Good day, TORWarriors! Today I’m here to talk to you about weather effects and why we need them! At some stage in your education you’ve probably been made to study some type of play or poetry. So you’re probably familiar with a literary device known as pathetic fallacy. Pathetic fallacy essentially means the weather mirroring emotions.
The approach to Belsavis (or a big poxy cue ball in space)
This is avidly seen in The Revenge of the Sith with the fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan. As they fight, lava explosions occur in the background and ash constantly falls in the background. It’s plain to see that the ash resembles Anakin’s clouded mind and the lava as impending destruction. This enhances the emotion seen on the screen, “you were my brother Anakin! I loved you!” *shivers*.
This is why we need weather effects for Star Wars: The Old Republic. The game is great as it is. However, being on Hoth with no snowstorms or snow fall is a slightly hollow experience. They’ve captured the arctic feelings superbly – but when quests center on people getting lost in the blizzard and there isn’t one, it’s kind of silly. My favorite planet so far is Belsavis. Not only does it have a story that I loved from KOTOR (I won’t divulge information, you’re spoiler safe!), but it also has some snow fall. It’s rare and only in specific small areas, but it’s there.
Ash and snow fall! Perfect for the tense quest i was doing!
Belsavis is a paradox. It’s got rainforest type settings in the middle of gigantic glaciers. And the story is of the same quality as the other planets (amazing). But, the snow fall and slightly darker lighting (moody) gives me goose bumps. I absolutely loved it. The snow fall really made me feel immersed – I only logged off because server maintenance made me. But up until that point I had played for five hours straight without ‘game fatigue’.
Music is often used in the same way. When someone does something bad, you get brooding music; when someone does something good, you hear heroic music. When these things are missing the impact caused by such decisions is less. But when you have the music there, it is greater – when you have the weather mirroring the emotion along with the music you have something extra special. And we all want this experience to extra special.
Mmmm.... Brooding
I’m not saying having night and day. Personally I feel night and day in games is a little stupid. A quest giver isn’t going to stand up straight all night and day waiting for someone to come around to help them. But having weather effects triggered by certain quests – such as someone being stuck in a blizzard – is an immersion must. I hope we see weather effects in the future, because it is the sole thing that would make the entire game extra special. The game is already special, and aspects of the story are extra special. But the minor quests could become so much grander with a thunder crack here, or a blizzard there.
The mixing of rainforest and glacier
What do you think? Would you like to see weather effects in the near future?
Linked Gallery:
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- Ash and snow fall! Perfect for the tense quest i was doing!
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- The approach to Belsavis
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- Mmmm…. Brooding
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- The mixing of rainforest and glacier
TORWars Podcast #151: Aren't You the Pretty Kitty?
I Whole-heartedly agree with everything said in this article!!!!
weather is a must while night and day is less thematic
I think this all boils down to when they are going to put it in. WoW never had weather effects till much later. Im sure its something bioware wants to do but felt it wasnt needed till afterwards, which im ok with!
I bet they’re working on it, ready to get it out soon. I mean, honestly, most players aren’t going to be to Hoth till several weeks after launch. If they had it then, it’d be perfect.
They would be nice, but I don’t see it happening.
I think the reason TOR doesn’t have weather effects is because every quest turns into a cutscene. They can’t account for adding weather effects to all those cutscenes.
I also believe this is why we don’t have sliders in the character creator.
Dragon Age II already had facial sliders for a speaking main character. Given the small number of facial muscles that tend to move when someone in a BioWare game talks, the cutscenes work with pretty much any (relatuively human-ish) face you can put together.
It’s all down to scripting. Every quest does not need weather effects. Certain ones do however, such as the quest in Hoth where you have to rescue guys in a blizzard when there isn’t one. And you need a darker environment for the world arc/class quest of Alderaan, having a nice sunny day doesn’t do the story justice
You could simply have ‘enter conversation’ trigger ‘weather script 9′ for example. In the same way ‘enter conversation’ triggers animations and a conversation with an npc
And every quest is already a cut scene. 
For the main story quests i see no hardship being offered if weather effects are triggered with them, because they know those quests in and out. And it’s pretty straight forward to find them, and add to them.
Your comment about npcs standing up all day and night got me thinking of some asian mmo I beta tested I think it was called angels and demons or something along that line. They had most of the quest npcs in the town disappear at night but they left a sign out that you could click on to summon them back “wake em up”. I think they even charged you to wake them sometimes.
I agree there does need to be a bit more weather effects but I wouldn’t be surprised if its already in the works. This build we are able to see is probably 2 jumps away from what will hit retail.
I agree. Ord Mantell has such a meh landscape. I think if you add a random rain storm in from time to time, it would completely enhance the environment. Though I do see and agree with your point on the one quest in Hoth, I think using it specifically for quests or scenes would limit weather to just a few small zones.
As far as Coruscant goes, since you’re really, REALLY high up, why not keep the perpetual dusk/dawn look, since we’ve only seen it depicted that way in the movies anyways, but why not make whatever trees/flags/banners less static and add some wind effects?
[...] information came out a few months ago (TORwars discussed it briefly here) that BioWare chose to “lock” every planet in a particular moment rather than have [...]