Lit How similar/different should the Old Republic Look?

Oooh I like that, maybe a bit like this?

 

i think space travel should work like how people taveled with boats before, maybe not as long but take sometime before you reach your goal, like the longer you travel the loger the ride is. like you can be stuck in your ship for months in long travel hyperspace. More horses, speederbikes isn't invented yet so more horse riding. ships with little to no shields, ships needs hyper space rings and like HR has its starlight beacons, they need it's own beacons to travel anywhere outside the core and mid-core. Lightsabers little to no change. We see ancient sith and jedi have lighsabers looking more like a sword similar to high republic ones, but more ancient. the worlds should have middle earth first age or second age feel. also no jedi armor pls.

 

They should bring back the wired lightsabers attached to a big battery.

 

nah that was kinda dumb.

 

I think I mentioned this in another thread at some point, but in my opinion the best approach for developing an aesthetic would be to work backwords, so the High Republic content can be used as the basis of early Republic/Late-Sith era. Stuff like the Crucible, the Momin flashbacks in the Vader comics, and some of the Old Republic references also already provide a general basis for the look of the Old Republic era.

Some general ideas for an older setting of the top of my head:

• Smaller/Medium size ships require larger carrier ships for Hyperspace-travel, somewhat like the Spacing Guild in Dune.
• For really early Hyperspace travel, have Purgill or similar beings function as living hyperdrives, their traveling routes becoming the first hyperlanes
• Use the ornate Senate Guards as the basis for a Republic trooper design, as it would make sense that the more ceremonial look derives from earlier actual battle armor
• For the Sith and Mandalorians, I would simply use the KOTOR designs - they already work wonderfully on their own

One of the things I'm really wondering about is what role Droids would have in earlier history. We know they definitely existed (e.g. Huyang), but would they be as commonplace or capable as the "current" timeline?

 

I do like this one. It would create a variety of change in how the Galaxy runs, especially for War, Bounty Hunting, and Smuggling.

Though I wonder how popular it would be for the fanbase. Star Wars fans are used to seeing crews have the freedom jump around the galaxy in medium/small ships. No Millennium Falcon/Ebon Hawke style of freedom in traveling, when vessels of that size in the Old Republic require a large space ship to go anywhere beyond a solar system.

Maybe Disneys first introduction into the Old Republic, should have less Hyperdrive differences then above. Lets say they decided to explore the final Sith vs Jedi War (Banes era), around 1040BBY. They can have some changes such as less hyperspace lanes, a bit more time to travel through hyperspace, perhaps no one maned hyperdrive ships, but medium vessels in a similar size to the Millennium Falcon still have hyperdrives. References can be made to past eras, in which hyperdrives were not as good, and a lot larger, requiring massive vessels.

Eventually if Disney gave us an even earlier era (say the 100yr darkness, etc) we can see those significant differences that really make earlier Old Republic era stories different compared to Late Old Republic ones.

 

I would really like the Old Republic Jedi Temple to be distinct from that of the prequels/High Republic. Rather than this massive, artificial, forbidding monolith, it should look more like a community of buildings and open spaces, built around a mountain, without the central spire surmounting it. Maybe the four towers could be made largely of coloured glass, to resemble lightsaber blades.

I think the prequel temple itself should be an early example of the Jedi losing their way, by burying the natural mountain under this enormous fortress. It is intended to send the message that the Jedi are invincible, which we know is far from the truth.

 

• Hyperspace Guns and Sleeper Ships play a much bigger role.
• The Trade Routes are clearly and meticulously explained and become essential plot elements.
  
• Not everyone has the same tech...and it leads to advantages and disadvantages.
• The tech is not so much "primitive" as it is "outmoded" compared to the new. Star Wars has through all iterations been pretty "static", all things considered, when it comes to tech. Now granted the appearance has been artistically embellished to portray age, but the primary technological standard has been consistent...hyperdrives, blasters, galactic communication...all has a presence or a similar predecessor regardless of era. As such, a great deal of latitude in how this tech is achieved can be granted, so long as it it there.
  The most obvious meme of this is the battery pack lightsaber...but as that has become such a insider joke, perhaps other changes could be offered.

1. Lightsabers have a 20 minute battery pack, and jedi carry clips of replacement batteries.
2. Lightsaber crystals break...a lot. A Jedi's skill in saber technique is not just in combat mastery, but keeping one's crystal from failing amidst a fight.
3. Hyperspace travel has nasty side effects...sickness, psychosis, anxiety over whether you will actually come out of hyperspace.
4. Primitive holonet comms only allow for one-way comms with hours of delay...and only to networked worlds.

• Perhaps beyond the tech question is the whole "state of the galaxy" question...a real problem the creatives have long had with the galaxy is when "not" to use a species. Toss a Twi'lek in there and a Rodian over there to give it the right "Star Wars" look. Perhaps a new look into the Old Republic could show us a galaxy before some of these worlds were known...maybe their discovery becomes key plots. It would be very VERY hard to do this...origin stories as plot pieces are uncommon in the universe...it usually gets left to encyclopedias and databank writers to give us some vague background...but if they had a real vision for a "first" story, I think they could get away with it. They just have to stick with it...until the next time they hit the reset button on the canon.

 

I loved the way that Tales of the Jedi was aesthetically different (and technologically different, but not in a way that impeded the "space opera" feeling) from the OT era, and I was annoyed with everything that watered down that difference (TOR most of all). I'm sort of resigned to the idea that technology is mostly static over history in the Star Wars universe, but I am very much hoping that the new canon will establish markedly different aesthetics for the different eras at least - and the High Republic (as far as I can tell) seems to be a good start in that regard.

 

I still say Kotor 1 and 2 are the best aesthetic looking for the old past, familiar but different.

 

I think they're cool designs that fit in well with what's established, but very little of it looks like it's from a different time. Some KotOR elements have shown up in Canon, and they feel right at home in the Skywalker Saga part of the timeline.

 

True that's why I like KOTOR design for the past over TOR and TOTJ

Although personally I'm of the head canon that the ancient past was SUPER ADVANCED but the Jedi-Sith wars were just so bad that it caused civilization to move backwards.

 

Im ok with Disney's Old Republic looking very similar to KoToR 1/2, only if its Bane's era. A little over a 1000 years before TPM. That's a good excuse to why it draws a lot of similarity in style to the PT/OT eras because its very Late Old Republic.

But if say the story was set 2,000 years before TPM, or longer, the presentation should look more different then the style of KoToR.

It was a mistake making KoToR look the way it did in Legends when its set close to 4000 years before the films and there is only a 50 year gap between KoToR 1 and most of ToTJ with Exar Kun.

 

My idea is this: They have advanced firearms and space travel, but the government has banned the use of the more advanced weaponry. So instead of ballistic weaponry or primitive lasers, people go around with swords and armor. And if somebody violates the accord and abuses machine guns or lasers, that's when the Jedi get called in to take care of that. And the Jedi still have their lightsabers because they're attuned to the force and can find the kyber.

 

Personally, I loved both TOTJ and KOTOR in look...and while it was a touch jarring to one's headspace to accept the vastly different styles as completely representing the galaxy in such a short time (compared to the 4000 year jump to the films)...just remind yourself it is a big galaxy with wildly different looking things everywhere.

And as was said before, if the tech is essentially static in function, then design is mostly just about design, and as such can look however the builder (or writer) wants.

My personal explanation was always that following the events of TOTJ, and Old Republic had rushed into an intense era of modernization, based on ideas of efficiency and speed to produce...think post-WWII Europe's reconstruction...the rush to rebuild, and then, to have to respond to the Mandalorian threat in the same interval, lead to the changes in appearance we see in KOTOR.

In a universe where fleets capable of subduing a galaxy can be produced and manned with capable personnel in matters of months, seeing a large scale appearance change isn't impossible.

(And yes, just squint at the Sith Tombs or Onderon as you play them)

Out of Universe...I cannot recall the source, but someone many moons ago said KOTOR was well into development before the story elements were finalized as 4000 BBY. And having played many of Bioware's RPGs over the years...they don't stray too far in appearance...kind of how they all play mostly the same. (Tangent: Props to Jade Empire, probably the most stylized game of Bioware's RPG catalog of that time).

It also helps that I like Batman...you want to talk about radically different styles ingrained in one universe...sheesh! If you can apologize that in your head, TOTJ to KOTOR is a breeze.

 

Let's face it, authors will always fall back to movie saga looks and aesthetics even if designs and artists at least dress up the status quo in design language that looks older/ancient influenced by real world ancient times designs they home in for for any new era. So if discussing a practical approach for ancient times looks we need to account for these author fallacies and designer choices as past SW had done while at the same time presenting them with a solution that is neither difficult or more complicated to realize for the authors and production crew and nor too reliant anything other franchises did predominantly so it will still look SW and not SW doing Dune, Alien or else.

I like the SW eras of sleeper ships, hyperspace guns, giant hyperspace carrier vessels and guilds and all that and would love to see them explored but to be honest I do not trust them a single step wide to do it without either falling back to the status quo instead of exploring these new "old" options. So let them keep their toys and yet infuse a fresh ancient era feel within the limits of SW. These other times exist but would probably not be explored on big screens.

SW is big on invoking a different times feel via hairstyles, clothing, architecture and colorcoding rather than actual technological differences so far. As SW is timeless, so is its tech as it kinda is all cultures, all real eras and all corners of the real world thrown into the same universe here and now where anything goes. SW does have ancient supertech as well as modern weirdo supertech but always at a regional, cultural limited or temporarily only existing level and not spread far and wide.

Ancient times are often invoked by megalomanic buildings. Be it Pyramids, giant temples and stones. The lost times of great builders and designs that the rather practical and money focussed modern no longer attempts due to being not cheap enough.

So one might indeed use way larger ships as carriers and also larger architecture that is fit for all alien sizes and less the humanocentric Imperial standard of PT/OT eras. In fact, standardizing sizes, interfaces, language, etc. all was what was a key point of the Empire and modern era. Re-diversifying all that should give us quite some look and practical differences for story. TPM had this nicely with plenty of different comm dishes on the Radiant VII cruiser before Tantive IV and other later ones would employ standardized tech.

The Senate Guard armor idea is nice as well! I'd even go as far as giving us more "new" species that look like stuff we know but we never saw in the flesh (or chitin or somesuch). Like f.e. design species based on Droid looks of which we only know their droid likeness in later eras. Prequels had this with Collicoids and Destroyer droids. Lets do some others as well, how about other species redesigned from later era droids?

Colorcoding wise one might show the origin of why the Republic uses diplomatic red and senatorial blue as colors. Back when the Republic was united but politically and organisationally still divided by "Corellian sphere of influence", "Coruscant sphere of influence" etc. each could have had a dominant color to mark their ships and personnel or uniforms with and when fully merging they kept the colors for specific roles and offices.

Very good point!

I love Incredible Locations Mountain Temple and concept art versions of it as a meditative city settlement around it and its meditation caves ladded mountain top.

Show us Coruscant mostly covered by city but with the Manarai Mountain Range still free with the Jedi residing in its outermost part around one Mountain as others like Monument Plaza are being just erected and the last bits of cityscape is growing over the others as "save the Manarai" projects vote for keeping it free and if not at least preserve it, like cut it off and elevate it up with city growing below it, which will be done for artificially keeping and elevating the later Manarai hiking range.

Good call on the Lightsaber battery packs, that keeps established aestetics and offers a new innovative way for storytelling, rushed fights and reloading trouble.

While I love it, I think showing any delays in comm traffic or travel times is impractical sadly. Well for lazy authors sadly the movie industry works with.

Less on the big screen but more on tv they might try stuff like hyperspace guns and sleeper ships etc. for an episode or two or modern times rediscovering old tech for a mission. For a complete era? They couldn't even keep Dawn of the Jedi technologically straight.

I fear and think, maybe one has to accept that the SW galaxy is a galaxy that reached a certain epitome and kept it for 25000 years with minor advances and setbacks always due to wars. Even if we play around with taking some tech away for older eras, the problem of species or the galaxy map remains with them having to keep certain places or aliens out of the story and background, which they won't in times where set redressing is common to cut corners and save money. Look at all the ST aliens in Mando and probably also Andor, etc. Could they really keep the Old Republic not extended beyond the Colonies in a fitting era? Without excuses like some excursions reach this or that Outer Rim world...?

If we cannot take aliens away from their playground, maybe lets shuffle the mix and dominance of them to get a different feel like, show some way more often than usually and others less. We can't kill Human superiorty in casting and acting sadly, but it is a significant difference if you see 1 Twilek per 10 episodes in the background or if you see them all over and instead other common aliens much rarer. Like show us some Colony or Core Worlds and those regions aliens should be more dominant... with Rimmers less frequent. But nobody in production thinks much about such details. Or to avoid that create new ones all the time instead of properly utilizing what one got.

Movies often have blasters leave no mark when they hit walls... well some do but not always. What if we play around with not the tech itself but their impact in ancient eras? Have blastermarks and effects be way worse in past times when material was not improved with innovative blasterscorch-protected material. Have ships use exterior hull extensions on stilts like in some ancient ship art in the essential guides to show them using more double hulls rather than electronic shields to protect themselves as shields were higher priced and rarer or not sufficient enough yet.

All in all, KOTOR and TOR were set in a past era but marketed as experiencing the saga from a first person pov as a player, so of course it is like the saga just in the past.

The question is, do we keep ancien times looks chronological like in the real world? Or could one say use the look of the middle ages in a setting before the Egyptians in the GFFA? Subconsciously the familiary of the chronology helps the ancient era feel so keeping it has its bonus points. But architecture and other cultural clothing, styles, etc. are mixed up a lot by SW where asian designs are transported to western settings and vice versa all in the same era.

But going by the above lineup of real world past and GFFA, how would the past eras we discussed here look in between those? What would inspire them?

The New Sith Wars are called a Dark Age serving in function like the middle ages loss of knowledge and tech and used medieval looks in some sources (not all though). Lately the High Republic draws from a middle ages look, too with crossguard sabers and soon to come backstory for other middle ages inspired elements from the Sequel Trilogy like Maz Kanatas Takodana Jedi Castle.
So while the High Republic invokes middle ages, the expansion to the Outer Rim kinda has an "Into the West" vibe of domesticating the wilds in the old colonies, while not using Western genre imagery, kinda like knights went to the united states and not later era explorers. Well in a way maybe the armored spanish conquistadores in south america, though those were less noble great works then compared to Lina Soh's plans. Anyway, it all ended in an age of piracy and Nihil like Marchion Ro expanding out of the Carribbean to threaten the entire colonial powerhouse. And yet they use less pirate imagery but Mad Max style trashworld postapocalpytic pirates for a weird reason.
So oops did we have two middle ages in the GFFA? The darker ones in the NSW (lol autocorrect wanted to write nsfw and no I don't think that fits these times lol). And the more graceful high times of romanticised Middle Ages in the High Republic? Or did the High Republic mark the end of the NSW Middle Ages long after wars end only as we know crossguards were used on Malachor already even pre-NSW as far back as KOTOR times if canon sticks to Legends dates?
But wait there is more to consider, Darth Bane in TCW got a redesign with rather pre-first-world-war era german-looking Bismark-style steel helmet and a Samurai-esque armor rather than his beetlejuice armor of Legends.

As SW draws from all of history always, one can't just slap one look or era on one in the gffa verbatim, it always is a mix and mash and finding what works predominantly to mark the new era as what it is meant to invoke.

 

Sounds like Jedi as Samurai.

Not an inappropriate approximation.

But in a galaxy so vast and technology is known, to say it is "banned" only facilitates it's continued used. The Pirates and Smugglers will just find another moon to stash the blasters on and sneak them to the rebels on this world and the next.

If they could come up with a clever trigger...example, a galaxy spanning radiation caused plasma fields like blaster bolts to become unstable and blow up the moment they are created...you could then have the galaxy react to that in different ways...worlds with the means could make slugthrowers and gunpowder kit...others may devolve to blades and bows.

 

Such an explanation while handy though is often not really scientific or an excuse for a story only like in Star Trek Discovery's future where the Warp-Drive was rendered mostly useless temporarily.
In general though it is a good idea for a story, not an entire era though maybe without sufficient scientific or pseudo-scientific backup to make it not just an excuse.

KOTOR used Vibroblades and sabers heavily to even counter Lightsabers. Rather than prohibiting one technology one might advance another tempoarily only. Say a company discoveres ore that can withstand lightsabers and thus suddendly reinforced Vibroblades are back in fashion as they got useful again. But supply is limited and while initially mass-mined and spread, after a decsade or couple years only the galaxy is back to blasters.
Kinda like with cloacking crystals and cloacking devices having had their time and wars and become rare again or highprice and limited in use.
Likewise one might do the same trick with hyperdrives, kinda like the High Republic does with the Nihil Hyperdrive and Path Engine that is extraordinary in what it can achieve. But did not spread to mass use for a reason!

Aside these technological tweak options, one might add biological ones. How about an era with limited supply of wonderdrugs? We had our fair share of Bota, Bacta and co in the healing sector. How about some death sticks? Or rather drugs not longer existant in modern era due to their source plant being extinct by then due to mass-harvests and difficulties in producing it artificially or in controlled farming.
There might be drugs that give regular folks temporary Force powers like some game boosters had.
You could have drugs that allow humans to rejuvenate themselves, but as all rush to use them, the longterm effects are unstudied and surprising as people suffer other lacks due to it in a subsequent era in later life. Say their rushing to one lifeextending wonderdrug had the detrimental effect that it sterilised a percentage of them or otherwise impedimented some, hence the followup era has a significant drop in human superiorty and we get an era with alien dominance again until humanity recovers? Or otherwise a storyrelevant loss of abilities.
Aside scenarios of killer viruses and wondedrugs like the Blue Shadow Virus or Bacta, Bota and Spice, there is the option to have an intermediate era where biotechnology is on the rise, stalling technology in favor of superior biotech. Why did it not last or win out in the end story has to resolve then. Or rather an era where cyborgism is "the thing" and everybody wants implants (much like everyone wanted stims in the KOTOR era), but the cyborgism hype dies down after some catastrophes regarding hacking, mindcontrol or an advancing fear of technology taking over biology like with the Borg and co (starring Iskalonians!).


Alternatively, another option to differentiate the past may be to let go of humanity defining everything for everyone. In the Saga Era, we have humanity superior, standardized communication, tech, interfaces, language, writing systems, etc. Political terms even are ideal for humanity and its lifespan. What if in the past laws and regulations were not yet standardized but also not yet humanocentric? Could an office term be longer for longlived species? Or shorter for shortlived ones? Say Did Blotus the Hutt get reelected every 4 years or did more alien diversity centric laws back then allow for longer terms, even if shortlived species and humanity objected due to many being unable to vote if say a Hutt chancellor serves 20 year terms? I'd like to see these different term lengths advantages (longterm planning and politics) vs. its disadvantages as mentioned above partially.
Likewise, travel times needn't be always fast as humans prefer it. Longlived species might not even be adverse to longer travel times and knowing they got time, be contempt with taking 50 years from the Rim to the Core which humans and others would not be keen on.

 

Disney/lucasfilm should be willing to take the ToTJ approach for future Old Republic material. Yes they will have to take some risks, but they have familiar star wars to fall back on if Old Republic era tales (that actually look like an ancient era) turn out to be a disappointment in the franchise. With star wars on disney +, they can use a smaller budget in a tv series first before attempting a movie/trilogy in the Old Republic.

With the popularity that Jedi and Sith have, lightsabers, force, etc, I do hope that will be enough for an Old Republic Tale that looks more different compared to KoToR, to still be popular amongst the audience, and give Disney further faith in exploring that era.

I have wondered what the reception of KoToR 1/2 would have been like if they took heavy inspiration from ToTJ (more Exar Kuns era then Golden Age of Sith), while taking into account the 50 year gap but still keeping the same storyline we witnessed. Hopefully it would still have created great reception and the fanbase it has today.

 

Considering the Old Republic era is just about anything pre-1000 BBY at this stage, even if one idea fails, they can jump back/forward a few hundred or thousand years to tell a different Old Republic story without much issue.

 

When it came to legends I always liked the idea that the sith rule of the Galaxy literally Caused such a dark age that Technology and know how was literally lost, think the Library of Alexandria. It could mean that we have a republic that was quiet similar to the clone wars republic in technology level that was lost.

I also really like the idea that routes, and worlds and species where lost. It takes the republic years to rebuild when they finally do defeat the sith and only really come in to a renaissance during the High Republic period.

 

Agreed.

While I don't know if it is a "dark age", but I always imagined the 3000ish years between KOTOR and Ruusan as a galactic "stagnation" caused by the perpetual flair ups of struggles between the Sith and the Jedi...toss in a Mandalorian war here and there...the galaxy was doing everything just to hang on and could not advance.

Post-Ruusan allowed for the Republic to recover...and while some technological progress was made, it seems more effort was focused to expansion and commerce then the next big tech. As most of the tech we would see would be "war" based, it can be understandable why the galaxy decided not to pursue innovation in that direction.

The High Republic, as it unfolds, could provide an interesting vision into the progress since Ruusan, and how far they need to go before the film era.