klausaidon:
Pfft, of course there is a reason to be wearing a cowbow hat, and duster in space.
It has good stats.
Cowbow hat is +35 to ranged accuracy, and the Duster raises Crit chance by 25%!
And don't get me started on those boots!

i think the boots are +3 accuracy but complete the
'disorients enemies with coolness when entire set is used' bonus
( -100% chance to be hit with giant ass laser guns wielded by sith space marines and robots )
quite a set bonus, if you ask me.

You're right, there were no actual cowboys in the movies, but this is a MMO... so chances are that guy's name is something like "Mel K. Raynolds" and the ship is called "Peacfullness" or "Sense of Calm" or "S3ren1ty".

All this talk of three lightsabers is so passé.
You guys have obviously not heard of the light-tire-iron or the jar'jar'kai form (or even the twin light-tire-iron jar'jar'jar'jar'kai form!). As a great Sith Lord once said: "All yousa peoples guna DIE!"

In all seriousness, though, this was ridiculous in the late 90s, and it really hasn't changed since then... yet I still gobble up the Star Wars formula. It's... a conundrum.

I'd play a game about Han Marston. Episode was funny as hell, though I maintain that this trailer was still fucking awesome.

SIDE NOTE: This is my captcha:

What.

You know, some people call me a Space Cowboy...

Forgive me I could not help but quote Steve Miller Band. Funny episode guys.

Lord of Torment:

Kinguendo:

hawk533:
While that cinematic may have been terribly cliche and completely wasted on an MMO, that was still pretty awesome. Three lightsabers for the ridiculous win, followed shortly after by a loss because you can't beat a Sith trainee. Everyone knows the master is the weak one.

He wasnt a trainee... there is always a Sith Master and their Apprentice, both are still considered Sith Lords. Its set up like that so that the next leader of the Sith will always be stronger than the last. Its called the Rule of Two.

So he was actually fighting 2 Sith Lords and he bested the weaker one, thats why the Apprentice killed his Master, because he knew he was more powerful and it was time for him to take over as Master.

I... I know too much about it, but its interesting as fuck to me! I cant help myself!

Yeah no, Darth Bane set up the Rule of two, this is long before him there are tons of sith running about in this setting.

The episode had its funny bits, but in truth I am going to play this game, Bioware is the best company out there for games these days, they make great stories, compelling characters, and this is something in their expertise in RPG's. I am sure all of that will make for a great game, KOTOR 1 was a great game I still replay from time to time, Mass effect 1 and 2, Dragon age origins are also from Bioware so they will be able to handle this well, I have no doubt.

Hagi:

Kinguendo:

hawk533:
While that cinematic may have been terribly cliche and completely wasted on an MMO, that was still pretty awesome. Three lightsabers for the ridiculous win, followed shortly after by a loss because you can't beat a Sith trainee. Everyone knows the master is the weak one.

He wasnt a trainee... there is always a Sith Master and their Apprentice, both are still considered Sith Lords. Its set up like that so that the next leader of the Sith will always be stronger than the last. Its called the Rule of Two.

So he was actually fighting 2 Sith Lords and he bested the weaker one, thats why the Apprentice killed his Master, because he knew he was more powerful and it was time for him to take over as Master.

I... I know too much about it, but its interesting as fuck to me! I cant help myself!

You do know that the Rule of Two came after the Old Republic era? About 2.000 years later?

Actually the Rule of 2 came from Darth Revan Darth Bane just reused it for his era, so the Rule of 2 originates before this game

Keith K:
Why must every single Star Wars game reuse the same John Williams scores from the movies? There's a million Star Wars games already and only 8 hours of music between them.

They've already stated theres over 5 hours of completely original musical scoring for The Old Republic (aswell as the many, many hours of traditional Star Wars themes that will make it in). For a trailer though its more than logical to keep it to something more familiar and traditional and star-warsy.

Kinguendo:

hawk533:
While that cinematic may have been terribly cliche and completely wasted on an MMO, that was still pretty awesome. Three lightsabers for the ridiculous win, followed shortly after by a loss because you can't beat a Sith trainee. Everyone knows the master is the weak one.

He wasnt a trainee... there is always a Sith Master and their Apprentice, both are still considered Sith Lords. Its set up like that so that the next leader of the Sith will always be stronger than the last. Its called the Rule of Two.

So he was actually fighting 2 Sith Lords and he bested the weaker one, thats why the Apprentice killed his Master, because he knew he was more powerful and it was time for him to take over as Master.

I... I know too much about it, but its interesting as fuck to me! I cant help myself!

Indeed, people also seem to neglect, or not know, that lightsabers can have an intensity control on them, so training lightsabers, just provide a minor burning sensation on contact

That was hilarious, I just watched it twice!

I'm not a MMO fan so I really wish this was knights 3, it seems like a nice set up for that game.

Also the next SW has to include a set of wolverine style lightsaber gloves, that would be awesome!

Mikodite:
OK, so the storyline is about these people, a Jedi, a trooper, and a smuggler, who...

DO YOU CARE? ITS AN MMO! WHO BOTHERS WITH THE 'PLOTLINE' IN AN MMO?

Thats kinda the whole point of this game.. bioware want to change the way people think about MMOs by bringing story to it.

Why shouldnt you be able to care about those things purely caus of the genre of the game?

Keith K:
Why must every single Star Wars game reuse the same John Williams scores from the movies? There's a million Star Wars games already and only 8 hours of music between them.

To be fair, The Old Republic is going to have its own original soundtrack, but, y'know, soundtracks tend to be one of the very last things finished in film and game production.

Edit: And as others have pointed out, this is going to be a story driven game (what ELSE would you expect from Bioware), I would damn well hope the three CGI trailers will have an impact on the game.

Actually the Rule of 2 came from Darth Revan Darth Bane just reused it for his era, so the Rule of 2 originates before this game

"The holocron belonged to the ancient Sith Lord Darth Revan, who was the first to realize the flawed logic of training more than one apprentice. Through the gatekeeper of his holocron, Revan taught Bane how any master that trained multiple apprentices was a fool. Bane learned from Revan's holocron that, in times past, the students would seek to destroy their master and claim the title. By joining forces and combining their lesser powers, they would attack and defeat their master."

Revan did not start or put into practice the rule of two, he was smart enough to see the flaw in the system yes, but he only did it to train one apprentice at a time, to prevent them from teaming up. It was Darth Bane who broke the Sith and remade it into the ones who follow the rule of two.

Baresark:

Off topic: I hate how these movies have become one giant cliche. Flippy spinny lightsaber battle. I'm relatively sure that same trooper without the helmet was in the second old republic trailer we saw, with the same gatling laser type gun. And, why are all the Jedi only one single character?

I think the Trailers are working in reverse so in chronological order this is the first, also the female jedi is in the second trailer and so is the sith, no space Marston though.

Anyway I really loved this episode, well done guys!

One of the best unskippables.

Heh, nice one guys, as usual.

Best moments: "The Great Darkness", the discussion of space cowboys (kinda reminds me of Firefly...), 3 small lightsabers ala Wolverine (am I the only one who thinks that sounds pretty cool?), and "Get off my space lawn, you rebels!"

Also, if this is a MMO game, why does it need the cinematic? Then again, I never did care about MMOs to begin with...

To be fair, I actually can see the use for a duster in a climate controlled environment.
He flies that massive friggin' ship. By himself. This means lots of computers, and lots of computers means he has to keep the air really really cold. Hence, the duster, because it's cold up in here.

The hat was just for awesome - and he just got off Korriban.
I'm pretty sure it's fairly desert-like on Korriban.

This was ridiculously funny!
Best one I've seen in awhile, and the recent ones have been good too...

"Master, they've escaped."
"Yes, I know. I was here, remember?"

Cracked me up!

that cutscene was two thirds star wars and one third firefly

MelasZepheos:
I'm not going to play it, I'm not going to follow any storylines from it, and generally I'm bored with Star Wars ever since Legacy of the Force held the likable characters down and forcefed them George Lucas home brand stupid pie, but this still looks pretty cool.

Then again, it's Star Wars, all of the lightsaber fights look cool, the gamble is whether the story around them will be any good, and Han Solo, Cowboy edition just isn't doing it for me. However, the concept of having a Republic Trooper, a Smuggler, and a Jedi Apprentice who just lost her master all on one ship is one of the better beginnings for a SW story I've seen in a while.

Of course, that it basically is Star Wars Episode IV probably takes some of that cool away. When the trooper and Jedi went for the gun turret I just had to shake my head at how badly they were ripping off the original.

Legacy of the Force was the result of Troy Denning being an egomanical jackass, Sue Rostoni dropping the ball big time on editing, and Karen Traviss shoehorning Mandalorians in everywhere. Only Aaron Alliston was able to make a decent story, and he was stuck cleaning up while the other two bitched at each other over whether Mandos or Jedi were better.

OT. Funny episode. This trailer was probably the weakest of the three by Blur, and that's disappointing. They keep showing off all the eye candy, while the gameplay trailers look the same as they did two years ago.

"Take my love. Take my land. Take me where I cannot stand. I don't care. I'm still free. You can't take MY SPICE from me!"
-Republic Gunslinger

I'm still playing that class when TOR comes out.

tehweave:

Has ANYTHING good come out of Star Wars since the original trilogy?

This franchise needs a stylistic reboot so badly it's not even funny. GET ME 50cc of CHRIS NOLAN STAT.

Every single thing I've seen about TOR since they've started releasing videos has just had me going "meh". I didn't think it was possible for things to get MORE mediocre (I mean, shouldn't more and less move you up and down on the scale?), but apparently you can produce entire avalanches of the stuff if you try hard enough.

Hearing about the "operations", giant raids where you have multiple groups doing different things, almost made me choke. DDO (my MMO) has 12-man raids where people have to split up and do radically different things at the same time, and they are a TRAIN WRECK. (One of them, Accursed Ascension, has something like a 90% failure rate. Most of the time you expect to do that raid 3-4 times with a really good group before you manage to complete it.) Someone invariably screws up and you have a big ol' raid fail and have to start all over again. Some of these raids take an hour or more to complete. Now expand this to tons more people. Yeah. Unless they made it so that it's easy enough to go back and fix other people's screwups, doing one of those operations is going to be hell.

I still want to have a look at it just to see how they implemented some stuff, but I doubt it'll pull me away from my current MMO.

Unskippable: Unskippable? What, did someone riff this week's Unskippable? Did Paul and Graham riff this week's Unskippable (cuz it's still Unskippable)?

Unskippable

There is no emotion, there is under-reaction.
There is no ignorance, there is stupidity.
There is no passion, there is mildly irked.
There is no death, there is- ...oh.

In all seriousness, I like the trailer and your riff. Good job.

So how come they allowed the smuggler to carry his guns even though he was a prisoner?

I enjoyed the trailer when I saw it, but that was pretty funny.

One of the best Unskippables to date. I also thought I'd let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed this week's Checkpoint as well.

I don't care if there is controlled environments; I don't care if it is in space. That hat is pure awesome. Besides it might be a culture thing on the planet he is from.
Seriously, if dressing for controlled environments was that much an issue, everyone may as well be naked.
And get over comparing it to the movies. I think the movies counting the prequels covered every cliche and meme you can think of where you will find something like it in every cinematic in the game. Next you will be whining BioWare ripped off the novels next.

Keith K:
Why must every single Star Wars game reuse the same John Williams scores from the movies? There's a million Star Wars games already and only 8 hours of music between them.

X-Wing Alliance actually used original score, which was reminiscent of William's music but was damn good in its own right.
So, no, not every single Star Wars game reuses the same canned music. The Old Republic game may not even recycle Williams' score. This was just a cinematic released long before the game even goes gold.

CaioBrisolla:
So how come they allowed the smuggler to carry his guns even though he was a prisoner?

Who said he was a prisoner? They were probably throwing around the fact that he did have contraband in order to get a favor out of him. Deception is a tool of the Jedi and smugglers are quite sensitive about being caught with cargo they shouldn't normally be carrying.

TheAmazingHobo:

You know what ?
You are right, that is a pretty interesting start for a story.
I think I should play that game.
And by "that game" I am of course referring to the Star-Wars PnP-RPG we got going every saturday WHICH STARTED THE EXACT SAME WAY.
Seriously, when your creative efforts produce the same results as those of a bunch of drunk CS students, you might want to take a hard look at yourself.

Some people produce their best work when they're on drugs or alcohol. Did you not like your campaign? I've personally always been proud of the PnP RPG campaigns I've been a part of.

You and I look at it in different ways. I would tend to say "They are good" rather than "I suck" if someone had the same story idea I did.

Oh man, this one was awesome. It had me crying with laughter. At work. Great job, guys.

"The hat just seems like a liability."
"Get off my space lawn, you rebels!"