Star Wars and Old Republic character notes

I made an off-hand reference in my previous post that I actually thought about a bit more since I made it. Looking at the original trilogy, Luke is the protagonist of the series overall, of course. Han is the deuteragonist. And Leia is the love interest, although there was a curious diversion where she became Han's love interest and Luke had to become a celibate monk or something. Which then later evolved into actually Leia was his sister all along. If you read The Secret History of Star Wars which examines older drafts of the scrips and the comments of the creators and actors, it becomes very obvious that those were later developments, though—the original plan for the script was much more straightforward. When Leia appeared to be the love interest in the original Star Wars, that's because she was. When Ben Kenobi told Luke that Darth Vader killed his father, that's because that was the original plan. Even in the early drafts of The Empire Strikes Back we see Luke's father make a brief appearance as a force ghost or voice or something. The change of Leia to Luke's sister wasn't done until the drafting stage of Return of the Jedi where Lucas felt that he had to tie up the loose end that he'd created perhaps foolishly by making an offhand reference to Luke not being the last hope so that there was more tension; the audience was meant to think that if Luke went to go fight Vader that he didn't necessarily have bulletproof plot armor. 

Of course, it had the additional benefit of giving another subconscious reason for why Leia was diverted in her role from Luke's love interest to being Han's love interest. In my opinion, nobody really needed this; I think subconsciously everyone got it anyway. Although Luke was the protagonist and Han the deuteragonist, everyone also understood implicitly that Han was an alpha and Luke was considerably less so. In spite of his non-protagonist role, Han was the one that men identified with or wanted to be because of his character (this was maybe less true for younger boys) as well as the member of the pair that women were more attracted to. And part of that had to do with how the script and later casting and acting played out in the first movie. I seriously doubt that it ever occurred to Lucas to make Leia shift her love interest focus from Luke to Han until after the first movie was finished, at which point it seemed maybe a bit more obvious. In fact, obviously it didn't; when Lucas had Alan Dean Foster write up a sequel for Star Wars, this shift hadn't happened. This is Splinter of the Mind's Eye which was also meant to be a low-budget sequel to Star Wars in the event that it didn't make enough money to merit a big budget sequel, which is the outcome that Lucas expected. And in that book, Leia is quite clearly still Luke's love interest; Han only gets a brief offhand mention, and Luke and Leia have all kinds of flirty moments with each other. Although Foster had a lot of leeway in terms of what kind of plot he developed, he did work closely with Lucas, and Lucas' only input to the plot outline was to remove a space dogfight which would have been effects heavy and therefore expensive to film. Other than that, Mind's Eye is the "truest" sequel to Star Wars in some ways; i.e., the sequel that held most closely to the spirit of the first movie, before Lucas got more ambitious and serious and "mythic" as the critics love to say in Empire.

In any case, I've now made sixteen characters for Old Republic, mostly so I can get the free Shae Vizsla companion for all of them. After creating the characters, I had to watch the opening cut-scene, close out the tutorials (why isn't the game smart enough to recognize that if this isn't my first character on the account, I obviously don't need the tutorials again!?) and go find the mailbox right outside of the opening cut scene location so I can open my mail, which is how ou unlock Vizsla. As well as the two pilot outfits, the old anniversary fireworks and a few other perks for new players and subscribers, etc. as it happens. And then after I did that, I logged out of that character, and decided that I'm going to be done with them until I open them back up.

I started off making eight characters. As I mentioned in my earlier post, which talked about my preferences for space opera protagonist, deuteragonist and love interest characteristics, all of these eight characters are human males. In fact, they all use the same body type and I think I even picked the same face style for all of them. This isn't meant to imply that I made the characters all look the same (although I did have at least a bit of that idea in mind) because they don't. I have different shades of skin tone from pretty darkly tanned with sunburned cheeks on my bounty hunter to pretty pale on my two Sith characters. The bounty hunter, which of course I inherited from my free to play days, has light blue eyes and my agent has green eyes; the others all have either the silver-chrome or the wolf-eyes gold colors, which I unlocked via cartel coins. And they have a variety of hair styles and colors from nearly jet black to silver-white, although some kind of brownish or blondish is the most common. My trooper even has gray hair, although in the lighting in which I picked it, I thought it looked more like a grizzly brown, so that was kind of an accident. But I think I'm going to keep it anyway. Makes the guy look older and more experienced (which is funny because in the cut scene, he's called "kid" by the other guy doing the talking; Gearbox or whatever his name was. This one was my trooper.)

But then I made eight additional characters, which I may or may not get around to playing through with. They are all women, so I can get the other dialogue actor's performance, and they are all non-humans so I can more broadly unlock the races if I ever come back. I can't remember exactly how I did it, but the last one had to be a cyborg because I was out of more alien choices to pick from. I didn't spend the cartel money to unlock the Kit Fisto race; nautolan, or whatever they're called, or the cathar or the togruta. Not only do I not want to spend real money on those options, but I don't really love any of them anyway. Again, I can't remember exactly how I did it, and I may not even ever play them anyway, but I think I have my two sith are the Darth Maul style zabrak and a trueblood, although I can't remember which is which, and my bounty hunter is chiss and my agent a rattatak. She almost looks like she could be Kaliyo's sister, which may influence how I play her, if I ever do. My two jedi are a Eeth Koth style zabrak and a miraluka although again, I can't remember for sure which is which, and my smuggler is a miralian and my trooper a cyborg.

Because each story class has two variants, which are "repeated" with cosmetic difference across factions, I was able to spread those out as well a bit. With my first pass, with one exception (the vanguard trooper variant) I avoided any of the class options that had healing options with my male characters, because that's a multiplayer option that I set my companion to do passively otherwise, while I focus on DPS-style, mostly. But with the second wave of girl alien characters, I finally went ahead and have the other variant on all of the ones I picked. If nothing else, the weapon choice will look different for them.

Old Republic Progress

Just a fairly quick note on my progress on Old Republic. People may well say; dude, that game is nine years old and most Star Wars fans have played it through years ago. Yes, that's true. However, I'm slow. Plus, because of the recent Steam launch earlier this summer, there are probably more people playing than before; in fact, there is some evidence I've seen here and there that suggest that more people are playing right now than have played in a long time. (This is true for other video games I play too; probably related to people being stuck at home and being monumentally let down by other avenues of entertainment. Movies, TV, most books, even sports all suck right now, so people are turning to video games for their entertainment. Those are starting to attack them with wokeness too, but the rot is considerably less far along in the video game world than in Hollywood or New York or in the NFL and NBA, etc.)

So with my free to play account, I had played the bounty hunter up through about halfway through Balmorra, including doing most if not all of the planetary missions on Nal Hutta and Dromund Kaas. But I was playing on an older computer that still had Windows XP, and when that OS was no longer supported, I had to stop playing for the better part of two years, I think. I was already super behind even then. Now that I've reinstalled it on a newer rig, I've sprung for a subscription temporarily. I may go ahead and keep it as long as I'm actively playing, because it seems like it offers a number of benefits. One that is a temporary benefit is that it offers Shae Viszla as a free companion, even before you normally have access to a companion, I've found. Because of that, I'll probably go ahead and create a character for every class, although I don't intend to play them yet; just enough to get that Mandalorian gal as a companion so I can use her when I do play those classes.

I did go ahead and finish the first chapter. This sounds small, but keep in mind that the prologue and first chapter, especially when done in conjunction with all of the planetary missions and heroics, as well as a few flashpoints and whatnot here and there, is at least as big—probably bigger—than the entire Knights of the Old Republic game was on it's own. The end of the first chapter for each story arc is also a major stopping point in the plot; it's kind of like I've watched the entire first Star Wars movie (about a bounty hunter, in this case, not a budding Jedi wannabe) after I watched an entire prologue movie that we didn't even actually get in reality. My character has been leveled up to max level for most of the time that I was on Alderaan before I went to the end-game (of this phase) starship insertion, so I've been building up a decent collection of Legacy levels and legacy drops on equipment; plus, green bar drops are now pretty awesome stuff, at the 270+ level equipment. I find that I still spend money almost as fast as I get it, though—probably related to my constant desire to tinker with cosmetics—so that's the only thing that I wish I had more of; credits. I've bought even a handful of cartel coins, but given that that's real money and not in-game "money" I probably won't do that anymore; I'll just save up my monthly drops of cartel coins from when I'm subscribed.

In any case, it seemed like a good time to furlough the bounty hunter for a while now that I'm halfway through his story arc, so I started up a Jedi Knight character as well, and I've finished Tython and am plowing relatively quickly through Coruscant with him, in an attempt to get my second real companion and romance option (Kyra) as well as my own spaceship, which makes a huge difference. I'm also trying to get a speeder; somehow my bounty hunter has three all of which I got for either free or pretty cheap. It seems like getting one for my Jedi will not be either, sadly, but it's a game-changer to have one instead of having to run around on your feet like a chump at half the speed. (The inclusion of fast travel is another game changer, although you can only use it to travel to places that you've been before. And you still often need to speeder around to get to exactly where you're trying to go after you've fast traveled to a taxi location or whatever. I think that's a subscriber perk, though.) My plan, after getting to the end of Chapter 1 for the Knight was to start a Sith Warrior and then a Smuggler, doing the same thing, before then turning back to the bounty hunter, probably and advancing some of my other characters that have been furloughed. Although maybe I'll add an agent in there too.

My interest in the Jedi diplomat and Sith sorcerer, as well as the trooper (whatever those classes are called; I can't even remember off-hand) are considerably less, so I was going to get to them later after I've done the ones that I really want to do. However, like I said, getting a free and relatively cool companion right away up through October 5th means that I'll probably actually create all of the other characters I want, maybe mail them some gear so they don't look like n00b chumps, unlock the companion which if I remember correctly from doing the Jedi Knight requires at least a little bit of playtime and a few cutscenes before you can use, and then having them sit waiting to "really" start until later. It's just too good an offer to pass up, and I want to do all of the characters eventually anyway. Why not create the characters so I can get the perk?

This begs a few questions, though, or maybe even an entire discussion on the nature of swashbuckling space opera. I'm finding that so far I think I really only want to create characters who are 1) men and 2) human. At least for my first pass. Why is this? In part, it's because I'm 1) a man and 2) human. But it's more than that. It occurs to me that all of the stars of the original series and the prequel series too are 1) men and 2) human. Oh, sure. Princess Leia and Queen Amidala. But they aren't stars as in the protagonists or deuteragonists sense. They're the love interests, which is a different role; swashbuckling action movies with women pretending to be men is off-putting. That said; after I've done all of the stories as a man character, I might be interested in doing it again as a woman character just to do it differently. That's a bit iffy, though, given how much I will have played the game by then.

I also find that the aliens work better as sidekicks and antagonists. Every time I think I'll make a zabrak or chiss or mirialan character, I find that it just doesn't feel right and I end up not doing it after all. Maybe this is related to my embrace of humanocentrism in fantasy; a humanocentric space opera is a little different; it's more about the protagonists, deuteragonists and love interests than it is about the setting overall, but again—it's surprisingly consistent with the Star Wars movies, if you stop to think about it. I think that unless I'm redoing the stories a second time, that they just wouldn't feel right without a protagonist who's a white, human, and young-looking man. That's just the way action stories to Americans need to be to not feel "off." And, admittedly, being a little off sometimes for variety isn't a bad thing. But I don't want to go all the way through the entire story for each class feeling off. 

Then, I also need to figure out which of the characters I actually want to do the expansion scenarios with. There are eight unique stories for each class, and then the expansions are the same (more or less, although with some minor variation between dark and light choices) regardless of which character you play, so there's no reason to play them with each class unless you just can't get enough of repeating them.

If you think about the fact that my bounty hunter playthrough, which is only halfway done, is about the size of the entire first KOTOR game, then this game is thoroughly massive compared to KOTOR. Some people say that the stories aren't as good as the KOTOR story, but most fans suggest that the better stories here are as good, and only the weaker stories are lesser than KOTOR. Granted, after I've finished the bounty hunter and Jedi knight, I doubt I'll go back and do all of the planetary missions with each character and focus more on the class missions instead (which, admittedly, means that they'll level up less fast too, but that's OK; I'm at level 75 which is supposed to be an end-game expansion level, and I got there less than halfway through the bounty hunter storyline. Which, in the original version of the game topped out at level 50 at the end-game of Chapter 3. Trying to figure out "how many KOTORs worth of content are there in this game" is probably a difficult question and pointless anyway, but the answer is clearly "at least a dozen." It's that big, and especially when you get into the Eternal Throne expansion storyline, it's as amazing and galaxy-shattering as the KOTOR stories or the original trilogy movies, if not even moreso in some aspects. Valkorian/Vitiate is as good a villain as Palpatine. In some ways, he actually might even be better.

I feel like it's a little bit of a shame that this is the venue that we have to get this content; I'd almost prefer to have a Clone Wars-like Old Republic show that adapted these storylines into a visual story arc that you watch as an action show. In some ways this is what is offered to us, except that the graphics are hit or miss and the action scenes are interactive in a hot-key combat sense, but not very immersive or exciting, honestly. The real "charm" of Old Republic, if you want to call it that, is the talking heads stuff, quite honestly, which is why I wish that it'd be converted into a new venue, because I really miss the good action scenes; blaster fights, lightsaber fights, chase scenes, starship combat, etc. It's OK in game, but does not compare at all to what the movies offer us, or even the Clone Wars or Mandalorian show. Although I don't trust anyone to do that without messing it up with wokeness and nonsense, of which there's already a bit of it in the game as it is (although the worst of it is ignorable if you just don't pick options that show it.) So what we have is likely the best that we'll get, and as we go through it, we just have to imagine what it could be like if done differently. But look how weak Rebels was compared to the original Clone Wars series, and even then Clone Wars was fitty-fitty, and The Mandalorian was much more average than it should have been. Lucasfilm just doesn't have the chops to make good stuff for the big or small screen either one.

In many ways, this is like watching the prequel trilogy anyway. You can imagine what Lucas was trying to do, and see that grand vision, but what you actually got was a very flawed execution with a lot of misses and challenges that you have to overlook, and the end result is unsatisfying in some ways and disappointing, not only because it just doesn't quite work, but even moreso because you can see how with a little bit different execution, it could have. 

Old Republic

I haven't made a new post (although I have had a number of YouTube videos posted about D&D and other things) but as I'm now back at home again after several weeks on the road, and back to sitting around at home working, but also just mostly being at home, I've engaged in video games again. I've started working on rebuilding my streak for daily challenges on Red Dead Redemption so I can be ready and set for the October outlaw pass that we know is coming in the next few weeks or so. They've also released some great new clothing items, which are fun to wear because they look pretty nice. But the Naturalist role is still very hit or miss. I like the legendary animals, but I've found that the Gus clothing are all kinda samey after a while, and not all that cool to begin with (why can't we have the hood without the coat, already?) and Harriet and literally everything associated with her is absolutely terrible. Granted, I think that her idiot aggressive and bullying SJW approach is supposed to be kind of a joke, but it's not a very funny one, because there's no remedy to it other than to refuse to engage in the role. You can't tie her up and throw her off of a bridge, or feed her to an alligator or bear; you can't catch her tent on fire and watch her burn alive and then piss on her body, which is exactly what I'd want to be able to do.

So, I haven't been doing too much beyond the basics of keeping a streak going and earning cash to buy the cool new clothes, especially the ones that will go away soon. Unfortunately, there are more gold bar gated items than I'd like, but that's always been the case. What I've actually spent a good deal more time on is the Old Republic, though. I've picked up my old bounty hunter game, where I was only about halfway through Balmorra, and I've burned through that planet, Nar Shadaa and Tatooine now, including all of the planetary missions. Rather than run off to Alderaan, I've also spent some time on Ilum, because you could pick up some missions there on the fleet. I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, though, with jumping up to a expansion before I've finished the main story, other than some basic flashpoints and other simple missions that I can do that don't have any bearing on the story.

I've decided to spring for a subscription, obviously, and I've not only nearly finished Chapter 1 (finally) but my character is now level 69; fairly close to the max level. Heck; I've even got it on during work and I do crew crafting skills in the background on one computer while I'm working on the other. Anyway, I don't have too much to say about this other than that I'm doing this, but here's a few observations:

• Combat is kind of tedious and not really all that fun. Just jacking up the hit points of enemies to make them take longer to kill doesn't make it more fun either, although at least some opponents do have some tactical stuff here and there. But mostly it's just key-mashing your way through the combats.
• I wish there was some kind of vehicle chase action scene of some kind. That's a major miss.
• Playing on the Imperial side but not being overly "evil" is probably the best to avoid silliness. I think BioWare took to heart the complaints that they had from the earlier Knights of the Old Republic game about how dark side options were just petty and stupid; sadly, it seems that the light side options are now idiotic hand-wringing rather than actual heroism or goodness.
• No sensible person will ever pick 100% light or dark. My character is about four-fifths light to one fifth dark, and I'm sometimes surprised that being true to your word and not lying is dark side, when you knew going in that that was your mission. For that matter, saving bad guys isn't always a good choice. Ever hear of a thing called justice, BioWare? Of course not. They're SJWs. But most of the missions themselves and their obvious resolution default to favoring the light side, even on the Imperial faction.
• I haven't gotten into the weird higher level pervert romance options yet, but in the age where the Democrats and their surrogates in Hollywood and elsewhere are cratering into scandal after scandal of pedophilia and harrassment, it doesn't come across as a good look. Honestly, it never did, but it seemed like relatively harmess if moronic virtue signaling a few years ago. Now, it comes across as shockingly tone deaf.

Anyway, I'm so far quite enjoying being back in, although I continue to wish that the Old Republic had been converted into some other kind of medium and cleaned up by a writer who isn't pyschologically disfunctional and creepy. That said, even with a lot of virtue-signaling and women acting like men, and strangely diverse human populations, and whatnot, it's still better Star Wars material than almost anything that's come out in the last twenty years, and certainly better than anything Kathleen Kennedy touched.