As I said last time, there are eight class stories. Originally there were eight classes. This is kind of changed now. The classes originally split into two advanced classes as ability trees partway through, which offered some different visuals and mechanics, but which still followed the exact same class story. Now you have to pick your advanced class at character creation. Rather than "advanced class" it's more like just a different interpretation of the archetype altogether. For example, for the bounty hunter, the Powertech is the heavily armored, flame-throwing Mandalorian-type guy, while the Mercenary is more like a Cad Bane cowboy in space gunfighter type. But regardless of which you pick, you'll have the same class story, companion NPCs, voice actor, etc. These classes are mirrored (from a mechanical, if not graphical) perspective across the factions too, so where the bounty hunter as the powertech and mercenary archetypes, the trooper has the vanguard and commando archetypes that are mechanically the same. They are graphically quite different, though, so they don't really feel like the same thing exactly.
This will change even further in the upcoming update in the next few weeks or so; you'll now be able to decouple your class story from your mechanical class altogether. All non-Force classes can be used to play any non-Force class story, for instance. We don't know exactly how this will work until it launches, and some changes to the class mechanics themselves are also expected. Even though this is "the mother of all SWTOR reviews" I can't actually comment on every single mechanical class, because I've only played one iteration of each class story so far, and in half of the cases, I did the mirrored Imperial and Republic versions. This means that I didn't see the other mechanics at all, sadly.
Compared to the earlier Knights of the Old Republic games, the stories are really all out. They are fully voice-acted, rather than you simply selecting from a dialogue wheel. I mean, you still select from a dialog wheel, but then your avatar will recite lines with a professional voice actor that represents a "bigger" take on what you selected in the dialog wheel. Sometimes the dialog wheel summaries aren't very good and you don't get exactly the response you thought you were getting, but if it bugs you that much, you can hit escape and start the conversation over to make different selections. For the most part, these choices aren't really choices, they're just an expression of your attitude and mood as a character, and the story will progress the exact same no matter which you pick. Occasionally a more substantial choice will pop up, like to kill or spare a character, that may reappear if spared, for example. Mostly, though, the choices that have some but not a ton of meaning are about companion influence, i.e., do they like or dislike the choice, and light or dark side allegiance. There aren't a lot of mechanical implications to light vs dark side (although we're to understand that the new system described above will be dependent, at least on force-using class mechanics, on your light vs dark side balance.) In fact, the game's morality is sometimes seriously out of whack and gives you light or dark side movement in situations that make little sense. The companion influence makes more sense, because it's based on the character of the companion, but the reality is that the choices you make that they dislike have little real impact, and you can make up for it easily by giving a companion gift or two anyway.
This is the BioWare trademark stuff here, though—companion characters, interactions, soap operas, romances and hoaky moral dilemmas that feel forced and dumb most of the time, but which occasionally work surprisingly well. Knights of the Old Republic did this quite well, although with only one story and only two directions to potentially take it, and only one romanceable option, it was obviously a bit less varied.
I say that every class story is different, and that's true, they are quite different in many ways, not least of which is tone. Some are pretty serious, some are light-hearted, some of them are mostly serious but with flashes of dry wit. However, they all follow a very similar pattern, which makes them more similar than they otherwise could be.
First, a little bit of context. Knights of the Old Republic takes place some ~3,000 years before Star Wars, and Knights of the Old Republic II takes place only about five years after that. This game takes place over 300 years later, so still long before the original movies, but also significantly after Knights and Knights II that the galactic setting is quite a bit different. The Sith Empire has emerged out of the depths of Wild Space, or wherever it was hiding, it attacked and sacked Coruscant a few years ago, but then gave it back as part of a treaty. Now, a good chunk of former Republic worlds are under the sway of the Empire and the two powers are in a state of Cold War, itching to get back to hot war in many ways. Much of what was taken for granted in the Knights games is different. In Knights, there was a healthy Jedi Order based at an Enclave on Dantooine. The opponent is Revan's Sith Empire (well, Malak's now) and is unconnected to the Sith Empire here, other than the fact that Revan and Malak were corrupted by the Sith Emperor. Anyway, that backstory is a bit complicated, so I won't get too much into it here. Revan's Sith Order and the "True Sith Empire" are two completely different polities, though, so the Sith Empire of Knights and of this game are not the same. In Knights II, the Jedi Order is almost extinct, and the Sith Triumvirate is kind of a spin-off of what happened with Revan, a bunch of crazy kooks that bear a closer resemblance to villains in a horror movie than a Star Wars movie in some ways. By the time this game starts, the Jedi Order has been rebuilt, but it is kinda sorta in self-imposed exile on Tython after the surprise attack of the Sith on Coruscant and the sacking of their temple there.
All characters start off on a starting planet. There are four of them, two class stories per planet. The smuggler and trooper start off on war-torn Ord Mantell, where Republic troops battle Imperial sponsored Separatists. The agent and bounty hunter start on Hutta (called Nal Hutta in the Clone Wars) where both, unsurprisingly, deal in the organized crime environment of the Hutts. Both Jedi classes start on Tython, and both Sith classes start on Korriban (called Moraband in the Clone Wars.) This is where you pick up your first companion, and when you're done you head to the faction fleet, before heading to the faction capital planet; Coruscant for the Republic and Dromund Kaas for the Imperials. At the end of this second planet, you get your ship, and the Introduction is officially over.
Chapter 1 is the next four planets. The order is slightly different by faction; The Republic go to Taris, Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine and Alderaan, while the Imperials swap out Taris for Balmorra. Taris is the same planet as in Knights, but it's now an overgrown jungle ruin, swarmed by rakghouls, and there's a reconstruction/recolonization effort underway. Its vibe is very, very different than in the earlier game. Chapter 1 is also, along with the Introduction, the end of the first story arc. You finish things off with your main rival and accomplish the goals that you've been chasing down. Yes, at the end of Chapter 1. This is true for all class stories, although obviously it's just set-up for bigger and badder adventures in chapters 2 and 3. All class stories converge at the end on Corellia, which is supposed to resemble Dresden in the process of the fire-bombing during World War II, I think. The Empire is invading the planet, and you either support the invasion, defend against it, or pursue your own goals with the war in the background.
Each character has a little finale after Coruscant after which the official class story is over, but more material came out shortly, including faction stories for Ilum, Makeb, Oricon, Rishi, Yavin IV, and more. Eventually you enter the Knights of the Fallen Empire expansion, where a third party has smacked down both the Sith Empire and the Republic, and has them both at heel. The story here gets pretty epic, but it's also basically exactly the same no matter which class you play. Fallen Empire is followed by Knights of the Eternal Throne. After this, the next expansion was Onslaught, and it introduced more faction-based separation. The announced expansion coming in the next few weeks is to be called Legacy of the Sith. Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne has you forming a Galactic Alliance to fight the Eternal Empire, so your a mixture of Imperial, Republic and even criminal elements all to take out the greater evil. But as you start to see success, the old Sith and Republic rivalries reopen, and the game settles back down again into Sith vs Republic, basically, although your team is a bit more eclectic now.
Because the class-style stories with your regular class-style companion relationships ends at the end of the main storyline, but rest of the game feels a bit different. You actually lose your original companions and run around with a whole different crew, eventually reuniting everyone. You have all new romance options, for instance, too, which BioWare thinks is really on brand for them and their type of storytelling. While in the main game, the romance options are more or less "normal" in the expansions, they're all over the map. When the game started giving me options to flirt with other men, weird alien gay lizard men, and who knows what else, the virtue-signaling noise drives out the signal; it materially takes away from the options to have better dialogue and character building options built in instead. While a few new options might be nice, especially considering that the "default" options for some of the characters isn't a really attractive romance choice, the reality is that most of these follow-up new options are even worse.
The game has also steadily added more levels over time. It initially went from levels 1 to 50. It currently goes up to 75, after some more creeping over time as new expansions added a few more levels, and we expect it to max out at level 80 in the Legacy of the Sith expansion. I'm not quite sure what these new levels will add exactly, though. More abilities? The level synching means that this is mostly a transparent thing anyway; I don't really feel like there's any difference playing a level 3 character vs a level 30 character vs a level 75 character except for the fact that fewer abilities are unlocked at the lower levels. If anything, it almost seems easier at the lower levels sometimes. You can also pick ability trees that customize your advanced class. For example, my powertech is on the pyrotech ability tree, which unsurprisingly focuses on all kinds of flamethrower options.
In typical MMO fashion, some players come up with "rotations", by which they mean the order in which abilities are used in combat. Personally, I think any game that has rotations is a game that takes itself too seriously as a tactical piece. I like that The Old Republic doesn't require this. It doesn't require 1337 gear to play. Old Republic, at least in the solo experience, is a pretty relaxed game that is much more about the story and exploration than it is about anything else. I know it has its raiders and fans of the MMO stuff, but I don't know how well it really stands up to "pure" MMOs in that regard, and I don't really care. Ohlen's comments, mentioned in the last post, that players really wanted something much more like Knights of the Old Republic with some online stuff here and there rather than full on World of Warcraft, but that the studio decided (for some reason) to try and chase after the perceived WoW money was off-brand for BioWare. He kind of admits regretting that a little, but I think he's dissemblin just a bit; I think that was a major problem and that they saw fairly quickly that they'd made a pretty serious miscalculation of where their fanbase was. It took them a while to sort it out, but right now, the game is pretty good for the people like me who really wanted a very different experience than what BioWare hoped to sell us.
Next, I'll start deep-diving into the specific stories and where they work and don't work.
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