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Trivia / Star Wars: The Old Republic

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  • Acting for Two:
  • Actor Allusion:
  • Ascended Meme: Don, the Exiled Knight started as a joke on the Old Republic's subreddit which got noticed by the developers and was eventually added into the game with the Jedi Under Siege update.
  • Development Gag: On Ossus, after Darth Malgus reveals he's still alive and takes command, a background conversation has a soldier speculating that Arcann had him frozen in carbonite. This is a reference to an unused scene for the trailer of Knights of the Fallen Empire.
  • Executive Meddling: The powers-that-be in charge of the game have an unfortunate tendency to leave out things that seem relatively basic, such as having all the playable aliens being as close to human as possible, due to the reasoning that playing as a Mon Calamari for example, would interfere with the romance side-missions, and that it would make designing head slot armor difficult.
  • Fountain of Expies: Each class is specifically modeled off a popular Star Wars character. Wanna be Luke Skywalker? Play a Jedi Knight. Wanna be Han Solo? Play a smuggler. Wanna be Boba Fett? Play a bounty hunter. Each class was specifically inspired by a character or set of characters in the films, and much of the artwork and designs are evocative of them. (The Bounty Hunter and Trooper design, for example). The Dark Side Jedi Knight on the other hand very nearly quotes some of Anakin's lines. The only class that doesn't have a direct source of inspiration is the Imperial Agent, who instead represents the Imperial officers in the movies.
    • This is perhaps most evident in the Sith classes: the Juggernaut is based on Darth Vader, the Marauder on Asajj Ventress, the Sorcerer on Darth Sidious, and the Assassin on Darth Maul.
    • Smuggler classes are clear as well. The Scoundrel is Han Solo or Lando Calrissian, and the Gunslinger is Cad Bane.
    • Jindo Kraay, a boss from the False Emperor Flashpoint, is an Expy of Jango Fett.
    • For a non-Star Wars example, the Female Republic Trooper is essentially FemShep in the Star Wars Universe. Both characters even share the same voice actor.
    • Another non-Star Wars example, the Imperial Agent doesn't have a direct expy to anyone in the Star Wars universe. Depending on play style and Karma Meter, the Agent has been likened to James Bond, Jason Bourne, Sam Fisher, Grand Moff Tarkin, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and/or Elim Garak.
    • This isn't just the classes; companions are designed to channel Star Wars tropes like the Big Aliens and protocol and astromech Droids. Even the ships resemble starships from the movies. And then we get to the non-Star Wars examples...
    • Alternatively, the 8 player classes are expies of the main characters in media set during the Great Galactic War, some of whom are also in the game.
      • The Sith Warrior is Darth Malgus, especially if a Juggernaut and/or a dark side male romancing Vette.
      • The Sith Inquisitor is Darth Thanaton, especially if a Sorcerer. Their similarities make their feud more poignant. This is probably deliberate because even their backstories are similar.
      • The Imperial Agent is Grand Moff Kilran.
      • The Bounty Hunter is Shae Vizla.
      • The Jedi Knight is Ven Zallow. They’ve even had the same astromech droid accompanying them.
      • The Jedi Consular is Satele Shan, especially if a Shadow and/or romancing Lt. Iresso.
      • The male Smuggler is Nico Okarr, the female is Hylo Visz.
      • The Trooper is Jace Malcolm.
  • Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Two different ones: First, The Collector's Edition includes in-game items, a statuette of Darth Malgus, and other items, and costs $150. Second, the Digital Deluxe Edition costs a more reasonable $80, and has just 5 in-game items. In addition, every player who pre-ordered, even those who just ordered the vanilla version of the game, received a special color stone to turn their weapon's effect yellow with a black core, and up to five days of early access to the game, depending on when they pre-ordered.
  • Make-A-Wish Contribution: The NPC boss Towe is named after a Make-A-Wish recipient who visited the BioWare offices.
  • The Other Darrin:
    • Tanno Vik was originally voiced by David Anthony Pizzuto, who died shortly after the game launched. In subsequent appearances, he's now voiced by Fred Tatasciore.
    • This isn't the first time Jeff Bennett has taken over the voice acting of an insanely powerful Jedi from Rino Romano.
    • The same could be said for Doug Bradley as the Sith Emperor, Darth Vitiate. After The Reveal in Knights of the Fallen Empire, he's voiced this time around by Darin De Paul as Emperor Valkorion. Justified as this is The Nth Doctor incarnation of Vitiate (the same Sith Emperor who tried to prolong his life), and his body has taken on many appearances in the past. Plus, Valkorion is more human in appearance than his previous incarnation, but one thing that carries over is his baritone.
  • Troubled Production: After EA got the license to make a new Star Wars MMO in 2007, they immediately ordered BioWare to make it. However, BioWare Edmonton (the main studio) was in the middle of development of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 so they gave the game to new studio BioWare Austin, a studio specifically formed to help with Online games and features. BioWare Austin not only was inexperienced but also was under a lot pressure from EA to make a game as big and successful as World of Warcraft with the game becoming one of most expensive games of the generation (between 250 to 300 millions) but they also wanted it by 2010, something they couldn't accomplish. The game missing its projected launch date angered EA's executives (since their stock was hit thanks to the Schedule Slip) so much that they forced a December 2011 release even though the game was far from finished.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Very early in development, Word of God mentioned three factions: Republic, Sith Empire, and Underworldnote . And before that, a developer said that they were going to have Voss Mystics as the third faction, so that's two factions that didn't pan out.
    • Before settling on the "Jedi Sage", the class was originally called the "Jedi Wizard". Fan reactions were mostly negative and BioWare held a poll to see how it should be named. The "Jedi Sage" got the most votes, followed by the "Jedi Adept", the "Jedi Seer" and the "Jedi Wizard" with the least votes.
    • Existing sound files suggest that same-sex romances were originally planned for some companions. Three lines of Quinn's were found, apparently with identical dialogue to his romance with a female Warrior.
    • Originally, it was going to be possible for players to permanently lose their companions. Due to the complaints from testers who figured it would be a case of Like You Would Really Do It (and assuming that paying players would make the same error in judgement), this feature was removed, as the goal of the game is to "be fun" first and foremost and losing a healing companion could gimp a character permanently.
      • Knights of the Fallen Empire eventually introduced killing companions for real, but it was only made possible by allowing users to switch a companion's combat role at any time and vastly increasing their overall amount, so that losing a few hated ones no longer affected the gameplay.
    • Content in game files shows traces of a much different first expansion, originally to include unique Chapter 4 for each of 8 classes that was at least 3 planets long and featured a direct continuation of the previous class stories, with many of the supporting characters returning. Reduced development resources left that original plan unsustainable and only one of the planned planets - Makeb - was featured in the finished expansion, with only a shared faction story and no unique class stuff. Some of the other planned planets such as Rakata Prime, Yavin IV and Ziost were eventually added using resources developed way back in the game's first year, but featuring a completely different story, while other planned planets such as Varl, Bothawui and Sleheyron were scrapped altogether.
    • The Sith Pureblood race was originally only going to be available by default to the Sith Warrior class. The decision to make it available to Inquisitors as well came only a few weeks before the game's launch and required some very last-minute dialogue changes.
    • Grand Moff Regus was supposed to be the focus of a cancelled Flashpoint where he would have split off from the Empire and formed his own faction after being angered by the Empire allowing aliens to be recruited into the Imperial Military.
  • You Sound Familiar: A lot of voice actors appeared in previous Star Wars projects, and as is common for video games with many characters, many play multiple roles in the game. Some of the standouts:

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