Star Wars | Superior Realities

After a significant hiatus, I have returned to finish my goal of completing all of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s class stories. Just two to go. First up, Jedi knight.

If you ask most people what the best SWTOR class story is, most people will say agent, but second place is usually given to the knight story, which also receives almost universal praise.

I disagree with that praise, but I kind of understand where it comes from. You see, the knight story is the truest of all the class stories to the feel of Star Wars. It’s just like the movies.

That is to say the characters are paper thin, the acting is spectacularly wooden, and the whole thing is riddled with massive plot-holes. It’s pure spectacle, full of action, adventure, and excitement, but no brains and no heart.

Just like the movies.

/troll_face

Let’s start at the beginning, with chapter one. Oh, wow, chapter one is something else. I guess it’s a welcome case of faction equality. Normally you need to play Imperial to watch your character’s superiors achieve this level of cartoonish evil and clownish incompetence.

Chapter one of the Jedi knight story is such an utter mess it starts bleeding into the realm of “so bad it’s good.” It reminds me of Attack of the Clones. Unintentional comedy, but effective comedy nonetheless.

My favourite part is the Deathmark. A terrifying superweapon that can shoot dead anyone on the planet with no warning… as long as an assassin can get within 10-20 feet to target them.

In other words, it’s a “superweapon” that’s significantly less effective than a conventional sniper rifle.

Sure, okay.

Also, it’s a satellite. Why couldn’t we just shoot it down? Why was I running up and down Alderaan trying to find the control centre? My ship has guns on it…

Chapter two also makes the Republic and Jedi out to be idiots, though by then they’ve been upgraded to well-intentioned idiots. Still, as I’ve said before, it’s hard to be invested in a story that derives all its drama from the incompetence of its protagonists.

Chapter two is also later undermined by revelations in chapter three. If droids are immune, why didn’t we just send a droid army in the first place?

As for chapter three itself, it’s… not bad, actually. A little by the numbers, but it works, mostly. Kind of too little too late by that point, but it’s something.

Trouble is it’s not just the main plot that’s the problem. The Jedi consular story faltered near the end, but it still worked because by then you were invested in the characters. The knight story offers no such emotional hook, having one of the weakest companion line-ups of any class.

T7 joins Jorgan, Kaliyo, and Khem in the ranks of awful first companions. It’s pretty hard in the first place to form an attachment to a beeping metal box, but even if he weren’t a talking toaster, T7 still would have been a terrible character. What an obnoxious, over the top Mary Sue.

I thought I was going to like Kira because she’s played by Laura Bailey, who’s one of my favourite voice actresses, but to be honest she’s just kind of a flat character. A one-dimensional “bad girl.” Her backstory is pretty interesting — much more interesting than the player’s, in fact; like Elara, I wound up wishing we were playing as her — but the whole thing wraps up way too fast.

Also, while I think Jedi concerns over falling to the dark side are usually dogma and paranoia, I have to say Kira is one person who may actually be at serious risk of going full Vader at some point. I particularly liked the part where she casually mentions how it’d be cool if the Jedi overthrew the Senate and turned the Republic into a theocracy.

Okay.

Then there’s Doc, who is just unctuous and insufferable on every level, and Rusk, who somehow manages to be even more of a robot than the actual robot on the crew.

Finally, we have Lord Scourge, who is actually pretty cool. He’s a little too hardcore Sith even for my taste sometimes, but on the whole he’s a pretty interesting character. Twisted, yet not without a certain strange nobility.

It’s a shame he didn’t show up during the Fallen Empire/Eternal Throne arc. Seems like he should have.

Interestingly, the most compelling character of the knight story by far isn’t a companion at all, but Tala-Reh of Voss. She is easily more likable and more interesting than all the knight companions combined, and it’s a crying shame she was relegated to a one-off character for a single planetary arc. I know I’d much rather have a beautifully tragic warrior-poet on my crew than Microwave Mary Sue, Sergeant Killbot, or Dr. Nick Riviera.

A bit of a tangent, but since we’re on the subject, how many dumptrucks of money do I have to drive up to Bioware to make Voss a playable race? Yes, I know that would be problematic from a lore perspective, but I’m willing to handwave that. I want to be a Voss. They’re just too cool.

With all of that ranting, though, I still haven’t gotten to the worst part of the knight story: The knight himself.

His voice acting is just so utterly lifeless and monotone throughout. It’s utterly impossible to inject any kind of personality into the character, no matter what choices you make. It sucks all of the soul out of the story.

I suppose I could have rerolled as a female, but from what I’ve seen, the female knight voice isn’t much better. I think “the knight has no personality” may have been a deliberate design choice on Bioware’s part, because I know the female knight is voiced by the same actress who did Kirsten Geary in TSW, and while I think Geary is a bit overrated, I could never claim she lacks for personality.

(Plus she also voiced Madame Roget and Bong Cha, and those are characters I liked just fine.)

As for good news? Well, I enjoyed playing the class as much as I ever enjoy anything in SWTOR. The spec I chose has a really tight combo at the heart of its rotation that feels really satisfying to use. Being a DoT spec seems to mitigate the pain of SWTOR’s button bloat a bit. No point in using every DoT on weaker enemies. There’s actual decisions to make in the rotation.

So it’s not all bad, but in short, the Jedi knight story failed to impress. I still wouldn’t say it’s the worst class story, though. I don’t think anyone’s depriving trooper of that honour at this point. The knight story was many things, but at least it wasn’t boring.

One more to go.

Get your boots on, Mako. It’s time.

Man, what’s going on with SWTOR? They seemed to be on such a roll there with Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne. Two great expansions in rapid succession that seemed highly successful by just about every possible measure. But now I return to the game after nearly a year away, and it seems to be floundering, with barely a trickle of new story added since I left.

Do note this post will contain spoilers for Knights of the Eternal Throne and the recent patches.

It’s not that I don’t like the new story. It’s imperfect, but it’s got a lot going for it.

I do give Bioware major points to finding a way to bring drama to the story after effectively painting themselves into a corner with the ending to Eternal Throne. At this point, the player is the most powerful person in the galaxy, commanding an army that no force in existence has yet been able to beat.

It’s hard to make a dramatic story in that context. The War for Iokath suffered from this. Why am I wasting time fighting a ground war against the Republic when I can just threaten to wipe Coruscant off the map with the Eternal Fleet?

There’s pretty much only one thing left that can threaten the Eternal Alliance: a betrayal from within its own ranks. And very wisely, that’s exactly what Bioware has thrown at us.

Unfortunately, I had the traitor’s identity spoiled for me, so the reveal didn’t have much drama, but I still think making Theron the traitor is an interesting path to take.

More than anything else, I admire the sheer gutsiness of it. Theron’s been around for a long time. People have put a lot of effort into grinding influence for him. Many people have even romanced him. I feel really bad for those people — I’d be losing it if Lana had been the traitor — but at the same time I can’t help but admire Bioware for being willing to take such a huge risk. No sacrificing good story for the sake of gameplay here.

It fits well with my own RP, too. As a player, I’ve never had any strong feelings one way or another on Theron, but my agent has always hated him. This is due to a combination of the traumatic experiences she’s had at the hands of other Republic spies and his close relationship with Lana — Cipher Nine is the jealous type.

So having Theron now turn traitor is a great escalation of the tension that’s always existed between them.

Also, speaking of Lana, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of romance content in recent patches. I mean, it’s not a lot, but it’s more than I expected, and it’s well done. I think I might need to reexamine my views on relationships, because I think Lana’s bloodthirsty tirade about the wrath and ruin she’ll bring down on anyone who hurts me is just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.

It’s an interesting story, but the trouble is there’s just so little of it. Each of the three major content patches since I played last contains roughly an hour of new story. Even TSW, at least prior to the pre-reboot drought, was putting out more content than this.

It’s not just a lack of bang for my proverbial buck, but the extreme brevity of the story harms its quality, too. I think Theron may have a point, and there’s probably a great conversation to be had around the Eternal Alliance playing Team Zakuul: Galaxy Police, but there’s just no time for any of that, so instead of a gripping ideological split it’s more, “I’m the bad guy now, kthxbai.”

Also, we need to talk about Copero. Man, that was a disappointment. As a Chiss main, I was really looking forward to finally getting to know Cipher Nine’s people. Not being a big Star Wars fan, I know very little about the Chiss, and I’ve always regretted being so ignorant of my own character’s origins.

But the Copero flashpoint and accompanying story tells us pretty much nothing about the Chiss, their history, their culture, or why they’re the only society in history the Sith have chosen as allies. They’re just a different color of trash mob to mow down.

On that note, it also needs to be said Copero is an absolutely miserable experience from a gameplay perspective. Umbara was pretty good, and I thought maybe Bioware was finally figuring out how to do fun dungeons, but Copero is a long, long slog through endless trash mobs and bosses that have about twice as much health as they should. It was painful — actually painful; my fingers were getting sore by the end.

To make matters worse, I had to do it twice. For some reason story mode and solo mode are separate this time, and I made the mistake of doing story mode first, which doesn’t count for the story mission. I therefore had to pick up the actual story mode (which is called solo mode) and do it all over again.

I feel a bit dumb, but based on general chat, I am far from the only person to make that mistake.

Oh, and there’s no recognition at all that I’m playing a Chiss. Racial content is usually very minimal in SWTOR, so I wasn’t expecting much, but at least a few dialogue tweaks would have been nice. It’s weird having all the Chiss treating my Chiss as an outsider.

At least Raina’s back. She was one the last missing companions I really wanted back — just waiting on Nadia now. Although it was too short as always, I did really enjoy seeing her and Cipher Nine catch up. That was a very real feeling moment. I’ve always liked their relationship.

So it’s not all bad news, but nonetheless, it’s a big letdown after how stellar Eternal Throne was. My hope is that the current lull is due to most of Bioware’s efforts being put toward another big expansion, and I think there’s pretty good odds that is the case, but I don’t like having to take it on faith. It would be nice to hear them confirm, “Yes, we’re working on Knights of Theron’s Douchey New Haircut; just be patient.”

Because at face value, it looks like SWTOR reinvented itself for the better only to squander all its momentum and faceplant once again.

Superior Realities

Tag Archives: Star Wars

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