Star Wars: The Old Republic combat to be choreographed

Interesting word of note about the upcoming Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic: according to BioWare's chief Greg Zeschuk, the combat will be a heck of a lot more realistic than in the Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) games. Not that it wasn't pretty realistic anyway, but this time it's been built from the ground up to be on par with the Star Wars films. 

“If you recall some very specific things from the gameplay video, it was choreographed," he says. "One big difference, especially against the MMO space, is that typically everyone swings through each other. That’s the way it’s been done. It doesn’t look great for Star Wars."

“Star Wars is choreographed, it’s elegant; it’s big, powerful moves and lightning bolts flashing, but in a way that makes sense visually and aesthetically. One of the goals we have is to create this choreographed type of combat that looks as though it could be taking place in a Star Wars movie.”

A new gameplay video shown was reportedly devoid of the usual repeated fighting animation MMO gamers have come to expect -- swords now hit each other and the opponent's actions are affected by other parties in the fight, and things like that. Seems a little odd the combat has gotten very realistic but the graphical style of the game seems to have gotten, for lack of a better word, "cartoonish"...

It's not clear how smoothly this new system will work in an online environment, but presumably, BioWare knows what they're doing, them being BioWare and all.

No release date is set for the game as of yet.