The Hutt Cartel Also Rises

I've finally finished a major chunk of brand-"new" (post-launch) content for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This post covers Trel'ves's progress through the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion, including the various side-quests and other content associated with it, up through the Prelude to Shadow of Revan.

But before hitting plot and content, some technical (boring) details:

This game is made by BioWare, which means it's published by EA, which means it is infuriatingly difficult to take in-game screenshots. It actually has a dedicated screenshot key, but it seems to only work about 4% of the time, and never during cut-scenes, which are the ones I actually want to capture. There's no in-game feedback, so it isn't until after I finish, say, a 1-hour session that I'll open up the official Screenshots folder and find that it holds only 2 pictures instead of the 40+ I expected.

I've come to discover that the best way to run EA games is through Steam, which is dumb but at least lets me use Steam's infinitely more reliable and convenient screenshot capture utility. At first, though, this didn't work for me: I wasn't able to access the Steam Overlay or any associated utilities even after adding SWTOR to my library and opening from there. After some digging, I eventually discovered that this was because SWTOR requires you to run in administrator mode, which is also why you get that annoying permission prompt each and every time you open it. (Why does it require Administrator Mode? Excellent question! And one that nobody seems to know the answer to! The official answer, dating back to the 2011 launch, is that it's because the game needs to be able to patch itself. But that seems incredibly wrong to me. I mean, Steam itself is self-patching, and can run in user mode; Lord of the Rings Online is self-patching, and can run in user mode.) The solution? Launch Steam in administrator mode, then open SWTOR from within Steam. And finally! Screenshots!

This was also the first time I've subscribed to the game since my original run in the pre-Free-to-Play days, and I thought I'd note what that experience looks like now.

First of all, if you spend any time with SWTOR stuff online, you'll see lots of referral links. BioWare runs a program where subscribers can refer non-subscribers to the game, and both of them get some rewards. You can still use a code if you were previously a subscriber, as long as it hasn't been in the last few months. The program works a little differently from what I had thought, based on what I'd read online: I was under the impression that you had to actually subscribe to receive the benefits. Nope! You essentially get a 7-day Subscriber-lite trial. You can do this without entering any credit card info or other payment stuff. During this time, you are essentially a Subscriber. This carries a lot of benefits, but the big ones for me were:

• No credit limit. You'll receive all credits currently in escrow, and can accumulate and spend unlimited in-game money.
• Removes weekly limit on Space Missions. You can fly as much as you like.
• Six quickbars.
• More inventory space.
• Unlimited crew skills and simultaneous crew missions.
• Free and unlimited Medical Probes (revivals after dying in combat).

The relevant things you don't get are:

• Higher level cap. (Will still be 50 if you haven't previously subbed.)
• Access to expansions.

 But it's still really good! The credit limit thing is particularly nice; there are quite a few Legacy unlocks that cost more than the 350k non-subscriber credit limit, as well as a few pricey items like certain housing and speeders, as well as Galactic Trade Network auctions. I'd previously thought that all that stuff would be out-of-bounds for a non-subscriber, but now it looks to me like every couple of months you could use one of those codes, do all your shopping with the credits you've accumulated during that time, then lapse without ever subscribing.

If you do subscribe within 14 days of using the code, your referrer gets a benefit (probably Cartel Coins?). That's a 7-day grace period after the end of psuedo-subscriber status. There are tons of codes out there; I used one from Swtorista, who has created some really great non-spoilery guides for solo players that have helped me out during my run.

When you do subscribe, the best thing is probably to set up a monthly recurring subscription, then immediately cancel it. This gives you all the subscriber benefits, including permanently unlocking the expansion story content and the current level cap. You'll continue to get all the subscriber perks through the end of the month. It's all very easy to do online, no need to contact support or anything like that.

One other minor thing that I had misunderstood: Based on information I'd previously read, I was under the impression that, like excess credits, excess XP was saved, and after you subscribed you would automatically advance to your new level. Nope! All the XP I gained while a non-subscriber at level 50 is lost. Which is totally not a big deal at all - as always, SWTOR is overly generous with XP grants, and I ended the expansion (which is supposed to be for levels 51-55) at level 67, without any grinding or multiplayer or operations or multiplayer flashpoints or space missions or anything. But if you do care about that, it might be worth doing your one-month subscription starting at level 50 and not at the end of the F2P story content.

 
Okay! I think that's it for nuts and bolts, bytes and dollars. Now into the expansion proper.

MINI SPOILERS (for RotHC, MAJOR for the base game)

A whole bunch of stuff gets unlocked with this expansion: new areas, flashpoints, operations, side-quests, game mechanics, and so on. The single biggest addition is probably Makeb, the planet where most of the story missions take place. This is where the titular Hutt Cartel flexes its muscles: Makeb has been independent for some time, has entered into disadvantageous trade agreements with the Hutts, the Hutts (well, at least some of them) are recklessly industrializing and mining the planet's core, and you are called in to try and sort out the planet's problems and bring them into your faction's fold.

I was particularly pleased at how the game acknowledges your character's elevated stature. It's tempting for expansions and sequels to hit the reset button and push you into a new culture where nobody knows or cares who you are. Here, though, you've already accomplished great things and are recognized throughout the galaxy, and you are acknowledged as an important asset of the Republic war effort. It's kind of nice to be in that position, where characters will thank you for paying attention to their problems while they worry that they might be keeping you from grander conflicts. It can be tricky to have a high-power campaign where the stakes are still believable, and they did a great job at pulling that off.

The actual plot is pretty interesting, I'd say roughly on par with one of the original planetary arcs like Alderaan or Voss. There are some cool layers of plots to dig through, a wide range of minor and major characters, some distinctive cultural elements. There don't appear to be major branching plot lines within the arc, but you get quite a few Light Side / Dark Side decisions along the way, and a significant choice at the end. From a lore perspective, I'm always interested to see corporations depicted within Star Wars; the big players like Czerka have cropped up in the past (and make a bigger appearance later in the expansion), but here we get to see some slightly-smaller-scale businesses, including the individuals who run them. The game doesn't appear to have much of an appetite for critically examining capitalism, which is totally fine, as that's never really been a part of the Star Wars DNA (and is also one of the reasons why The Last Jedi was so nicely shocking). At the very least it's cool to have some flavor outside of the normal lightsabers-and-blasters-and-robes deal, and it does give a venue for you the player (not necessarily you the character) to question why the galaxy is the way it is.

At the time of its release, Rise of the Hutt Cartel might have been most anticipated due to its delivery of long-anticipated same-gender romance arcs, or SGRAs. I remember there being a lot of drama around this at the time of the game's initial launch. By this point, BioWare had cemented a reputation as an LGBT-friendly company with a commitment to writing diverse characters, and quite a few players were understandably bummed that all of the romances in the game (a total of nineteen!) were exclusively heterosexual. This led into one of the predictably tedious fandom "debates", with a minority arguing that gay people don't exist in the Star Wars universe, and more pointing out that KOTOR already had a lesbian romance with Juhani. The Austin studio seemed much more reserved on the issue than the Edmonton (Dragon Age / Mass Effect), but there were some vague promises that those kind of relationships would appear in the future.

At the time I'd been curious if they would do this by editing and expanding existing characters; for example, it seemed odd that female Imperial Agents can't romance Kaliyo, who is canonically bisexual. Instead, BioWare opted to add SGRAs for future characters, the first of which are introduced here. That's a minor bummer, as players might need to play through a significant amount of the game before being able to start that content, but I suspect it's a lot simpler and less risky to do this than to mess with stuff already in the game.

Up until this point, Trel'ves's only romance option had been the cocky and insufferable Doc, and it was kinda nice to start a little something with Lemda, the daughter of a wealthy CEO and a geologist who has been researching the earthquakes wracking Makeb. The "romance" is very tame: You get a couple of [Flirt] prompts over time, and if you do it often enough, there's a quick but fairly sweet kiss between you two. It's all rather light, but then again, so are the standard romances for class characters: again, this is probably in keeping with Star Wars' lighter tone, and they are firmly PG connections, as opposed to the more PG-13/R ones you can see in the M-rated BioWare games. Unlike the companion romances, though, Lemba purely lives on Makeb: she'll never travel with your party or hang out on your ship or whatever. Still better than nothing!

 
Oh: Also worth mentioning here that Makeb is gorgeous, one of the prettiest planets in a game willed with pretty planets. Particularly after the stark and cold beauty of Ilum, I really enjoyed spending time in such a lush and verdant world.

While Makeb is the single biggest element of the expansion, it probably accounts for less than half of all the new content unlocked by it. The remaining elements include both new content set on old worlds, and smaller brand-new areas and missions. The first of those are two new game modes kicked off from Coruscant, Seeker Droid searches and Macrobinocular landmark identification.

Seeker Droids are D U L L. I ran into something similar while searching for HK-51 droid parts, and this is even worse. The idea is that you travel to a planet, then find a zone within that planet, then start searching it for content. There's usually a huge area to search, each search takes, I dunno, maybe 10 seconds or so. The idea is that you get feedback over time so you can gradually narrow in on the right location, but that never seemed to work properly for me, even while using consumables that are supposed to make it more accurate. Once you finally find it, you're done, and move on to the next planet.

Macrobinoculars were a lot more fun. You travel to an area, pull out your binoculars (think of the ones Luke used to observe sandpeople in A New Hope), and pan them across the landscape looking for a target. Part of what's cool about this is finding good vantage points: the target is shown on your map, but you might be able to actually spot it from much further away if you find good sightlines. Some targets are easier to find than others, but the hardest of them are still far less frustrating than the seeker droids.

What finally crushed my spirit, though, was the way that both of these quests eventually lead into flashpoints that cannot be completed by solo players: they require a full 4-person Flashpoint team. Some of the new Flashpoints have been rebalanced for solo players, but not those ones. I knew that going in, thanks to Swtorista's guide, but it was still extremely disappointing. I'm pretty sure that they're designed as on-ramps for group content: solo players like me will get as far as they can, then be forced to join a group, then discover that they like multiplayer stuff after all and start running operations and become subscribers. But, nah. What's especially annoying about these is that the underlying quests themselves as incredibly solo-oriented: you're basically being a tourist, going to a place and looking at a thing, which is the least group-incentivized activity in the game.

It was at this point that I actually decided I'd stop playing. My initial plan had been to sub and then play all the way through to the current endgame, but after spending so much time on those missions and then hitting a wall I'd had enough. I think the final straw came when I attempted one of the Macrobinocular-linked Flashpoints, finally completed a very long and unfun platforming section (yet another game mechanic that SWTOR technically does but does not do especially well), then faced the boss, who, during a very long and challenging battle, knocked me off the edge of the platform and auto-killed me. I realized I was no longer having fun, and hadn't had fun for a while, so I resolved to wrap up the other Hutt Cartel stuff and stop playing as soon as my subscription ran out.

But that left three other elements to check out, and fortunately each was better than the one before. CZ-198 was very small, more of a daily area like Section X than anything, but it still felt nice to actually do something again, and it didn't overstay its welcome. Then came Oricon, which was actually quite cool. It had a nicely ominous atmosphere, some deep lore, good cut-scenes and a couple of vivid characters. The plot here deals with a group of ancient Sith known as the Dread Masters, who have become another rising faction; on Oricon, they are using their immense telepathic powers to project madness and despair into the minds of their foes, including the Jedi and Republic troopers attempting to establish an outpost here. This planet is dramatic: volcanic, with lots of flowing lava and tall, rough rock pillars. Once again the story culminates in group content not available to solo-ers, but this was another place where I felt more or less satisfied by the missions that were available to me.

The last part was the best: the Prologue to Shadow of Revan. Somewhat like the False Emperor arc at the end of the original game, here we have a set of Flashpoints that link together to tell a single story. This is where I absolutely have the most fun in SWTOR. They are relatively quick, fairly linear, the combat is challenging, boss fights have unique mechanics, you can see some cool cut-scenes, there are a handful of decisions to make, the stakes feel high, the loot is all good. This new arc depicts a bold plan to destroy the Sith Academy on Korriban, which eventually segues into a conspiratorial plot that shifts attention beyond the Republic and Empire, shines additional light on the Infinite Empire, and ends with the dramatic reappearance of Revan himself.

As if that wasn't enough, it also introduces still more SGRAs. The one intriguing me is Lana (LANA!!!!), a rogue Sith Lord who becomes an improbable ally. You only meet her shortly before the end of the expansion, so there isn't enough time to get too far along the arc, but I'm already intrigued by the few [Flirt]s there so far. I now think that this is probably the single best way to keep players engaged and convince them to subscribe as soon as a new expansion is released: tease them with the preview of an upcoming romance. Hey, we're suckers like that! (And, as a side note, this is also why I am still uninterested in Anthem.)

END SPOILERS

As noted above, I'm suspending my planned full playthrough of SWTOR: I want to get to some of the shiny new games populating my Steam queue, and I've been playing this for a long time. That said, the last few missions of Rise of the Hutt Cartel reminded me of just how much fun this game can be when it's firing on all cylinders, so I still would like to come back. I don't think I can wait for too long, though... more so than many other games, late-stage MMOs require muscle-memory-memorization of tons of hotkeys and macros and such. The few times I've loaded up Seberin, my original agent from 2011, I can barely move him at all because I'd optimized his commands so much that none of the standard buttons do what I now expect. But anyways, I remain impressed at the sheer scope and ambition of MMOs like this, and am at least somewhat curious about the plot arcs currently underway. Despite my griping, I do appreciate the efforts BioWare has made to make the game more solo-friendly, and I feel reasonably confident that I'll enjoy what lies ahead if and when I finally return.

Pub/Sub

You'll be pleased to learn that the galaxy is now safe. You're welcome!

This has been a bit of a whirl, but Trel'ves is now up to about the point where Seberin left off back in 2012: Level 50, completed the class and faction storylines, and dipping into the Interlude end-game content. The difference, of course, is that Seberin eventually segued into true multiplayer guild business, while Trel'ves has a large amount of new single-player content to look forward to.

I've remarked before that leveling and progression is much faster now than at launch, as seems to generally be the case for maturing MMOs with receding endgames. That said, it feels like it's taken roughly the same time to reach this point. I guess the fights and stuff along the way have been easier this time, but as I'm still hitting all of the same sidequests and stuff, I'm spending about as much time as before in cutscenes and walking around, which still adds up to quite a long time. It's kind of amusing that I started this off thinking that returning to SW:TOR would be a quicker experience than picking up a brand-new CRPG. Nope!

There are quite a few quality-of-life improvements that helped streamline this playthrough. A lot of these are tied to the Legacy system, which I think is really good design: a brand-new player's initial playthrough will be a bit slower and guide them through the systems gradually, while subsequent characters can hop around to the spots that interest them. These include things like teleportation options to a variety of locations (I find the trip back to your starship most useful), and purchaseable cooldowns on Quick Travel. You can get this all the way down to 0, which significantly cuts down on the tedium of retracing your steps to turn in quests.

Another really nice change has been transitioning Flashpoints to Story Mode. At launch, Flashpoints were group-only content that you could only complete with three other decently-well-geared and competent human beings. A lot of these have now been retuned so a solo player can finish them. These are a blast! I'd tried a couple of them with T'may back when I was leveling her, and have been more consistent about playing through the story-mode ones with Trel'ves (thanks to this very useful story order guide). They're a significant step up from the normal landscape questing process. They're a lot more exciting, cinematic, and fun: instead of roaming back and forth over an area juggling simultaneous quests ("Defeat 5 Wampa Rats," "Disable 3 Uplink Poles," "Retrieve the Crystal Trigger"), you have a strong narrative pull along a single path with a clear, compelling objective. The fights along the way are all more interesting: not overly hard, but they feel more substantial, call for some tactics, and have more engaging animations and sound effects. There's the same amount of choice-and-consequences as regular story quests, but because you're following a single plot line, you can more easily remember what you did and trace through the implications, instead of squinting at the screen and muttering "Who are you, again?"

My focused playthroughs of the Flashpoints also highlighted an oddity. Star Wars: The Old Republic is an MMORPG, but it's also a quasi-sequel to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, a beloved single-player RPG. The plot of the MMO picks up roughly one generation after the end of KOTOR 2. Most of the links are just in background and atmosphere, but the direct continuation of the KOTOR plot happens entirely through Flashpoints, which, at launch, were the one part that you couldn't complete as a single player. I'm still curious why this was: was it an attempt to strongly urge the solo players who only bought the game because of KOTOR to get involved in multiplayer? Regardless, it makes a ton of sense that these segments have now been rebalanced for solo play and make them more accessible to people who want more KOTOR.

MEGA SPOILERS (Imperial Agent and Jedi Knight class stories)

That said: It's also interesting that the story is split across mutually exclusive faction arcs. My years-ago run through the Imperial-only flashpoints gave crucial insight into the fates of KOTOR's companions; my more recent excursions into the Republic line finally shared a glimpse of Revan. I guess that's a nice way to keep subsequent playthroughs / alts more interesting, and it also makes the worldbuilding feel really cool and vast and interconnected.

I think that, ultimately, that's one of my favorite things about SW:TOR - just how big the universe seems, and the prismatic effect you get at watching the same events unfurl from different perspectives. Or even different outcomes. Regardless of whether you are playing as a Republic or Imperial character, the overall story has to be "You are the hero and did great stuff and the galaxy has changed as a result!", while the actual facts on the ground have to be the same regardless.

I feel like the Imperial progression makes a bit more sense. Again, it's been ages since I played, but I feel like there was a strong sense of momentum there: as you contributed to the war effort on each planet, you won a string of victories, pulling those planets into the Empire's control and setting the stage for future planets who were cowed by your actions. So your early work on Taris and Tatooine emboldens the Imperial faction in Alderaan's civil war; conquering Quesh and Hoth and Taris inspires the uprisings on Belsavis; all of this makes the Voss open to alliance; and finally, as a capstone, you launch an all-out assault on the core Republic world of Corellia, finally crushing them with a decisive victory.

The Republic side goes through almost the exact same progression, but instead of regular momentum, it's always two steps forward, one step back. You put down the Empire's play for a Hutt alliance on Nar Shaddaa...  oh, but now they're trying to win the civil war on Alderaan. You take care of that and pull Alderaan back into the fold... but now they're trying to seize Balmorra's weapons factories. You thwart their plots on Hoth... but now they're stirring up trouble on Belsavis. So you put that down, but the folks on Voss are still super-interested in them. You defeat the Empire everywhere in the galaxy, but they're still launching an all-out war on the core world of Corellia. It feels like you're constantly putting out fires, running around and reacting to the Empire's incursions.
 

Which... I guess that's how it usually felt in the movies, and also the usual good-guy/bad-guy dynamic in games and novels and such. It just feels kind of odd to have such a strong difference over such a long period of time, and to see it from both perspectives. The good guy needs to always be the underdog, fighting a more-powerful enemy against overwhelming odds, but that gets kind of hard to convincingly maintain over a hundred hours where you're constantly winning.

Aside from the general shape of each arc, though, it's really cool to have information gleaned in one playthrough help illuminate events in another. There are tons of examples even just from these two class stories, but the big one I'm thinking of now is the climax of the game, with Darth Malgus seizing control of the stealth fleet and declaring the New Empire. First, the world state of this event can be very different: if you're an Imperial, then Malgus is a traitor launching a coup against the true Emperor; if you're with the Republic, though, the Emperor is already dead, and Malgus is just making a bold move to succeed him.

Now: In the Jedi Knight story, you got to know the Emperor rather well during the game. In contrast, the Dark Council is an enigma: I think they're referenced in passing a couple of times, but aren't really highlighted as a major threat. You're mostly concerned with the head, not the underlings.

In the Imperial Agent storyline, it's the exact opposite. The Emperor is a total enigma: you never hear from him, or even get the impression he's very involved in running the Empire. He's a distant, brooding figure: pursuing his long-ranging arcane schemes, leaving his Council to manage the actual administration of the Empire and the war, while desperately vying for the favor of their disinterested liege. You get to know the Council very well: their factions, their rivalries, their tensions with the civilian and military infrastructure driving the Empire.

All that to say, I think the whole False Emperor arc is a lot more interesting if you've been through both of those paths and know both the Emperor and the Council. It doesn't necessarily need it - the story makes sense with only a few pieces of the puzzle - but it gets cooler and more compelling once you add the other facets to the story.

I'm like 99.5% sure I won't replay this game with yet another class, but this experience makes me very curious about just that: what additional lore and characters will be illuminated by their own stories, both for their own sake and to help add more dimensions to the stories I've already played.

This seems like a good point for a quick rundown on the Jedi Knight storyline:

Favorite companion: Kira Carsen

Favorite planet, aesthetics: Tie between Corellia and Nar Shaddaa

Favorite planet, gameplay: Tatooine

Favorite skybox: Illum

Favorite alien species: Voss

Favorite side content: Space missions

Favorite flashpoint: Maelstrom Prison

Favorite quote: "I'm in the prime of my life and I'm spending it with people who enjoy running around on exploding planets." - Doc

END SPOILERS

I was planning to roll right on into the expansion content, which is kind of the whole reason I started this playthrough in the first case. But it sounds like a new content update is dropping in December, so I might postpone my planned one-month subscription to overlap with that. The way SW:TOR handles expansions and subscriptions is kind of unusual and very cool: whenever you subscribe, you automatically and permanently get access to all the content in the game at that time, even after you unsubscribe. It looks a lot simpler than LOTRO, which usually requires a combination of subscription, expansions, and quest packs to get access to everything.

Anyways - I think there are still a few Level 50 things I can do in the meantime, but I'll probably slow my pace down for a bit, while checking in often enough to keep my key combinations memorized. But I'm definitely looking forward to making my way through all of the expansions and meeting the new companions in store!

Helping Others Is Both A Duty And An Honor

And now, Chapter 2 of my Jedi Knight playthrough of Star Wars: The Old Republic is in the bag. Or wherever people in a galaxy far, far away store their playthroughs.

I'm digging it more as I get further along. I'm already having trouble recalling the plot of the first chapter, but so far the later developments have been more intriguing.

MINI SPOILERS

I neglected to discuss the companions in my prior post. Kira is by far my favorite: I almost always bring her along, and I really enjoy her personality and her story. She is a Jedi, but comes from an unusual background: she grew up in poverty, ran away from home, and was a criminal for many years. (And, as you learn at the end of Act 1, she even served the Empire for a time.) She has a nicely sardonic and cynical worldview that's a fun change of pace from the generally self-serious Jedi you otherwise encounter.  Her dialogue reactions are interesting: she generally likes you espousing pro-Jedi and pro-Republic views, but also appreciates when you poke fun at those institutions. Her deprecating asides about institutions and planets are always a lot of fun.

 
There's a long gap between meeting Kira and Doc. Doc comes on way too hard; I'm playing as a  Jedi woman, and almost every single dialogue choice with him is responding to his aggressive flirting. This was mostly annoying - take the hint, already! - but I did kind of laugh at how he responds to some of the putdowns. He always pretends that they're compliments and continues on unfazed. This is especially fun when he has an audience. He implies we're seeing each other, I coldly shoot him down in the most devastating way possible, and he says "See? She's wild about me!"

Since my initial playthrough, BioWare has changed the Approval system to an Influence system, and my interactions with Doc make me very glad that they made that change. Virtually every interaction I had with him was negative, but it still "counts" as Influence. Now that we're past the final rejection dialogue, I can finally lighten up and build our friendship. (I marked the occasion by giving him a new custom appearance. He has the same voice, but I can kinda pretend that this is a new guy on my ship who actually respects boundaries.)

That said, the whole Doc experience has prompted me to think more about romance design in video games. (Which, granted, I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about anyways.) I'm used to having only a limited few number of opportunities to start a romantic arc, which has conditioned me to mash that "Like" button a bunch when I want to hook up: I'm always worried that I'll miss an on-ramp to the content I crave. In this game, it felt a bit tedious and unrealistic to repeat my "dislike" options so many times along the way: how many people in real life would keep trying? But, from a storytelling and roleplaying perspective, it is kind of nice to have a sort of tsundere path, with resistance before acquiescence. "I didn't like you and now I do" is a much more interesting arc than "I always liked you." Granted, this is probably trickier to handle now in a Me Too, "no means no" environment: I think that in just a couple of years pop culture has moved from seeing persistence as admirable to seeing it as creepy. I dunno. It's tough to do right, and important to do right, but it ultimately might be more interesting to let a player experience approval and disapproval at various stages along their romantic journey. I love the idea of being able to set specific boundaries, and see those boundaries honored, without necessarily killing off the romance as a whole.

Along with my periodic frustrations at Doc, the most striking feature of Chapter 2 were the incredibly repetitive choices. SO MANY MISSIONS come down to a final decision of "Should we keep these experimental weapons to aid the Republic, or destroy them so ensure nobody uses them in the future?" It's kind of an interesting choice, but they return to that well way too often and it ceases to be interesting. It's kind of like BioShock's question of "Will you kill this little girl?" - if you said "No" the first time, why the hell would you say "Yes" any of the next 20 times?

There were also a ton of choices of the form "You've defeated [bad guy]. What do?" One option is to kill (always Dark Side), and there are also choices to arrest and/or release them (always Light Side). That structure is also very repetitive, although here I did occasionally mix things up: I generally took the Light Side path, but there were one or two cases where, based on the circumstances, it seemed like all parties would be better served by execution.

It's been many years since I played the Imperial Agent storyline, and I've been trying to remember if those choices were better or if I was just more forgiving of them. From what I hazily recall, a lot of those choices had more to do with alliances: whether to honor agreements with non-Imperial forces, and how to handle misbehaving elements within the Empire. Those still had LS/DS annotations, but I thought their real-world implications were a lot more nuanced and debatable. And, ultimately, I think it's inherently more interesting to play as a good guy inside a bad hierarchy than as a good guy in a good hierarchy. Playing a Light Side Imperial Agent is inherently conflicted; a Light Side Jedi only has the conflict you create for yourself.

I feel like the game doesn't even acknowledge what could be one of the most devastating conflicts: the morality of mindfucking your opponents. I was stunned to see that, most of the time, the [Force Persuade] option has a Light Side value associated with it. It seems deeply wrong to me that hypnotizing someone else and violating their inner self, forcing them to do your bidding, would be seen as a good action. But it is! The game appears deeply confused as to whether or not the ends justify the means: yelling at someone to get your way may be Dark Side, while brainwashing them is Light Side. As with so many of my concerns, though, this really goes back to the source material. We all had a good laugh when Old Ben Kenobi did it in Episode Four, so it's canon that good guys do it, so that gets carried forward in derived media.

MEGA SPOILERS

I was still playing the game, but rolling my eyes ever-harder at each fresh iteration of "WhAt ShOuLd wE dO wItH tHeSe WeApOnS?!?!111!one!" That said, the story got really good once Chapter 2 finally hit its climax. The plot all along was really dumb and ambitious - not the plot of the story, I mean, but the scheme hatched by your Jedi masters. They're like, "Hey, why don't we just go get the emperor!" And I'm like, "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, how has nobody ever thought of this before?" It's self-evident that the plan is doomed to failure and incredibly risky and dumb, but I still was all-in for it, since I love big, dumb, ambitious gestures.

So, the bulk of Chapter 2 is you doing busywork leading up to two big achievements: finding where the Emperor's hidden space station is located, and acquiring a cloaking device that will allow your team to safely approach it. You eventually head to the station. This is where Star Wars' faux-sci-fi trappings really start to strain. It's supposedly a "thousand-year-old" station, which seems incredibly dumb in a sci-fi context - you would think that technology had significantly advanced during the past thousand years, rendering the initial construction obsolete. Just think of if, say, Theresa May retreated to a fortress constructed before the Norman Conquest. But, really, Star Wars has always been a fantasy story, wrapped in a thin sci-fi wrapper, and it makes a lot more sense here. The Emperor is ultimately an Evil Wizard, and the space station is ultimately a magic castle, and of course a thousand-year-old magic castle is gonna be more impressive than one which was built last year.

Some decently surprising stuff happens at the climax. Your party is discovered (shocking!) and defeated (wow!!!!!), and you're brainwashed by the Emperor and turned into his slave (okay, that's actually kinda unexpected). Your dead master shows back up, helps you shake off the mind control, then you rescue Kira and sneak your way off the station. At the end you meet with Lord Scourge, who you spared back in Chapter 1, and join forces with him as you leave.

So, yeah, that was a lot more plot-dense and interesting than what had come before, and helped Chapter 2 end on a particularly high note. But, the more I've thought about it, I've realized that it's almost exactly ripping off the Imperial Agent storyline. Mind control? Check - though in the IA case, it lasted for quite a while and was an interesting overarching burden you dealt with across multiple missions, whereas here it's introduced and overcome within a few real-world minutes. A spared lieutenant from the enemy returns to aid you in an hour of need? Check. I think that, in the Imperial Agent storyline, Ardun Kothe's fate can be decided by you, which makes the eventual reactive outcome more personal and meaningful. On the other hand, though, Lord Scourge actually joins you as a companion in the Jedi Knight storyline, which may feel like a more impressive result in the long run.

On the whole, though, I do really appreciate how different the class stories are. One of the most immediately obvious is the diversity. Throughout the IA storyline, you're constantly embedded inside the Imperial hierarchy, and thus constantly surrounded by humans. I remember feeling minor shock when, very late in the game, I arrived on Hoth and, for the first time, experienced being in a human-minority structure (as the Chiss compose the majority of Imperial power there). In contrast, the Republic and Jedi cultures are filled with a wide variety of non-human species, which lends a lot more visual interest and a sense of a patchwork alliance. For the most part I really dig this, but after playing for many hours, it's impossible to ignore the fact that a relatively limited number of "alien" dialogues were recorded, and then replayed over and over again across multiple planets, species, and individuals. You start to recognize these nonsensical but very distinctive phrases and anticipate exactly what they're going to say: "Ah hoka noka no pisto" is one of several favorites. What they're supposedly saying is different each time, as reflected in the subtitles; but the subtitle length bears little or no connection to the length of the recorded line. This leads to some very long and awkward silences within alien dialogue, as they wait for you to read their words long after the last syllable in a sentence has been uttered.

It's also, as I expected, interesting to see the same larger political story from two perspectives. Each players' story covers the same timeline, as a cold peace between the Republic and Empire flares into a series of proxy wars and instigated uprisings, and ultimately erupts into a full-fledged hot shooting war by the end. I remember thinking during my initial playthrough that the whole sequence felt very reminiscent of the run-up to World War 2, and I was even more struck by those parallels this time around. I'm fairly certain that the connotations are intentional, as this is yet another thing that is embedded in the Star Wars DNA. The Imperials have always been coded as Nazi Germany, from the Hugo Boss-inspired uniforms to the enormous hangars and banners evoking the Nuremberg rallies. In the game's earlier timeframe, an earlier devastating war resulted in an armistice, although it seems like in this case the Allies were the weaker party by the end. The terms of the Treaty of Coruscant are subverted and violated by the Empire, and the Republic is divided between those who seek to maintain the peace, and those who believe a new war is inevitable and are alarmed by the rapidly increasing strength of their foes. I think this metaphor is especially strong on the planet of Balmorra, which seems to be a stand-in for Czechoslovakia. While Balmorra is a relatively weak state, it has a highly developed industrial base and enormous capacity for weapons manufacturing. As with the annexation of Sudetenland, the Empire seizes this pre-existing infrastracture, which makes it a far deadlier threat as the two sides march towards an inevitable confrontation.

END SPOILERS

I'm just now dipping into Chapter 3, as my Knight attempts to wrap up the fallout from Chapter 2 and, well, we'll see what happens next. As always, there's plenty of nuts-and-bolts stuff to criticize in this game and its hundreds of quests, but the big picture continues to be a hell of a lot of fun.

There's a good chance that this will be my last playthrough of the game. If I do start a new one in the future, it's encouraging to know that I'll easily be able to just focus on the new class storyline, without replaying faction and planet quests. Those have been fairly enjoyable, but are also the most repetitive aspects of the game, and I'm glad to see that BioWare has rebalanced the early game to make them optional.

Planet Peace

Just a quick update on my return to Star Wars: The Old Republic:

I'd wondered before if my swift level advancement was due to playing during a double-XP week. Nope! Even after the event ended, my progress was very quick. I reached Level 48 at the end of Chapter 1, right after completing Alderaan. The game continues to hand out XP Boost items, none of which I have used. I'm curious if the curve will get any steeper after I hit 50, but I suspect that it'll remain fairly quick all the way until the new cap at 70.

It's interesting to see how different games handle being overleveled. In LOTRO, if you're 10 or more levels ahead of the enemy, they cease to threaten you: you can walk right past them, or even through them, without them becoming aggressive. This makes it a breeze to complete quests in low-level areas; granted, those quests won't provide meaningful XP or rewards for your level, but it can still be nice for story-completion purposes.

In SWTOR, the game will instead limit your effective level: if you are level 34, but you're currently on Taris, where enemies are around level 16-20, the game will adjust your level down to 24. It doesn't take away any higher-level abilities, but scales down your raw health and power to be more in line with your foes. That means that fights will be at least somewhat meaningful - you can't just one-shot anybody - but you're still rewarded for being overleveled. It looks like your rewards are also scaled, so you'll receive a decent amount of XP for completing a quest, whereas in LOTRO (or, I'm pretty sure, the original SWTOR) you would just receive a tiny 5XP award if you were significantly over-leveled.

I'm a bit curious about the meaning, if any, of the difference between the two games. One obvious difference is the structure of the content. SWTOR has a ton of different activities you can use to level (PVP combat, story quests, space-fighter missions, multiplayer flashpoints), but the actual story quest is very linear: except for a few minor deviations where, say, you can choose the order in which to visit Tatooine and Alderaan, you must complete each story element to advance to the next. In contrast, LOTRO has far more options in how you advance through the content. Some players visit the Trollshaws after the Lone-Lands; others head to Evendim instead. After reaching Rivendell, you can continue east to the Misty Mountains, or north to Angmar, or west to Forochel. Some players will make their way south down the Misty Mountains through Enedwaith and Dunland, while others strike east through Lorien and Mirkwood. Anyways: all that to say, SWTOR assumes that you will visit every planet in the game, while LOTRO assumes you will skip many regions, and that probably impacts their decisions on why players visit a region they're too high-level for. In LOTRO it's probably because they just want to see the beautiful sights or follow up an Epic Quest line. In SWTOR it's probably because they spent time doing non-story quests.

I'm digging a bit deeper into the whole free-to-play / cartel coin situation. Here are all of the unlocks I've bought thus far:

• Third crew skill slot
• GTN terminal and cargo hold decorations for my stronghold on Nar Shaddaa
• Companion appearance customization

I got the first one early on, and just bought the last. I kind of wish I'd gotten it earlier, so I could have swapped in my new look for Kira near the beginning of her plot instead of near the end. It is a little odd that you only reach those vendors after traveling with your companion for quite some time, as the changes in their look are pretty significant. Still, better late than never, and I'm enjoying making my party more unique-looking.

Oh! I also have had fun with costumes. Back when I was playing before, the main approach to making a decent-looking character was to use custom (orange) gear which had a look that you liked, and then keeping its mods updated as you leveled. Sometime in the past six years, BioWare has added a cosmetic outfit slot so you can display a different outfit than the one which is providing your stats. This works somewhat similarly to the one in LOTRO; the biggest difference is that the SWTOR version charges you credits each time you add an item to your cosmetic outfit, so the stakes for experimenting are higher. Anyways, I spent a very productive hour trawling the cheap aisle of the GTN looking for secondhand gear, and threw together an outfit that I really like and will probably keep for a while. Which, again, is funny - I have zero desire to go thrifting in real life, but happily throw together cute combinations in video games.

It's a somewhat similar situation for companions. All of their gear is now effectively cosmetic, and doesn't affect their stats, so you can put on whatever you like. As I discovered to my chagrin, though, you can't give them items that they can't use. I only figured this out after dropping several grand on the GTN buying light armor with a level requirement of 65. Ah, well. I did get a new chestpiece for Kira, and will be holding on to the other pieces until she can wear them, assuming I don't find something better first.

MINI SPOILERS

I neglected to talk about this in my previous post, but, for better and worse, one of the more interesting elements of the Republic plot line has to do with the Republic itself. Particularly while you're visiting Coruscant and meeting with Senators, there are several plots that deal with the mechanics of government there: elections, representation, campaigning.

On the whole, it's a rather negative portrayal. Senators scheme against one another, sharing polite words in public while arranging betrayals in private. One charismatic woman was elected on a reform platform, but took money from a criminal enterprise to fund her campaign. Another senator is a populist advocating for the Republic to disown the Jedi in order to curry favor with the Sith.

On the one hand, these are actually interesting scenarios! Unlike the binary choices I complained about in my last post, there's some room to consider alternatives and values here. Unfortunately, though, because this is Star Wars, at the end of the day the game imposes its own Light Side / Dark Side value judgment on each situation. It doesn't matter if that woman is delivering real, meaningful structural change and lifting people out of poverty: her money is tainted, so supporting her is Dark Side. It doesn't matter that the man is betraying the principles of the Republic to support the Sith: he represents the will of the people, so supporting him is Light Side. Does that seem contradictory? Don't blame me, take it up with the developers!

In a broader sense... I shouldn't be surprised that, in a post-Phantom Menace game, we get such an underwhelming view of the Senate. The overall impression you get is that it's sclerotic, dysfunctional, indecisive, corrupt. Again, the complexity of that picture is interesting, and does make the Republic/Empire dichotomy more compelling than it would be otherwise. But, playing this game has made me increasingly unhappy that we have so few positive portrayals of representative government in our speculative fiction. Fantasy is probably the worst offender, where a nation's goodness or badness entirely derives from the monarch leading it. (And it's not for lack of historical examples, whether classical Grecian democracy or medieval Italian republics.) Science fiction is a little better, especially Star Trek, but on the whole seems to veer towards militaristic fascism or corporate dystopias.

Anyways! It's so rare for us to get a sci-fi/fantasy game that includes scenes of democratic governing, and it's really discouraging to have it portrayed in such a snide, dismissive way. Over and over this game presents us with the idea that debate and consensus are for weak, sniveling cowards unwilling to make difficult decisions, and that only bold unilateral action can solve problems. That's the opposite message we should be sending.

Or, maybe to put it another way: in speculative fiction, non-representative governments (kingdoms, empires, and so on) can be shown either critically or non-critically. But it seems like representative governments are only shown critically. I definitely don't want to say there's no place in fiction for critiquing problems with democracy - they're definitely there! - but looking over the genre as a whole, it's held to a far higher standard than authoritarian governments are.

Again, though, it's hard to blame the developers for this - it's a big part of the Star Wars DNA, centered on the hero's journey instead of the betterment of society. That's one of the many reasons why I'm cautiously optimistic about what the Expanded Universe might look like after the sequels are finished, as they're doing admirable work in dismantling the bloodline-obsessed values underlying the original movies.

MEGA SPOILERS

As for the actual Jedi Knight story line: It's pretty good. The Imperial Agent one was way better, but I'm still relatively early in the JK plot, so I shouldn't pass final judgment yet. I've avoided reading any spoilers of the plot, but it was relatively highly rated, and the consensus seems to be that it's one of the most "Star Wars" plots. I'd say that's true, and... it actually reminds me in some ways of the sequels (which were started after this game was released) in the way it seems to replicate the story beats of the original trilogy.

• Young Jedi teaming up with a cute little droid in a personal space ship.

• Jedi is the secret offspring of a Sith.

• Empire has built a planet-destroying weapon that only you can stop.

• Young Jedi's master gets killed by the Sith adversary, but comes back as a Force Ghost to give guidance and instructions.

I suspect that, in 2011 when we were starved for more Star Wars stuff, this all would have felt awesome. It now all feels pretty familiar. But, again, I have two chapters left to go, and haven't even recruited half of my crew, so I imagine there's more story to come.

END SPOILERS

Despite all my grousing, I'm having a lot of fun! It feels good to be a hero, to help innocent people and solve problems and make the galaxy a safer place. There's a nice rhythm to combat as a Jedi Knight, and you look stylish as hell while swirling around two lightsabers.  I'm determined to press onward and see what else the game has in store for me.