Chapter XI: Disappointed

Just like when chapter ten came out, I don't want to get into a detailed discussion of the new chapter's story as I'll eventually get around to that via my "KotFE Chapter by Chapter" series anyway. But there are a couple of things about last night's patch that I feel the need to mention.

First off, is it me or are those subscriber rewards getting more and more bizarre? I've seen some ugly pieces of armour in this game over the years, but why in the world would you want to wear another character's head as a hat? That's just morbidly bizarre.

I was rather looking forward to chapter eleven, because the preview picture had Aric Jorgan on it. While I thought that chapter ten has its good points, recruiting a terrorist into my Alliance just felt all kinds of wrong for a trooper, so I was looking forward to the next chapter featuring someone my character would actually care about and whom it would make sense to seek out.

I almost shouted at my screen when, right within the very first conversation, my character questioned why she should get involved with recruiting Havoc Squad. Maybe because you're its former commander?! That line really should have been taken out for troopers.

Then I got into the phase to meet up with Jorgan & Co. - just to discover that the old cathar was running around topless. The really funny thing in hindsight is that it actually took me a moment to realise that this was a bug - Havoc Squad is supposed to be on some sort of guerilla mission in the swamp, so I actually wondered for a second whether partial nudity was part of the plan. It was only when I noticed that Jorgan wasn't wearing any trousers either and that the rest of the squad was fully suited up that it truly hit me that I had another case of 4.0's "no trousers" bug on my hands.

Oh well, that's kind of funny, right? I started to move on towards the next phase but allowed myself to get distracted by the numerous gathering nodes in the swamp - it's funny because it's not even like I needed more herbs; I just enjoy tidying up my mini-map. Next mission step: "Talk to Aric Jorgan". However, there was no Aric in the marked area. Could I summon him? Nope. Neither could I summon any other companion. Hmm.

On the forums I found out that at least I wasn't the only one having this problem, and a recommended workaround was to reset the entire mission and start over (which also gets rid of the nudity). After that, I was finally able to have the next conversation with Aric.

Then it was onwards to the next objective, to click on six doors. I found a total of seven, however when I clicked on two of them, they just spawned a bunch of skytroopers and didn't count towards my objective, leaving me stuck on 5/6. After having wasted some more time looking for any doors I might have missed, I eventually had to leg it out of the phase to reset again.

The sad thing is, in the end I think "Disavowed" was a pretty decent chapter and hit all the notes I was hoping for as a trooper - or it would have, if I hadn't constantly been interrupted by stupid bugs. I know that this kind of stuff happens, but the frequency and regularity with which Bioware releases content with game-breaking bugs is frankly getting ridiculous. They already postponed the Eternal Championship and the next Alliance alert because they weren't ready, so they had just one job in this patch: to get out the new chapter and to make sure that it's playable.

I always feel like the Bioware guys are very passionate and have their heart in their right place, but their quality control is simply atrocious. I hate to think how many subs they lose purely over stuff like this.