Star Wars: The Old Republic's Dialogue Changed Due to Mass Effect

During a chat they had with Star Wars: The Old Republic lead designer and storywriter Daniel Erickson during E3, CVG has learned that the team scrapped the game's original dialogue system after seeing Mass Effect in action.
"Originally the game was built far more like Dragon Age as far as Conversation System went," he said. "Our player characters were not going to be voiced because it's a massively insane expenditure and hugely complicated to do. You have to cast 16 of the best actors ever and then hold them for eternity."

This quickly changed after seeing the 360-exclusive sci-fi RPG, Erickon explains: "Mass Effect came out when we were very early into development. I remember walking up to James Ohlen - the lead designer on both Baldur's Gate Games, Knights Of the Old Republic and both Dragon Age games.

"We both saw Mass Effect and were like: 'Okay. There is no choice here.' So we rounded up both sides - us and LucasArts - and despite it being a huge undertaking, we showed them one with VO and one without and we attached a price tag to it.

"We thought they wouldn't go for it. We were like: 'This is a dumb thing to try to go for an MMO.' It came back unanimously from both sides - we had to do it."