I have spent the past month completing every single class storyline in SWTOR. Most of them are good, the smuggler storyline is hilarious, the bounty hunter is super badass and the Imperial agent's personal quest is a work of art. I have lied to a target's wife, pretended to be an old friend of the family, cooked dinner with her, then held her hostage and threatened to kill her when my mark came back home. I got married to an alien lady to earn the trust of her people, then abandoned my new family as soon as the job was done. The Imperial agent has no face, no name, no life apart from the roles he assumes for each mission and BioWare have done an incredible job making me feel like a cold-blooded professional in a game, which basically boils down to 'click three things' and 'murder twelve guys' in pretty much every single mission.
He's basically this guy is what I'm saying.
Playing all the class stories before jumping into the latest two expansions is by no means necessary, but you get rewarded with a bunch of cool skills and you get to know each class' companions, some of which play a relatively big part in Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne. It's a lot more awesome to see Vette popping out of a nuclear warhead if you know who the fuck Vette is. It's easier to care about characters you actually know.
So I finished all the classes, completed all the older expansions, while the one thing I really wanted to play, the main reason I decided to give this game another try after a half decade was this:
Awesome though it may be, this new setting is a bit problematic. Aesthetically, the Fallen Empire and its inhabitants look too good. Up to this point, SWTOR used this stylized, almost cartoony look for landscapes and characters throughout the entire game. Characters don't quite look 'Clone Wars', but they have this timeless, comic-esque look about them, much like characters in World of Warcraft.
Looks perfectly alright, but not exactly photorealistic.
SWTOR's hairstyles look like they're made of Play-Doh, beards look drawn-on and many pieces of body armor are simply pixellated textures, tattooed onto the body of your character, because this is a five year old MMO, where people are happy to sacrifice visual quality for the sake of performance. Fast-forward to the game's latest two expansions and the new NPCs are so detailed, you can actually see the pores on their skin, little pimples and imperfections, as well as bump-mapping on clothes, making them look like real fabric and leather.
Skin pores, bumps, freckles - those new NPCs make everyone else look shit, including player characters.
It's not a deal breaker, but it sure feels weird hanging out near all those ridiculously realistic people while my character is this skinny blue alien, who looks like she was molded out of cheap plastic.
Another problem is how they've upped the quality of some character models, but they're still using the same old facial animations to convey emotion. And while that's alright for the cartoony default models, watching the new guys smile or frown takes you right to the uncanny valley, making them look ungodly and terrifying and something that entirely should not be. Awesome!
The other problem lies within the setting itself. In a nutshell, the Emperor, ruler of the Sith Empire, ultimate badguy you had to destroy in the jedi knight's class story, is alive and well. Turns out he has built a whole second empire, married, settled down, made some creepy-ass children and now he's ready to conquer the entire galaxy. In fact, the guy tells you that he hasn't been keen on this whole Sith Empire thing for a while now and he's much more into that whole Eternal Empire gig he's running for the sake of the expansion. Imagine that. The Emperor had two lives, two identities, two empires and he considered this whole sith thing to be little more than a side project. That's a bit shitty all in itself, but it also cheapens just about everything you've worked for if you've played a jedi knight. You're basically going from defeating the Emperor and dealing a crippling blow to one of the most evil factions in Sci-Fi history to 'eh, that was just my alter ego and you've never really done anything, because here's my real empire and we're so much more badass over here'. Gee thanks, BioWare!
Let's not even get into how, by their logic, the Emperor could be running dozens of other secret empires and identities.
So to the surprise of absolutely nobody, there's this whole 'hurrdurr, BioWare ruined Star Wars' thing going on, because the setting was drastically changed, suspension of disbelief is a strong requirement and then there's the fact that the game does what every BioWare game does at some point and that's taking shit away from you.
You get frozen. You get stuck in carbonite for five years. That's a lot of time. All those companions you thought were friends for life are gone, your ship is gone and you're a fugitive in a galaxy where nobody gives a shit about your past heroic deeds. In a way it's pretty clever, because lots of people, myself included, completed their class story when SWTOR came out, then quit the game and stayed away from it for five years, which is when these ridiculously awesome trailers brought people back.
To make things more fun you get the Emperor's ghost stuck in your head, so the guy gets to see and comment on everything you do, constantly trying to influence you. Some of your new companions are loyal to the Emperor, others hate him, so they don't trust each other and most of all, they don't trust you. Those loyal to the Emperor hate you for turning him into a ghost in the first place and those who hate the Emperor, don't trust you, because he's probably manipulating you. And then you find this ridiculously overpowered battleship to replace your old starship.
Let's summarize: all your former allies are gone and assume you're dead, your new companions can't stand you or even each other. Meanwhile, you're aboard your new, super-powerful warship, searching for allies, trying to save the galaxy while the Illusive Man is constantly trying to manip... oops, wrong BioWare franchise! But that's an honest mistake, seeing how the setting of Fallen Empire is essentially Mass Effect 2.
Fortunately for me, I love Mass Effect 2, so I felt right at home. I mean, c'mon! A cool new ship, sexy new allies with real depth and personality and finally a bit of girl on girl action!
We'll bang, okay?
So my character is this righteous jedi knight, who loves to blab about the jedi code in order to take the moral high ground, only to abandon all of that nonsense whenever there's the chance to bone someone. The 'relationships' feel weirder and more forced than in any other BioWare game I've played so far. There's this super-serious sith lady who sends me on a mission and one dialogue option is, "How about a kiss for good luck?"
What follows is this really hot, passionate lesbian kiss from an NPC, who never gave two fucks about my character (figuratively or literally). The scene ends with the NPC telling me 'this is neither the time, nor the place.' Really? Then why were you eating my face just a minute ago and completely out of nowhere?
To be fair, the story sucked me right in from the very beginning and kept me wanting to play non-stop until I had finished the whole thing. There are some really awesome, surprising twists, some of which involve former companions from various classes in the game. So when Scorpio makes her utterly brilliant comeback, the effect becomes that much stronger if you've met her when playing the Imperial agent before.
She's secretly EDI, because all BioWare games are really Mass Effect.
In fact, the story is so good, I played it despite the completely broken difficulty. On the default 'story mode' setting, everything dies in one or two hits, apart from bosses, who have ridiculous amounts of health whilst requiring no strategy and dealing absolutely zero damage to the player.
There is also a 'veteran mode', which makes baddies considerably tougher. So tough, in fact, that apparently many players simply cannot beat certain chapters at all. So you really get to choose from 'too hard' and 'too easy' with absolutely nothing in between these extremes. Great job!
Personally, it didn't bother me much, because I was having too much fun with the plot and I didn't mind just eradicating everything like some kind of super-powerful god, but I can see how some players were frustrated with the awkward balancing. Still, the story ticks all checkboxes you'll expect in a BioWare plot. Twists and turns, sex, betrayal... oh yeah, almost forgot one!
So. Much. Posing.
There's also the inevitable moment where the game brutally murders one of your companions with abolutely zero chance to save him. To add context: at some point the story reunites you with Vette and Torian. And then comes the point where both of them come dangerously close to losing their lives and you can only save one of them.
Vette is a Twi'lek female. She has a vagina. She's got exotic blue skin, a vagina, a quirky sense of humor, a vagina, she's really witty, she's got a vagina and she's this fun, lovable, roguish prankster, who also happens to have a vagina. Then there's Torian, a male. Also a bounty hunter or something. Who cares? Nobody has ever fucking saved him and BioWare put him in what's possibly the most unfair popularity contest in gaming history. It doesn't help that he's simply one of the blandest companions in the entire game. He spouts random gibberish in a made-up language and he likes to cook. Yay. See you at your funeral!
Now type 'Torian' into that search bar and you'll get nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Other checkboxes I would have liked to avoid are 'you cannot defeat the boss yet because we say so' and 'here's a talkie mission where you dress up and don't murder anybody for a half hour'. The former checkbox appears multiple times, putting you into fights with some of the ultimate baddies. You can completely dominate their asses thanks to the broken difficulty, only to be interrupted by a cutscene where the bad guy rams his lightsaber up your gut and/or you get saved by somebody from what appears to be a desperate fight you cannot possibly hope to win in the cutscene.
And the whole 'dress up like a generic soldier to infiltrate the enemy castle' mission wasn't fun or believable when this idea was still new and it certainly isn't in SWTOR. Random guard blocks your way because this room is for guard captains only. So you aimlessly wander about the place, pick up a guard captain's hield and - BOOM! Free passage, because obviously you're a captain now and they don't need proof, identification or anything apart from some random shield, which is just randomly sitting about, waiting to be picked up by anyone. Is this how security works in the so-called Eternal Empire?
"Haha! I'm making Arcann look like a total puss... oh."
Speaking of ultimate baddies. Look, I can totally get behind this whole 'nobody is beyond redemption' jedi philosophy. You know, defeat a main villain, take them to the jedi temple and brainw... err, teach them about love, forgiveness and tolerance until they repent, see the errors of their ways and become good guys. At least until the bad guys take them back and make them evil again. But can I just say that sparing Arcann is dumb?
When Arcann takes over as the new emperor, he attacks five of the core worlds, levels entire cities and murders countless millions. The game also never shows or specifies which planets are under attack or which cities are getting destroyed, because whoa, budget! Whatever happened to 'show, don't tell', BioWare?
This guy commits mass-genocide on a level that would make Hitler say, 'whoa, calm down there, buddy' and when you finally bring him to his knees, his mother gets all, "Nooo, spare him, I know he can change, he is actually a really good kid" and you actually have the option to say, "Eh, what the heck" and let him go.
I bet somewhere down the line, she's gonna turn out to be super friendly, as well.
When you beat up Hitler in an ultimate showdown and he suddenly goes, "Wait! Timeout! I changed my mind! I wanna be on your team now!" You don't just shake his hand, forgive and forget, water under the bridge, he eradicated millions, but he's feeling really sorry about it right now. I forgave my brother when he sold the super-expensive 1st gen boxed edition of World of Warcraft I bought him for Christmas to spend the money on pot. I forgave my cat when she hopped on me while I was watching TV the other night, took a massive piss in my lap and went to sleep like it was nothing. I forgave Claire when she tossed off the pizza guy because we didn't have money for a tip. But you don't invite a guy who murders entire planets into your team, saying, "Yeah, I believe this guy has the potential to become a really good person." At some point you've simply crossed the line, you're an irredeemably bad person and there's no coming back from it. I think you can safely draw that line at a body count in the hundreds of millions.
You gotta slaughter several million innocent eggs to make an omelette.
All my bitching aside, Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne tell the most exciting story I have ever experienced in an MMO. The whole thing is so action-packed, full of ridiculously good cutscenes, masterful voice acting and surprise plot twists, I simply couldn't stop playing. Not even the completely broken difficulty balancing or a few overused or plain idiotic story elements could ruin an otherwise breathtaking experience. There's the charismatic Emperor, a guy you so want to trust and have on your side, even though you know he's full of shit and lying to you whenever he speaks. There's the tragic mother, who has to face the fact that she gave birth to the most horrifying space-brats in the known galaxy. There's yet another genocidal assassin droid, who derives such intense, child-like happiness from killing stuff, you just can't get yourself to tell him to stop murdering people.
Sure, you no longer get 8 completely different storylines, based on which class and faction you've picked. And the game is even less of an MMO now than it ever was. I don't care. They've already announced the next chapter of the story, slated to be released this spring. In the meanwhile, I'll be raising galactic command levels by playing any content I want, unlocking raid-quality set gear without being forced to raid. Why can't more MMOs be like that?
