Michael Stackpole’s “I, Jedi” book is my favorite novel in the Star Wars Extended Universe. (Let us not speak of the travesty that they call The New Jedi Order.) It’s an intriguing look at what it might be like to adopt the Jedi code, and how one adapts to using the Force and living as a Jedi Knight.
I never played Star Wars Galaxies. I’m not sure if there was a similar sense of responsibility and power that was attached to the Jedi character class. I hope there was, just like I hope that the lore is treated well in the Bioware MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Being a Jedi should mean something beyond having a fancy lightsaber and an emo cloak. (Yes, this means that I think George Lucas didn’t quite treat the lore all that well, either. Yes, it’s his baby. Yes, I’m a fan of what I think it could be, not what it has become. Too bad.)
I want an I, Jedi experience from Bioware. I want to know what it’s like to be a Jedi, not just some dude who takes turns trading lightsaber blows with some Sith NPC. (Seriously, trading hits with a lightsaber? Am I the only one getting serious Monty Python Black Knight flashbacks?)
I want to build my own lightsaber.
That is, I want to go through the entire process, like Corran Horn did. I want a personalized piece of machinery, tuned to perfection for my abilities, and suiting my tastes. I don’t want a generic Trainee lightsaber that I can only tune by swapping in some gems of +5 Rancorslaying. I want to go hunting down an exotic monster’s horn, hollow it out and put the emitter in it, give it mother of pearl inlay and obsidian buttons, and install a secret compartment or two for when I get my MacGyver itch. Or maybe scavenge a droid’s arm and make myself a unique hinged lightsaber. I definitely want a dual phase blade.
In short, I want player-driven crafting in SWTOR, and I want craftsmanship and individuality to mean something. Surely that’s something Bioware can do, right?
Tish Tosh Tesh 
The reality will be:
Padawan receives noobsaber from Jedi Starter Trainer. (Obi Wan gave Luke his first saber.)
After leveling up the Jedi character, you get an Epic Quest chain to travel all over the galaxy, defeat monsters and NPCs and collect exotic items to craft your personal lightsaber.
Once these items have been collected you travel to the special Jedi crafting location, bring up the crafting interface and click OK.
The server examines your ethic parable choices to determine where you lie on the Jedi or Sith scale. If Sith, your saber is red. If Jedi it examines your gender. Males get a blue saber, females get green.
Go kill more space foozles with your latest end-game lightsaber until the level cap raises and makes it obsolete and BioWare caves from the complaints of lightsaber quest chains being too lengthy and difficult and… /sigh
But hey, it will have the Fourth Pillar of Story!
Hehe… have you played Knight of the Old Republic 1 or 2? IIRC… you could kill a certain monster to get a special gem/horn to use in your lightsaber and give it special properties.
I am sure Bioware is not going to reduce the concept they used in KOTOR 1/2, but rather expand it.
About Michael Stackpole: This guy wrote awesome BattleTech novels. Some of my favorite novels were written by Stackpole.
But then he started his own series and universes, and it went severely downhill!
He is usually my example of an author who needs a set universe to thrive. He made so much more of the BattleTech universe while staying in its setting. Let the guy set up his own universe and it … is not even half as good as if you put him in chains. I think this is pretty interesting, as people usually say that creative guys cannot have enough freedom at all to express themselves. Stackpole needs someone/something to restrict him to shine. 🙂
Shush, Scott! I have my little dream bubble, don’t pop it! 😉
Aye, I’m pretty sure Bioware won’t do what I want. They may well have different customizable elements like in KOTOR (I only played the first one), but I doubt very much that they will let us build them from the ground up however we’d like. This is just me wishing for more control in my fantasy treadmills again. And actual “role playing” in my RPGs. I’m weird.
Long, I’ve long argued that before you can think “outside the box”, you have to *have* a box, and you need to know what thinking inside of it is like. Mark Rosewater of MTG fame has argued that “restrictions breed creativity”, and my life as an artist has borne that out very well. Put an artist in a box, and they find ways to expand it or make the most of it. Give an artist free reign, and they don’t know where to start, how to proceed, or where to end. (That’s true of everyone, actually, even if it is grossly simplified.)
Tesh, I agree with the whole “having to have a box before you think outside of it” thing. You have to work your mind to get around certain boundaries, but when there are no boundaries you don’t really have to think as hard. You can just make stuff up, but when you do that there’s a very real risk that it won’t fit or even make sense because those rules aren’t established.
Anyone can “think outside the box.” That and 25 cents will get you a gumball.
The trick is to have the motivation to create a new box, thereby prompting new thinking outside it, creation of a new box, etc. ad infinitum.
Humans are too resistant to change. We like to whine about the box. We like to beat our chests and think outside it. But if anyone dares to actually push us outside it we curl into the fetal position and fight it.
I don’t see BioWare inventing a new box with TOR; all I see them doing is staying within the safety blanket of the Diku Box and concentrating on providing more storytelling than we’ve seen thus far, but the same old level/gear/faction grinding we’ve been doing for a decade.
Like Longasc said, KOTOR 1 & 2 allowed you to build your own lightsaber. You could even choose the color. Although strictly speaking, if you were hardcore, you should know what color to pick.
I will be going against the Jedi Order and using a purple lightsaber 😉
I did play KOTOR, but what I’m talking about here is something far more personalized and customizable. You know, the sort of stuff that makes these MMO things appealing in the first place? Or, at least, what I wish made them appealing. That’s sort of the point; I’m looking for mechanical support for something beyond the loot grind. I need to be less oblique in my aspersions, I guess.
I’d even go so far as allowing for user-generated textures and meshes, with an oversight committee, of course.
Wait, Mace Windu was a rebel?
I loved KOTOR, but not the second one so much. I agree with your outlook though, Tesh. They will probably give us a n00bsaber and we can customize slots on it or something, but nothing to the extent you want. I think something like that is almost impossible if you consider it though. I mean, you’d have to take into account each item in an entire world that could constitute a handle, then the adornments, etc.
Something possibly on a smaller scale based on modifications mentioned in books, but then people would cry that they couldn’t do their own.
You could always build your own light saber out of blood sweat and tears, then use a 3D scanner input it’s model in the computer. Then send the model to Bioware with a cute puppy on it asking if they will upload the model onto your account. You can’t get more personalized than that 😉
I also had a purple lightsaber!
Mike Stackpole also wrote The Pulling Report, which was a serious effort to discredit the anti-D&D hysteria going around during the late 80’s. You get to argue how much these fancy fantasy games suck in part because of his work that silenced one of the most vocal (and wrong) opponents of paper RPGs. Without my late introduction to D&D in the 90’s, I might not be doing online games.
As far as “the box” is concerned, I don’t think you can make blanket statements about what someone can do. There are different skills required for different tasks; the skills required to understand and expand a universe are very different than the skills required to create a new universe out of whole cloth. For creative types, this can be hard to accept because not all skills are as appreciated. We appreciate those that can create universes because the skills required to do so are rare.
To put this in game development terms, the people who can create games may not be the same people who are best at maintaining them. Conversely, the person or team that made a mess of maintaining a game might be the right one to create one. It’s easy to correctly assume that competence in one area indicates competence in another.
CS, I suspect that actually mailing the puppy would be the hardest part there…
Interesting link, Brian, thanks! And thanks for stopping by. I’ve had a sense that Stackpole is a decent guy; that’s one more piece of the puzzle that makes me think that assessment is fair. From reading your comment, though, I think you meant “incorrectly assume” there at the end.
But yes, I agree with the sentiment. George Lucas is one example; his work creating the Star Wars universe was great, but there does seem to be a sense that he sort of lost touch with his own creation a bit with the second batch of movies. It’s one thing to build a great sandbox (and I seem to remember that Stackpole has thanked Lucas more than once in his books for it), it’s another to built a great sandcastle in that box. Having tried my hand at both, I have seen the difference first hand, and it can be significant.
Yeah, you’re right, I meant “incorrectly assume”.
George Lucas was one of the examples I had in mind, exactly. He’s revered for creating a wonderful universe, but it appears for whatever reason that he doesn’t have the ability to really expand the universe in interesting ways. In the long run, society will probably remember Lucas’ name longer than it will remember Stackpole’s name. That’s the reason why people strive to create their own works that will endure.
Indeed, pioneers benefit from the “primacy in memory” applied to history. That’s part of why I keep arguing for innovation. 😉