to Tatooine after you’ve completed the planet missions/quests?
DK: As mentioned the planets are generally designed for a specific level range for the class stories, but there will be content and reasons you will want to go back to visit them later, perhaps at a higher level.

AAJ: When 2 players of the same class are in a party together, how is it decided whose continuity is used inside of a class story flashpoint?

DK: I can’t say too much about this, but there are mechanics in place to ensure each player gets a chance to play it their own way. Whichever player owns the flashpoint will be the continuity that the players see.

AAJ: Thanks for your time and all the hard work you guys are putting into the game, we can’t wait to play it.

DK: No problem guys, any time!

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Star Wars Celebration: Day Three

A long day three here at Star Wars Celebration has come to a close… but what did it have in store for TOR fans you ask? Well, plenty!

For starters, today there was an encore of The Art and Writing of Star Wars: The Old Republic panel. The format was much the same as yesterday with the same cast of characters. One switch for today however was Arnie Jorgensen manning the design station, while Clint Young took to the chairs with the rest of the panel.

Arnie proceeded to do an entirely different piece of concept art than in yesterday’s panel. Yesterday, Clint produced an interesting environment, but today we were treated to a character that “we will meet in our travels through the game.”

Today we also got to sit down for in-depth discussions with all 4 BioWare developer team members, and are looking forward to publishing those interviews – written, audio and video – in the coming days!

One of the highlights today for me personally was attending the Last Tour to Endor special event at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. None other than George Lucas himself attended the performance of “Indiana Jones and the Jedi Temple of Doom,” sitting just rows away. Also on hand was Anthony Daniels who participated as an extra in the show. In addition, Seth Green was also in attendance and likewise participated as an extra. The love for Star Wars knows no bounds, and it was very cool to be in that theater tonight with those people.

Stay tuned for more info tomorrow from the 4th and final day of Star Wars Celebration!

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