As part of my mother of all SWTOR reviews, I ended up doing a forced ranking of the class stories, least to most favorite. Then I released a modified version of it later. I guess this is the third one, although I'm focusing more on "what would I change" rather than the ranking itself.
I think with my most recent playthrough, I'm finding that all of the tech classes are preferable to me to force-users. Especially because you can use more varied mechanics to represent them now. That said, that is a personal preference that has little to do with more than the fact that I like guns better than lightsabers. Part of that is the many, many trash mobs you have to face. It's much less tedious, for whatever reason, to engage them by just standing back and plinking at them with the 1 key than it is having to move around and engage them in hand to hand. That's a very esoteric and kind of strange rationale for preferring the techs to the space wizards, but there you have it. It is what it is regardless. If you could take that element out of the picture, I think my previous ranking would still work; least to most favorite: consular, inquisitor, trooper, knight, agent, warrior, smuggler, hunter. With the caveat that the daylight between all of the top 5-6 classes is extremely small, and very minor tweaks could make them move many spots, because they all have essentially the same score, and it comes down to fine-tuning the decimal places. For this post, however, let's just do the force-users first, and the tech classes second, in this order: consular, inquisitor, knight, warrior, trooper, agent, smuggler, hunter. So; what would I change?
First off, let's again reiterate the criteria for why a class story succeeds or fails. There are several elements: 1) main character characterization, 2) the actual plot, 3) companion characters, especially girlfriend options (again, I almost exclusively play male characters). I had mechanics in there, but given the greater flexibility now, I don't think that matters as much. Although clearly I have my favorites in terms of mechanics too (gunslinger, mercenary, powertech, sniper.)
Consular. One of the consular story's biggest weaknesses is the boring main character who has no character. There needs to be a serious rewrite where the concept of the "earnest Jedi who speaks in boring fortune cookie expressions" is replaced with someone who resembles a real person, cracks some better jokes, has some more interesting opinions, etc. This is a systemic problem that affects both Jedi classes, so I won't get into details here, but I think BioWare's writers got caught in the "righteous, liberal vision of a serious hero" paradigm, and the problem is that the character is such a boring cypher with no personality that it's just frustrating to play him.
Of course, the consular's companions are pretty weak too. I never had much interest in Dr. Lizardo, who you have to run around with for several planets as your only option, while he constantly gives you lizard anthropology lectures. The only possible exception is your girlfriend character, who isn't too bad, if a little mouthy, pushy and self-important. Still, she could be much worse, and some of her worst traits come across as more immaturity rather than true character flaws. But she's not really very cute, and you get her very late, so you have no opportunity to have a proper romance with her. Plus, honestly, there's no chemistry between you and her, and that's mostly on the writing of the main character himself.
The plot is also sadly kind of flat. The dark side plague that you run around healing and the Manchurian candidate dark side brainwashing that you encounter has some potential, but it never quite seems to live up to it. They also are very similar and kind of bleed into each other, which amplifies the repetitive nature of it even more than it already is. And your villains aren't very memorable either. The other element that you do as part of your plot, running around with all of these entitled, bratty little princess diplomats, is more tedious and frustrating than fun. Honestly, the entirety of the consular story needs some serious overhaul. The main idea, of a dark side plague of some kind followed by sleeper agents who don't even know that they're sleeper agents, has some potential, but it needs a more interesting character, more interesting companion dynamics, and the adversaries and plot problems to be solved need to be much more lively.
Inquisitor. Here, the main character himself or herself—and this is probably the only class story where I actually think it works a little better as a woman—isn't really too bad. But the companions are mostly pretty lackluster, and the plot is mostly kind of silly. To the point that you wish that they'd committed to making it a farce instead of trying to pretend that we can take it with a straight face. If the whole thing had been more light-hearted, the plot itself could have worked. But the character really needs better companions. If you play a girl, you have a serviceable if pedestrian romance option, but if you play as a guy, all you get is a severely unlikeable weird alien girl. Apparently, Khem Val is romanceable, although only in the Ossus+ expansions where super gay and weird options were something that they made a point of offering. I can't imagine it for either a man or a women; the "morose monster" is, at best, only vaguely humanoid to begin with. You don't get Ashara, the romanceable alien, until you finish Taris, which is not as bad as the consular geting Nadia Grell on Quesh, or wherever it is that you finally pick her up as a companion, but it's still too late, in my opinion. Romanceable characters should be available on the first or second planet.
The villain is also really flat. You never really understand what his beef is with you, or why either of you should care one way or another about each other.
Knight. The Knight actually has a pretty good story, marred by two somewhat glaring problems; 1) lame main character, who really needs a lot more personality and spunk to feel anything at all like a real person (see similar complaint for the other Jedi character noted above). Tython is also a very rough first planet, where you are put in one hoaky moral dilemma after another where the "light side" choices are all stupid and the "dark side" choices are mostly just childish, and no matter what you pick, the stick in the mud Jedi council will lecture you like a Karen hall monitor about it. The story improves tons when you leave Tython, you get a great girlfriend character, probably the best in the game, even, and you get her on the second planet after having already interacted with her a lot on the first planet.
The plot itself is mostly pretty cool, albeit somewhat repetitive, for the first act, but it's a little silly when you're part of a strike team to go kidnap the emperor and bring him to Tython to turn him to the light side. Lolwut? I remember in college hearing about an idea floating around in Kennedy's CIA about sneaking into Cuba and shaving Castro's beard off, thinking that that would cause his government to fail. This idea is only marginally less stupid. Still, the Jedi Knight story mostly delivers interesting swashbuckling action, thrilling heroics, and over-the-top melodrama, which is pretty iconic to the Star Wars franchise, after all.
Warrior. The Sith Warrior is the dark mirror of the Jedi Knight, and if you sometimes have to choose a few dark side options on the Jedi just to not be a ridiculous parody of a liberal hero, you have to mostly choose a lot of light side options as the warrior to not be a tactically obtuse, childish psychopath. I personally find the character most enjoyable when I play him as a kind of reformer, who finds the insane dictates of the worst of the Sith counter-productive to the growth and success of the Empire, not to mention worthy of summary execution for its own right. The Sith are maniacs, and while that's kind of how they're supposed to be, it also begs the question of how their society ever formed in the first place, much less managed to last as long as it has. The early stuff has a kind of rough Spartan agoge feel to it on occasion, which kind of works, but later it's just nothing but insanely counter-productive whims and backstabbery. This weakness carries forward in the faction stories of all of the Imperial classes to a fair degree, but it really only applies as a plot point in the class story that you have to ignore and pretend that it isn't there for the two Sith classes. In the agent class, on the other hand, it's a plot point, but is treated much more reasonably, and the Imperials are constantly careful and cautious and also sometimes kind of resentful of the prominence that the Sith and their stupid ideas are given. For the most part, they do their best to stay out of the Siths' way and ignore them, so that they can competently run an Empire.
Because the Sith Warrior isn't bound to try and be serious and heroic in the minds of writers who don't understand either dimension, he actually is kind of a likeable character and feels like a real person. This is true whether you play him more dark or more light; he's still a more interesting and likeable character. I prefer him, as noted, a bit more light, but I can understand wanting to do either.
While none of the characters hit five home runs with their companions, the Warrior and the Knight both do pretty well, and have at least three or four pretty good, interesting ones. Quinn isn't exactly likeable, but he is interesting, and has some interesting plot elements inherent in his story. Vette is a likeable girlfriend, and if she wasn't a funky colored alien without any hair, I'd like her quite a bit better. Jaesa is another really interesting character, but if you run her light-side, she disappointingly doesn't offer the romance option that you kind of want from her. The writers, to their credit, took this feedback and added an expansion romance that is very satisfying; kind of suggesting that you had a lot of romantic tension all along that she tried really hard to put aside, but ultimately failed to do. But the expansion is out of scope for this discussion, so I'll say that I was always just a bit disappointed in the romance department with the Sith Warrior. Jaesa having a real romance option was a must, and having Vette be human would have been nice too.
Trooper. The plot of the trooper is surprisingly good. I think it would be greatly improved if they admitted the obvious; this guy isn't really a soldier, he's more like a spy or hitman; an "asset" as they call them in the Bourne or Bond or Mission Impossible movies. I also feel like the second act when you're recruiting your team falls a little flat; there are a few where you can quite sensibly tell your CO that you don't want this person on your team, but you have to pick him up anyway (Tanno Vik being the most obvious here, but Yuun is also super boring.) The main character himself, again, has the same problem that the Jedi have; the writers want to promote him as a serious yet heroic figure, and they have no idea how to do that without taking out all personality and character, and making the main character that you play super boring. The villains get to have more fun, and the smuggler by his nature, but these three all get really short shrift, because being told what to do by superiors and being good little boys and girls who follow orders without any attitude is what the writers think a good guy hero is, and they can't seem to add anything at all to that without making them boring. But as I said before, the trooper was a pleasant surprise to me; in spite of foreseeing the things that I wouldn't like about it accurately, it turns out that they weren't as bad as I feared, and the other elements were mostly done fairly well.
Elara Dorn is the romance option, and she's actually quite charming in many ways. I mean, as a real man if she were a real woman, I'd probably get tired of pursuing her with the hard to get attitude that she sometimes has, but that's an artifact of the way the game is structured; you can't have the romance finish up too early, so there's nothing else to do about it other than accept that you need to wait until the right pacing moment in the story.
I also feel like the trooper suffers more than most in terms of losing focus after Act I is done. This is true to some extent for all of the characters, but what follows for the Trooper until you get to the end is worse than most. Also, the second villain you get isn't very well developed or interesting.
Agent. The agent has a really interesting story, and although there is occasionally a loss of agency (no pun intended) inherent in it, the plot is probably among the best of all of the class stories. However, as I've said before, the companions are among the worst in the game. The only one that I really like is Raina Temple, but even then I have to swap her out for a prettier customization, and you get her way too late to have a credible romance with her. Kaliyo, who's supposed to be your romance option, just isn't attractive at all in looks, in personality, and especially in baggage. The idea that any man of value would have an interest in a woman like that is laughable. What's wrong with the writers? Are there not any actual men among them, only really toxic betas and women?
A better romance companion, which you pick up earlier, and better companions in general is the main thing that the agent story needs.
Smuggler. The smuggler struggles a bit with this same problem, but if you stop worrying about trying to fit what the game thinks your characters want to hear and just doing what you should be doing anyway, the smuggler works better. (Ironically, also true in real life.) It's another case study in how the writers don't seem to know jack squat about what alpha males are really like and what women actually want. It's not so bad that they made the successful men into the villains, like in Revenge of the Nerds or Beauty & the Beast, but if you're willing to take a few hits on companion approval and maybe not flirt with every single NPC that it gives you the opportunity to flirt with (most of whom a real man wouldn't be all that interested in anyway) the smuggler is a charming and engaging character to play.
I am a little frustrated that Risha, your default romance option, isn't "officially" a companion until the end of Act I, even though she's on your ship and is an NPC that you interact with a lot. It almost feels like you pick her up at the end of Coruscant, but you don't really do so completely in terms of being able to use her as a companion or customize her appearance. She's also a bit pushy and holds out too long too, but again, there are structural reasons why it has to be this way, even if it doesn't really feel right from a chemistry perspective. And, of course, you have another romanceable option among your companions, but not one that I can take seriously, so I've never pursued it with any of my many smuggler characters, nor do I intend to.
I also feel like the second act where you do privateer work is a bit weak. And the attempted plot twist feels more forced rather than clever or natural. The whole freakin' game I was saying, bring on Rogun "the Butcher", but we're "supposed" to be afraid of him the entire time. Kind of frustrating too. The whole point of a character like the smuggler is that he takes his own destiny in his hands and makes things happen, but you have to be way too much of a follower here. I know; to some degree that's dictated by the structure of the game, but a good writer at least doesn't allow you to notice it so much.
Bounty Hunter. The hunter plot isn't super complex or deep, but it works pretty well. The whole concept of the Great Hunt is a little dubious, but once you accept it, it works fine and some of the hunts in particular are actually fairly interesting. This is especially true for the Eidolon on Nar Shaddaa and Tiresias Lokai on Tatooine. As weak as the Great Hunt motivation is in some ways, it does seem to feel a little better than what follows, where you're still doing hunts, but the motivation for doing them seems even weaker. The Great Hunt contrivance is contrived and forced, a bit, but the Black List is worse. It's a little bit of a shame that the writers couldn't quite manage to rise above what they did and create something that feels just a bit more compelling. Should have probably watched more classic westerns and gangster movies before writing this. There's nothing wrong with what we got, it just feels a little too safe and not quite creative enough somehow. A kind of deja vu, too obvious plot.
I don't really love Torian Cadera as a companion, because I don't really love the standard EU presentation of Mandalorians, but I'm sure that I'm the exception there; I think otherwise that's kind of popular. Mako is one of the best girlfriends in the game, in my opinion, and Gault is pretty fun. Blizz is... whatever, and I don't know why I have to take Skadge at all; in a realistic world, I'd never accept him on my ship; I'd have killed him as quickly as I could in game as a psychopathic criminal and villain who had started targeting me and my crew to scam. Mako is also your first companion, way back on planet one, which is really how most of the girlfriends characters should be, honestly. Kyra being at the end of planet two is the only other acceptable alternative, and all of the other classes who don't do that are doing it wrong.
I'm not sure how they could have done this without making the game quite a bit bigger than it is, but the attraction of the smuggler and hunter in particular is that you kind of want to disassociate them from the faction. The smuggler isn't really a Republic agent, just like the hunter isn't an Imperial one, but you're constantly dragged back in as if by an inescapable event horizon.
No comments:
Post a Comment