Legacy Reborn's Potential Gameplay Implications

I'm really keen to do a full review of Legacy Reborn's story, but I think I'll need a few more playthroughs for that, so in the meantime I'd like to talk about another topic related to 7.9's story update. I originally meant to post this after the review, but it's much easier to write so I'll do it first.

Note that this will still contain spoilers for Legacy Reborn's ending, so don't read on if that's something you want to avoid!

So the story ends with Malgus activating Heta Kol's machine to call out to the galaxy's Force users whether we like it or not, which will surely have a major impact on 8.0's primary narrative. However, as someone with a trooper main there was a detail in the final cut scene that I found very interesting: our previously purely tech using classes are affected by the machine's call as well and suddenly feel the Force, which is reflected in our character reflexively holding back a rock that's about to fall down on our heads.

I didn't manage to take a screenshot on my main, but here's the equivalent moment on my agent alt. 

Now, I didn't think that was too big a deal initially - while I've always been adamant that I don't want my main to be a Force user and disliked the way KotFE treated all player characters largely as if they were, that storyline did also leave us with every character displaying at least a bit of Force sensitivity in the story, as evidenced by things like the extra action button in KotFE chapter 12 that lets you tame an animal companion for part of your journey, or the way you reflexively shield yourself against Arcann's attacks in the final confrontation with him at the end of chapter 16.

I don't think it's ever been made explicitly clear whether that was just Valkorion using his powers while he was possessing us or whether he left us with a degree of "residual" Force sensitivity anyway even after being expelled. Either way, our character holding back a rock was definitely a step up in power levels (lifting rocks isn't easy, just ask Flingeld) but still, it's not like we're suddenly all Jedi or Sith now. I do trust the devs enough that I'm pretty sure we won't suddenly be shoehorned into that in 8.0, though I can imagine our sudden enhanced abilities coming up in conversation.

I did find myself wondering how having a stronger sense of the Force would affect my character's combat abilities, concluding that she'd still be using her weapon primarily but could maybe learn a few Force tricks to help her out along the way. And she would just be one of many in the same predicament.

Which then got me thinking about combat styles! We know that we're never going to get a new origin story, but since 7.0 split classes into origin stories and combat styles, a new combat style seemed a lot more doable. Most of the time I've seen people talk about how they'd like to have a tech class with a blade, similar to how some companions already work (e.g. Tanno Vik or Broonmark), but I realised that Legacy Reborn instead feels like the perfect setup for a tech combat style with some Force abilities.

The great thing about that would be that unlike giving tech users a blade, it would still be fully compatible with the existing story cut scenes since you'd still have the same weapon, the Force abilities would just be an extra thing to use outside cut scenes.

There would be some kinks to work out - they'd have to make it possible to change combat styles for one thing, as currently you can only add a second one but then you're stuck, and many players probably already have two. Plus from a story point of view it would be weird for a new character to be a Force-using smuggler on Ord Mantell I guess, so maybe there'd need to be some kind of restriction on when you can start using this new combat style? Then again, it's probably no weirder than Jedi shooting lightning on Tython, which is also allowed now, so...

I don't know whether I'm just building castles in the sky thinking about this, but it just seems like such an obvious idea once you think about it, I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else bring it up yet. I'm very curious to hear what else the devs officially announce for 8.0 now that 7.9's cat is out of the bag so to speak.