Star Wars: Celebration V - Midi-chlorians Are In The Air - The UpStream

Star Wars: Celebration V - Midi-chlorians Are In The Air

posted Friday Aug 13, 2010 by Jon Wurm

The atmosphere here at the Orange County Convention Center isn't quite what Josh and I have come to expect from our previous con experience. Of course, there are tons of people here basking in the world of Star Wars. There are plenty of vendors, guests and people in costumes. So what's the difference? The quality of the costumes and the vast knowledge con-goers share is unprecedented. I'm not knocking cosplayers here, but when it comes to taking pride in their appearance and understanding of their characters as well as the roles they play, they got you guys beat. About the only way I can explain it is that there is an overwhelming amount of Midi-chlorians(more than Master Yoda has) and that the Force is here at Celebration V.

There are many people who have found unique ways to express themselves like the many members of R2 - Droid Builders. Josh and I had the pleasure of interviewing a man we know only as Guy and he is certainly passionate about building those lovable R2 units. The skills and monetary investment required to bring R2 to life is crazy. For you C3P0 fans, we did see a few but it's definitely about R2. The amount of detail, creativity, and TLC that goes into making every unit can only be described best by Guy himself. He also tells a neat story about George Lucas stopping by to see their droid creations so be sure to check out our interview that will be posted early next week to get the entire scoop.

For more information about the day, hit the break.

Later today Josh and I also got to hear Drew Karpyshyn (Principle Writer, Bioware), Hall Hood (Senior Writer, Bioware), Arnie Jorgensen (Lead Concept Artist, Bioware) and Clint Young (Senior Concepts Artist, Bioware) talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic and some of the art associated with the game. One thing they talked about was differentiation in planets, weapons, clothing and space ships. Since TOR is a story-based MMO and the extended universe beyond the original Star Wars trilogy is so vast differentiation is key to keeping the player experience feeling fresh. They used the example of there being too many green planets while Clint was in the middle of drawing a green planet landscape in Photoshop, which was pretty funny. These guys definitely have a sense of humor.

Another point they made was about the game music. There is more new music for TOR than there has been for any Star Wars game ever created. This will help aid in keeping the player experience fresh, especially when it can be difficult to break out of the repetitive music trance MMO players fall victim to after a few hours of gameplay. I am, however, sad that they were not handing out beta keys seeing as how neither Josh or myself got in.

I don't want to give it all away here so check out Josh's article about Warwick Davis and tune into the show this Sunday night to hear all that happened today.

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