Star Wars: The Old Republic has "19 major worlds," built to "last for decades"
Senior creative director James Ohlen has been speaking at Comic-Con about the enormous scale of The Old Republic. The conference, reported by Darth Hater and picked up by Eurogamer , revealed that players will be able to explore 19 "major worlds" on launch. Bioware plan to add many more after that.
"We want to add dozens of worlds. Hundreds of worlds eventually. In 2025, we'll hopefully have 500 worlds," said Ohlen.
The 19 major worlds aren't the only explorable locations in The Old Republic. "We have an indeterminate number of minor worlds," reveals Ohlen. "Our goal, obviously this being an online game, that we're hoping is going to last for decades, we're going to be, obviously, adding more to the galaxy map as the game progresses."
Now we're starting to see why The Old Republic is the most expensive game EA have made to date. Every character in the game is fully voiced, even the scummy ones selling broken speedbikes on the minor worlds. Bioware lead designer and writer Daniel Erickson told The Escapist that the voice acting alone was "a massively insane expenditure and hugely complicated," adding that "you have to cast 16 of the best actors ever and then hold them for eternity."
Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to be released later this year , and there are beta weekends planned in September.
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Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.