Musings on Onslaught's Story, Part 2: Mek-Sha

So after Onderon's plot felt a bit mediocre to me, I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about Mek-Sha, presumably totally unique smuggler haven #247 and not the sort of setting I tend to immediately fall in love with. (Spoilers to follow. You've been warned.)

In this case, I was very wrong though! Your task on Mek-Sha primarily concerns diplomacy, as the Republic wants to buy fuel for its fleet and needs the five biggest gangs on the asteroid to vote in favour of going through with the deal. As an Imperial, you want to sabotage actually want this deal to succeed as well, which was very surprising to me as a player, to my character, and to everyone she mentioned it to - which was in turn somewhat amusing to me. It's all in order to set up a trap for the fleet though.

All five "factions" were immediately interesting to me:

There is Huttbreaker, who is the one who's in charge above all others and the first female Nikto I recall seeing in game!

Then there is Junker Jott, who is responsible for all the tech on the station and a gruff but lovable Republic war veteran. My jaw dropped when I found out that he was also voiced by Darin De Paul (who is the voice of Valkorion, General Daeruun and others) because I absolutely did not recognise him in this role, which just goes to show once again how absolutely awesome he is at his job.

On Imperial side we have the mysterious Brothers, slavers dressed like ninjas who pursue their trade with an almost religious zeal as they believe that making their slaves do work is productive and wholesome, which I thought was an unusual and interesting angle to take for an organisation like that.

Though you do get to talk to all of these, the two linchpins of the mission end up being a Rodian crime lord called Veek the Sneek, and Indigo, leader of a group of Mandalorian outcasts, as you'll need one of their votes to sway the outcome in your faction's favour. Indigo in particular is written with some interesting detail as he reacts differently if you bring one of your Mandalorian companions with you (Shae, Torian, and supposedly Akaavi too).

There isn't really a lot of variety in how you can handle these two (I was really hoping you'd be able to cook up a bit of intrigue by going back and forth between Veek and Indigo - mainly I wanted to rat Veek out to Indigo so that he could get him kicked off the station without resorting to outright murder, but alas, no such luck) but after the bland cast I had dealt with on Onderon just talking to all these characters with colourful personalities felt like such a breath of fresh air; I loved it.

I also really appreciated that Gault and Hylo showed up to give you an introduction to the place - just another one of those small touches that just made so much sense. With such practised and experienced scoundrels in your Alliance, why wouldn't you naturally seek out their advice on a mission like this?

I would say the one major downside of the plot on Mek-Sha is that due to the nature of events, there is a lot of overlap between both factions, which somewhat lowers replayability. How many times do you really want to listen to Huttbreaker's speech? Or get attacked by a mysterious Sith assailant (who we'll come back to in part three of this series)?

There is some variety between Republic and Imperial experiences though, which does once again come down the small character interactions. Republic characters get to reunite with Commander Vice Admiral Narlock from the Esseles for example, while Imperials deal with Darths Shaar and Vowrawn (I assume it's just Shaar if Vowrawn is Emperor in your timeline).

Republic characters also have a little episode where Arn calls for help after freaking out at the Brothers and killing a lot of them. I keep finding this one a little odd as everyone around you reacts very much along the lines of: "Aww, the poor traumatised Jedi!" Yes, the people he killed were slavers, but it's still generally not considered a good thing for Jedi to go into a rage like that. I don't know if you can actually get him in trouble if you choose the disapproving/reprimanding dialogue options all the time. (I'm clearly too much of a softie.)

Imperials meanwhile get to steal some blueprints from Junker Jott while Major Anri and her squad dress up as Nova Blades to distract him, which is mildly amusing.

In the end you either protect or disable/destroy the Republic fleet... which does bring me to something else though:

All of my playthroughs so far have been on loyalist characters as I don't have anyone with a personality that I'd consider suitable for sabotage caught up to the most current content. I think I've said a few times that I really need to get someone up there, but I haven't actually made much progress with this plan.

I didn't think that this was too much of a big deal as everybody kept saying that the saboteur path didn't make that much of a difference on Ossus, beyond the sabotaged faction's leadership grumbling about not achieving some bonus objectives. Things seem to be different in Onslaught though.

I've kind of avoided outright spoilers for what happens to saboteurs so far, but I've heard several comments that there are actually significant differences this time around. The thing that really tipped me off though was that I got a letter in the mail on Imperial side which I clearly wasn't meant to get (yay bugs) and which had Darth Vowrawn talking about mission failure, which makes it sound to me like saboteurs can actually go so far this time around as to prevent your old faction from actually achieving its objective, which sounds pretty intriguing and cool. I really do need to get around to levelling that saboteur now...

Anyway, by the end of Mek-Sha I was fully immersed, having dealt with all kinds of fascinating people throughout, and was ready for the grand finale on Corellia.