Star Wars: The Old Republic E3 Preview
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The demonstration we watched started with the new beginnings of a bounty hunter character, a large, bulky male character with dark hair and a deep, menacing voice. Star Wars: TOR will apparently have full voice acting for all its characters, as well as full cinematic cutscenes similar to those of Knights of the Old Republic. In the demonstration we watched, our new bounty hunter started his life in a small bounty hunter conclave on the planet Hutta (home planet of the Hutts, which has previously never appeared in a computer or video game before). He made his way to a central chamber where his mentor, a character named Braden, awaited. On greeting Braden, our character was sent into a cutscene in which Braden introduced two other non-player characters who will help you on your way, and made vague references to The Great Hunt, an event held by the warlike Mandalorians to see which bounty hunter can land the greatest prize. This event will apparently be the focus of a bounty hunter character's storyline. After swapping terse, not-so-pleasantries with our mentor by choosing responses from a circular dialogue wheel (some dialogue choices will have serious consequences that will not only change the game's story, but will also change the outcome of your character's adventure and may award you light side points or dark side points, as in KOTOR), we headed outdoors.
Hutta was apparently colonized by Hutts who turned the once lush planet into an industrial wasteland, and we saw that reflected in the landscape outside our starting building. Huge, tall trees with hanging branches were scattered among large, metal buildings with long networks of pipes sticking out of them, and the sky was a sickly yellow color. Off in the distance, we could see a tall Hutt palace, which apparently houses the Hutt slumlord who will eventually be a fledgling bounty hunter's ticket off the planet. For the time being, we sallied forth and found some enemy human soldiers skulking around the area, and engaged them in battle. The bounty is a "ranged" character who will primarily rely on blaster rifles and blaster pistols, and has several abilities (keyed into a hotkey bank at the bottom of the screen) based on firing powerful energy blasts, though the character also has some close-range abilities, such as a wrist-mounted flamethrower which can spray multiple targets with incapacitating flames to control crowds.
