Gamespy has an <a href='http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/121/1215532p1.html' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Interview</a> with Daniel Erickson. Below will be some interesting snippets.
GameSpy: So, I'm playing as an Inquisitor, and I've just come out of slavery. I guess I was born into it, and I've been recruited as a Sith. Have you written any kind of backstory to explain why my character is such a dick? Or is that on me for choosing the dark side option every time?
Daniel Erickson: That is you. Not just choosing the dark side every time, because there are options that are not dark side, necessarily, but incredibly dickish. Rebecca Harwick wrote the Inquisitor, and one of the things that was very important right from the beginning for her was getting a feeling of pride, being able to stand up there and be strong while all this stuff is going on. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but she didn't want to create the Harry Potter experience, because you're not eight, right? If there's a grown man in your face, screaming at you and giving you crap, if there's people trying to tear you down, she had to do something to put a backbone in you really, really early. You can also, of course, play your Sith Inquisitor very cool and unruffled, but yeah, there's a lot of attitude in there.
GameSpy: I guess Anakin was also born a slave...
Daniel Erickson: And also had some serious attitude issues.
****
GameSpy: Each character has a beginning, a middle, and an end to their story. How are you getting around that to create this additional content? Are you tacking something on to the end, or is it going to be inserted in the middle?
Daniel Erickson: Well, what they have is, they don't have a beginning, middle, and end. Each one of the classes has a Star Wars trilogy. But that is not an act one, act two, and act three. That is, Chapter one is a full piece, with an act one, act two, and act three. And then we finish it. We talk about the Bounty Hunter, that's probably the most famous one, we had the story out there, being part of the Great Hunt, the giant bounty hunters... That's just chapter one. You finish that entire, let's say, season, if we were doing a television show, because it's way longer than that... You finish that entire season, all those plots are wrapped up, but all the characters are still there, they're going to move forward, they're going to change. Then we do chapter two, then we do chapter three. And that's just what we've shipped with. So in the future, there will be even more.
****
GameSpy: Is there any particular character that was your favorite to write for? And is there any particular mission or anything that really exemplifies what you think is your personal style?
Vette, the Sith Warrior companion character, who I wrote, was probably the one that I got to do the most serious writing with, for a long term, and really enjoy it. One of the issues with that really early was, we knew we wanted her to be a romance. There were a lot of people who really liked Mission Vao in the original game and were mad she wasn't a romance. Well, she was underage. So we gave the Twi'lek a romance, but she starts as a slave, and that made it very complicated to write something that was going to feel real. So that is a real late-bloomer romance.
It was an interesting one, to build a super-strong character that was going to be pretty guarded, but not in that overdone RPG "oh I'm so full of angst and I can't talk about it" way. That's funny, but when you flirt with Vette, she just doesn't get it. She's not stonewalling you. The concept that you're a Sith Lord of the entire empire and you're flirting with this street girl who got captured, she's just... "You're silly." It's a very interesting, frustrating place. You have to build a really long-term friendship with her and really gain the trust. And then you can start to see her. It was fun to get down and be able to write one thing for a long time like that. I had to do it on a lot of weekends.
****
GameSpy: For the light/dark choices, particularly on the Sith side, I'm seeing that some of the light side choices aren't necessarily what you would think of as "light side choices." The big one so far: killing the slaves quickly, as opposed to making them suffer.
Daniel Erickson: One of the things we had to do really early was decide where you started. It doesn't make any sense that you got to the Jedi Academy, and you've just became a Jedi, and you're a murderous, rampaging psychopath. At the same point, it does not make sense that you became a Sith and you got through all these sorts of things and you've never gotten your hands dirty. So on the Sith side, what we're starting with is, If you go light, you're starting with redemption stories. On the Jedi side, if you're going dark, you're starting with small temptations. You're telling somebody something that isn't necessarily true. You're sending somebody else down a path that's probably going to take them to a bad place. Then, slowly, as you go further and further down those paths, they get more and more into being those pieces.
Edit 2:
<a href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9zW5SpKUr4&feature=related' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Female Sith Lord helps her companion get a clue</a>
...you know, if more Anime/Manga tsundere's did this rather than wait for the clueless idiot they'e in love with to finally figure it out, there'd be much less stress all around.
GameSpy: So, I'm playing as an Inquisitor, and I've just come out of slavery. I guess I was born into it, and I've been recruited as a Sith. Have you written any kind of backstory to explain why my character is such a dick? Or is that on me for choosing the dark side option every time?
Daniel Erickson: That is you. Not just choosing the dark side every time, because there are options that are not dark side, necessarily, but incredibly dickish. Rebecca Harwick wrote the Inquisitor, and one of the things that was very important right from the beginning for her was getting a feeling of pride, being able to stand up there and be strong while all this stuff is going on. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but she didn't want to create the Harry Potter experience, because you're not eight, right? If there's a grown man in your face, screaming at you and giving you crap, if there's people trying to tear you down, she had to do something to put a backbone in you really, really early. You can also, of course, play your Sith Inquisitor very cool and unruffled, but yeah, there's a lot of attitude in there.
GameSpy: I guess Anakin was also born a slave...
Daniel Erickson: And also had some serious attitude issues.
****
GameSpy: Each character has a beginning, a middle, and an end to their story. How are you getting around that to create this additional content? Are you tacking something on to the end, or is it going to be inserted in the middle?
Daniel Erickson: Well, what they have is, they don't have a beginning, middle, and end. Each one of the classes has a Star Wars trilogy. But that is not an act one, act two, and act three. That is, Chapter one is a full piece, with an act one, act two, and act three. And then we finish it. We talk about the Bounty Hunter, that's probably the most famous one, we had the story out there, being part of the Great Hunt, the giant bounty hunters... That's just chapter one. You finish that entire, let's say, season, if we were doing a television show, because it's way longer than that... You finish that entire season, all those plots are wrapped up, but all the characters are still there, they're going to move forward, they're going to change. Then we do chapter two, then we do chapter three. And that's just what we've shipped with. So in the future, there will be even more.
****
GameSpy: Is there any particular character that was your favorite to write for? And is there any particular mission or anything that really exemplifies what you think is your personal style?
Vette, the Sith Warrior companion character, who I wrote, was probably the one that I got to do the most serious writing with, for a long term, and really enjoy it. One of the issues with that really early was, we knew we wanted her to be a romance. There were a lot of people who really liked Mission Vao in the original game and were mad she wasn't a romance. Well, she was underage. So we gave the Twi'lek a romance, but she starts as a slave, and that made it very complicated to write something that was going to feel real. So that is a real late-bloomer romance.
It was an interesting one, to build a super-strong character that was going to be pretty guarded, but not in that overdone RPG "oh I'm so full of angst and I can't talk about it" way. That's funny, but when you flirt with Vette, she just doesn't get it. She's not stonewalling you. The concept that you're a Sith Lord of the entire empire and you're flirting with this street girl who got captured, she's just... "You're silly." It's a very interesting, frustrating place. You have to build a really long-term friendship with her and really gain the trust. And then you can start to see her. It was fun to get down and be able to write one thing for a long time like that. I had to do it on a lot of weekends.
****
GameSpy: For the light/dark choices, particularly on the Sith side, I'm seeing that some of the light side choices aren't necessarily what you would think of as "light side choices." The big one so far: killing the slaves quickly, as opposed to making them suffer.
Daniel Erickson: One of the things we had to do really early was decide where you started. It doesn't make any sense that you got to the Jedi Academy, and you've just became a Jedi, and you're a murderous, rampaging psychopath. At the same point, it does not make sense that you became a Sith and you got through all these sorts of things and you've never gotten your hands dirty. So on the Sith side, what we're starting with is, If you go light, you're starting with redemption stories. On the Jedi side, if you're going dark, you're starting with small temptations. You're telling somebody something that isn't necessarily true. You're sending somebody else down a path that's probably going to take them to a bad place. Then, slowly, as you go further and further down those paths, they get more and more into being those pieces.
Edit 2:
<a href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9zW5SpKUr4&feature=related' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Female Sith Lord helps her companion get a clue</a>
...you know, if more Anime/Manga tsundere's did this rather than wait for the clueless idiot they'e in love with to finally figure it out, there'd be much less stress all around.
