Companions

Like everyone, I'm often distracted by current events right now, and I am often actively seeking to distract myself from current events right now. Vox Day, as is often the case, says it best—to be patient, because disinformation is the order of the day, and few people know what's really going on, and those people are necessarily not talking about it. Meanwhile, the people who are talking are known liars and the only thing you can trust from them is that you shouldn't ever trust what they say.

So, today I'll try to make two posts; the first a very frivolous one about the companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) and the second a more interesting one summarizing and commenting briefly on a paper I got from academia.edu by John T. Koch on Indo-European branching, which presents several working hypothesis (although right away, I have an issue with the first one. But still; good work overall.) Granted, I'm not an Indo-European expert, so maybe nobody cares what I think of his paper, but precisely because I'm not mired in the details that the experts wrangle over, I think I'm able to see big picture stuff fairly well. At least I like to think so. In any case, here's a teaser image from that paper attached the post, which I quite like. I also like the division of Proto-Indo-European into various "stocks" representing the unified body of languages at various stages after other sub-families "split off." This makes the assumption that there are ten known subfamilies, while noting that various "big time" branches have completely unknown affiliations, such as Thracian, and therefore have to be ignored for purposes of this tree.

Let me explain very briefly the image, but I'll keep further commentary for the other post. Which may happen today or tomorrow, depending on my time today. Proto-Indo-European 1, or PIE 1, would be the last "complete" Proto-Indo-European language, and would include the Anatolian branch, the first to split off. PIE 2 is after Anatolian splits off, and right before the Tocharian branch splits off. PIE 3 is on the verge of spinning out Albanian, PIE 4 is on the verge of spinning out the Italo-Celtic languages, PIE 5 is on the verge of spinning out the Greco-Armenian branch (and possibly Phrygian, as part of this branch? The paleo-Balkan language situation is a Charlie Foxtrot for sure.) PIE 6 is the last of the "unified" part of Indo-European, although it could really just be called the Balto-Slavic branch + the Indo-Iranian branch. The placement of Germanic is tricky, and it "floats" over the image, but that's part of the discussion. From the get-go, the placement of Germanic has been tricky, as there are things that tantalizingly seem to pull it towards the Balto-Slavic branch and others that pull it towards the Italo-Celtic branch in the estimation of linguists. To me that makes Germanic one of the more interesting of the bunch, and the fact that of course I speak a Germanic language as my native language, and my genetics go back nearly a thousand years to people of Germanic descent (although the oldest guy we have information for was a Norman and the father of one who crossed the English Channel with William the Conquerer; technically a Germanic person speaking a Romance language! That said, my ancestry is overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon and British Celtic, not Frankish, Viking or Norman) makes it doubly interesting to me. 

Anyway, that's for next time. Right now, I want to refer to this relatively recent article on companions in SWTOR (written at the end of 2019 makes it just over a year old, but still—given the age of the game, that's pretty recent.) Although I haven't yet finished all of the stories of all of the characters (or even started with a few of the classes) I've seen enough on Youtube playthroughs over time to feel reasonably confident to comment, without being myself (yet) a "legendary player" who's completed all eight class stories. (As an aside, I'm about three fourths of the way through Knights of the Fallen Empire with my Jedi Knight, I'm due to start the Shadow of Revan with my Sith Warrior, I'm well into chapter 2 with my Smuggler and just starting chapter 1 with my Agent. And, as a reminder, although I'm starting over with a new character, I did do all the way through chapter 1 with a bounty hunter before accidentally ending up locking out my companion stories by doing some Onderon stuff. Ugh. That's why I made a story progression tracker in Google Sheets to make sure that I didn't screw anyone else's stuff up.)

Let's see my commentary on best companions:

Jedi Knight: I mostly agree, although I tend to like bringing T7 along quite a bit, and I think Doc has tons of interesting dialogue. His backstory isn't quite as intriguing as that of Scourge, but his dialogue is funnier. Most of that character-building stuff happens in the ship between planets anyway, although there's some interesting snippets here and there if you have the right character with you at the right time.

Sith Warrior: I'm not completely in agreement. I don't like Vette as much as the rest of the crew seems to. I think if she were human instead of Twi'lek, I probably would, but she's not, so that's a moot point. Also, I did light side Jaesa, and can't really imagine doing the dark side stuff. The morality of Star Wars games, particularly when it's trying to portray the dark side, is puerile and stupid. While this goes both ways quite often, where blatantly immoral acts are light side (like lying and breaking your word, and abandoning your responsibilities to your people), it's particularly egregious with the dark side stuff. My Sith Warrior did more light side than dark side choices, mostly—but not always, because they didn't always make any logical sense either. In any case, doing things that way means that my experience with Jaesa in particular was very different. I like her, especially with the red-hair or blond-hair customization options for light side, and the platonic romance between them was kinda amusing—with a big pay-off coming at the end of the expansion storylines when you're reunited and it is a full-on regular romance. Best romantic partner pay-off in the game, although it requires patience to pull off.

Jedi Consular: While I confess to not being super informed on this one, from what I have seen, I think that it's a reasonable assessment.

Sith Inquisitor: I'll say more or less the same thing about the consular, although the fact that your "default" romance option isn't usually considered one of the best companions to take along should be a clue that the romance options aren't really satisfactory. In my opinion, your "romanceable" companion should be your first choice, and if it's not, that's not a great romance.

Trooper: Once again, I'll defer to the article, as I don't really have the expertise to rebut it. But my playthrough on Youtube experience would tend to agree, or at least not have any reason to question it. I'd be interested, quite honestly, in who the worst companion choices would be too. Heck, they should have ranked the "full stable."

Bounty Hunter: 100% agree with Mako. Despite the weird sharky name, she's one of the better NPC characters in the game period, and a perfectly written match for the hunter. I'm a little less sold on Torian, although if you're playing a female character and want a romanceable option, I guess that moves him up. Gault Renow is much funnier to have around. Blizz is entertaining, but the novelty value tends to wear off after a while.

Smuggler: I agree with this assessment. I will say that I'm disappointed that you have so many interactions with Risha before she's your companion, so you can't apply a customization yet. And that you pick up Guss pretty late; he'd be fun to have around longer.

Agent: Sigh. The poor agent. I really dislike Kaliyo, who's the first (main?) companion and default romance option, so I suppose this is a good enough list. I don't much like Vector either. Raina Temple I probably prefer to SCORPIO, because she's my actual romance choice (after applying a customization that makes her white; either #4 on Belsavis or #9 from the GTN). But in general, his team is my least favorite of the eight classes. Which is too bad, because he's one of the most interesting characters himself, and has one of the best plots. Putting him as a default with Kaliyo almost seems like it's a deliberate emasculation of James Bond in space.

It's interesting, of course, that pretty much nobody picks Kaliyo as a favorite companion for the agent or a favored romance option overall. Luckily, they actually gave you an alternative, even if you can't pick it up until fairly late, in the form of Temple.