#Thess plays SWTOR

[thessalian]

Thess vs Narrative Set-Up

So I don��t even play TOR anymore - hell, I didn’t even play Iokath - and yet I have feelings about the whole ‘traitor on Iokath’ thing. I keep up sometimes. Kind of hard not to, given my lifetime MMO progression, my Tumblr dash and my Enjin wall. So before I go try to grind levels and ventures in the game that, while occasionally utterly fucking incomprehensible, at least doesn’t pull this shit on me (like, the last traitors we had in FFXIV were ‘possessed by someone’ or ‘pretty obviously shifty with comprehensible ulterior motive’ and I can work with that)...

Spoilers under cut. Despite the fact that I think everyone on my Tumblr who cares, knows.

Theron Shan. What the FUCK.

Look, for Dark Siders it makes sense. But for Light Siders? All of his talking about being a benevolent dictator ... the last time I checked, we didn’t actually get the tiniest bit of say in the day-to-day running of anything. If ‘the Alliance was rotting from within’, why did we not ICly get the option to stop it? This is the game blaming the player for things it fucking well failed to include, and I am not. Fucking. Having it.

And this, “I had hoped for peace but war just continued so I’ll get you out of the way and it’ll all stop” bullshit? Point one: THEY STARTED IT. We keep fighting because people. Keep. ATTACKING US. And if we’re Light Side, they’re not doing it because they hate our oppressive regime; they’re doing it because we have the biggest guns and they want to take those guns away from us so that we don’t have an advantage in the wars they want to start. If the Eternal Fleet goes bye-bye, all that’s going to happen is that Republic and Empire are going to regroup to go at each other again, and pirates are going to end up all over the fucking place to steal from rebuilding efforts and set up their own little versions of Hutt space until someone bigger comes and clears them out. So ... yet more war.

Summary: We’re being blamed by a NPC who has up until this point been a reasonable person, and who is also ignoring the long-term picture for the most reactionary short-term view imaginable, for things we weren’t allowed to even know about in game, much less try to fix by any means but those Uprising things. This ... makes no sense. This is lazy. And this is, to me, further proof that they are predominantly writing this for a Dark Side character. Honestly, I’ve always had a feeling that this was a Sith Warrior plot with Jedi Knight as a secondary. Now they’ve apparently stopped pretending that the Republic actually matters all that much.

And don’t even get me started on, “You know I love you ... but this is bigger than us”. You are not allowed to say that when it’s bookended by “Mwahahaha” dialogue, okay? If you love someone, you try to talk them out of whatever it is you think they’re doing wrong. If you’re afraid they’ll talk you out of it, maybe your idea isn’t as good as you think it is, or you need to stand by your convictions. Do not kill people because you are apparently easily led.

The only thing - the absolute ONLY THING - I can think of that makes Theron Shan doing this shit make any sense at all beyond triple-agent (which would be cheap as fuck retcon handwavey bullshit for which I have no respect) or brainwashing (ditto) is that he’s wrecked over what he did on Ziost. Because let’s face it - he handled Ziost badly. Shit was going down and what did he do? Sent a secret Jedi strike force. Who then proceeded to get possessed and killed or ... well, frankly eaten along with the rest of the planet. Although you’d think that that particular brand of bullshit would have reminded him that maybe that’s what happens when you pull stupid reactionary shit without telling anyone.

Also, can we talk about the “I’ve been planning this since you killed Valkorion” line? Theron tells a Light Side Commander that he’d been hoping they’d make a difference but they didn’t so he’s killing them now. How the hell much chance did any Commander have to change anything immediately after killing Valkorion? I imagine, given the whole ‘literally ripped a Force entity out of their head’ thing, they spent at least three days in medbay on significant painkillers with the migraine from hell - particularly if they were a Force-user, since Valkorion screamed every Force-user in the galaxy into at least a pretty major headache when he kicked it. Bioware, seriously, at least give us a reasonable turning point, some in-story impetus for this shit, before you have characters turn on us.

So, summary: This is bullshit. Taken from a completely analytical perspective, this is bullshit and Bioware pulling the “shock twist to keep people interested” gambit. In terms of “people we trusted pulling really ridiculous shit”, I’m going to have to break it down a little because frankly that is EVERY Bioware game. But ... okay, the ones that went more or less completely barmy and did something that had really painful consequences. Saren made sense, was well set up and beautifully written, and made one of the most sympathetic antagonists I’ve ever seen. Loghain had some issues, but those issues were well-documented, well-demonstrated and while I don’t agree with what he did afterwards, I see the reasoning behind abandoning Cailan at Ostagar. Zevran ... well, that depends on your choices. (I don’t count Morrigan; what she was asking for was not at any point particularly painful, though that only comes out like two games later.) Anders? You could see the logical progression from “I have made this place a sanctum of healing and salvation; why do you threaten it?” to “There can be no peace”. Isabela ... is Isabela. We know this. Blackwall / Reinier - we all saw that shit coming when he kept stumbling over “I am pretending to be a Warden ‘cos I don’t know shit about Wardens” so we can hardly complain about that. Iron Bull ... well, come on, if you pick that choice, he’s Ben-Hassrath and you more or less ordered him to put the Qun ahead of friendship; when the Qun wants you dead, and you’re staring at the axe of a remorseful Bull, you brought that shit on yourself. Solas ... okay, not so entirely sure why he’s so bent on this particular course of action, but none of this beggars belief. And let’s not even start me talking about the glorious Face Heel Turn that was ‘Master Li’ in Jade Empire. Each and every one of these was well-foreshadowed and set up on a foundation of possibility that you look back on and go, “Oh, yeah, I can see that...” This, though? This, as far as I can see, came out of fucking nowhere. And the fact that they had to come up with bullshit non-answers for a Commander’s entirely reasonable questions just proves they didn’t set up a damn thing to act as foundation and support structure for this asinine decision.

The worst part is they fucking planned this. Apparently if you killed Arcann, you get a lot of dialogue from Valkorion about one of your people being a traitor. A lot of people are saying that they had a different traitor in mind and that information leaked so they decided to change it last minute ... but this belies that. Besides, I don’t imagine we’re going to see changes to their stupid idea of who the traitor is now that this has leaked, since the spoilers are coming out of datamining. Someone actually sat down and said, “We’re going to make Theron Shan the traitor! Won’t that be shocking?” and surprisingly, no one said, “What’ll be shocking is if our player base doesn’t lynch us for this”.

Bioware, you are phoning it in. This is why I have not bought Andromeda. I know it’s different teams (probably, unless the rumours are true about them having pulled all the good writers off TOR to patch Andromeda together) but I do not trust you to give me what I want for my money anymore. You are constantly leaning on your “Now With CLASSIC BIOWARE STORYTELLING” reputation, so ... why not try actually doing some? Resting on your laurels just ends up with crushed laurels under your lazy arse.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Revan Meta

I promised meta on the following: EA/BioWare doesn’t understand how Revan and the Exile work and the appeal behind their characters that made them fan favorites and that’s reflected in their SWTOR portrayals in this essay i will-

And since @curiouscatcrafts flagged it up, guess it’s time to write it. Let’s begin with Revan.

Honestly, any Revan portrayal after KOTOR that wasn’t an idle comment from Carth and/or Bastila was doomed to failure, because the reason Revan worked was the journey, not the destination. You begin KOTOR as a soldier, scout or smuggler. Your life’s been pretty average, as far as you can tell, and everything everyone’s telling you - which is all a player has to go on as much as the character does, and even if it’s a replay, if the writing hits all the right notes (and pre-EA Bioware fucking did), that feeling still persists despite what the player knows - feeds into that. Right up until you start figuring out, “Hey, I can do shit, what the fuck”. The entire point of KOTOR is all about your character figuring out who and what they are from the evidence presented, through trial and tribulation and harsh-ass decision-making. It’s a person growing into their own skin, their own role.

And then you find out that you are actually Revan, and you have to decide at that point, right at the end of the game, who you’re going to be. Are you going to hold to the person you became throughout the time spent on Taris, Tatooine, Kashyyyk; the time spent with Carth and Bastila and Mission? Are you going to be the person you fought to become? Or are you going to lean into who you used to be? And if so, which version of who you used to be? Will you be Revan the Terrifying Sith, or Revan the Right Proper Jedi?

Knights of the Old Republic has a lot of big themes important to the wider galaxy, but that’s not what makes it arguably the most popular, most talked-about, and most loved story-focused Star Wars game out there. Everything was personal, because the whole game was about self-discovery, and how much of who you are is what you choose to do with what you have. KOTOR was not just “Powerful Force-User Saves The Galaxy Or Enslaves It”; it was a personal journey first and foremost. This is why seeing Revan in any context as a NPC is jarring at best, and insulting at worst. A player went on a very important personal journey with their particular Revan or Revans, and then you walk into a flashpoint one day and you find Revan - this grizzled white dude who made choices you don’t even understand. More, a grizzled white dude who has emotional responses to previous events that you don’t understand. A player went on such a deep personal journey with their Revan of choice; it’s almost impossible to identify with a cookie-cutter YAGWD-Revan after that.

Which was the point. Revan from KOTOR was at their core a cipher, a blank canvas upon which a player could create a whole sapient being, and guide that sapient being through a growth and maturity with few if any particular limits. You cannot create a character that players can identify out of that kind of tabula rasa at the best of times, never mind when the players have so great a fondness for the version they created, a version that given the choices on offer likely doesn’t even remotely resemble the one they got lobbed at their heads in a couple of flashpoints and an operation.

The Exile is a better example of the other reason neither of the customisable characters that got ported into SW:TOR worked particularly well: agency and destiny. While Revan was all about self-discovery, with a note at the end about how your past only defines your future as much as you let it, KOTOR 2 leaned far more heavily into that latter point. Everyone wanted the Exile to be something; and few if any cared about the Exile wanted out of life. How you reacted to that while playing the Exile is entirely up to you, and the Force-ghost entity that turns up briefly in SW:TOR, while mercifully brief in appearance, is yet another example of the impossibility of truly manifesting a customisable character in a setting. They wrote out this entire backstory about the Exile’s relationship with Revan that works for their plot but may not remotely resemble the player’s thoughts on the matter. After an entire game in which a player’s Exile learns that destiny is just a word if you’re following your heart, a player gets to watch their Exile get roped into a foregone-conclusion future and ending up as little more than spectral backup calling for help for some other individual. As a character who fought for both the right and the opportunity to live by their own code, unhindered by other people’s ideas about destiny, that just burns.

And again, that’s the problem. Both Revan and the Exile were not built to stand alone without a player guiding them. But honestly, I don’t really blame all of SW:TOR for this. I blame Drew Karpyshyn, in specific. Because he was the one who couldn’t leave Revan alone. He wrote Knights of the Old Republic. He should have known how important it was that Revan remain an enigma, a cipher, someone to project one’s own character onto, because he wrote the damn game. Unfortunately, he apparently decided he loved his idea of what a Canon Revan should be so much that he wrote the Revan novel in the SW:TOR novel trilogy around the same time the MMO came out and additionally loved his Canon Revan so much that he shoehorned the entire living being into the MMO heedless of potential fan backlash.

Drew Karpyshyn, you’re great a lot of the time, and you write some good characters. But your Revan is cookie-cutter YAGWD man-angst bullshit and tossed the entire glorious personal journey you gave us for our own Revans right down the shitter. For that, at least, you can get fucked.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Deliberate Absenteeism

I decided not to go to the SWTOR Cantina thing today. I could have. I chose not to. There are very good reasons for this. Basically, I don’t want to wreck anyone’s good time, and I would have asked QUESTIONS.

I would have asked why they decided that condensing all the wonderfully diverse class stories into one generic Forcey Hero was the way to go in the situation as presented.

I would have asked why their new ‘event’ contains no new content whatsoever.

I would have asked why the gains from Cartel Market crates are getting more and more reliant on an increasingly skewed RNG every update.

I would have asked why we are getting so short-changed on romanceable companions’ returning (because we have had, like, two).

I would have asked how they’re going to deal with Light!Jaesa vs Dark!Jaesa and if they’re prepared for the backlash that will ensue if they decide to spend the five years skewing both of them until they are one generic Grey!Jaesa.

I would have asked why Epic Bioware Storytelling was being brought into a format (the MMO) that by its very nature cannot allow for significant deviation between the actions of one Chosen One and the next because MMOs are supposed to go on until there isn’t enough money being made out of them to justify their existence and they cannot have a continually branching story that allows for any of the decisions that Epic Bioware Storytelling traditionally expects us to make to have any impact at all on the overall narrative.

...Let’s just say I would have been me, and leave it at that.

So I didn’t go. I hope everyone who did had fun. I just couldn’t have got through the “This is our awesome!” that seems to be the prevalent theme of the organisers of these things without standing up and asking, “You do realise you’re pissing in our drinks and asking us to praise the vintage, right?”

[thessalian]

Thess vs OCs

Here is my current set of Secret World girls, and their spots on the map.

Here is my current set of Star Wars: The Old Republic girls.

I really ought to do these for Hawkes, Shepards and Wardens at some point. Not sure I play my Guild Wars 2 characters enough for them to merit pages of their own.

Of course, now I actually have to play the people. I have choices - get my various level 59 characters through Rishi, Yavin and Ziost, or level the babies. Yay for x12 experience bonuses until this time-skip thing in October.

Or get Templar!Mych out of Egypt but that means sneaking through Orochi compound oh bugger.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Big F’ing Art Commission

I have a big f’ing art commission I need done and I’m trying to figure out who’s crazy enough to take on this particular commission.

Let me explain. No, wait, that’s too much; let me sum up:

My Star Wars: The Old Republic main was ICly adopted by ‘the most genetically diverse noble House on Alderaan’ for various in-game reasons that can be summarised as ‘character development bullet train’. One Pureblood, two humans ... and now my miraluka girl, the youngest of them all, by adoption. (And if you’re fond of ironic-funny, my little adoptee bears some fairly strong resemblances to the humans of the family - same red hair worn in a similar style, and all by total accident.)

Anyway, point is that I was thinking of commissioning a ‘family portrait’ of the sisters. The sisters’ player has agreed to go halfsies, so price isn’t a huge issue, but the issue is finding an artist who’d be willing to do four characters at once. I’m nervous to ask; most people seem to offer one extra character, and I’d obviously pay the extra cumulatively, but it seems like an awfully big job to offer somebody.

So ... anyone know an artist who’s good with Star Wars, would be willing to draw a Pureblood and could give me a price on a four-character portrait?