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.