SWTOR Lore: The More Things Change...

The Rakatan Infinite Empire left a massive technological legacy in the Star Wars universe. They were the first to invent basically all the technology that exists during the era of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and that tech has remained current for about 4000 years. Some minor advancements were made here and there, but the basic tech never really changes.

If you look at the Earth of 4000 years ago and compare it to Earth today, you will see a profound leap in technology. In 2000 BC, Stonehenge was just being completed. The Bronze Age was just beginning in northern China. People were just discovering glass. Jump forward 4000 years and you have the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, nearly 830 metres (2723 Feet) tall. The world has passed beyond defining its ages by increasingly-complex metals or industry, and now classes itself according to how much electronic data it can effectively create, store and use. The rudimentary glass first discovered 4000 years ago has been refined to the point where it can be used in windows in the International Space Station orbiting the planet.

You don't see that kind of dramatic curve happen in the Star Wars universe. Superluminal space travel and blaster technology existed long before the Jedi Order came into being, and those technologies are arguably the ones that define that universe. Technology has hit a plateau long before the events of SWTOR, and that plateau seems to carry on, unbroken, for nearly 4000 years to the events of the movies. And it's not just technology that has leveled off - architecture, fashion and industrial design all seem to have stalled. Not only does everything work pretty much the same 4000 years later, it also looks pretty much the same.

When discussing Star Wars timelines, the common "0-point" is the Battle of Yavin, the destruction of the first Death Star. Events that occur before that happen BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin), and events that occur after happen ABY (After the Battle of Yavin). The events of SWTOR take place sometime around 3643 - 3641 BBY, and the events of Knights of the Old Republic (to which SWTOR is essentially a sequel) occur around 3956 BBY.

Hyperdrive

Superluminal (faster than light) space travel is a barebones necessity for any space saga. In order to skip from star system to star system and not have it take several lifetimes, starships need to somehow transcend physics and travel faster than the speed of light. The Rakatan Empire accomplished this by fusing bizarre technology and the Dark Side of the Force, over 25,000 years BBY, creating the first hyperdrive systems.

A hyperdrive system bypasses the limits of physics and relativity by bashing the time-space matrix with massive bursts of radiation to create ripples, which propel the starship through the 4 dimensions of our physical universe into hyperspace. Hyperspace is little-understood, but may be seen as a parallel universe, an alternate dimension of space-time, or perhaps the physical universe as seen in a tachyonic state.

Around 25,053 BBY, some 200 years after the Infinite Empire collapsed, scientists and engineers on Corellia and Duro independently discovered technological workarounds that allowed them to use Rakatan hyperdrive engines without needing any kind of Force-attunement. The invention of the hyperdrive paved the way for the founding of the first Galactic Republic among the Core Worlds, and the expansion of that organization to increasingly-distant star systems.

Newer hyperdrive models may be much faster and more efficient than these ancient models, but in the 3600 years between SWTOR and the Battle of Yavin, there doesn't seem to be much difference. Space travelers can flit across the galaxy in the span of a few hours. Hyperdrives are small enough to fit inside personal transports, and not just giant capital ships. There do not appear to be any significant innovations in that time span.

Blaster Technology

The same can be said of blaster technology. The Infinite Empire had it first, it got rediscovered later (at least by the time of Revan), and by 3643 BBY it had become the galactic standard for small arms. Blasters all operate on roughly the same principle: a small amount of gas is released into a chamber where it is somehow super-charged with lasers until it is broken down into a packet of electromagnetic radiation - basically, a super-excited mass of photon-spewing electrons. It is then ejected through a barrel that focuses the charge into a coherent "bolt" of particles and energy, and this bolt strikes the target with both physical mass and radiant energy (light and heat). The lightsaber operates on the same principle - the blade of a lightsaber is essentially a frozen blaster bolt that reflects back upon itself.

Particle beam weapons seem to the pinnacle of weapons technology. They are common and current during the events of Knights of the Old Republic and remain so 4000 years later. Like the hyperdrive, it is possible that 0 BBY blasters are more powerful and efficent than those of 4000 BBY, but they still use the same technological principles. Aside from some relatively minor advancements in beam-focusing, fire-cycling and such, they are largely unchanged.

Consider what humans on Earth were using as weapons 4000 years ago. Bronze-tipped spears and bows and arrows were the weapons of the most advanced armies, and chariots made their first appearances on the battlefields. A far cry from weaponized anthrax, Barrett M82 anti-materiel rifles, Apache attack helicopters and nuclear missiles. Evidently, blaster technology is the single most efficient method of ending lives, and there has been no need to develop anything more lethal.

It may be safe to assume that these technologies represent the absolute zenith of their respective fields. There is no need to improve upon them because they do the job they are meant to do more or less perfectly. This leaves only one question: why does stuff from 0 BBY look pretty much the very same as stuff from 4000 years earlier?

Industrial Design, Style

For blasters, the answer is fairly simple. There are only so many advancements that could reasonably be made in ergonomics. The shape of the hand is the shape of the hand. Grab yourself a hunk of Play-Doh, squeeze it in your fist, and that's the perfect shape for a weapon grip. Many of the weapons of Episode IV: A New Hope were built using World War II era firearms and have ergonomic features that, while not exactly "current," are still familiar today. Take a close look at a stormtrooper's blaster rifle - that's a British Sterling submachine gun with a scope mounted backwards, some piping stuck in the barrel's cooling sleeve and the collapsible stock folded underneath. The blaster pistols wielded by the rebels on the Tantive IV are also Sterling SMGs, with the stock removed, a different scope on top and a silvery-grey barrel housing with a conical tip. Han Solo's famous DL-44 blaster pistol is a German "Broomhandle" Mauser C96 with a rifle scope and some plumbing attachments. And lightsaber hilts were actually just grips from 1950's Graflex camera flashes with a few added buttons and geegaws.

The two areas where significant changes would be expected, yet fail to occur, are in clothing and starship design. This is where the mind boggles at the lack of innovation over 4000 years.

Fashion typically evolves over time. We no longer wear togas except to fairly specifically-themed parties. Fur coats might have been absolutely necessary to survival in the frigid climes of 2000 BC Northern Europe, but if you try wearing fur now some activist might decide to hurl a bucket of fake blood at you. Kings no longer wear heavy eye makeup and giant golden headdresses (at least not in public). A soldier wearing a giant feathered plume on his helmet is almost certain to get shot first on the battlefield. Why, then, are Imperial officers wearing almost identical uniforms 3600 years apart?

Note the similarities: the high, closed collar, the buttonless panel down the front, the code cylinders at each armpit, the red and blue rank insignia on the chest. The cadaverous face is also rather familiar, but that's not a design feature.

On the one hand, one could argue that Palpatine's Galactic Empire was emulating the "look and feel" of Sith Empire. Neo-classicism has real-world roots - consider the art of the Renaissance period, where European painters veered away from strictly Christian imagery and began painting Greek and Roman themes. Michelangelo likely didn't wear Greek-style robes, but the subjects of his paintings surely did.

Neo-classicism does not excuse starship design. Lucasfilm could take any SWTOR starship design, insert it into another digital remastering of one of the original films, and it would not look out of place. That doesn't make any sense. In the space of 3600 years, not one designer sat down at his workstation and thought "hmm, I can fit all this stuff into something sleeker and more aerodynamic, and maybe paint some red stripes here and here." Or, even worse, try following that backwards - if one considers the 0 BBY starships to be the equivalent of the modern-day Maserati or Nissan Z, why are the SWTOR starships not the stylistic equivalent of Model T's?

Obviously, BioWare wants to put us in a setting that is familiar to us through the shared experience of the movies and the expanded universe. What would a Jedi be without earth-tone robes and a lightsaber? What would a Galactic Republic be without starships capable of traversing it? What would a space opera be without laser battles? These things must be present in order for the story to be Star Wars.

Perhaps the Old Republic is the Star Wars equivalent of Ancient Rome - an era romanticized by modern society, and the source of many of the ideas we hold to today. The Romans borrowed much of their culture from the Greeks before them, much as the Old Republic (and the Sith Empire) borrowed from the Rakatan Infinite Empire before them. The Greeks invented democracy, physics and laws, and the Romans embraced these ideas and spread them across much of Europe and around the Mediterranean. The mark of Roman influence is heard in many modern languages - French, Italian, Spanish and English among them. We no longer wear togas, but we do continue to build great roads to ease the shipment of goods and people across great distances. Instead of gladiatorial combat, we have professional football and hockey, with epic battles fought in packed arenas and stadiums. We don't have Caesars, but we do have Senates. Et cetera.

And I imagine that if the Romans had invented lightsabers, we'd still be using those, too.