Since Onslaught's launch it feels like the game has a much clearer path ahead - which is not to say that I necessarily expect my predictions to be right, but at least I have some things to base them on if that makes sense. To be honest I expect a lot of them to turn out wrong, but I feel they are at least educated guesses.
Note that some of these predictions concern story direction post-Onslaught and will therefore contain spoilers if you haven't played through the expansion story yet.
1. The Emperor's Last Gruesome Weapon won't actually turn out to be that big of a deal, for all the time Scourge and Kira spent expositioning about it. I expect we'll get to see this story arc relatively late in the year, October at the earliest. It will be smaller than Ossus was, with no exciting new environments and largely the same storyline for both Republic and Empire players. Depending on some previous story choices, you'll get the option to kill Master Satele. Either way you stop the weird mind plague before it can actually bring the Emperor back or anything like that, and we can finally move on from this subject.
2. Darth Malgus will get in touch with Imperial players somehow and give you the option to ally with him like many of us always kind of wanted to on Ilum. The idea will be that you help him overthrow Acina/Vowrawn so that he can position himself as the new Emperor, not false this time! This might not actually happen yet in 2020 but there should at least be a smaller story snippet setting things up and having you meet with Malgus. I'm not sure what Republic players could get that's equally as interesting, mind you...
3. GSF will get a nice amount of love mid-year, with more than just some balance changes and a new map. There might even be a new game mode and/or new ships in the cards!
4. PvP will also get a new warzone at some point, though it might "just" be a new map for an existing game mode. More importantly though, someone at Bioware will finally figure out what's up with the weird desync in Huttball and fix it, or at least make it better... Yeah okay, I don't really think that one's going to happen, but I really, really want it to!
5. We still won't get Zenith back in 2020. It's mind-blowing to me now that we thought his return was imminent back in 2016 and yet here we are nearly four years later and he's the very last of the original companions that's still unaccounted for. I really wish we could get him back already, not least because he's my favourite of the original consular companions... however, looking at how Bioware has handled companion returns in the last year and a half, I've really enjoyed the way they've worked them into the main story again, compared to the rather disappointing Alliance alerts from two years ago. So I'm happy to wait if that means he'll get a nicely integrated return later on, preferably something involving Balmorra, considering his strong attachment to his home world. I just can't see that fitting into what's coming up in the short term.
not least because he's my favourite of the original consular companions
ReplyDeleteInteresting. He's the companion I find easiest to forget, but then my consular was a Shadow back in the pre-KOTxx days so I really only ever used Theran as he was the healer.
My first consular was a Sage and levelled as a healer, which meant that she originally ran with Qyzen (out of necessity) and switched to Zenith when he became available.
DeleteBut gameplay aside, I also really liked him as a character: the damaged guerrilla fighter trying to readjust to normal society. I would have loved to romance him, especially as my character was also a Twi'lek. Looking at how they've handled these last few companion returns, I guess there is hope for that too depending on how they handle it. :P
If I had to guess, I think the Sith plague story will be resolved in a Nathema style flashpoint. I don't think SWTOR needs another daily area, but some more max level group content would be nice. I could see them making Satele a flashpoint boss. I imagine the darkside options at the end of that story will result in the deaths of a more than a few popular characters.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious to see how the Malgus story plays out. I've been thinking he'll be Onslaught's final boss, but I can see the option for siding with him to set him up as Emperor working for some characters of either faction. I do wonder where the story will go, especially for saboteurs. I doubt characters formally swapping factions is even possible (they couldn't get it to work in a limited way on Iokath), and I fear that might keep their story from a truly satisfy conclusion.
Some GSF love would be nice. I know people who really enjoy it, but getting over the learning curve remains its biggest challenge. It's certainly kept me from doing anything more than dabbling in it.
As for PVP, I'd wager on new Novare Coast style map to even out the game modes available. It's my favorite map, so I'm cool with that.
And poor Zenith. I could absolutely see him playing a key role in a cool Republic vs Empire story, but not any of the stories they seem to be telling now. Personally, I'd rather wait until 2021 than see him shoe-horned in or relegated to a two minute alliance alert.
I kind of struggle to imagine the mind plague story taking place in a flashpoint, because the subject matter makes me picture something along the lines of KotFE chapter two or KotET chapter nine, which I don't think would work very well in a group. Then again, it could be more of a Ziost situation, with everyone already awake, possessed and needing to be knocked out. Who knows!
DeleteI have no idea how they are going to resolve the saboteur thing. As I wrote a year ago, I think there are too many practical hurdles to allow permanent faction changes. But I'd be positively surprised if they managed to pull it off somehow. I certainly hope they have some kind of plan.
Poor Zenith, I love him as well and wish we'd get him back. I was s bit disappointed that Holiday didn't make an appearance even on Theran's alliance allergy -- well, not directly anyway. I find it very endearing, though, that you can't romance him (again?) because he is Holiday's through and through - which naturally is in tune with his companion Story. Back in KOTFE I had considered that it might be cool if he had lost Holiday, grown bitter and maybe even a traitor because of it, but it's nice to see some measure of happiness survived in the galaxy even while we were in carbonite.
ReplyDelete