The Old Republic, a Star Wars MMO created by veteran RPG developer BioWare, first launched back in 2011. According to EA, the game is closing in on a billion dollars in lifetime revenue, which should give you some idea of its quality and popularity—even if player numbers have naturally waned over the years. But with renewed interest in Star Wars luring players back to this shared online galaxy, and a new expansion on the way called Legacy of the Sith, The Old Republic shows no signs of fading away.
As you'd expect from BioWare, storytelling is a big part of the experience. It's possible to play TOR as a single-player Star Wars RPG, and the tales it tells are hugely entertaining—whether you're a Sith lord, a Jedi, a smuggler, or a bounty hunter. BioWare has been telling stories in this game for a decade now, so I sat down with creative director Charles Boyd to talk about the studio's approach to this aspect of the game, how it's changed over the years, and getting to play in such a beloved universe.
One of Boyd's jobs as creative director is making sure TOR feels like Star Wars. "It's a fun, pulpy adventure," he says. "It has big, exciting things happening, but with very personal stakes too. Look at the original trilogy: it's this massive galaxy-spanning space opera, but it's also about Luke and Vader, a father and a son, and their conflict. To me, that's one of the most special things about Star Wars. Somehow, everyone ends up wrestling with some kind of personal drama. This helps draw you into the story on an emotional level and it makes the characters relatable."
"Our game is set in the Old Republic era, so there are thousands of Sith and thousands of Jedi at war. There are these big, grand things happening in the galaxy, and we want to make sure we capture that. But you also develop emotional connections with the characters you meet. It could be positive, like a buddy or a romance, which is traditional for BioWare. But there are rivalries too, and people you want to get the better of."
As you play TOR, you don't just watch the story unfold: you can steer the direction it takes through the decisions you make, which is rare for an MMO. "We want you to have interesting choices to make as a player," says Boyd. "It's not just a cool story, it's an interactive story where you decide what kind of person your character is. When you're presented with tactical decisions or moral dilemmas, we want to make sure they're interesting and sometimes challenging, which is what makes them fun."
When TOR launched in 2011, there wasn't much Star Wars around. The Force Awakens was still years away, and the series largely lived on through video games. But now it's everywhere. I ask Boyd how this has impacted the game. "Having Star Wars out there all the time helps us by increasing the general interest in it. Someone might go see one of the movies, then feel inspired to play a game, and we're there waiting for them. It's definitely great from a business perspective, but creatively too.
"One of the great things about Star Wars is that it feels like a universe filled with stories. Every spacer and mercenary in a cantina has a life of their own. So getting more Star Wars—new aliens, new creatures, new droids, all of that—gives us a lot of cool stuff that we can look at and maybe include in the game in some way, or just be inspired by."
The Old Republic is set 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic, and over 3,000 years before A New Hope, which gives BioWare a lot of freedom when it comes to writing its stories. "This was a big driver when it came to setting the game in this era," says Boyd. "The freedom to have the Star Wars stuff you recognise—starships, Jedi, blasters—but separate it from the films, comics, and other media.
"In our stories we can have heroes rising and falling and big shifts in galactic power, but in a legendary era, far in the past. If we want to do a space battle over Coruscant, we can. It's not gonna conflict with anything else out there." Even with this separation from the more familiar timelines, I ask Boyd if working in a world as meticulously documented and charted as Star Wars makes writing new stories challenging.
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"It's almost like setting a story in real life," he says. "You gotta do your research. For me at least, I don't find it that difficult. I've always been a big Star Wars nerd anyway. My brain is full of this stuff. But we have LucasFilm to review our scripts and let us know if we've missed something, or suggest stuff we didn't think of that already exists. The established lore is just great seasoning that we can throw into our stories."
A lot of players, myself included, treat TOR largely like a single-player game. "We definitely support the solo player experience as much, or even more, than some other online games," says Boyd. "We offer a very personal story for players. But it's something we've varied over the years. In some expansions we've gone heavy on solo play and in others the multiplayer is the primary focus. I think we've struck a good balance."
As for anyone who's never played The Old Republic but wants to get involved, I ask Boyd what they can expect if they were to log in today. "At its heart, it's an MMORPG and a giant online shared world," he says. "But it's also a chance to create your own Star Wars character. You can be a Jedi, but also a bounty hunter like the Mandalorian, a smuggler, or a Sith. You can be fully on the Dark Side, which you don't see in many Star Wars games. And you can hang out with your friends, or make new friends in the game, and share in this big Star Wars adventure together."