Haul Romund

I've come to the conclusion that the best way to get screenshots out of the game of my characters is by taking regular Prt Sc images from my playback using Microsoft Photos Video Editor. Yeah, the resolution isn't the highest, and without a graphics card, the game my run fairly well on a fairly high graphics spec based on the strength of my processor, but the video editing software is a limitation. (As an aside, my brother and I, who worked on this, still can't figure out why we couldn't get the graphics card to work without causing problems. We eventually had to give up. It's not that we didn't have one, it's just that it wasn't working. Maybe I should have just bought a refurbished gaming PC from Newegg. Whatever. Now, it is what it is.) And I think that there's value for other reasons in leaving subtitles on, as well as the labels of NPCs and whatnot out in the field so I can see them better. This makes actually playing a better experience, but screenshots a marginally worse one. I still believe it's the way to go. 

Anyway, I edited some video last night, and took these grabs while I was at it, mostly facial close-ups during cut-scenes, but not entirely. Haul Romund, who might have been Paul or Saul Romund in our world, but in space many generations from now, some names have had attritional changes to their spelling and some of their letters, is an interesting guy, and I made him in look the way he does deliberately to use some of the new complexions with the "designer stubble" look to them. He's got a fairly dark "spacer's tan" which I've heard referenced in a number of older space opera stories—maybe I should even have used the goggles tan-lines complexions for him, although then I think I wouldn't have been able to get the designer stubble. He's the first character I built with "tawny eyes"—the very light green/hazel alternative that is a default alternative that all humans can choose, although he doesn't have auburn hair. Given that this is a reasonable approximation of my own actual eye color, or at least the closest to it, you'd think I'd have used it before now, but I guess I was very enchanted with the white and yellow eye options that I have to make slightly exotic but not too much-so looking characters. And I've had a couple of characters use various blue eye colors and the emerald green ones. 

Haul is a smuggler, and he's playing the smuggler class story. Because this is much of his early video, it shows him mostly on Ord Mantell. But, he's a mercenary in terms of mechanics, a bounty hunter character class. Like the smuggler, of course, or at least one version of the smuggler, it uses dual pistols as its class weapon, and doesn't focus quite as much on gadgetry built into the armor as the other bounty hunter option. I've said this before, and I'm not alone in recognizing it, but while the bounty hunter is paired with the trooper in terms of mirrored mechanics, in some ways, it's paired as much with the smuggler (who's otherwise paired with the agent). Not only in terms of the weapons used (one or two pistols, depending on the advanced class chosen) but also just in terms of the feel of the class and the type of story that each tells. The smuggler and the bounty hunter are both iconic Western freelancers; the independent gunfighter or cowboy, while the trooper and the agent are both officers and official positions within their respective governments. Without knowing anything about the class stories, years and years ago the class concepts of the bounty hunter and smuggler appealed to me the most, and while there are some flaws in the class stories, particularly the smuggler's, those are still my favorite two to play. And in some ways, I think the mercenary fits the smuggler archetype just as well as it does the bounty hunter; I've really enjoyed playing Haul. I haven't edited or uploaded a lot of video of his playthrough yet, but I'll get on that over the next few weeks. I have a lot of recorded raw video to edit and upload, and since I just finished all of the seasons and event stuff that I had going on, I'm kind of thinking it's time to get some of that backlog out of the way before playing and therefore recording too much more.

Haul's counterparts among my characters are Vant Galaide, a mercenary I created before 7.x dropped, so he's playing the bounty hunter story (and he's only one planet ahead of Haul) and Wulf Hengest, who looks more like Haul, but who is a bounty hunter story with a vanguard trooper mechanic. I somehow see the three of them as... not related, necessarily, but as similar characters.

This is my numero uno default look for Haul, and it's a bit more armored and and overt than the smuggler default in the game, but given that he's a mercenary class, it seems appropriate. Actually, it seems appropriate anyway; Star Wars is, in many ways, a Western in space, and in Westerns, people running around armed was common. Maybe not armored, but this stuff doesn't look like a military uniform. It looks like what a man of action in space might wear.

The guns are part of the look. I created this character before cosmetic weapons were available, so this was meant to be his guns for everything. Now that they are available, a few outfits have optional guns, but I still want to keep the majority using these huge mamma-jammas.