I can’t decide if that’s my best headline ever, or my worst.

Another class storyline is now under my belt in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This time, the Sith warrior is on deck, and it turned out to be a good one.

Chirp! Chirp! Chirp!

The interesting thing about the warrior storyline to me was that the companions really ended up stealing the show. Especially one companion in particular.

As you can probably tell by now, for me the warrior story was pretty much The Vette Show, and everything else came second.

Vette is just so funny, so charming, so endlessly delightful in every way that she just eclipses everything else. Rare is the time Vette opens her mouth without making me laugh.

Yet she’s not just comedy relief, either. As you get to know her, you learn how harsh and painful her life has been — and how incredibly strong she most be to maintain her cheerful, defiant, and kind-hearted nature in the face of all she’s suffered.

Vette isn’t the best Bioware character I’ve seen, but she is possibly my favourite character in SW:TOR to date.

Vette isn’t the only strong companion for the warrior, though. I also quite liked Jaesa. I admire how earnest she is, and her disdain for fake or dishonest people.

It’s actually rather a shame she’s a warrior companion. With almost any other class, she might have become my go-to companion, but she just can’t compete with Vette.

Of course, it’s not all good news. Broonmark is a literal monster, and Pierce is a disgusting goon.

And then there’s Quinn.

Well, if you’ve played the story, you know what happens. It’s actually a shame, because I rather liked him before that. And honestly… I understand why he did what he did. I don’t condone it, but it was something of an impossible situation he was put in. Try as I might, I can’t bring myself to hate him as much as most people seem to. Mostly I’m sad our bromance had to end.

That said, you better believe I Force-choked the crap out of him.

All in all, though, warrior still has the best companions of any class I’ve yet played. No doubt about that.

I also liked that you unlock companions a little quicker as a warrior than the other classes I’ve played. Usually the game is all but over before you have a full team. Warriors have much less waiting to do.

Companions aside, the warrior story also features some great incidental characters. I want a mission that’s just the warrior, Darth Vowrawn, and that Jedi from Belsavis going out for beers. Those are some cool dudes.

All right! Back to Sith business. Grr!

But while the companions were most memorable this time, that’s not a knock against the actual storyline itself. The warrior story does not equal the agent story by any means — and at this point I doubt anything in the base game will — but it was a good ride while it lasted.

The thing I found most surprising about the warrior story is how much humour it has. Vette’s obviously a big contributor to that, but even aside from her, the amount of snark, sarcasm, and silliness you can engage in is staggering, and I found myself laughing out loud many times throughout the story. The voice actor for male warriors does deadpan incredibly well.

This is especially surprising given that Bioware’s writing, though good, has generally struck me as rather stiff and humourless (drunk Tali and offering to appoint Sera the next Divine notwithstanding). The Sith warrior story is very out of character, but in a most welcome way.

The other positive thing about the warrior story is that it’s very consistent. Every other class story — even the agent — has had at least one slow leg where not much interesting happens. The warrior story doesn’t have a lot of stand-out moments, but it also doesn’t have any significant stumbles or slow patches. It has a good flow and a consistent theme from beginning to end.

It’s very similar to the inquisitor story in some ways, but the villain in this case is a lot better. He’s truly vile, and I spent the entire time longing for the day when he would meet his end at the tip of my lightsaber.

It also does better job than usual of not presenting the divide between the Republic and Empire as entirely black and white. Being able to take the moral high ground versus the Jedi is simply delicious.

And while it may not be as galaxy-shaking as the agent story, the warrior storyline does have much less of a “side quest” feeling than most other classes. Some of what happens does have some major relevance to the game’s main story and overall lore.

I have no idea how this quest got past the censors.

The one other noteworthy thing about how this particular class story is how mature it is. In general I’ve been impressed by how much SW:TOR is able to get away with in terms of sex and violence, given the usually family friendly nature of the Star Wars universe, but the warrior story takes it to a whole other level. Your warrior can get up to some impressively kinky stuff.

On a darker note, I was quite disturbed by a mission in which you have the option to abduct a woman and deliver her to a man who clearly intends to rape her. I of course did not do so, opting instead to have the wannabe rapist killed, but damn, that’s about as dark as I’ve seen video games get.

As for gameplay, I enjoyed playing the warrior a lot, even despite SW:TOR’s innate flaws.

Of all the classes in The Old Republic, warrior (and its Republic equivalent, knight) is the only one that even comes close to capturing the extravagance of the action sequences in the Star Wars movies. The animations are both fluid and flashy, and the acrobatic agility of the class is a joy to behold.

The downside of that is it makes me hate SW:TOR’s button bloat all the more. My warrior had a perfect, satisfying rotation at around level thirty. I had enough abilities to give some depth to the rotation, but it was still relatively simple, and everything flowed beautifully.

But they just kept dumping new skills onto me after that. Having to spend half my time watching cooldowns and twisting my fingers into knots with shift modifiers bogged down the once beautiful flow of the class. Being a mainly solo player, I can mitigate this a lot by simply not bothering with a full rotation — most things don’t live that long anyway — but it’s such a shame to see a class get less fun as you level.

On the whole I still had fun playing a warrior — maybe more so than any other class — but it does perfectly encapsulate my core issue with traditional tab target/button bloat games. It’s not that I can’t have fun in such a system, but I always feel that I’m enjoying myself despite the core mechanics rather than because of them. It’s more about mitigating annoyances than capitalizing on strengths.

Um, so, what happens now?

I’ve said it before, but this time I think I mean it: I’m going to take a little break from SW:TOR now. Probably not a long break — my backlog being what it is, it might already be over by the time this post is published. But at least a couple weeks.

But I’ll be back.

I think part of the reason I’ve felt compelled to provide these little “what’s next” segments in my SW:TOR posts is that I’ve still been thinking of it as a temporary investment. Something I’ll play once, and then forget. But now I’m starting to think this might be a long-term game after all.

I’m very surprised (and perhaps a little embarrassed) by that, given all the trash I’ve talked about Star Wars over the years, but then this game is a very different beast from the movies.

So there will be more.

As for what’s next, I want to play through Knights of the Fallen Empire on my agent as soon as all the chapters are out.

I’ve also been weighing whether to bring any other characters into expansion content. Given how fun the class is and the fact Vette shows up in KotFE, my warrior is probably the best candidate for that.

The consular is also tempting. I’d see the Republic side of things, and I do sort of miss that character. But I don’t enjoy the class’s gameplay much (really regret not picking the melee subclass), and really the main thing I miss is Nadia, and her story isn’t continuing for the foreseeable future, so…

As for alts, I plan to finish my bounty hunter’s story at some point, but I’ll probably wait for the next double XP event. The completionist in me says I should play more Republic classes, but I don’t like the subclass I chose on my trooper, and the knight story seems pretty dull from what I’ve seen so far. Never saw much appeal in smuggler.

Maybe I should just embrace being an Imperial loyalist.

Having had my fill of dallying around with various class stories, I decided it was finally time to move on to the post-launch content in Star Wars: The Old Republic. While I briefly considering bringing another character forward, it didn’t take much soul-searching to determine that my Imperial agent was the character I wanted to continue on with.

Cipher Nine is back on the job!

License to Ilum:

Before moving on to expansions, I had one more piece of launch content to do: the Ilum story and its associated dungeons.

I found it all more confusing than anything. I had taken Malgus to be the main “hero” of the Empire side, and his betrayal came completely out of left field.

And I don’t understand why I was fighting him. I wanted to join him. He seemed a lot more on the level than most Sith.

At least it didn’t take much time.

Surprise of the Hutt Cartel:

To put it mildly, I didn’t have high expectations going into Rise of the Hutt Cartel. I hadn’t heard much buzz about in the community, losing the unique flavour of the class stories was bound to be a disappointment, and… well, seriously, Hutts?

However, the Makeb storyline proved to be a very pleasant surprise.

Oh, maybe it’s not on par with the agent storyline, but it’s still very much a strong story.

I know I keep saying this, but once again I’m struck by how unlike Star Wars SW:TOR feels. Makeb feels more like a sci-fi James Bond movie, all intrigue, infiltration, and tense action. Maybe it wasn’t Shakespeare, but it was exciting.

Well-paced, too. I’m not sure if Makeb was stream-lined by Knights of the Fallen Empire like the base game, but I didn’t encounter much in the way of filler, and it was easy to skip what I did find. You can just leave the handful of side-quests be and focus on the main story without missing much. Provided you don’t need the XP, anyway, and maybe not even then.

It probably helps that I’m playing an agent. The flavour of the Makeb story fits perfectly with the Imperial agent class, to the point where if I hadn’t known better I might not have even realized this wasn’t a continuation of my class story.

I can’t speak to the Republic version of events, but something else I liked about Makeb was how it subtly but noticeably put a more positive spin on the Empire. It didn’t make them out to be saints — nor should it have, as that would be too much a stretch — but it does show they’re not just monsters, either. Cytharat’s honour-bound mentality was a refreshing take on the Sith, and even if it’s more out of necessity than altruism, it was nice to see the Empire softening on their anti-alien mentality.

On the whole, the Imperial NPCs on Makeb all feel like real, multi-faceted people, not just goons for the Dark Council.

Niar in particularly is another great example of Bioware’s character writing. She’s really a pretty nasty person, and I shouldn’t have liked her… but I did. Quite a lot.

I also found Makeb to be a significant visual upgrade compared to the base game. SW:TOR’s graphics have always been very below par, and Hutt Cartel didn’t entirely change that, but Makeb definitely looks better than the base game’s planets, and in particular I noted the cutscenes were much better — more cinematic and with more natural-looking animations.

That said, while Makeb was good fun, Oricon was less impressive. It represents one of my most hated concepts in MMO gaming: a storyline which has been entirely solo-friendly up until the climax, which requires a raid group. The good news, if you can call it that, is that it wasn’t a very interesting story to begin with, so I’m not heartbroken over missing the ending.

Thankfully, Oricon was over quickly and did not waste much of my time.

Shadow of Some Guy:

Shadow of Revan was more of a mixed bag.

My big problem is that I barely know who Revan is, and I care even less. From what I gather, he was some sort of major figure in the old Knights of the Old Republic games, but I never played those, so to me, he’s just some crazy weirdo in a mask. Without any context, he’s a very dull character.

Also, there’s two of him, apparently? Confusing.

I’m not entirely fond of the alliance, however temporary, between the Empire and Republic, either. Normally this kind of “bitter enemies putting aside their differences in the face of a greater threat” story is something I love, but this is one of the rare cases where the factional divide in an MMO actually has a good lore justification. And I don’t want to associate with those dirty Pubs.

I wasn’t too keen on how much of the expansion’s story was told through dungeons at first (even if they are soloable), but SoR’s dungeons are far quicker and less tedious than those in the base game, so it wasn’t that bad in the end. Rather liked the Manaan one. Blood Hunt was total filler, though.

That said, there’s also a lot I did unequivocally like about Shadow of Revan.

Once again the story feels very cloak and dagger, and totally appropriate for the agent. It’s once again hard to tell the class story ever ended. I’m starting to think the Imperial agent was meant to be the main character for the game, and the other classes are just side content.

The story is well-paced, and once the bits with Revan are done, it really hits its stride. Ziost is possibly the highlight of the game to date — it’s at least on par with the best parts of the agent storyline, anyway.

More than ever I see nothing of Star Wars in this game. And again, coming from me, that’s praise, not criticism. I see no common thread (beyond the superficialities) between the smart, intrigue-laced sci-fi that is The Old Republic and the simplistic adventure that is the film franchise.

The character of Lana Beniko was also a highlight of the expansion. I find her quite fascinating. A good(ish) Sith is not too far-fetched, but a dispassionate Sith? Now that’s unexpected. I really want to learn her history, and what makes her tick.

How did someone like her get where she is in the Sith hierarchy? Is there some furious cauldron of passion beneath her icy surface that she somehow keeps under wraps? Is she just a natural savant with the Force? Is she so cunning she doesn’t need raw power?

There’s something about her speech pattern that reminds me of myself, too, which is strangely fascinating. I’m not used to seeing anything of myself reflected in video game characters. Especially not in ones that aren’t villains.

And she’s the perfect counterpart to my agent. Lana works within the system, and Cipher Nine works outside it. Lana is the Gordon to Nine’s Batman.

The prospect of having her as a full companion sorely tempts me to abandon my plan to not start Knights of the Fallen Empire until all the chapters are out…

As for her Republic equivalent, I don’t mind Theron Shan as a player (though I’m not a particular fan either), but for RP reasons, I’ve decided Cipher Nine hates his guts, and it’s amusing to constantly put him down and argue with him. I especially like getting all jealous and possessive where Lana is concerned.

Beyond the story, Shadow of Revan was a mostly solid experience in terms of gameplay, as well. The pacing is good — without too much filler — and the quest design is slowly getting better, with better story-telling mechanics and more diversity of gameplay.

I was particularly impressed by how the daily quests on Ziost manage to provide a satisfying experience with almost no combat. The loneliness and lack of enemies serves the story very well, too.

And the graphics continue to improve. Yavin 4 is the first area in the game to date where I’ve found myself pausing to admire the scenery. Most of SW:TOR ranges from ugly to barely adequate, but Yavin is genuinely pretty. I especially like the sunbeams and other lighting effects.

Despite some hiccups, I’m gonna chalk Shadow of Revan up as a win on the whole. Its earlier parts were weaker than Hutt Cartel, but it sure ended on a high note.

Now I need to keep my impatience in check until all the Knights chapters are out. Maybe tool around with more alts in the meanwhile…