Legacy Reborn Full Story Review

Right, it's finally here, my full review of the Legacy Reborn story update. I don't know when these became such a big deal to me... I think that as the story updates became more nuanced in terms of character development, I just started to feel like I really also needed to talk about them in more detail to truly do the experience justice.

Anyway, if you're looking for a spoiler-free review, I'll just quickly repeat what I said on Bluesky shortly after the patch came out: "Great update. I laughed, I was sad, I went "that's so cool" many times - what more can you ask of anything Star Wars?!"

Another thing that's worth noting is that this was the first main story update since 2023 that didn't include a single KOTOR-style cut scene. As I personally haven't minded these too much, it didn't even register with me at first until I saw others talking about it afterwards and went "oh yeah, that's right", but I do believe there are players out there to whom this will be very meaningful. We'll see how the devs handle the cut scenes in 8.0 and onwards.

That's about as much as I want to say without spoilers, so below this screenshot we get into full spoiler territory. If that's not something you're looking for at this point, you have been warned.

The story starts with a long cut scene that initially shows Malgus and Shae's crew approaching Heta's fleet in a stolen Hidden Chain shuttle. Malgus makes an "I'm sensing something in the Force" face and decides to nope out of Team Shae by simply jumping straight out of the shuttle onto the planet's surface, much to Shae's chagrin.

Down on Khar Shian, we see Rivix slot Darth Nul's holocron into version three (as far as we know) of Nul's machine and Jadus explains to Heta that it needs testing. (The room that this takes place in is a great set piece by the way, with some cool visual effects when the machine gets activated.) There are a few prisoners kneeling in the background, including Sa'har and Tau (who is also here if you're an Empire player, with a side remark from Rivix explaining that she was captured during an attempt to rescue Sa'har in this timeline). Sa'har is selected as a test subject and put into the chair of the machine. As it starts up, she's clearly in pain and Ri'kan is not pleased. When she cries out in agony it's enough for him to actually make a break for it and he manages to interrupt the ritual with an angry outburst of Force power. He and Sa'har run away while Tau also breaks free and attempts to buy them time to escape.

Meanwhile our character returns to Odessen, where the Supreme Chancellor or Empress/Emperor awaits us on their flagship to talk. There's a big stand-off where they consider taking you into custody and Sal-Deron/Krovos are not happy to find out that you lost Darth Nul's holocron. Your present allies (Arn/Anri and Lana/Theron/T7, who are also there) empathically argue against this course of action when the Mandalorian fleet also arrives, with the Ordo brothers jet-packing right into the hangar. They also express their support for your side, and after some more agonising tension, Republic or Imperial leadership give in and agree to leave things be for now and tackle the threat posed by Jadus and Heta Kol first.

I thought this whole scene was brilliantly done. You can really feel the rising tension as your supposed allies from the Republic/Empire try to boss you around and you're obviously not going to take it, but at the same time both sides know that applying (lowercase) force at this point would have serious ramifications that would be hard to come back from. It was great to see your allies backing you up and talking about how great you are, with the arrival of the Mandalorians finally moving the needle enough to cause the Chancellor/Empress/Emperor to blink first.

In an interesting twist, if your character is a saboteur, they are actually exposed at this point, meaning the Chancellor/Empress/Emperor are not just mad at you about the whole Shae/Malgus/Jadus situation, but have genuine reason to want to take you down because they know that you've betrayed them. I thought this was an interesting way of framing the whole scene very differently, and in this light their reaction to actually being betrayed seems almost subdued. Your ally who just rescued you from the Enigma still speaks up for you regardless, and Republic/Imperial leadership still agree to deal with the current threat together for now.

Either way, with peace temporarily restored, the fleet jumps into Hyperspace towards Khar Shian, you catch everyone up on what happened on the Enigma and come up with an assault plan. It's agreed that you'll have to work with what you got as you are unable to call for further reinforcements. The Mandalorians, who now have some Basilisk droids thanks to Lane Vizla, agree to lead a diversionary ground assault while you and a small group of allies try to take the sneaky route to find Jadus. (There was a bit of dialogue with Lane here which sadly only seems to appear for a character that has completed the Bessi storyline, which due to the way it's set up can only happen once per account.) Meanwhile your faction will provide support from space and fight Heta's fleet there. (Side note: During the Imperial version of this bit we see that Maiya Vix from the Oricon storyline has been promoted to... captain or something? That was a nice little detail.)

As you arrive above Khar Shian, it's time to put your plan into action. You get to take part in a brief custom space combat section playing as either Daeruun and Arn or Krovos and Anri (in Krovos' ship). The devs were concerned that this could cause motion sickness for some people so it pops up a warning about that before starting and allows you to skip the whole gameplay section. The first time I ended up skipping it by accident, but I did play through it later on alts. By that point I was actually quite curious what it was like as seemingly every comment I'd read about it was pretty scathing and uh... yeah, I get the complaints about this one. It's nothing like the old space game or GSF, just a weird little section that is extremely on rails and hard to interact with.

The problem is that you're supposed to shoot targets on a large enemy ship, but your own ship's path is completely locked in and the point of view is straight ahead where most of the time you can't actually see your targets. While you can technically turn the camera to look around and see where they are, the moment you let go to actually click on a target, the camera snaps right back to the default view that barely lets you see anything. I eventually settled for just spamming tab target until it would lock onto something off screen, and then fire rockets at that whenever it would let me. While a slightly awkward process, it does eventually get you where you need to be. It's a shame because I feel I do understand what the devs were trying to do with this section; the implementation just ended up being poor.

While all this takes place, your character descends onto the surface in a stolen Hidden Chain shuttle of your own with Lana and either Theron or T7-01. The Mandalorians also try to land their ground forces but are repelled by a shield. Since you can pass through with the stolen shuttle, you have the option to suggest having a look at taking said shield out from the ground.

As you approach the area to land, you see Ri'kan and Sa'har running away, and are given the choice to fire at either them or their Hidden Chain pursuers. Then you perform another one of your by now infamous crash landings. If you didn't shoot at her, Sa'har will briefly help you fight off the Hidden Chain but then still nopes out of the situation since she promised Ri'kan to stay with him and the two of them just fly off unscathed either way. It was funny to me that Lana says at this point "I can't believe Sa'har stayed to help us fight" because all I was thinking was "I can't believe Sa'har just ran off like that".

You and your allies enter Naga Sadow's old fortress via a rocky tunnel. You feel the pressure to locate the shield generator as soon as possible as the Mandalorians are struggling and your faction's fleet is under attack by a giant ion cannon (always those ion cannons). Eventually you find a strange droid that looks like something off Iokath and which is attached to the fortress via dozens of cables. It attacks and when you kill it, the fortress' shields go down.

After this, we see a cut scene of Shae's team taking down one of Heta's lieutenants just as he's on the comm with her, and Shae tells Heta that she's coming before advising her team to split up. Heta meanwhile (still in the room with the machine) finds her eyes drawn to an ancient Sith blade (presumably Naga Sadow's) and picks it up. Nothing bad ever came from grabbing ancient Sith weapons, right?!

Jadus watches her with no more than mild interest while Rivix tells him that the machine should almost be fixed up/ready again after the test got interrupted earlier. Jadus tells Rivix that this means it's time for the latter to leave and prepare "for the next phase of the plan". Rivix is taken aback but Jadus assures him that he's the best judge of how to deal with the way events are unfolding.

With the shield down, the Mandalorians are finally landing, and we pivot to Lane, Rass and Jekiah in their new Basilisk droids - which we get to control and use to wreck the fortress' ground defenses, though the Mandalorians are eventually forced to continue their assault on foot. The attack of the Basilisk droids is another vehicle section where we get to take control of another character - this time it's Jekiah Ordo in his Basilisk, with Rass in his own as his "companion". This section was much more fun than the space bit, even if the droid handled like a drunk elephant sometimes. Listening to Rass go from complaining to being excited about his Basilisk was amusing.

In general, it was very clear by this point why the devs chose to have these sections playing as another character in this update. When it was first mentioned in the dev stream, I had no strong opinions on the idea but it seemed a bit random to me. Seeing it in action, you can tell that it was a deliberate choice to better convey the grandeur of the battle to the player. During this fight over Khar Shian, a lot of things happen at the same time that your character simply can't be there for, which would've meant either adding even more cut scenes to an already pretty cut-scene heavy update, or simply summarising things that happen elsewhere in a couple of sentences of NPC dialogue, which wouldn't really have done them justice. Having seen Broadsword's solution in action, I think it was very effective in this update and really allowed us to take part in everything that happens even when our character is not in the room for a particular event. 

While the Mandalorians assault the fortress, the fleet once again calls you for help against the ion cannon, and Lana agrees to split off to activate the fortress defenses while you continue towards where you think the machine is. So in the next segment you get to play as Lana and Theron/T7 for a bit, fighting and slicing your way towards some orbital defense controls. You/they manage to activate it for one big shot that at least is enough to disable the ion cannon.

Again, I actively loved this, in particular as it gave me flashbacks to KotET chapter eight and wondering why the heck three people can't split up to assist both Torian and Vette - but in a good way. Sometimes splitting up simply is the smart choice, and I appreciate the devs letting our characters be smart here, while at the same time reminding us that Lana and Theron are really quite capable on their own as well.

Meanwhile the Alliance Commander encounters Shae. Rass and Jekiah show up shortly after and there's a confrontation involving lots of shouting, during which Rass in particular really goes off on Shae, though Jekiah as usual pushes for calm. Then Heta joins the fray, ancient Sith weapon glowing ominously.

Within moments, her and Shae are at each other's throats like rabid dogs, and a wild brawl ensues as you and the Ordo brothers join in. At the end it segues into a cut scene during which Heta's sword makes the crystals in the room resonate somehow so that they zap everyone. You knock off Heta's helmet and we can see that she's already been physically corrupted by the Sith weapon. Shae then pushes Heta into the crystals so that they both get electrocuted (?) plus Shae also gets stabbed by Heta in the process. Heta dies surprisingly easily from the crystal zaps, while Shae stumbles back into the room one more time to expire tragically in Jekiah's arms (after uttering some appropriately dramatic last words).

While my description above is a bit flippant, I thought it was an appropriate ending for a character as important as Shae Vizla, who's been with us since the pre-launch trailers, sparred both against us and by our side in Shadow of Revan, as well as fighting Arcann's skytroopers for us on Darvannis. The way she became obsessed with hunting down Heta personally was ultimately her tragic weakness. She clearly never became fully comfortable in her leadership role and relished the opportunity too much to just run off and hunt on her own again.

I've seen some discourse here whether it wouldn't have been better if we as the player character got to stand judge over her, and as far as that one goes - I'm kinda eh. The stereotypical light side choice of all being forgiven and her coming back into the Alliance wouldn't have worked here - as she says herself, she doesn't think she has anything to be sorry for, and both the Republic and Empire were very pissed at her as well. I can see why a dark side scenario of killing her could've been appealing for vengeful characters, but I think whatever the outcome/fallout with Heta and the Ordos would've been from that would then have felt unsatisfying in a different way. Basically, I was fine with Shae having that particular spotlight for a moment (not like I personally cared about hashing it out with Heta myself for the umpteenth time anyway) and being able to respond to her dying words with either respect, affection or a variant of "I would've preferred to kill you myself, but whatever" worked well enough for me.

While the Mandalorians deal with the expiration of their Mandalore and any remaining Hidden Chain forces, you continue onwards alone. You find a trail of dead Jadus acolytes left behind by Malgus, which segues into a section where you play as him fighting his way towards the room with the machine.

When he arrives, he's confronted by a vision of the Empress or Emperor, his former master, but he successfully dispels it to identify his real opponent: Darth Jadus. A duel between the two of them ensues, during which you play as Malgus and win. (Though Malgus is panting like an old man at the end, which made me chuckle.)

He picks up the holocron and inserts it into the machine before sitting down in the chair and starting it up again, which is when our character arrives. You can approve of him using the machine or try to stop him, but something odd happens anyway - you realise that the machine hasn't really been on, but you seem to be trapped in some kind of illusion projected by the Sith meditation sphere hanging above you. Another vision appears, this one of Darth Malgus' old master (whom he killed in the Return cinematic), Darth Vindican, who warns you about Malgus' treachery, but the latter urges that you just need to get out of this together.

What follows is a very fascinating descent into Malgus' psyche. You attack the meditation sphere's anchors around the room but to no success, and instead more visions seem to spring forth from Malgus' brain, including of his former rival Lord Adraas from the Deceived novel. He gets lost in trying to fight it and even attacks you, forcing you to beat some sense back into him. However, he then immediately sees another ghost from his past: Eleena Daaru, his old Twi'lek lover (also from Deceived and the old trailer of the same name). He seems to briefly get distracted by her affections but eventually kills her again, just like he did in life.

This section is so incredibly cool if you're familiar with some of the lore involved. I read the tie-in novels years ago so it's not like everything was still fresh on my mind, but as things slowly started to come back to me, I became more and more engrossed. Oh right, it's the guy from the Return cinematic. Lord Adraas who...? Oh right, that guy! Now all that's missing is Eleena - and oh snap, there she is. 

I do wonder how well this section lands for people less familiar with the background material. Presumably more people have seen the trailers than read the tie-in novels, so I can imagine some being able to make the connections to those at least, but there are probably even more who didn't recognise any of these characters from Malgus' past. While the in-game context makes it clear enough who they are and why they matter(ed) to Malgus, I imagine it must be somewhat less impactful if you're only just meeting them all for the first time so to speak. 

Back in orbit, the fleet is noticing increasing levels of power from the fortress, and your faction's leader wants to order a strike of the location to take the machine out, though Arn/Anri and others warn them that you and other good people are still down there.

Meanwhile on the surface, you and Malgus are confronted by a vision of Jadus next, and you realise that Malgus didn't actually kill him - Jadus is sitting in the meditation sphere and causing all these visions. His projection tells you that he's modified the machine so that it won't just awaken the Force in people but will also fill them with terror of both the Jedi and Sith, with Jadus offering the only way out.

You fight and win against this projection, which results in the real Jadus leaving in the meditation sphere, while Malgus sits down in the machine again. You can (unsuccessfully) try to stop him one more time, but he does manage to call out to the galaxy. We see a number of shots from various locations with known characters reacting to the voice in their head, from Satele Shan and her students (hi, Syl) to the overseers on Korriban. (It's been pointed out that it's strange that Overseer Ragate is alive here when we seemingly killed her in the Korriban Incursion flashpoint. I guess the old lady is more robust than we gave her credit for and was only "defeated" to eventually get up again. Or the devs forgot that she was supposed to be dead. Take your pick.)

I really liked how the views of various other locations also incorporate past choices into the scene. We see Petra on Ord Mantell, alone or with her sister Mina by her side. In the Odessen Force Enclave, we see Sana-Rae and Kira, but depending on if they are alive/you invited them, you might also have Arcann and Senya, and/or Jemala and Ora in the background.

Now that everyone knows that the machine is on, your old faction's leadership orders that the fleet bombard the fortress. You and Malgus get buried under a bunch of rocks (with it being notable that even as a non-Force user, the Force seems to have been awakened in you) and credits roll. When you exit, you just appear on Odessen.

Whew, that's a bit of a cliffhanger, isn't it? I'll admit that this part was a bit disappointing to me, not so much because I'm against cliffhangers in principle, but just because of how utterly detached it is from the rest of the game. What I mean by that is that there's always a bit of a clash between the single-player story and the open world MMO elements - the story might tell you that you're in a race to save the planet, but you can opt out of following that storyline any time to do something else without any negative effects. However, it's one thing for the player to decide to break their immersion for a bit and another for the game to do it for you.

Imagine if Knights of the Fallen Empire chapter one had been released as a standalone back in the day, with chapter two coming out a week later. Imagine ending with your character being frozen in carbonite in the story, and then being spat out on the fleet just to be told to come back later to find out what's "canonically" supposed to be happening to you right now. It just feels wrong to me. Maybe it will make more sense when 8.0 comes out and future players will have a smooth transition from that being-buried-under-rocks scene to whatever aftermath comes next, but right now it feels a bit bad.

All that said, as a whole I found this update pretty damn brilliant. We'd been building towards this for such a long time, with so many different characters with different motivations pursuing their own agendas, it was bound to be epic and Broadsword delivered with what's probably the biggest cast featured in a single story update since the game's launch. Who'd have thought we'd be eating this well fifteen years into the game's life? Shae and Heta's arc finally reached a satisfying conclusion, and I think Malgus is supposed to be dead as well now, though I'm not 100% sure with him. It would be a good time for him to go in my opinion, after that nostalgia trip through his past.

The sudden cliffhanger aside, I'm okay with not everything being tied up in a neat bow. What happened to Tau? I have no doubt that we'll be dealing with Rivix again, but she just seemed to disappear without any fanfare. Do we still have reason to care about the Kateen siblings now that Ri'kan finally got fed up with Heta and they've both run away? I guess we'll see sooner or later, though I suppose the more pressing questions are how our character survives being bombarded from orbit and what impact the broadcast from Nul's machine had on the wider galaxy.

Also, even though I just wrote over 4000 words about Legacy Reborn, I do think I'll have more to say about it still, as well as about Legacy Sith as a whole, now that its story has finally come to a conclusion. Stay tuned!

Master's Enigma Prepares Us for the Big Finale

I'm way behind in terms of reviewing SWTOR's most recent story update "Master's Engima", which came out in 7.8.1. In fact, 7.9 and Legacy of the Sith's finale are only mere days away! That said, I've been putting extra effort in these past couple of days to get this review out just under the wire, before there's even newer story to think about. As usual with these posts, expect full spoilers and stop reading if you want to avoid them.

"Master's Engima" starts us off with a view of Sa'har and Ri'kan in a shuttle, with Sa'har being back to being Ri'kan's prisoner. I've got to admit I groaned a bit at seeing these two again. I don't mind the Kateen siblings as characters, but their dynamic has definitely become a big stagnant. You'd think that after the big showdown where Sa'har openly turned against Ri'kan and the Hidden Chain, she'd be done with constantly begging him for forgiveness, but no, we're back to her usual MO of being meek and apologetic.

Fortunately however, we don't spend too much time on this before returning to Odessen, where our character gets notified by Lana that she urgently needs to meet with you about something. While you make your way over, you get another call, this one from either Tau or Rivix (depending on your faction, obviously) who warn you that your faction's leadership is about to descend onto Odessen to moan at you about recent developments. Even if you've been fully cooperative and open about everything with them, they are not keen on the whole business with your former ally Shae helping Malgus escape.

You do still catch up with Lana first, who tells you that the urgent business is another message from Jadus, this time telling you to go to a specific set of coordinates, with no additional information (because of course). You barely have time to think about this before your faction's leadership arrives.

They are not doing things by half either: On Republic side the Supreme Chancellor herself is there, accompanied by Admiral Rava, Master Sal-Deron, Tau, Arn, and a whole host of Republic troops. For Imperials, it's the Empress or Emperor, accompanied by Darths Krovos, Xarion and Rivix as well as Major Anri and a matching set of Imperial soldiers.

Unhappy faces as far as the eye can see, regardless of your faction. 

A confrontation ensues regardless of how helpful and nice you've been in the past, though I've heard reports that this bit feels satisfyingly more justified if you've been playing as a saboteur (I haven't had a chance to verify that one for myself yet). You get to make a whole number of important-feeling choices here, even if I think they have limited impact on the immediate story outcome. It just feels good that you get to take a stand! You can decide to tell your visitors about Jadus or not (at several opportunities) and can acquiesce to various requests or be argumentative. I can imagine some players disliking the fact that their faction leadership treats them so badly here, especially if they've been loyalists, but I absolutely loved this part. Yes to political drama in my Star Wars! Inject it right into my veins!

Critically, there's a further incident when Master Sal-Deron or Darth Krovos touch Darth Nul's holocron and get thrown across the room, which leads to you being accused of tampering with it and the Supreme Chancellor/Empress/Emperor ordering you to stay cooped up on Odessen until further notice. Obviously not great considering you were just about to follow that Jadus lead!

Tau or Rivix have the same thought and suggest that you sneak out and follow the lead anyway. (They justify it by saying that clearly someone up top, whether it's Admiral Rava, Darth Xarion or whoever, has been scheming and is baselessly turning leadership against you.) Lana is on board (as is Theron, if he's around) and concocts a plan to sneak you out through some secret passages originally utilised by Theron during his traitor days. Arn or Anri overhear and aren't exactly opposed, but both stop you briefly before you leave, expressing concern about the dangers of defying your faction and running off by yourself like that.

This next bit has you sneaking out next to Tau or Rivix while dressed up as a Republic or Imperial soldier and OMG, this part felt like it was literally made for me. I mean, objectively it wasn't that exciting in terms of gameplay, just a bit of RP slow walking through the base in disguise, but the Republic trooper disguise looked a lot like the sort of armour my trooper actually wore around level 30 or so and it was extremely nostalgic. The game seemed to acknowledge this experience with my trooper even commenting that "this takes me back". Republic trooper nostalgia overload!

You successfully sneak out and escape on a shuttle with Tau or Rivix, and you have Darth Nul's holocron with you whether you wanted it or not. (Whether to try and take it with you is one of those earlier decisions, but even if you say that no, you're happy to leave it with the Jedi or Sith, Tau or Rivix just steal it themselves. Sal-Deron and Krovos' security must suck!)

You travel to the coordinates specified by Jadus and find an odd derelict spaceship which is later revealed to be the "Enigma", formerly property of Darth Nul. You meet Jadus holding court there, posing in front of a throne and everything.

He's also traded his lobotomised cyborg followers from the base game for much cooler looking Sith troopers. In fact, it occurred to me that they look a bit like that Sith from the Disorder trailer who fights Sa'har and Master Orr before getting killed by Darth Malgus. Coincidence or extremely deep call-back? You decide!

When you quiz Jadus about what exactly he wants this time, he says that he wants to stop Malgus from using Darth Nul's machine (which Heta has already largely rebuilt, damn it) because it would just cause chaos and he wants to bring order to the galaxy. My real life reaction to this was "are you for real, bro" because wasn't Jadus' whole thing in the agent story that he also wanted to sow chaos and fear? I guess he might have changed his angle since then; I just would've liked to be able to comment on that as an agent at least. Either way, he wants you to unlock the full power of Darth Nul's holocron for him instead - fortunately what I thought as the only logical answer to that was available as a conversation option in this dialogue: that if the goal is to stop Malgus from using the machine, and the machine won't work without the holocron, surely not unlocking it and just keeping it away from everyone is the way to go?

To that he retorts that you haven't been very good at holding on to it recently, and your companion points out that you're perhaps not in the best position to pick a fight right now, considering how outnumbered you are. (We didn't fully think this one through, did we?) So you either agree to proceed into the depths of the ship to play around with whatever Nul left behind there to power up the holocron, or you briefly turn against Jadus and get to mow down some of his lackeys in a cool cut scene before he makes you pass out with the Force, causing you to reawaken deeper inside the ship either way.

What follows is a (to me) pretty interesting exploration/puzzle section. You investigate two biomes within the spaceship: The biome of balance is a pretty idyllic pastoral environment (it even has a nice fake blue sky box), while the biome of ferocity is an icky swamp filled with predators. Each one is guarded by a holographic remnant of Darth Nul, with the twist being that she split off different aspects of herself (one hologram is evil Sithy Nul, while the other still calls itself Master Ranaiah) and put each one in charge of the biome that doesn't align with that aspect's values.

In other words, you have evil Sithy Nul working on the balanced biome and being annoyed that the animals in it don't fight each other enough, and Jedi-minded Master Raniah locking up all the animals in the ferocity biome because she doesn't like them fighting and eating each other, causing them to quietly waste away in their pens instead. Your mission in each biome (and what makes up at least half of the gameplay in this update) is to talk to the Nul fragment holograms, figure out what's going on by reading some research notes, and then take actions to restore each biome to its originally intended state. Like I said, I found this quite interesting and I thought it did a good job of showing just how much of a mad scientist Darth Nul was. (Splitting off parts of your personality and then giving them tasks that are going to drive them nuts just to see what'll happen is pretty crazy.)

Once you've restored both biomes to a working state, the guardian holograms are satisfied and upload themselves to the Engima's mainframe. You proceed further into the bowels of the ship yourself, just to find the two holograms fighting and siccing their minions on each other inside. In an attempt to stop the chaos, you plug Darth Nul's holocron into a convenient nearby socket, and after some waiting and fighting off random minions (this bit was unfortunately buggy and confusing on launch) peace is restored and the two holograms are united into a single "personality matrix" representing Darth Nul.

She tells you once again about the machine and its purpose, and that she'd be able to help whoever has it to fine-tune its workings. She also reveals that its location is crucial to reaching as many Force sensitives across the galaxy as possible, and that if Elom is no longer available, the next best option would be the moon Khar Shian, which meant nothing to me personally but apparently has a lot of existing Old Republic lore attached to it. (Ted talks a bit about that in the most recent episode of the State of the Old Republic podcast.) So now you know where you'll find Heta, Shae and Malgus!

Naturally this is the time for a sudden and inevitable betrayal (if you agreed to work with Jadus at least), as he shows up to collect the holocron and leave you in the dust. The burns he delivers to an agent in particular are pretty harsh! However, there's a twist: he's not the only one that's betraying you, as Tau/Rivix are turning against you as well, trap you in a forcefield and hand the holocron over to Jadus willingly.

I guess Rivix being a turncoat shouldn't have been entirely surprising, considering he's always come across as kind of smarmy, though that doesn't mean that a betrayal at this particular moment was obvious. I actually played through the story on my Republic main first, however, and Tau's backstabbing was truly shocking to me and felt like it came completely out of left field. Fortunately she has a believable (if still frustrating) justification in that she's desperate to save Sa'har and thinks this is the way to make it happen. Naturally she's wrong about that though: Jadus doesn't give a shit and Force-lightnings her to... death? I literally went "nooo" at my screen, as I hated to see it, even with Tau just having betrayed me. It does turn out though that she's not actually dead, as Jadus and his minions decide to drag her not entirely lifeless body away with them - presumably he still has some sort of plan for her.

Meanwhile he leaves you behind in the forcefield trap, which is something that would seem foolish for a lot of villains but is totally in character for Jadus, who's more like a cat playing with a mouse. Why kill you outright when there's more fun to be had?

You actually manage to break out of the forcefield using sheer willpower and immediately pursue Jadus, though you get slowed down further, as nightmares of betrayers and former allies turned enemies invade your mind and force you to fight them.  

You reach Jadus' shuttle just as he's about to take off, and I'm not gonna lie, if it had been down to me I would've taken the L at that point and simply retreated to fight another day, but my character turned out to be a lot more persistent than me and pulled a rocket launcher out of nowhere in one final attempt to manually shoot the shuttle down. Shintar the trooper is even more of a badass than I thought! (As a Jedi or Sith you get to pull at the shuttle with the Force, which I guess is a little less crazy.) The attempt fails however, and you end up falling down and dangling off a piece of metal at the bottom of the ship like Luke under Cloud City at the end of Empire Strikes Back.

Fortunately you have allies that never listen to your instructions to stay behind, so either Arn or Anri show up with a shuttle to rescue you. Lana radios you from Odessen to let you know that your escape has been discovered and things are not good with the faction leaders, but you have another priority now: to go to Khar Shian. 

We conclude with a final look at what some of our antagonists have been up to in the meantime: Jadus attempts to make a deal with unknown terms with Heta Kol, Ri'kan attempts to get back into Heta's good graces by delivering Sa'har and gets threatened with a knife for his efforts (honestly, seeing her be as sick of his crap as I felt was very satisfying), and Malgus and Shae, too, have just found out that their next destination is Khar Shian by crushing a few more Hidden Chain soldiers. It's show time, baby! 

I know I've remained more positive about this storyline than a lot of (at least the loudest parts of) the player base, but I absolutely loved this update. I have criticised it in the past when it felt like an installment didn't really move the story forward much, but ever since Desperate Defiance we are definitely going somewhere, and Master's Engima continued this trend.

This particular story installment also really managed to hit me in the feels in so many places: the callback to being a simple trooper, the political drama, Jadus' machinations (you can tell that he'll use you and turn against you, but he does it in such a manner that it still burns) and the sudden betrayal by your companion. So many great moments!

I'm excited to see how it'll all wrap up in a week or so.

A Week on Oricon

One of last week's weekly seasons objectives was "Seat of the Hutts Daily Sweeps", which requires you to either do the Oricon weekly twice or the Ossus weekly once. I've always thought this was a strange equivalence because since 7.0 the Ossus weekly takes less than ten minutes to complete (depending on your choice of dailies you don't even have to fight any mobs for it), while a single run of Oricon can require slogging through a full 100 mobs or so if you don't have stealth or someone else happened to come through just before you to clear things out already. And then you're asking me to do the one that's already longer twice?

I guess the one thing that Oricon has going for it is that it's more accessible since you unlock access to the area earlier in the story. On my secondary legacies on the other servers I didn't used to have access to Ossus, so I did some Oricon runs for seasons there in the past - though less so recently, precisely because of how tedious the whole affair tended to be. Since the release of the Bessi venture made daily access fully account-wide (meaning it applies cross-server), I could've just gone to Ossus to make my life easier, but I still feel a bit bad about "skipping ahead", even if it's just to do dailies.

This week I happened to have a few days off around Easter, so I thought why not take a few alts through Oricon since I have a bit of time? Only a couple of them had done the story before, so by the end of the week I had taken four new characters through the storyline, two on Republic side and two of my Imperials. I didn't do this all at once but staggered progress over the course of several days, and it occurred to me that I probably hadn't spent this many hours on Oricon since it first came out and I was farming reputation on all my original (then) max-level alts.

I did feel like the craziness was rubbing off on me a bit after a few days, but overall it wasn't a bad experience. Lord Hargrev's voice acting still holds up as top notch over a decade later, and I always love the bit where he goes: "Knives! They can't even resist carving one another like roasts!" Though it's distracting nowadays how much his assistant sounds exactly like Lana, not just because it's the same voice actress but also because she uses the exact same kind of voice/tone that would later become Lana's.

Being able to combine the storyline with the dailies and weekly these days is a peculiar experience that I already talked about about one and a half years ago, when I first went through Oricon that way on my Shae Vizla main. Back then I did find it a bit frustrating how all the missions tended to bug out one way or another since they had clearly never been designed to be done at the same time - this wasn't something that was impossible to overcome, but it still required me to backtrack and redo things several times.

Since I already knew what to expect this time, I was able to take some notes on the best way to circumvent the bugs tied to each mission, and I thought I might share my learnings here as well, even if it's an extremely niche topic.

[DAILY] Fallen Forces

For this one, the objectives for the story and daily quest are exactly the same and there are no issues, both progress at the same time. 

[DAILY] False Paradise

For this one, unfortunately there seems to be no way to avoid doing the phased bit twice. The story mission requires you to loot ten bioenergy enhancers while the daily requires only five. The problem is that interacting with the quest items will only progress one mission while still locking you out of progressing the other one if they were both at the same step. So the best way I found of doing this was to loot five items for the daily, use them, and then go ahead and do the phased bit for the daily mission. After exiting, any spare bioenergy enhancers you may have already collected towards the other quest will have been deleted from your inventory so you'll need to collect a full ten again, but at least you'll be able to do so straight away without resetting anything.

[DAILY] Dread Engines

Funnily enough, this quest is the exact opposite of the above. You need to destroy three/five terraforming devices, but if you enter the phased bit while one mission is done with that step and the other one isn't, both of them will bug out. Bad! Instead you have to make sure to destroy the full five terraforming devices for the story mission before entering the cave. You should then be able to progress both the daily and the story at the same time inside. 

[DAILY] The Tower’s Core

This one is probably the trickiest one to get right. The first thing to note is that when you enter the control room at the top of the tower, only the daily mission will update to the next step, so you'll want to instantly head back out of the phase and walk back in a second time, which will then cause the story mission to update as well. Inside you can disable the defences and fight Commander Zaoron for both missions at the same time with no issues. When finishing up, it's important to click the cube for the daily mission first, then interact with the panel for the story mission. If you click the panel first, you won't be able to pick up the holocron for the daily afterwards and a reset will be required.

Another thing that's worth mentioning here is that both missions require you to pick up the same unique quest item at the end, which the game doesn't allow, so what will happen once you complete the story conversation is that you'll get a pop-up saying that your inventory was full and that you got an item in the mail. Exit the phase to complete the daily (which will remove the associated item from your inventory), then pick the holocron out of the mailbox back at base before handing in the story mission. Important: You won't be able to hand in the story mission without it! In one of my earlier attempts I made the mistake of just deleting the item in the mail, thinking it was a glitch that I had been mailed a second copy. However, if you don't have this in your mission inventory, you won't be able to start the follow-up story conversation! When this happened to me, I had to reset the story mission and redo the whole tower part a second time. Don't be me. 

[HEROIC 2+] Preemptive Strike 

This is another mission that simply progresses for both story and daily mission at the same time. Phew. 

Galactic Threads: Things Are Starting to Come Together

With more than 18 months having passed since the last story update, my anticipation for 7.8's Galactic Threads was high, and I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint.

It's a decently sized piece of story that sets itself apart with what I'd describe as a somewhat more "old-school" vibe, with slightly more running around in the open world and more varied gameplay. As was already revealed during the first previews, it's also structured a bit differently than normal, with three "mini arcs" that can be completed in any order instead of a single, strictly linear narrative. I was a little worried that this might make the shorter arcs feel kind of inconsequential (since by necessity, nothing you do in one of them could influence events in another) but that didn't turn out to be the case.

Let's go through everything one by one, shall we? As usual, there will be full spoilers.

Galactic Threads

The story starts with a cut scene showing us Malgus, Shae and her newly assembled ragtag band from the prison break fighting the Hidden Chain on Tatooine, which includes Malgus reaching out with the Force and downing two small ships by smashing them together in the air. I thought this was a nice callback to the Deceived novel, where Malgus' sheer power is also demonstrated by him stopping a shuttle from taking off by pulling it down with the Force.

That short scene is largely it for "meanwhile, here's what's going on somewhere else" cinematics in this update though, and going forward it's all about our character and their companions. I think it's been a while since I got to take so many good screenshots of my own characters, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Back on Odessen, Jakaiah and Rass Ordo arrive in a shuttle and let you know that they are pissed off about Shae's prison break too, as it meant that she effectively abandoned her position as Mandalore. I wonder if there are any precedents for that kind of thing in Star Wars lore? Either way you agree to pursue the matter together, which leads us to the aforementioned three mini arcs that can be done in any order, taking you either to Tatooine, Hoth or Elom. I've played through them in different orders and can confirm that your choice in that regard makes absolutely no difference. I did wonder at one point, when Rass made a complaint about something that included the line "if we got here sooner, this might've been a whole lot easier", whether there might be slight differences in voice lines depending on the order, but that didn't turn out to be true. He says that line even if you go to Hoth with him first. 

On The Run

In my first playthrough however, I started on Tatooine, so I'll start there in this post as well. With the help of Akaavi Spar, you go there to answer a distress signal from a high-ranking Hidden Chain defector. You eventually find her, though it turns out that she didn't actually signal you, which points towards a mysterious third party interfering. Nevertheless you make a deal to help her and her love interest get rid of a band of mercenaries that have been hired by Heta Kol to hunt them down. In turn they provide you with the intel that Heta's fleet is moving through Sith space, seemingly unbothered by anyone even though she doesn't particularly like the Empire, which again, is somewhat mysterious.

Gameplay-wise, this section is probably the least interesting as it involves a lot of running around to first track down the defector's safe house, and then to hunt down the mercenaries scattered across all four corners of the map. I could see some people not being too thrilled by this, but to me, cruising across Tatooine for a story mission actually felt very nostalgic and I even made a point of not always taking the fastest route via quick travel and instead using taxis and my speeder so I could take in the scenery and pause for the occasional dynamic encounter on the way (at least on my first playthrough). I also liked the mechanic for finding the stealthed mercenaries and how you could tell you were getting close by either your character or Akaavi emitting a small startled sound.

Story-wise, Jemala from clan Ha'rangir and her lover Ora are certainly... memorable for their slightly melodramatic behaviour, and I think people were just happy to see a lesbian NPC couple in game for what I think might be the first time. (Darth Krovos and Zasha Ranken are pretty clearly an item as well, but it was never that obvious and depending on your choices you may be responsible for Ranken's death, so less of a happy story.)

It was also interesting to get more interactions with Akaavi that showed more of her character to players who perhaps never played a smuggler and aren't that familiar with her. The letter she sends you afterwards also ties in nicely with her origin story in the base game.

Hoth Pursuit

On Hoth you're after the slicer from Shae's little band, and you're accompanied by Rass Ordo, who continues to be in a very bad mood about the whole Shae thing, which manifests in a lot of anger and disgust about the slicer and how Shae could throw everything away just to do a heist with a low-life like him.

You visit a place called Shai Tenna's Pleasure Den and I was a bit disappointed that smugglers don't get any comment about their previous adventures with Shai. Also, am I the only one who found the concept of a "unique slicer signature" a bit weird? I always thought the point of slicing was to do things without being traced... but that's just an aside.

After a lot of searching you finally manage to corner Greb Besrik the cyborg Mon Calamari (for some reason I found his name extremely difficult to remember and spell correctly) and he confesses that he doesn't know where Shae and her crew are right now, as he doesn't hang out with them all the time, he just sends them stuff via a broker. He just knows that Shae and Malgus are still sticking together, as they seem to have some sort of plan that involves both of them going after the same target for different reasons.

Gameplay-wise, this section also has a lot of running around, but slightly less than Tatooine I guess. Also, the final chase to catch Greb at the end was actually really funny. Usually I'm not necessarily a fan of these kinds of scenarios where you're running after someone who keeps getting away repeatedly, but this one was really well done. I had to chuckle at the bit when you're almost caught up to him and he lets out a yelp, gains a sudden speed boost and just jumps into the ice water. And they make you climb a ladder! I always thought it was weird that they introduced ladders on Onderon as a terrain mechanic and then promptly seemed to forget about them again, forever. 

I needed Illeva to point out that you can see Greb swimming through this tube above you during the chase sequence.

The Library of Nul 

The Elom bit of the story actually starts on Nar Shaddaa, where you help Talos Drellik procure an ancient droid part to repair a droid that's meant to help you access Darth Nul's library. The game repeatedly hits you over the head with how everything about this replacement droid part is odd and weird, to the point that I thought to myself "if this doesn't go wrong in some way, I'll be very disappointed". I was not disappointed.

The repaired droid seems to work fine at first and does indeed grant you access to Nul's sanctuary, where you find old holos of Nul and three small puzzles. It felt like ages since we last got to do a little puzzle as part of the story, though I guess thinking back, there was a short one as part of the story in the Interpreter's Retreat, back in 7.3. I know I've said in the past that puzzles in SWTOR can be contentious, but I enjoyed this little change of pace.

You learn from Nul's holos that she seemingly didn't fully embrace the Sith code but rather warped her old Jedi teachings into something new that suited her better. She also talks about how she did indeed design the machine that Heta replicated with the goal of expanding on her personal power to awaken the Force in people. Her last recording has her explaining that the Emperor is on to her and that she intends to distract him to keep her secrets hidden. At that point the spare droid part suddenly starts transmitting data to somewhere else, and if you don't interfere yourself, your faction companion smashes it. Here too, you worry about what mysterious third party caused this to happen.

I enjoyed the different pace of this section of the story, with minimal movement and combat but instead featuring those three puzzles. It also adds a taste of faction flavour as you're either accompanied by Arn or Major Anri, both of whom have some great, amusing commentary on Darth Nul's little setup. 

Dark Heart of the Fortress

During the intermission conversations between these three mini arcs, Lana updates you about a survey team sent to Ilum to investigate the old ruins of the Emperor's crashed space station (where we also found XR-53). If you ever wondered why nobody looked at that thing before, the implication seems to be that at least part of the stealth technology actually survived and hid it from view.

As the survey team becomes non-responsive and seems to have run into trouble, Lana asks you to go to Ilum with her to search for them. You follow their tracks and eventually find their bodies in the ruins of the station, though it's not clear what killed them. Soon afterwards some of them get up as zombies though, and I immediately thought "uh oh, just like those Czerka guys who messed with the Rakata mind trap on Tatooine" - good foreshadowing there, as you eventually do find a Rakata mind trap, as well as some Malgus holos that seem to indicate that he talked to someone there. You also pull Darth Nul's holocron out of your back pocket and the mind trap tugs at it, though I was a bit baffled why my character would be just carrying that thing around with her so casually. In general, this whole section was really well done in terms of atmosphere though - I was very immersed in the creepy vibes.

You check in on the mind trap and find Darth Nul herself inside, or at least what's left of her mind. She talks about "he who came before" and you conclude that she must mean Malgus, though she doesn't really confirm this, so I'm not sure that's actually who she meant. What's left of her mind doesn't seem to be entirely there anymore (she also has the equivalent of a legacy title under her name that says "Fragments of Intellect") and she attacks you in an attempt to take over your body. After you successfully fight her off, the sparse scenery inside the mind trap comes crashing down and you awake outside to see the physical mind trap fall over, seemingly lifeless.

Back on Odessen, you're given the option to share everything that's happened with your faction or hold back, and you suddenly find yourself with a mysterious recording that someone seems to have smuggled into your situation room. It reveals Darth Jadus of agent story fame, enlightening you that he's been the one leaving hints for you (such as the distress signal that led you to Jemala). He sees the galaxy changing with the events that are already in motion, and wants you to follow his advice on what to do next (without telling you more about that). He also reveals that Sa'har and Ri'kan are not dead (not the biggest surprise in the world I guess, though I didn't expect it to be revealed so soon) and that Ri'kan appears to have taken Sa'har prisoner, presumably in an attempt to get back into Heta's good graces.

We already knew about the Darth Jadus reveal thanks to the trailer from Star Wars Celebration, but at the time I wasn't sure what the context for it was. I'm pleased to see that he seems to be back "properly", though I was taken aback by how different his voice sounded. I was convinced he had been recast, but according to the credits it's the same voice actor (Stephen Rashbrook); he just sounds quite different to me (and I've seen others comment on this too). I guess it must be hard to hit the exact same pitch you once used for a character you recorded some fifteen years ago and haven't revisited since then.

Conclusion

While this update didn't have a big "whoa" moment - the Darth Jadus reveal would have qualified if the devs hadn't opted to spoil it ahead of time - I thought it was really strong in other ways.

I've generally been positive about all the goings-on with Shae, Sa'har and other important NPCs, but I did note as far back as 7.2 almost three years ago that I was getting a bit concerned that we were perhaps spending too much time watching other characters having adventures that didn't really involve us. And I do think that has kind of held true over the patches that followed. I still enjoyed those story updates, don't get me wrong, but you know how sometimes you don't realise you miss something until it suddenly comes back and you go "oh wow, I forgot how good that was"? That's how this update made me feel by limiting its "meanwhile, somewhere else" segment to that brief shot of Malgus and Shae and then focusing everything else on the player character and their relationships with existing companions. I feel like I haven't had a chance to take so many screenshots of my characters just looking cool in a long time! We also get to interact with half a dozen different companions who often have interesting banter that fleshes out their characters or our relationships with them, or that's just plain fun. What's not to love?

In terms of overall plot progression... eh, I wouldn't say that we made huge strides in this update, but I've got to admit the structure with the three mini arcs actually made me appreciate how frikkin' complex this plot they've been building is in terms of what all the different characters' motivations are, and I think this was the first time the writers really managed to pull it all together a little bit.

The Tatooine arc reminds us that Heta is a threat by herself, regardless of her rivalry with Shae and the details of her goals and motivations, while the trip to Hoth deals with the impact of Shae's betrayal and her alliance with Malgus. The visit to Elom finally provides some clear answers about Darth Nul, which on Ilum then get tied back to Darth Malgus. All of these people are converging towards something, and it feels like whenever they all finally manage to meet up, it could result in massive fireworks due to their different alliances and rivalries: Heta hates Shae, who works with Malgus, who in turn doesn't seem to care about Heta but actually appears to have similar ideas as her (wanting to carry on Nul's work) even as he helps Shae fight her! Just thinking about all that makes my brain hurt!

And now we also know that the Kateen siblings are still alive, and Darth Jadus has been planning something too. Where the heck is this going? At this point I feel like all of this could be heading towards a pretty epic finale.

10 Moments in SWTOR's History for Which You Had to Be There

Star Wars: The Old Republic is primarily know for its developer-crafted stories, but any player who's engaged with the social side of the game for any length of time knows that there are also community-driven stories and dramas, and moments when you simply had to be there to know what made them so exciting, even if some of the related content is still available in the game today. As someone who's been a subscriber since early access and never stopped playing, I thought it would be fun to share some of the most interesting moments I remember with my readers, especially with newer ones who may not have been playing as long.

Note: If you've never played through some of the expansion storylines, some of the later items on this list will contain story spoilers.

The /getdown bug

Going chronologically, let's start with a story with which I amused my guildies one night. Back when the game launched, you could apparently do dance emotes in combat, and someone quickly discovered that doing /getdown would suddenly prevent opponents from attacking. This was actually picked up by several gaming news sites at the time, both because SWTOR was the newest hotness in town and because the mere idea of enemies being stunned into inaction by your dancing skills was a very funny thing to write headlines about.

I never saw this bug in action myself, but I did come across this comic on social media at the time which made me laugh so much that I saved it:

Click to enlarge and read properly. I wish I could credit the original artist (Minicrit?) with a link, but alas, RIP Google Plus.

The big PvP debacle on original Ilum

Another thing that made headlines around launch was the planet Ilum and the PvP taking place there. You see, the western ice shelf where the Gree visit nowadays used to be a dedicated PvP area. This brief video by Force Gaming should give you an idea of how it was supposed to work. It was released about two weeks after launch, and the video notes that at the time, people were just flipping objectives and not much PvP was going on. This was "fixed" with a patch... that in turn broke the area in a whole bunch of other ways. The result were crazy AoE fests that the game's engine couldn't deal with very well, which caused people to gain valour way too fast, even as they were just dying over and over in the mayhem. It was just chaos and caused endless complaints.

Once again, this is something I didn't actually get to experience directly, as I took my time levelling and didn't get to Ilum until about three months later, by which time all the craziness had already died down. In January 2013, I actually wrote a post called "The strangeness of Ilum a year later", but in those first weeks after launch, it was seemingly all people would talk about on forums and news sites, about how this newly launched MMO clearly didn't know how to deal with PvP and was therefore already failing horribly.

The original Rakghoul event

The recurring Rakghoul Resurgence event is probably old hat to most of you at this point - just another world event that comes around every so often and which has been around for what feels like forever. The very first Rakghoul event in April 2012 though... that was something else. The activities it came with weren't really any more exciting than what we have in the repeating event, but the vibe was very different and unique, mainly because we had no idea it was coming.

The game was still very new at the time, had a lot going on and we were getting patches and updates about more patches all the time... but this came as a complete surprise, and the experience of everyone being confused about what was going on and slowly figuring things out over the course of the first day was unique and exciting in a way that I think is hard to convey nowadays. You can read the blog post I wrote about it at the time to get an idea though. (I also wrote two follow-ups.)

Ultimately the fact that it was a time-limited one-off was also one of the biggest criticisms Bioware received, which is why they eventually swapped to making new events recurring. The Rakghouls would eventually join the rotation in early 2014.

The Grand Acquisitions Race

The Grand Acquisitions Race (sometimes also referred to as "the Chevin event") was SWTOR's second one-time world event, and a lot less exciting than the original Rakghoul incursion on Tatooine. One reason for this was that we actually knew that it was coming, even if we didn't know the details. The second reason however was that it was simply a lot less exciting in terms of activities, as all there was to do was a time-gated puzzle quest chain and farming currency crates on Nar Shaddaa. I have to chuckle a bit when I occasionally see people say that this event should be brought back. People didn't even care about it that much when the game was still in its heyday and a limited-time world event was something exciting! Still, I guess my point is you had to be there to know just how underwhelming it really was.

The return of Revan

I think this one might be a bit hard to parse for anyone who started playing after 2014. We all know Revan is in the game, right? There's a whole expansion called "Shadow of Revan", no? Well, for a moment, try to imagine that there wasn't. Revan is in the game, but only in this weird side quest that you'll only see if you like doing group content, and he's a prisoner one moment and a genocidal maniac the next, and if you blink you'll miss him dying as well. Also note that you had to have levelled through and done group content on both factions to be able to make sense of this brief cameo, something which fans of the original KotOR were not at all happy about.

Then it's 2014 - we've been level 55 for a bit over a year, got several new daily areas and raids, everything's kind of chugging along nicely if you're not dying for your character's personal story to be continued... and then we start getting a new series of flashpoints that's being promoted as a new story arc called "Forged Alliances". That Theron guy is kinda cute, but aside from that it's all a bit mysterious. Who are these new troublemakers in the shadows? The answer came in September, in a post in which I felt the need to give a spoiler warning.

Whoa, Revan is back? Revan is alive? Is it really him though? And then a whole expansion with his name! It was exciting times for a while, showing once again that Revan's name still attracted the crowds. I think reception of the expansion storyline was ultimately a bit mixed - it gave the character a better send-off than the base game had for sure, but it was still a bit awkward in the eyes of some.

The launch of Knights of the Fallen Empire

Did you realise that we're less than a month away from the KotFE expansion turning ten years old? I'm sure I'm not the only long-time player who still thinks of everything pre-KotFE as the good old days, and everything that came after it as "the new stuff". It is after all a fact that it changed the game in bigger ways than perhaps anything that came afterwards, with the introduction of features like level sync or its complete overhaul of the companion system.

Still, I'm not even talking about all of that. What made KotFE's launch a "you had to be there" moment was just how absolutely insane the hype was. A new CGI trailer for the first time since launch! Accidental leaks with announcements that could be interpreted in multiple possible ways! General Star Wars hype as we were all looking forward to the sequel trilogy! (Oops.) Absolute mayhem!

And when it came out, people (including me) did indeed love it! Mainstream gaming sites were like "hey, this game still exists and is good"! It felt like we were all set for a big SWTOR renaissance... except it all fizzled out within a couple of months. People thought the story was neat, but they didn't want to hang around to wait for one new chapter per month. They felt there wasn't enough to do at endgame. And those of us who did stick around quickly found out how tedious the new story was to play through on alts, never mind the plot going in directions that became more and more aggravating. For the second time in its life, SWTOR had released (something) with a lot of hype and then failed to live up to it.

Galactic Command

For anyone who might not know, Galactic Command was a new gearing/endgame progression system introduced with the Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion, and in its original iteration, it was the worst system of its kind that I've personally ever seen. To add insult to injury, people (including me) were telling them from the moment it was announced that it was a bad idea, but the devs were all "nah, it'll work and be fun, you'll see".

It didn't and it wasn't. For me, the early days of Galactic Command were one of my all-time low points with the game. Fortunately the devs scrambled to fix it immediately after launch, but it took about six months to get it into what could be described as an "acceptable" state and many players held a grudge long after. It's another one of those things that in hindsight makes you wonder what could've been sooo bad about it, but if you were there, you know.

Theron's betrayal

I did say there were spoilers in here, didn't I? I think looking at the game's storylines as a whole, the Fractured Alliances story (consisting of the three flashpoints Crisis on Umbara, Traitor Among the Chiss and The Nathema Conspiracy) is probably not among many people's favourites. The writing definitely felt like it had dug itself into a bit of a hole with Knights of the Eternal Throne, and it wasn't clear how it was going to get out of it.

I actually think that Fractured Alliances ultimately succeeded in what it set out to do, but it's fair to say that it was a bumpy ride. One thing I really did enjoy about it though was the community interactions it created. Theron's betrayal in Crisis on Umbara was not well-received for a variety of reasons, but it was interesting to watch the conversation around it evolve as more people started to believe that the whole thing was just a ruse. In hindsight, there are some hints towards this from the beginning, but they were easy to overlook at first.

People just didn't want their love interest to betray them, and there was even a hashtag called #believeintheron making the rounds on Twitter. I remember seeing screenshots of people assembling on Odessen with all their Therons out and forming a heart-shape or something. I just thought that was very cool, and actually kind of made me more invested in the final outcome than the story itself would have been able to do on its own.

Darth Malgus' return

Back in 2017, I wrote a post called "11 NPCs That Died Before Their Time" and Darth Malgus was second on my list. I just couldn't believe that they put him in all the cinematic trailers and then simply had him get killed off in one of the first endgame flashpoints! I'm not sure I was aware at the time that there was a supposedly deleted scene from the KotFE trailer that showed Malgus being delivered to Valkorion, frozen in a block of carbonite. Even if I was, it seemed obvious at the time that they'd deleted it for a reason and for all intents and purposes, Malgus was still considered dead.

When he really did come back with the Ossus update at the end of 2018, I absolutely loved it. It was a really well-presented surprise, and while I don't think it was as big as the return of Revan, for me personally it was actually more meaningful than that had been. It's hard to think that it's already been seven years since then - at this point it feels like it should be obvious to everyone playing the game in any capacity at all that Darth Malgus is alive. However, that moment when we first found out was definitely special. (Cue some comment about how he's unfortunately outstayed his welcome since then.)

Move to Broadsword

Two years ago, when IGN leaked the news that Star Wars: The Old Republic was going to be transferred from Bioware to some largely unknown studio called Broadsword Entertainment, all hell broke loose in the community for a few weeks. I think dedicated SWTOR players are quite used to endless doom-saying about the game and are well-practised at ignoring it by this point, but this sounded serious, and it was not at all clear what the consequences were going to be.

To me it was probably more worrying than even the original free-to-play announcement had been, and I found myself seeking solace in spending a lot more time than usual talking to fellow content creators. I also felt compelled to try and do my own part by practising something vaguely resembling journalism, which meant assembling information from different sources and trying to put it into context for people. In hindsight it seems almost silly how much we worried, considering how little changed from a player perspective after the studio transition, but at the time it was big news.

Runner-ups:

I could've tried to come up with even more stories, but I thought that 10 was a good number to stop at. Nonetheless, here are three more events that I considered mentioning but decided against because they were mostly negative but also ultimately not that interesting to talk about in detail in my opinion:

• The original free-to-play transition
• The Legacy of the Sith expansion launch
• The whole character texture update drama

Which of all of these events were you personally around for? Do you agree with my characterisation of how things went down? Are there any other major events in the game's history that you would've included on this list?