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Friday Update: Codex Developer Blog

This week’s Star Wars: The Old Republic Friday Update is a developer blog from Principal Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert on the Codex System. Damion Schubert gives an in-depth look how the Codex System in the developer blog for those looking to learn more about this intriguing lore based system. He explains how the Codex System evolved based on a combination of the codex seen in Dragon Age and Mass Effect, and talks about its use in targeting explorers based on Richard Bartle‘s categorization of players. Schubert also dives into Datacrons and their integration within the Codex System. As he explains it, Datacrons expand the Codex System by giving players a challenge in either awareness or dexterity. The Codex System will let players track their progress and help them discover more secrets within the galaxy.

Also, do not forget to check out the latest embargo drop content from the Fan Site Summit event from our friends at Darthhater.com.

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Fan Site Summit: Question & Answer Session (A...

Our friends at Darthhater were one of the fan sites in attendance at the Fan Site Summit.  The question and answer sessions covered a range of topics relevant to the developer answering questions at the time. After the session concluded and the summit ended, BioWare made the audio of the sessions available to fan sites.  Below is the audio from the Q&A sessions with Blaine Christine, Daniel Erickson, Damion Schubert and Georg Zoeller.

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SWTOR Comic Previewed in Star Wars Insider Magazin...

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Taral V Flashpoint Trailer

Updated: 1/28/11 @ 12:45PM

The official Friday Update is the new Flashpoints section under Game Systems on www.swtor.com.  It contains several examples of Flashpoints in SW:TOR including early game, mid game and end game for both Republic and Imperial classes.

At last we are blessed with gameplay footage of Star Wars: The Old Republic!

Gamespot revealed a new flashpoint trailer for Taral V, intended for players level 32 and higher.  World designer at BioWare, Jesse Sky offers a great overview of the flashpoint:

“The emperor is holding a powerful Jedi captive in his personal prison–a massive space station at the heart of the Maelstrom Nebula. Only a Gree computer is capable of navigating the treacherous cosmic storms that surround the prison. Fortunately, the Republic has learned that the Empire guards just such a device on the remote jungle world of Taral V.

Your mission is to infiltrate the hidden Imperial fortress on Taral V and recover this computer. Success will mean that the Republic fleet can launch an assault on the prison where you can, perhaps, rescue the Jedi prisoner.”

For a working dissection of the video, please visit our friends over at Darthhater.com!

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Interview: Daniel Erickson on Crew Skills

Our friends at Darthhater.com recently spoke with the Lead Writer Daniel Erickson for Star Wars: The Old Republic after last weeks EA Winter Showcase about the Crew Skills system.

The crafting system in Star Wars: The Old Republic we call Crew Skills is something we worked on literally for years trying to solve some of the big puzzles. There are a lot of us who are big crafting fans, including myself, but we really wanted to make sure we preserved some of the core concepts around SWTOR such as you play a hero of Star Wars. You are doing big, heroic, and exciting things. You are not sewing. You are not making shoes. You are not hanging out trying to get some thread together.

We went through a lot of versions of how we work with this, and one of the things we kept coming back to was companion characters. One of the issues with companion characters in past BioWare games has always been that you have a limited set of who you can bring in your party at one time. For most people, they pick the couple of companions they really like, and everybody else ends up back on the ship. These came together into a great kind of synergy for us and became the Crew Skills system, which is a combination of wanting crafting, but we don’t want to make your character mundane and we need something for your crew to be doing. So alright, we have a perfect match.

Full Interview (Darthhater.com)