Playing as a Male Character

Last week, after more than twelve years of playing Star Wars: The Old Republic almost daily, I completed a class story on a male character for the first time. The question of why it took me this long is kind of fascinating to me.

I've played video games with male protagonists in the past without giving it a second thought, but something about MMOs makes them different somehow. I've never shied away from creating male characters there either (one of the very first alts I created back when I started playing WoW in 2006 was a human male warlock) but for some reason I always struggled to get as invested in them as I was in my female characters.

I do know that I'm at least not entirely alone in this - Nick Yee from Quantic Foundry did an interesting survey about gender preferences in gaming a few years ago, which found that a large majority of women prefer to play female characters, but only less than half of the surveyed men preferred playing male characters. In fact, almost a third of men also preferred playing female characters.

Anecdotally, my own experience has been that people have basically two modes of engaging with their characters in an MMO: by viewing them as an extension of themselves, an avatar or personal representation, or by viewing them as toys to play with, dolls to dress up, action figures that they can make jump around. This isn't to say that people aren't capable of doing both, but I think that "by default" you tend to lean either one way or the other when you start a game.

My personal observation at least has been that people who prefer playing characters that match their real life gender tend to view them more as representations of themselves, while those who'll happily mix and match view them more as objects to be played around with and with whom they don't necessarily identify. Though why women would be so much more prone to the former than the latter is honestly a mystery to me.

Either way, my strong preference for female characters in MMOs wasn't something to which I gave a huge amount of thought in the past... but of course SWTOR has a lot of "gendered" content in the original class stories, such as flirt options and whole romances that are only accessible to you if your character is the right gender. After more than a decade of exploring the game with dozens of female alts, I was really starting to feel that I was missing out by denying myself access to those optional story bits designed for male characters.

I actually created my very first male character in TOR back in 2012: Zilek, my Jedi consular on what is now the Satele Shan server. I know this because I mentioned his creation in this post from October 2012. As I anticipated back then, I partially played through the starting zone and then didn't do anything with him again for ages.

As far as I can tell from screenshots, I decided to check in on him again for reasons I can no longer remember around May 2019. What I do remember is that I almost instantly realised that I suddenly hated the way he looked (I'd originally given him shoulder-length black hair and that complexion option with the lip liner), so I gave him a makeover to make him more visually appealing. That helped, but somehow the quest cut scenes still bothered me. For some irrational reason I cannot quite fathom, it felt strange to see him talk and have a male voice coming out of "my" character. It just felt wrong. So I bought him an outfit with a mask - something I usually never do - but in this instance it weirdly helped to make him more playable, as if it made it easier to pretend he was secretly a girl or something?! If that sounds kind of insane to you, I didn't think any better of myself for feeling that way.

I levelled him for a few weeks, but then forgot about him again for the next three years. It wasn't until I started doing Galactic Seasons on multiple servers that I began to give him attention more regularly and got him to max level, though I still haven't finished his class story.

As I got more into the idea of levelling a male character of each class, I made more of my new alts on the other servers male. They are all still relatively low level and not very advanced, but they exist and get play time, even if sporadically. At some point I realised that the only permutation I was still missing entirely was a male Sith warrior... so I went ahead and created one on my home server Darth Malgus. This was also around the time I was having a blast PvPing as a Juggernaut on Shae Vizla, so my newest warrior's purpose became to both do lowbie PvP while levelling and go through the warrior class story as a male character for the first time.

And... I actually succeeded! The questing really picked up once I outlevelled the lowbie bracket, as I wasn't keen to start midbie PvP at the very bottom of that pile and focused on progressing the story over queueing for arenas for the next ten levels or so.

I actually had a lot of fun with the story as well, and I didn't even have the urge to hide my character's face this time. I think what helped was that with this one, I had an idea for a "character" from the beginning and didn't even pretend that I was using him to represent my real self at any point. But it required a kind of actual "work" from me at first, as I had to think about what his personality was and how he would react to certain situations. There were some choices where I had to pause and think for a really long time to remind myself that I didn't want to go with whatever my gut feeling was, but what this character would do in that situation. For how challenging I found that at times, it was also a new kind of fun to be honest, and he quickly became one of my new favourites, as I connected to him in a different way to all my other alts.

I went in with a plan to romance one of the warrior's female love interests (seeing that kind of stuff was part of the whole point of making a male character, after all) and found myself surprisingly torn by which route to go down. I initially didn't think he was going to be interested in Vette, but she can be so charming... with Jaesa, I wasn't sure whether I was going to make her light or dark side, as he wasn't clearly one or the other himself, but I eventually ended up with her dark side version.

Now, dark side Jaesa has always been one of my least favourite companions, and I've been baffled by why she's so popular with some people. After playing through her romance, I can at least kind of see why - she may be psychotically violent, but she's also a stereotypically bad girl that falls head over heels for the player character and pursues him aggressively - I can see that being appealing. It's just that if you're playing a female character, like I always have, you're only left with the conversations where she's being absolutely psychotic and nothing else.

I thought that since I'd flirted with both Vette and Jaesa, there would be some sort of conversation that would force me to choose between them at some point, but I don't know if I just did things in the wrong order but I never saw anything like it. The most I got was Jaesa making a reference to my character having a thing with the Twi'lek but she never seemed to take all that much issue with it. Vette on the other hand never even mentioned Jaesa and asked to get married after a single kiss, which was just an obvious "whoa, no". Ultimately my warrior ended up agreeing to marry Jaesa in the most assholish way possible, which I thought was both disturbing and funny in equal amounts.

I kind of like the idea of continuing to play him to see some of the expansion content as a male character as well (even if I have no particular urge to flirt with Lord Cytharat, who knows what might happen) but realistically my enthusiasm for that kind of thing tends to fizzle out once I hit the level cap at the latest - we'll see how it goes.

Bad Romance

I actually finished the Sith warrior class story on Shae Vizla! For as long as I've had alts on other servers, this is the first time I've actually completed a class story on a server other than Darth Malgus, and while it may be silly, I'm kind of proud of myself. I also realised that it had been a really long time since my last full Sith warrior playthrough in general... six or seven years, based on some comments I made on this blog.

Something I hadn't done in even longer was romancing Quinn. I wrote a post about the different base game romances for female characters last year in which I mentioned that I quite enjoyed the dynamic with him, but I've got to confess that this was all based on memories from over a decade ago at this point. I thought it would be fun to finally go through that particular storyline again with my newest Pureblood. Boy, was it a confusing experience.

To be clear, it's not that I completely changed my mind about Quinn or anything, but I basically hadn't considered that the way companion conversations work had changed in the meantime, and what effect this would have on the experience.

To refresh everyone's memories, at launch the class companion stories weren't tied to main story progress but rather to that particular companion's influence (then affection) level with you. I don't remember when exactly I went through most of Quinn's conversations, whether it was earlier or later, but I do recall that I was generally very bad at maxing out companion affection (I made a whole post on that subject back in 2014), so I probably didn't see at least half of his storyline until after completing the overall class story. Either way, I have no memory of how this interacted with his "big twist", but I figure it probably can't have been that big of a deal or I would've remembered it.

The point is, with Knights of the Fallen Empire, companion conversations were changed to unlock automatically after completing certain steps in your class story. I was very much in favour of this change, since it meant I actually did them at a sensible pace now instead of oscillating between basically ignoring my companions and going on gift-giving binges to get them to talk to me. I'm not sure how I expected this to affect the Quinn romance, but I know that what I actually got, wasn't it.

I was initially quite excited and keen to get the ball rolling, so I always made sure to talk to Quinn before any other companions, but he seemed coyer than I remembered, and it felt like it took forever for things to heat up between him and my warrior. I kept waiting for the big confession of love, but it just didn't come.

Eventually we got to the end of Voss and then the visit to the Imperial ship where... "the thing" happens. I couldn't help but think that surely it would've been more impactful if we'd already been closer beforehand, but I still chose a conversation option that said something like "we're breaking up". I was reminded of just how incredibly clunky the bit where you end up sparing him for "reasons" feels.

Then we got back onto the ship and I went to talk to him again to see what the next conversation was and... it was the big confession of love. My jaw just kind of dropped. Like, we literally got close to killing each other five minutes ago. Timing!? And I'd chosen the conversation option that said we were done, too!

I tried to justify it in my head with something like that the emotional turmoil of all that just brought their real feelings to the surface even stronger or something like that, and I allowed the romance to continue, but it still just felt weird.

It's kind of funny to me that even replaying content I've done before while trying to achieve the exact same outcome can result in such a dramatically different experience. Maybe the game has changed more over the years than I usually give it credit for.

Romance Review: Base Game Guys for Gals

A couple of months ago (wow, this has been sitting in my drafts for a while!), Intisar wrote a blog post in defence of the romances with Doc and Corso, after they'd been panned pretty hard in one of Swtorista's livestreams. I had thoughts on this that I wanted to share in reply, but I figured that I might as well do so in a blog post of my own. It just took longer than expected to get it out...

I'll open by saying that I'm far from the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the in-game romances. Unlike many players, I'm not tempted to hit absolutely every flirt option I see, and in general the concept of romancing an NPC in a video game has less appeal to me nowadays than it might have had maybe fifteen years ago. I've also just been really inept at virtual romance in the past. My first post about companion romances on this blog talked about this at some length, including mention of my akward attempts at romance in Dragon Age. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have opinions on the stuff I have seen, and I thought I might as well compile them all in a single post.

This will only talk about romanceable companions by the way - flirting with random NPCs you encounter along the way can still be fun and memorable, but it just doesn't quite have the same weight in my opinion. I'll also limit myself to the base game companions, and more specifically to those available to female player characters, because almost all my characters are female. It's only more recently that I've dabbled a bit in also trying to level a couple of male characters, but none of them have made it far enough in the story to see their major romances. Something to explore over the next decade I guess. Anyway, here's what I've got to say now:

Republic

Trooper - Aric Jorgan

My main is a trooper and she's never kissed anyone. As I mentioned in the post linked two paragraphs ago, I wasn't instantly sold on Jorgan, and by the time he kind of started to grow on me and I might've considered a romance, I had missed my chance. So all she's done is flirt relentlessly with Jonas Balkar, and I could see something developing with Rass Ordo depending on how things go with him in the future... we'll see.

Anyway, on the subject of Aric: I obviously made alts later and have romanced him since then, though it's been a while since I played through those conversations, and I've got to admit they haven't been particularly memorable. In this post from 2016 I wrote that Jorgan kind of acts like a clichéd action hero in the sense that he likes to let the tough guy hang out most of the time, only confessing his feelings under certain amounts of pressure. It's hard to picture him in a proper committed relationship where he'd actually have to act like a normal person most of the time. And yeah, I don't really have much more to add to that. I kind of want to get my Vanguard through Fallen Empire at some point, to see whether the reunion with Aric in chapter eleven adds any more depth to the relationship.

Smuggler - Corso Riggs

Ah, the frequently maligned Corso. I'll come out right away and say that I like him. Honestly, even if you don't want to romance him, taking him along everywhere and watching him squirm by intentionally pushing all his buttons is hilarious. However, even as a romance he's got some things going for him. Like Intisar says, he's the kind of guy who'll always have your back no matter what's going on. He's kind of old-fashioned in his protectiveness and ideas about loyalty... and yes, this is where the problem with the sexism comes in.

I can't really blame anyone for being put off by this, but to me it ultimately wasn't that big a deal because unlike many sexist ideas in real life, Corso's sexism is utterly toothless. He'll always pipe up about how he thinks that a lady shouldn't do this or that... but ultimately he never tries to stop you, ignoring his objections doesn't diminish his affection for you, and if you push back on any of his silly complaints, he never has a good comeback. His ideas about ladies don't come from some deep conviction, but rather from a place of being a young bumpkin growing up on a backwater planet who just repeats what he's been told growing up, which ultimately just means that he's kind of naive, which I don't find that big of a deal personally. Plus he does show some growth over time.

Jedi Knight - Doc

Next we have Doc, the other guy Intisar went to bat for, and I agree with him, though for different reasons. I get why people might find him unappealing if they're looking for a character who'll be their one true love - but I always loved Doc for offering a more casual romance option. Doc flirts with every woman he meets from the moment you first encounter him, so you know exactly what kind of guy he is. And that can still be fun! There's something attractive about a man who finds something nice to say about absolutely every woman he meets, as long as you don't let yourself get dragged in too deep.

Ultimately, Doc's brave, easygoing and optimistic, and some days that's just the kind of pick-me-up you need after a hard day of saving the galaxy. I think he might also be the only companion who's actually happy if you turn down his marriage proposal. I just think he's a fantastic buddy with benefits.

Jedi Consular - Lieutenant Iresso

My first impressions of the consular romance were not very positive (again I refer you to the old blog post linked at the beginning), as I apparently flirted with both Tharan and Felix without meaning to and it all got very weird. I still don't really care for flirting with Tharan, but Lieutenant Iresso was really charming when I entered a relationship with him intentionally on an alt consular. He's probably got the most mature of all companion romances, with no major tension or drama, just two adults that really like each other and slide into being more than friends really easily.

Empire

Sith Warrior - Malavai Quinn

Quinn is another companion that is hated by many, though he didn't do badly on Swtorista's romance tier list. His betrayal in the main class story makes many people's dislike understandable I think, though if you can look past that, he's got another pretty unique experience to offer. I actually never forgave him on my own Sith warrior - she didn't hold a grudge on Iokath but also came to realise that she was kind of over him and that she preferred casually shacking up with Lieutenant Pierce.

Either way, in the earlier part of the class story, Quinn is pretty delightful to romance as he's basically the male equivalent of a blushing schoolgirl. He's super turned on by the Sith warrior's power and confidence but doesn't quite know how to deal with it at first, which makes for many a fun opportunity to make him squirm. It's an entertaining dynamic that you don't see this way round in media very often - more commonly it's the strong man whose appealing qualities make the woman blush.

Sith Inquisitor - Andronikos Revel

Andronikos is the classic "bad boy". He even gifts you a knife at one point! I remember the thing I enjoyed the most about romancing him was that he starts out very chill and views the relationship as pretty casual. I'll never forget how much I cracked up when I flirted with a guy on Alderaan and Andronikos' reaction was to approve and tell me that he was gonna go off to entertain himself with some girl from house staff in the meantime. He does get more possessive later on from what I remember, but it's still an interesting dynamic. He's easily the fiercest of the male love interests.

Imperial Agent - Vector Hyllus

Vector is the one romance that worked for me from the beginning and that I've never changed my mind about. I find it hard to make a female agent without romancing him. I just love how he's this calm, dedicated geek, and how the early flirtations with him are very low-key and playful. His love is deep but he doesn't want to make any drama about it. What's not to love?

Bounty Hunter - Torian Cadera

Torian is superficially attractive, but I've got to admit I never found his romance terribly compelling. I'll always remember the various conversations where he just says something to you in Mando'a with no subtitles and I was simply like: "Huh?" How am I supposed to judge whether that's romantic or not? His voice actor also uses a pretty flat affect most of the time, which to me comes across as Torian being "too cool to care", which I in turn don't care for myself.

On replaying his romace more recently I found it a bit more appealing, as I think it actually works better if your own bounty hunter isn't too weighed down by morals and approaches things with a colder "just in it for the thrill/money" kind of attitude. (My first hunter who romanced Torian was very light side and e.g. letting a potential target go for "moral" reasons didn't generally sit well with him.)

Overall Verdict

All in all, I've got to say I rank the base game romances for female characters pretty highly - even if they don't all appeal to me personally, I think it's really impressive what a wide range of love interests the writers managed to come up with for these: from shy to boisterous, from loyal to promiscuous, from goodie-two-shoes to bad boy, they offer quite a wide variety of experiences.

In fact, just writing this has made me want to do some romancing on alts just to see the ones again that I haven't played through in a while...

Day 2: Class Stories #IntPiPoMo

I'm taking part in IntPiPoMo, and this is the second of ten screenshot posts I'm making this month, each one themed around a certain topic. Today's topic is... class stories!

The last time I made a post on this theme three years ago I noted that I have a very haphazard way of playing through the original stories nowadays. Many still consider them SWTOR's most compelling content ten years later, and while I don't exactly disagree, I'm clearly not as compelled to stick with them as most! Where others might start a new character and play through their story from beginning to end, I regularly hop between different characters while only progressing them by one or two missions at a time, meaning that without my spreadsheet I'd be hopelessly lost when it comes to remembering where each of my alts sits in terms of story.

Accordingly, when I gathered screenshots for this post, I ended up with an eclectic mix of images from different classes at very random points in their personal narrative.

This may well be the earliest moment I screenshotted in any class story ever, as this happens when your bounty hunter is like... level two? Historically I don't tend to take a lot of pictures on the starter planets except maybe on Tython due to how pretty it is.

This is Zilek, my Jedi Shadow on the Satele Shan server, solving his primary task on Taris the violent way. He's actually an absolutely ancient character - I think I first created him around the time free-to-play came out, but I don't actually tend to spend much time on servers other than Darth Malgus. One thing that makes him interesting though is that he's the only male character in my giant stable of alts - for some reason I've always struggled to bond with characters of the opposite sex in MMOs. I still dream of actually making some progress with him one day though.

Here we have another one of my consulars, my dps Sage, meeting with a child of the Emperor called Stark, like the ill-fated family from Game of Thrones. I always kind of liked this guy in the sense that despite of his very brief appearance, the voice actor manages to imbue him with a lot of character and he comes across as quite a tortured soul.

And one more shot of yet another consular, this one my DvL Shadow. It's a bit hard to make out in this static image, but the giant statue on the right was being smashed dramatically at the moment I took this. I've always liked these rare, more wide-angled scenes from the early game, considering that a lot of the earliest cut scenes were just basic shot/reverse shots.

Another nice wide-angled shot, this time from the Sith inquisitor's class story, when Darth Andru's Force ghost tries to kill you on Dromund Kaas, just before old Lord Kallig steps in to intervene. Who says Sith can't make great parents? Having a ghostly ancestor come in to save your hide on more than one occasion is definitely a perk.

Another shot of another inquisitor of mine, this time taking part in the iconic activity of shooting lightning! On second thought, I'm not 100% sure this was actually from a class story mission and not just a planetary quest, but there are enough similar moments of this type either way.

What else is iconic for Force users? Flinging/smashing things with the Force! Modelled here by my DvL Juggernaut.

And finally, here's the same character striking another one of my favourite iconic poses, lightsaber raised with determined expression on her face.

IntPiPoMo count: 15

What Will Combat Styles Mean for Me?

As mentioned in my post about the expansion announcement, there's still a lot about the new combat styles feature that we don't know, especially relating to how changing between different styles will work and whether there'll be any sort of limitations on when and how often you can do it, but it does seem pretty clear that you'll be able to swap between the existing advanced classes with everything that entails - including both their weapons and abilities - and I see no reason to assume that e.g. older characters will be excluded from this feature (though I did see that line of thought floating around on Twitter as well).

With that said, what is this going to mean for my stable of alts?

The thought of Shintar the Commando being anything other than, well, a Commando seems kind of absurd. I mean, it's in the blog name! And I've always had a giant assault cannon on my banner! That said... no, I don't think I'll change her play style, though depending on the ease of swapping, I might experiment with using Mercenary style some time. Same basic gameplay, but two blasters. Plus I mean, all tech-using classes have canonically always had at least one blaster anyway, considering the ever-present oddity of wielders of big guns and rifles suddenly holstering their weapons in cut scenes to threaten their enemies with a small blaster instead.

Looking at my alts, I honestly can't see myself making a lot of changes to them either, because I've never been fussed about weapon choice and if I made them one specific advanced class over another, there was usually a reason for that. Still, I could imagine some use cases for swapping combat styles:

One is for Force users whose alignment doesn't match their faction. I have thought occasionally that it's a bit weird that my Sith Sorcerer is still shooting lightning all the time, considering how much of a goodie-two-shoes she is. So I could see myself changing her to Sage for the more appropriate visuals. I think on a low-level character it would feel a bit strange to use opposite-faction Force powers, because you'd think that would be very alarming to your fellow Sith or Jedi, but if you're already the Commander of your own Alliance, I reckon you don't have to worry about hiding your true nature anymore if you don't want to. The same would apply to my light-sided Juggernaut tank.

I've said before that I'm terrible at playing dark-sided characters, so there aren't many contenders for a transition the opposite way among my Republic alts. The closest is probably my somewhat ruthless Sentinel, but I'm not sure she's evil enough.

Speaking of my Sentinel though, that does bring up another interesting line of thought. I've made alts of every single advanced class over the years because I simply wanted to know what they played like, but I can't say I actually enjoyed them all. Sentinels and Marauders look cool with their two lightsabers, but the play style has never appealed to me at all. My second least favourite is probably Sniper/Gunslinger.

So the question here is: Would it be worth speccing out of the advanced classes that I don't like very much? It has sometimes struck me as a bit of a shame that I find myself avoiding playing these characters purely because I don't enjoy the way they play very much, even if their story choices would make for some interesting content to experience. But at the same time, I specifically created them because I wanted to have a Sentinel, a Sniper and so on. Is that still going to be that meaningful when we can all swap combat styles though? Something to think about at least.

And of course there is always the option of new alts. As if I need even more of those! But then, there could be synergies with other things I want to do. For example I've talked about how I like to play healers in lowbie PvP, but just how many times do I really want to start over as a consular or inquisitor? Now I could level up through the knight and warrior stories to add more alts to the stable while having a bit more variety in my story content.

Do you see yourself making use of the new combat styles feature?

The Best Classes to Take into Onslaught

With the recent Steam launch having brought many new and returning players (back) to SWTOR, there's been a resurgence of curiosity about many basic aspects of the game. One question that returning players with a stable of multiple characters might have is which class they should pick up first to get the most out of the new story additions since they last played.

My post about the best classes to take into the "Knights of..." expansions is one of the most popular posts on this blog, but we've had a fair amount of new story since then, with the arc about Valkorion and his family more or less wrapped up and abandoned. I think it's fair to wonder whether the storylines that have come after are better suited for a different set of classes, or if there is one class that's just best for everything, meaning KotFE/KotET and everything that comes after. My answer to the latter is "yes, and it's the Sith inquisitor", but I'd really like to go into a bit more detail than that. So get ready for some minor content spoilers and mention of companion returns post-KotET, but I'm not giving away any major plot points or anything.

First off I think that on the whole, the post-KotET content has been much more neutral in terms of which classes it's suitable for. Your character is now the commander of the Eternal Alliance (whatever you may think of how they ended up there) and they are back to dealing with the two big factions, which is easily justifiable in my opinion, whether you originally started out as a Sith or a Republic trooper.

When Bioware first eased their way back into this style of writing they seemed to struggle a bit, and the Iokath storyline that followed KotET was pretty bland and awkward as a result. This was followed by what has been dubbed the "traitor arc" since then, which again started poorly but got better as it went along. It's also probably the single most class-neutral storyline we've had since KotET, simply because it focuses very much on your personal relationship with the traitor, which depends more on how you feel about that particular character than your class choice. That said, the last flashpoint in the series, The Nathema Conspiracy, features a nice callback to your class story with a lot of different permutations based on your choices there.

From there it's off to Jedi Under Siege, which takes place on the planet Ossus, and where the current ongoing storyline kicks off. While this is still fairly class-neutral content as a whole, Bioware started to include a lot more references to the original class stories from this point onwards, which is what I will use to justify most of my rankings. Also noteworthy is that from Iokath onwards you're given the option to start sabotaging your old faction, which is something that might be greatly suited for characters that were played as never having been that attached to their original faction to begin with.

With all that out of the way, I would recommend prioritising the classes as follows if you're uncertain:

1. Sith Inquisitor

The Sith inquisitor is in the lucky position that they were a great fit for KotET/KotFE but the new content fits them like a glove as well. They basically enjoy ruling their own little faction, and whether you decide to go back and help the old Sith Empire or would rather scheme against them because it's the Sithy thing to do, opportunities for intrigue abound.

Jedi Under Siege starts with a call from your old friend Moff Pyron (who remembers you of course), and if you sided with Khem Val over Darth Zash at the end of his companion arc in the base game, you'll get to reunite with Khem on Ossus. Even better, you get to romance him too if you're into that kind of thing!

In Onslaught you're also given the opportunity to reclaim your old seat on the Dark Council if you wish (and in an appropriately Sithy manner as well).

Oh, and Andronikos and Ashara also come back in post-KotET Alliance alerts but that's really just the icing on the cake.

2. Jedi Knight

The Jedi Knight is another character that gets along well with the KotFE/KotET storyline and manages to continue into the new content quite seamlessly. You'll get recognised both as an important Jedi and a military commander, and no fewer than three of the original knight companions make their return as part of the storyline from Ossus onwards: Doc, Kira and Scourge. The latter two haven't had that much to do yet (that'll be in the content drop we're anticipating towards the end of the year), but all three are fully integrated into the storyline and reuniting with them is quite interesting. Kira can now also be romanced by female knights and Scourge is open to either gender. I haven't been able to find confirmation whether Doc swings both ways as well now...

3. Imperial Agent

The reason I rank the Imperial agent highly is mostly because of the saboteur option. You don't have to take it if you don't want to, but of all classes the agent was the one for whom it could (potentially) make the most sense to want to betray the Empire by the end of their class story. This was the sort of story thread that I think most of us didn't expect to ever get picked up again once Bioware said that there weren't going to be any more class stories, but the saboteur option has effectively revived it and even made it more "mainstream" so to speak.

Vector returns in a post-KotET Alliance alert, which is nice enough if you like him or even romanced him, and agents also get an exclusive little chat with him after the Task at Hand interlude that serves to remind you that he's still there and involved in the agent's life and decisions.

4. Jedi Consular

Similar to the knight, the consular is recognised for previous achievements on Ossus, and there are opportunities to both fight and be diplomatic.

In terms of companion returns, the consular was a bit of a black sheep during the KotFE/KotET era as no consular companions were involved in the main storyline and Qyzen was the only one that could be re-acquired via an Alliance alert. Post-KotET however, Lieutenant Iresso returns in an alert, you reunite with Nadia as part of the Ossus storyline, and Tharan comes back during Onslaught. Good times!

5. Sith Warrior

I ranked the Sith warrior as fairly high in terms of its suitability for KotFE/KotET, but to be honest I never pictured the warrior as someone who wants to sit on a throne and rule - better to leave that to someone with an interest in politics while they go out and smash faces. Ossus and Onslaught offer some nice opportunities here as you get back onto the front lines of the war and get the option to leave all that pesky planning to other people if that's more up your alley.

Quinn returns on Iokath and you get the option to finally get closure in regards to "that thing" he did during your class story. Jaesa returns in an Alliance alert after Ossus too, both her light and dark side versions. The former can now also be romanced, and the latter can also be killed if, like me, you always found her pretty annoying.

6. Bounty Hunter

You finally get Mako back in post-KotET Alliance alert, but it's a bit lacklustre to be honest. There is an interesting moment in Onslaught where bounty hunters get a slightly different reaction from an NPC than other classes, but other than that it doesn't offer anything particularly exciting for the class. The main reason I still rank it above trooper and smuggler is that bounty hunter is another class for whom the option of wanting to change sides in the war makes more sense than for most others.

7. Smuggler

Corso, Risha and Akaavi come back in two post-KotET Alliance alerts but they are short and not that great in my opinion. And while part of Onslaught takes place on a planetoid where a smuggler could feel right at home, nothing much is made of how this might make for a different experience for this class.

8. Trooper

Elara Dorne makes her comeback during Iokath but it's not very exciting. In the aftermath of Onslaught you get another little scene with her though (like the agent does with Vector), which is nice. Other than that there isn't anything going on that feels particularly tailored towards troopers.

Looking back at the final ranking, I'm kind of surprised by how similar it is to my KotFE/KotET ranking, with knight and inquisitor coming out on top once again, and smuggler trailing behind yet again. That said, I think it's important to repeat that overall, the newer content doesn't feel nearly as badly suited for some classes as KotFE/KotET did, and that there's much less of a difference between how much you'll enjoy playing through it as an inquisitor vs. a smuggler.

Got a different take on how different classes experience the current expansion and the content leading up to it? Feel free to leave it in the comments!

Video Stuff

I've been feeling quite inspired on the video front recently, so I thought I'd make a blog post to plug my most recent creations. If you're already subscribed to my YouTube channel, you can pretty much ignore this! As I've mentioned previously, I'm primarily a blogger, not a YouTuber, so creating and promoting videos is not exactly a focus for me, but that doesn't mean that I don't want anyone to see it when I do make one.

First off we have "Getting Physical as a Juggernaut", which was one of those rare videos that were a completely spontaneous idea. Basically I had spent an afternoon doing PvP in the midbie bracket on my Juggernaut Cheriza while also being on a bit of a Dua Lipa trip and listening to Physical on repeat, and it occurred to me that leaping at and smashing into people was a valid interpretation of the phrase "getting physical"... so I edited it all together into a sort of love child between a PvP montage and a music video. It doesn't show me being particularly awesome at PvP or anything like that, it's just a bit of fun.



Another way in which I felt like getting creative recently was that for the first time in literal years I decided to make not one, but two cinematic raid videos - which is to say I went into a 16-man story mode operation and recorded the proceedings from first person view and with all UI elements hidden, just to edit the best footage together to an epic soundtrack. I do think the results are the best two videos of this type I've done so far (we did both Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice in one evening):





As an aside, I decided to use two Two Steps From Hell songs as the soundtrack, which led to me reading up about them, and I didn't even know that they were specifically composing their creations to be used in film and video game trailers! That certainly explains why they work so well for this kind of content.

I also made a "behind the scenes" video which shows my guildies talking about silly things while epic battles were being fought on screen, plus some, let's say... less epic proceedings that I couldn't use in the main videos for obvious reasons.

Finally, I've talked about my outtakes videos before, and with this whole pandemic thing I've been spending more time with my guildies than any sane person should, resulting in lots of recordings of ridiculous conversations and silly deaths, and me putting up another compilation of this footage pretty much once a month.

Now, the primary target audience for these are my guildies and I'm sure to an outsider a lot of things simply wouldn't make sense, but I have had feedback from a few people not in my guild that they found these quite amusing as well, so I thought I'd mention them. If the humour's not your cup of tea that's completely understandable - but if you do like having a peek into the silly goings-on in a social raiding guild, here is your chance (be aware that there's some swearing, dirty jokes and stuff):

• February-April
• April/May
• May/June

Musings on Onslaught's Story, Part 3: Corellia & Beyond

After either helping or sabotaging the Republic fleets on Onderon and Mek-Sha, it's time for the big battle for the Meridian Complex on Corellia. Once again, spoilers abound!

On both factions, the briefing before the battle includes a lot of exposition about ships and battle plans. I couldn't help but think that to the type of player who just wants to jump straight into the action to get up close and personal, this could be a bit boring, but personally I appreciated the call-backs to weaponry developed in previous storylines such as the Isotope-5 powered ships of the Empire, and just the general effort to convey that both sides have competent leadership with an actual plan. Also, your involvement in these briefings emphasises that though the Alliance may have lost a lot of its power, it and by extension you are still considered very important to the war.

However, since you are also known for being good at kicking arse in person, you get asked to assist the ground troops, which leads to you doing the new Objective Meridian flashpoint. I think the flashpoint will deserve a post of its own later on... for the purposes of this one, it's enough to know that you spend some time fighting either Republic defenders or Imperial invaders in the streets of Corellia, until you get into the Meridian Complex itself, where it comes down to either shutting down or protecting the installation's shields.

The first place where you expect to do this turns out to have been rendered useless as controls have been rerouted to another level... by none other than Tharan Cedrax, yay! That leaves only one consular companion unaccounted for now. I'm really pleased that Bioware managed to weave his return into the main story here, and it fits well too. The encounter with him also features some pretty funny lines depending on your choices - I have to admit that I had to chuckle when I ordered him killed on my Marauder, and his last words "Holiday, I'm sorry" prompted Major Anri to go: "Holiday? What a weirdo." Also, my Sage looked hilariously put out when she recognised him.

On Imperial side you also get the option to flirt with Darth Malgus himself around this point! His response is a character-appropriate "ugh" before moving on. I just loved this.

Finally you have the big showdown between either you, Tau and Arn vs. Malgus or you and Malgus vs. Tau and some unnamed Republic soldiers/Jedi. These are both pretty well done and the fights quite interesting - though I swear the first time I did them they either bugged out in some way or I was completely zoned out because I came away thinking that they were really boring and the boss(es) had seemingly no interesting abilities.

Then I heard others talk about the fight and was confused when they mentioned all kinds of stuff happening of which I had absolutely no memory. The second time around I definitely noticed the actual mechanics too, so I have no idea what was going on there. (EDIT: On replaying the fight again last night, I think at least the first instance of me failing to notice any mechanics may have been simply due to the fact that if you have both Tau and Arn set to dps, they burn everything down very quickly, even Malgus.)

The one bit I found a bit wonky is what happens immediately after the fight, as your big feat of heroism basically consists of making a superhuman jump in a cut scene to get to the crucial console in time, which... didn't feel very heroic to me personally. Even worse, both your wounded opponent(s) and allies roll off the platform in the final moments and you just run off without as much as a: "Gosh, I hope he is/they are alright!" At least to me it didn't feel right for my character (any of them!) to have zero concern for the people that just fought by her side only two minutes ago.

On the plus side, everyone does definitely survive, and I do highlight this as a positive thing because I went into the final fight actively worrying about Malgus or Tau dying, which would have felt like a colossal waste to me considering how little time we've had with these characters so far. I didn't even want to have the option to kill either of them, not yet! So I'm glad to say that they lived to fight another day. Some enemies are just too much fun to have around for me to want to defeat them too quickly.

After securing victory for your faction in the final battle (from what I understand this is one place where you can't sabotage/betray anyone), you get a lot of honours bestowed on you. Regardless of your class, you get asked to integrate fully into the Empire or Republic or to make a conscious choice to maintain your independence. I thought that was actually an interesting question even for a loyalist, because while my trooper was instantly on board with simply serving the Republic again for example, my loyalist agent never liked being under the heel of Sith who had a 50-50 chance at best to be either competent or capricious. So while she's still definitely loyal to the Empire, it's because she cares about the people of the Empire. She definitely had no interest in going back to subjecting herself to the direct authority of the Dark Council again.

Then there are some neat rewards for you depending on your class: troopers get promoted to the rank of Colonel for example, while Jedi get offered a seat on Master Gnost-Dural's newly reinstated Jedi council. My warrior was basically offered her old job back (yes!) and I haven't played through the story on my inquisitor yet, but I heard that you get the option to go as far as to claim your old Dark Council seat back. All of this is simply awesome, period. I don't know how they are going to keep this much class specific detail straight if the story is going to stay generic, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth here.

Also worth noting is that Republic characters finally get to meet the new Supreme Chancellor Galena Rans, and she seems pleasant enough to deal with, which is nice. Republic leadership has not been painted in the best light for the last few years, and we really needed someone actually embodying the Republic's values at the helm again.

Anyway, you won and got your just rewards, time to roll the credits and do dailies, right? Not so fast!

For the first time in an expansion story, Bioware decided to not just wrap things up, but to also make it very clear where we'll be going next. (At the end of KotET Lana was worrying about trouble brewing ahead, but that was all very vague.) Back on the fleet, Tau or Anri introduce you to two people who want to meet you and who helped them out of the rubble after the battle: Kira and Lord Scourge! Finally! Now people can stop spamming each and every one of SWTOR's social media posts with "When's Kira coming back?", regardless of the post's actual subject...

Also, it turns out that Scourge was the mysterious Sith that attacked you on Mek-Sha, to test whether there was anything of Vitiate left in you. Also, it turns out that these two were the "mysterious observers" you could see in the distance from your base on Odessen just before the expansion. I remember someone on Twitter calling it (unfortunately I don't remember who it was) and me thinking that this was a weird theory, but they were completely right! Good on you, whoever you were!

For the Jedi knight, it's a great little reunion and involves some romance too: Kira is now open for some same-sex loving and Scourge can be romanced too! I was really hesitant about how to react to the latter on my knight because I wanted to romance him so badly back in the base game, but that was seven years ago at this point... since then my Guardian's gone through a lot of story and ended up with Arcann. I chose some of the flirt options anyway, just to see where they would go, and then pulled out at the last moment. I kind of thought there'd be an "I can't, there's somebody else" dialogue option or something, but since there wasn't, my knight basically just ended up saying that she thought it wasn't wise to rush into anything and that they'd talk about it again later. Cheeky minx likes to keep her options open!

Anyway, the big question with Kira and Scourge was always going to be why they hadn't shown up any earlier, considering everything you went through with Valkorion and that destroying the Emperor was literally Scourge's entire purpose in life. Surprisingly, they have a good excuse! They were busy destroying the Emperor's original body, which he had still stowed away somewhere as a sort of life insurance. (I did remember hearing/reading about that before at some point, so it didn't come out of left field for me.) Afterwards they were afflicted with some kind of disease caused by Vitiate's decaying body that knocked them out for more than a year until they were rescued by Master Satele and her new students, but then it afflicted them and they are currently stowed away on a distant transport ship, more or less comatose until someone comes to rescue them. Kira and Scourge want your help in saving them and destroying the Emperor's last legacy.

I thought it was a very interesting choice to finish on such a... not cliffhanger exactly, but obvious plot hook for the next story update, whenever that's going to come. I guess the folks at Bioware felt that making players feel too obviously "done" at the end of the story wasn't good for long term engagement. I can't say I minded though; the main story still feels like it wrapped up in a satisfying manner, and this is more of a tease of what's to come next. That said, I thought that going back to the old Emperor in any way, shape or form was the last thing I really wanted from the story, but Kira and Scourge kinda sold it to me. Of course, it also sounds very much like this next story update is then going to be the same for both factions again, which I'm less keen on, but I guess we'll see.

Bonus for Imperials only: They also get a scene that shows Darth Malgus strapped to a medical table while a doctor and a droid talk about what a nuisance it is to have to repair all those cybernetics again. The droid remarks that even the explosive device was damaged and needed taking out (forget subtlety, apparently Acina just decided to plant a bomb inside Malgus' body, dang), though the damage doesn't seem to have been caused by the debris under which he was buried... we have a brief moment of the doc going "oh noes" as he puts two and two together before we switch to a view of Malgus having set the lab on fire and demanding to be off with the medical droid. Exciting! So he's going to be on the loose as well now, another potential future plot thread. I guess we'll find out where he really stands on the subject of Republic vs. Empire when he isn't being kept on a leash by Acina or Vowrawn.

All in all, Onslaught's story has been very enjoyable to me, ramping up nicely after a bit of a weak start and finishing with an ending that once again has me excited about whatever's going to happen next. It has it all: class-specific dialogue options, companion returns, hanging out with entertaining NPCs - I couldn't really have asked for more!

Early Onslaught Impressions (No Spoilers)

Whew, the first couple of days of the new expansion have been a bit of a whirlwind! So far I've played through the story once on Republic side (on my Commando) and once on Imperial side (on my Marauder), did the new Republic dailies once, killed the first few bosses of the new operation on story mode, and spent a couple of hours sifting through several hundred screenshots that I took during my story playthroughs.

To quickly sum up my first impressions of the story in a spoiler-free manner: It didn't grab me quite as much as Jedi Under Siege did, but I freaking loved Ossus, so that was an incredibly high bar to clear. That said, if you asked me to rate Onslaught in comparison to all the previous story expansions so far, I'd say it's the best one we've had to date.

I honestly felt a little lukewarm about the start on Onderon - the planet is smaller than I had hoped (definitely no Yavin or Ossus) and the story beats didn't quite resonate with me - but by Mek-Sha I was warming up to it. The hollowed-out asteroid was kind of the opposite of Onderon in terms of my expectations, as I thought it was going to be small and I've traditionally not been super fond of what you could call underworld environments. But then it ended up feeling much bigger than I anticipated (I can't tell you how it compares in terms of actual square mileage, but all the traversing between platforms and in three dimensions certainly made it feel bigger) and the story developments made me go: "Yeah! That's what I'm here for!"

The thing with having played a game like this for several years is that you can't quite appreciate some things the way a new player can, as you just can't feel the same sense of awe and wonder at the sight of new things (as everything new is usually at least similar to something you've seen before). However, being a veteran of many years does give you an eye for certain details and nuances that the uninitiated won't notice and that you can only recognise with years of experience.

With that said, I could tell that a lot of love has gone into the Onslaught story. (If anyone from Bioware is reading this: thanks, guys and gals!) There are so many little moments that make you smile, chuckle, or just go "o-ho!" as they reference past events, and the cast of characters - both new and returning - is huge.

I've always felt that SWTOR's two biggest strengths in terms of story are the personalised class story that makes the player feel invested in the game, and the huge cast of supporting characters - all with their own backgrounds, interests and influences - that can push the story into fascinating new directions at any moment. That is also what made KotFE and KotET fall flat for so many people: that our characters seemingly forgot about everything that had come before, including loved ones and spouses, and that we were supposed to care about nothing but Valkorion's family and the Eternal Empire now, just us vs. them. (Now that I think about it, the Alliance vs. Zakuul story was actually a more simplistic black and white version of the galaxy than Republic vs. Empire has ever been in SWTOR.)

Onslaught is chock-full of callbacks to our characters' pasts (where appropriate) and the amount of old non-player characters that have been pulled back into service (again, absolutely appropriately) is staggering. As a long-time player, that just feels so good. As a non-spoilery example, at one point my Marauder was asked to see the Dark Council and quipped in response (I'm paraphrasing from memory): "Are you sure they really want to see me? Last time I did that, I ended up killing one of them." That's no line for an Outlander or generic Commander, that's pure Sith warrior right there.

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about how MMOs are actually kind of similar to long-running book series: the audiences for both love to immerse themselves in a huge world that seems to go on forever, happily memorising countless numbers of different events, protagonists and their motivations. The Onslaught story fully caters to that invested long-term audience that will welcome every reference and in-joke enthusiastically. I don't think that necessarily makes it unenjoyable for more casual players, but let's just say that if you only play a single character for example you'll be missing a lot of Onslaught's more subtle context.

Anyway, my "quick" story summary turned into seven paragraphs - what else is there to say so far? Unfortunately in terms of questing as a group, Onslaught has been a bit of a step back from Ossus again, and I'm not sure why. On Ossus they had this weird system going that allowed you to go into the same phase, have the conversation parts be personal to you and then do any fighting as a team while progressing the story simultaneously. This time we're back to regular old personal phases everywhere, and for me and Mr Commando they even bugged out a couple of times, with one of us finding themselves forced into spectator mode in the other one's phase and being unable to create their own phase without first leaving the group. At this point I feel a bit like I'm the last person left on earth who cares about levelling and questing in SWTOR as a group, but I'll just keep banging that drum anyway.

In general there are a fair number of bugs again. No show-stoppers so far - as far as I'm aware - but what I'd call the usual array of minor annoyances, such as crafting nodes spawning in the ground, creatures and droids whose bodies should be salvageable not being flagged as such, the Mek-Sha world boss giving neither achievement credit nor any loot, and one of the daily quests on Republic side that requires you to pick up items from the ground being almost impossible to complete. There's a definitive pattern to these bugs, and from the way Bioware designs their weeklies and such it's almost as if they expect at least one quest to be broken at this point (since they never ask you to complete absolutely everything to get the main reward). I do wish it didn't have to be like that, but I also understand that bug fixes for anything that isn't a major feature get treated as low priority from a business point of view all too easily.

My dislike for the new item tooltips and item modification UI from the PTS has made it to live too. I also noticed that you don't need to hit "apply" when swapping mods around anymore as it commits them automatically! I'll have to be extra careful now, because I'm totally the kind of person who used to accidentally overwrite better mods with worse ones until I noticed just in time to avoid hitting apply...

I'm also hopelessly confused by the new colour codings for armour. Maybe one of my readers can enlighten me? Basically "orange" as a colour for moddable items seems to be gone, so now items of any colour can exist in moddable and unmoddable versions. I'm totally lost what decides the colour of the shell though, as my old oranges have sometimes turned blue and sometimes gold. Why? Who knows! Makes it much harder to not accidentally vendor stuff you want to keep in my opinion, as you now have to double-check even every bloody green...

The one thing I really like is the new legacy-wide materials tab, which freed up something like three of my legacy cargo bays (though I'm sure I'll find something else to fill them up with soon enough). Again, there are just some minor issues with it that I wish they'd fix, such as it not remembering whether you closed any of the sub-categories and simply defaulting to having all of them fully expanded whenever it refreshes.

I also really dislike not getting any feedback when I gather now: The way it used to be (and still is when you gather a slicing node for example) is that you'd get a small notification on screen and in your event log of what you just picked up. Stuff going straight into the materials tab doesn't make a peep though, so I had no idea what I was harvesting on Onderon all day until I sat down at the end of the evening and checked which of the biochem mats in my materials storage I only had in small numbers (and which were therefore bound to be the new ones).

Finally, let me finish with a couple of random, non-spoilery screenshots:

I suffered my first death of the expansion from sheer stupidity: coming to the edge of a waterfall on Onderon I went "whee" and leapt right off the edge... to my death of course. (The screenshot shows Mr Commando reviving me after the fact.) That's what I get for having got excited about diving underwater in WoW Classic in the past month - letting my subconscious forget that in SWTOR every body of water is but a knee-deep puddle.

One previously unannounced feature of Onslaught: exciting new ladder-climbing gameplay! Unfortunately the reception hasn't been too great so far: mostly I see confused Republic players complain about being unable to reach that one spot in their story mission where they're supposed to climb a ladder because they don't seem to realise that this is what they're supposed to be doing. On Imp side I found a ladder to climb a roof in the open world but I tried to use it three times and every time my character got to the top and the getting-off-the-ladder animation played, she fell straight down to the ground. Baby steps...

One of the more amusing bugs to me was that in my Marauder's version of the story, Theron Shan is dead, but this didn't prevent him from making an appearance as an invisible ghost to talk about... partying?

The Return of Darth Malgus

I feel like we as a community are in a slightly weird place in terms of spoilers right now. There is this big plot twist in Jedi Under Siege that's definitely more fun to experience as a surprise... but Bioware themselves are at this point talking about it very openly on their social media and it's even on the front page of the official website, so we should be able to talk about it as if it's nothing special, right? However, since I know that my blog has some readers who play the game more casually, who might miss even those signs and would probably still prefer to be surprised, I'll try not to spoil things for anyone a little longer by not having the big twist just show up in people's feeds without warning. Maybe I'll go back and change the subject line of the post later. [September 2019 edit: I decided it was time.]

Anyway, let's get down to business. You know now that there'll be spoilers!

There are basically three things that I'd like to talk about in regards to the return of Darth Malgus.

1) Did I like it and do I think it's a good thing for the game?
2) Notes on how things actually play out in detail
3) Looking forward to what might come next

Did I like it?

I've long said that Darth Malgus' "death" in False Emperor always struck me as a colossal waste. Last year I made a post called "11 NPCs That Died Before Their Time" and Darth Malgus came in at number two on that list. As I noted back then, it felt very weird that a character that had received so much build-up before launch was killed off before the game had even received its first patch. The fact that the original incarnation of the Malgus boss fight had you knock him off a ledge so that you never saw a body may have been a hint that Bioware was always planning to bring him back at some point, but it seemed to me that with six years having passed since then, that ship had long since sailed. When Bioware teased fans with that "deleted scene" from the KotFE trailer two years ago showing Malgus turned into a carbonite trophy for Arcann and Thexan, it left me completely cold. "Whatever", I thought. "Bringing him back at this point wouldn't really add anything."

Yet when I first stumbled across a spoiler saying that Malgus was alive in Jedi Under Siege, I was instantly and unreasonably excited and I couldn't have told you why. I wasn't even sure whether it was true, as I had kind of come across it by accident and from the context it wasn't entirely clear to me at the time whether the information was even reliable.

Now that I've actually seen Malgus' return in game, I can say that I absolutely loved it though. And most of the general reactions I've seen to the story have been very positive as well. Which leads us to...

Do I think it's a good thing for the game?

The one person on my Twitter who groused a bit about Malgus returning pointed out that it was a tired trope and in some ways a rehash of Shadow of Revan. And I can't say that they are wrong! But tropes aren't always a bad thing and I feel that in a way, Malgus' return is just what the game needed right now. Two years ago the notion didn't excite me, because it would've just been an easter egg in the story of the Eternal Empire. However, things are different now that we are finally moving away from that and returning to the Republic vs. Empire conflict that we all love about Star Wars. This was something that SWTOR handled very well at launch and for which Darth Malgus was very much a poster boy. Bringing him back now isn't just a random plot point, but rather serves to underline that we're going back to the "good old days" by literally bringing a beloved character from launch back from the dead. Not Quite Dead may be a trope, but it's the trope we needed right now.

In that context, I also understand Bioware basically "spoiling" their own story on the front page. They made sure that the big twist was going to be a surprise for those of us who are actively playing every day, but now they are basically switching gear to using it as a marketing tool. As I said above, Darth Malgus is a symbol of everything people loved about SWTOR at launch, and by shouting loudly about his return, they are probably hoping to reel some lapsed players back in who checked out during KotFE/KoTET because they didn't care about Zakuul. Honestly, I hope it works.

The Way It Plays Out

With me being a die-hard Republic loyalist, I naturally played through the Republic version of the Ossus story first. In that, the reveal that Darth Malgus is alive comes very close to the end - and while I still enjoyed it for what it was, you receive very limited information about just what exactly is going on. It left me feeling eager to see things from the other side, though I still remembered Ilum all too well, meaning that I didn't necessarily expect to receive satisfying answers on Empire side either. Boy, was I wrong.

On Imperial side, the reveal that Darth Malgus is alive comes as a surprise too, though more so to you as a player than to the rest of the Imps. As Major Anri puts it very amusingly, apparently tales about Darth Malgus being alive had been making the rounds for a while, but most considered him a sort of bogeyman used to ensure that good little Imps brushed their teeth and ate their vegetables. Still, the big reveal worked perfectly for me. The scene in which Darth Malora paces before the mysterious supply drop she's just received goes on just a little too long, with the camera slowly changing focus from her to the crate, and just as you start to wonder whether maybe someone is listening from inside... out pops Malgus!

My first playthrough on Imperial side was with my Marauder, who's been my "dark side story main" since KotFE, but other than that I don't usually enjoy playing her very much to be honest. That said, she was a great fit for this particular bit of story and it just felt perfect. I loved how she was the only one to not bow to Malgus and how you're even given the option to mock him, in that way Sith are wont to do when they are trying to get each other's goat. However, he totally doesn't take the bait, which is also very much in character with the Malgus we know from back in the day, who was very goal-focused and not easily distracted by anger. (During some of the flashpoint intro quests you can give slightly stroppy replies along the lines of "Well, why should I care?" and he always has a good response.) There's also some interesting dialogue with Anri in the aftermath of this where she thanks you for not making a scene with Malgus, because we all know what it's like when you put two or more powerful Sith into the same room, which was another nice acknowledgement of my character's base class and also underlined once again that Anri has a very good understanding of Sith power dynamics.

However, the best part is undoubtedly the bit closer to the end when you reunite with Malgus in the temple and he asks you to team up with him against the Jedi occupying the area. My first reaction was :"Squee, Darth Malgus is my companion!", immediately followed by: "Oh wait, I'm gonna set him to heals now and he'll just wave his hands around and channel purple lines at me, and that's gonna feel a bit undignified for him, isn't it?" However, it seems that someone at Bioware wisley anticipated this, so they coded Malgus to not act like a normal healer. He jumps around smashing things up regardless of what role you set him to, and if he's supposed to be healing, you just receive heals somehow while he's smashing things to bits. I don't know how it's supposed to work but I didn't really care either. It was a great way of letting you really enjoy the feel of the team-up without making it impractical.

Totally Besties Now.

We also learn during the story that Darth Malgus' current role is that of the Emperor's/Empress' Wrath, so for my Marauder the added dimension of old and new Wrath teaming up really hit the spot. However, it's also made clear that Malgus did not volunteer for his current role. He looks anything but pleased when he's being told that he'll soon be prepared for his next assignment, and frankly the fact that he was dropped off on Ossus in a box like a slab of meat instead of being allowed to arrive on a shuttle like a normal person doesn't indicate him receiving a great amount of respect from his new boss. His new codex entry explains that it was Acina who rescued him from certain death, and it's implied that she has pretty tight control over him (presumably due to the cybernetic enhancements she gave him). If Acina is dead in your story, Vowrawn is supposed to be the one pulling the strings after her demise.

I do love the idea of Acina having been behind all of this by the way. I really liked her in KotET, but I also couldn't quite shake the feeling that she seemed maybe a bit too nice for a Sith. I love the idea that underneath that agreeable exterior she's been running some extremely devious schemes and side projects the entire time, and it makes her rise to Empress that much more believable.

What's Next?

What we learn about Malgus' current state on the Imperial side of the story is very intriguing. His basic character traits still seem the same, but at the same time it's very obvious that he's not entirely in control of his own actions, which raises the question of what he's really thinking throughout the entire thing. When he expresses a desire to work with you, is that just him trying to keep you sweet because it's what he's been ordered to do? Or is he genuinely interested in your character, maybe even seeing the Alliance Commander as a possible future ally? Does he actually believe in the future of the Sith Empire again or would he still love to break away if given the chance?

There are so many ways this could do, and ironically my biggest fear is that because we are free to imagine a thousand different outcomes for this situation, whatever Bioware actually ends up going with might end up feeling disappointing simply due to its practical limitations.

In the immediate future (story-wise) I would expect our characters to fight against or by Malgus' side some more, but then what? Will he be able to break free? If so, will Imperial characters help him? What could Republic characters get to play through to match the sheer potential awesomeness of that? Or is it going to turn into another "sorry, but I hate you all" situation like on Ilum? There is so much potential here, but unfortunately also much room for things to go wrong.

How did you feel about Malgus' return and where would you like to see his story go next?