Tag: jedi consular

SWTOR Class Storyline Review: Jedi Consular – Chapter Three

On By VrykerionIn Class Storyline Reviews, The Old Republic8 Comments

<—  Chapter Two ||

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Star Wars: The Old Republic class storyline for the Jedi Consular.  If you would like a spoiler-free summary of the third chapter, please look here.  You have been warned.

No, Sir. We weren't trying to steal Pay Per View.

(Sorry, no new photos this time.  I did Chapter Three on vacation so I didn’t remember to screen cap any on the laptop.)

So a little bit of a recap, the consular has just spent 10 whole levels sucking up to the Rift Alliance, a group of whiny planets that want stuff.  At the end of the whole thing, you find out that one of the representatives is not only a traitor but an imperial sleeper agent known as a Child of the Emperor.  There’s apparently lots of these people out there.  Who knows how many! But I’ve got a hunch that we’ll meet probably about oh…  one per planet?  Just a hunch.  But to fight this mysterious new menace, we need a mysterious new army.  So for that, it’s up to Jedi Consular and the Rift Alliance (Worst band name ever.) to gather strange and powerful new allies to help fight the Empire.

To do that, we need to figure out a heading.  The first clue is actually back on Hoth.  Funny, I thought we just left Hoth.  I was pretty sure I mentioned something about never wanting to go to Hoth ever again.  I distinctly remember Kill-It Felix agreeing with me.  Yet, here we are.  Blowing up a small ice cavern to unearth an ancient Rakata roadmap.  Okay, it’s like one of those mind trapped sentience thingies, but come on, all it’s there for is to give directions.  And to lie to.  I lied to it A LOT.  Which points us to…

Belsavis

Oh. Shocker. The next planet on the narrow linear leveling path of planets.  Honestly, would it have been that much effort to mix things up a little bit?  Like do Belsavis or Voss in whatever order you choose, and then follow it with Corellia?  Honestly.  Darn leveling system.  Anyway, yea. There’s a great and powerful army you are seeking to recruit on Belsavis. They are called the Esh-Kaaaa WAIT A MINUTE.  NO! I know the Esh-Ka.  I’ve had them shoot at me constantly, and try to kill me, and break out of their prisons and try to conquer the galaxy.  In fact, about half of what the Republic does on this planet is try to seal that can of evil back up.  Including in the bonus series! And we want to recruit them?  Oh but wait a minute.  These are different Esh-Ka.  Nice ones, that totally didn’t deserve to be locked away for millennia. Well…  that changes things.  I’m still suspicious.

So you’re first task is to find this military dude who knows more about the deep vaults than anyone, but when you go to find him every member of his squad is dead.  In fact, everyone but him is present and dead.  Apparently this was triggered by his assistant back at base camp telling him that a Jedi was coming to find him.  Hmm.   An evil Esh-Ka defector?  Brainwashed by Esh-ka?!  WHAT ELSE COULD IT- Oh, he’s a Child of the Emperor.  That didn’t stay a mystery for long.  Now begins a long cat and mouse game across the planet, where the Child of the Emperor has control of all the security systems, cameras, and can send waves of droids after you (if people had this level of control over Belsavis, why is there a prison riot again?)  Luckily you get aid from some unknown voice that instructs you in ways to bypass the security and to lock out the Emperor’s Kidz so that you can find the “good” Esh-ka.

Now, I say ‘unknown voice’ but if you’ve been playing this far you should have bumped into the Imprisoned One on Tatooine, and if you put two and two together you will quickly realized from the sound of the voice and the alien dialect that you’re talking to a Rakata the entire time.  Apparently, this Rakata regrets imprisoning the ‘Good’ Esh-ka, and wants to help you free them while helping you kill the bad Esh-ka.  Not that I honestly think the Rakata are deserving of a ton of trust, every one thus far has been a psycho trying to resurrect the Infinite Empire a few thousand years too late. But I don’t really have a choice here.

The story ends with you freeing the good Esh-ka who then immediately ditch you so you have to fight a Child of the Emperor aall by yourself.  Well, not just the Child of the Emperor, the gold level Child and two silver level mobs backing him up.  Unfair! Really, your only hope is to CC the Child and kill the two silvers, try to heal up and then finish off the Child. This of course leads to freeing the leader of the Good Esh-Ka who has some weird name like “Deep Throat” or something. I’m just gonna call him that. And he actually wants to help you out.  Well that’s nice.  My eyes are on you buddy.

Interlude

A brief interlude comes when you discovered upon leaving Belsavis that Senator Grell… HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED! Now you and Nadia (She demands to come, not shocked, it’s her dad.) must board the kidnappers vessel – tracked down by Theran and Holiday because they are insanely awesome like that – and save her dad!  The kidnapper it turns out is NOT a Child of the Emperor.  No, it’s some creepy former Sith who did or said something and got his brain wiped.  No name, no memories, no emotion. (My guess is that he was a mage.  That’s a Dragon Age joke, folks.) He hopes by screwing with you he can earn his memories back.  He is wrong, as I just kill him.  Sadly, you aren’t ever fast enough to stop the death of Senator Grell, who apparently spilled the beans on everything you were doing.

The interlude ends with the Jedi Council reading the senator’s will.  For some reason.  I honestly haven’t a clue why the Jedi had his will.  Are Jedi also notaries?  Anyway, apparently the will was made fairly recently as it asks that Nadia be made a padawan and you be her master.  Well, it only took an extra 28 levels, but hey sweet fetish fuel has arrived for the Consular too!  Also, again, we have someone being made a padawan of yours solely by virtue of “Oh, okay, sure. Whatever.”  Nadia doesn’t even have to train on Tython, or do her Youngling warm up excercises, or anything.  She’s a Jedi now.  You’re in charge.  Bye.  Screw you, Master Syo Bakarn.  I hope you die.

Voss

The next crazy ally you get is the Voss.  Yes, you heard me.  You are going to recruit the Voss.  I won’t go nearly in depth on this one because honestly, this is the most chores you’ve ever done since the Great McGuffin Hunt of the Prologue.  You essentially are tasked with making sure a potential Voss mystic goes through his trials correctly and safely, and then you can recruit him and his entire entourage into your galactic war.   Wait.  Why does this not sound like it’s going to work?

You do everything from run around and gather stones, perform dangerous healing rituals to keep your lemming of a Voss alive, and kill any and every little thing in his way to have a vision.  Which time and time again he fails to have.  He just fails, then asks to be taken someplace else where he might have one.  While it’s not the most annoying mission you have to do as a Consular, it really feels like babysitting a complete n00b.

Really, the payoff comes at the very end.  Because while you have had run ins with Imperials and Sith here and there, you never bump into a Child of the Emperor.  Not once.  Until the end, when it is revealed that the diplomat that sent you to find the Voss wannabe is the Child of the Emperor.  She sent you to essentially prep the Vossling and then when he was ready, she’d swoop in, kill you and take the freshly awakened mystic for the Sith.  That.  is.   BRILLIANT.  No, seriously.  This is probably the smartest villain in the entirety of the Consular storyline.  She actually uses you to get what she wants, and you never suspect her for a moment.  Honestly, a lot of these ‘hiding’ in plain sight villains are pretty easy to spot early (Bounty Hunter Chapter One, we will be getting to you soon.) But I was floored by this one.  I didn’t even appreciate it until way after and was looking back at everything that happened. I WISH the Inquisitor story was more like this.  Sadly,  her plan fails.  She didn’t account for one thing: Me killing her.  Twice the pride, eh?

So you get the Voss mystic, his team of Voss healers, and a squad of elite Voss commandos (I assume they’re like Asari commandos) and they’re all on your ship and joining you on your mission to defeat the Sith and protect the Republic.  Hooray!  Wait.  Aren’t the Voss neutral?  Likely, ridiculously neutral to the point of absurdity?  Doesn’t this violate that?  I mean, they say that the Voss will study the light and the dark and see both sides.  That’s nice. YOU ARE HELPING ME KILL THE OTHER TEAM.  You have officially picked a side now.  Debate over.  You fight for the Republic.  Or is this somehow not registering through your bald blue heads? GAH!

Interlude 2

The second interlude is an attempt to take over an Imperial flagship descending on Corellia.  If you and your crack squad can take over that ship, you will gain powerful intelligence on what the Imperials are after (It’s the Bastion) and stop them from succeeding (You can’t. They’re in the Bastion already.)  The whole thing is yet another giant ship to fight through, but luckily way less tedious than the one in the first act.  You work with your companions who hack doors, disable canons, and sabotage alarms.  And I really hate to say it, but they do it way better than the Trooper squad handled the Gauntlet in the Chapter 2 finale.  However, unlike the Trooper story, this thing actually turns out to be a giant trap.  Yea, you get to the bridge to find a droid who simply explains that the ship is rigged to blow for the sole purpose of removing you and your team from the picture.

At that point, the tone switches to you and your team trying to disable the bombs.  You get a few of them, and your team goes after the others that are near them but in the end there are too many bombs and no time to turn them all off.  So you all book it off the ship, except Nadia.  Nadia has found a computer with all the data that might reveal the identity of the First Son, the leader of the Children.  So no matter what you say to her, she will stay to get that data.  She’s not stupid however, as she does take an escape pod off the ship before it blows and falls to Corellia below.

You stand at the end of the interlude with no ship, no defeated Sith, and down one padawan.  It’s kind of a loss.  Which actually can be mirrored in some of the choices in dialogue.  Your crew is actively worried about Nadia being trapped on a war torn planet.  It’s actually pretty well done tonally. There’s even some nice dialogue if you demand to pursue Nadia at any cost that Theran talks to you about trying to get her back.  Which makes sense because if you do the companion conversations, Nadia is pretty friendly with Theran.

Corellia

Corellia starts pretty much with the search for Nadia.  You are able to find a smuggler?  Freedom fighter?  Hacker?  A person in a vest that can help you find her in exchange for some favors.  It’s a classic scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours scenario but I like how once he gives you the coordinates to find Nadia – deep in Imperial controlled territory – he asks you for one more favor and you can totally blow him off.  YES!  I’ve wanted to do that for ages in this game.  Best class storyline ever! I CAN SAY NO AND NOT GET RAILROADED!  Nadia’s still holed up in her escape pod and very week, luckily your favors have earned the help of the Selonians (Ferret people) who help you get Nadia out and back to health.  She does have the data that reveals the identity of the First Son, but it requires the Jedi Library to decrypt.  Luckily, and somewhat shockingly, you can just go to the Jedi Library website from anywhere in the galaxy and get whatever you need.  So finally we get the revelation of who the First Son truly is…

Master Syo Bakarn.

Oh.  Oh snap.  Uh.  You mean that guy who has been helping us since like level 1?  Damn.  That’s brilliant.  Seriously, right on the heels of that great twist you get another sort of just as great one.  Hear me out.  The trick to this whole thing is that Master Syo doesn’t KNOW he’s the First Son.  He’s a sleeper agent, only activated when his First Son persona chooses to manifest itself and Syo has no idea what happens during that time.  So it’s less OMGSECRETZPLOT! and more OHCRAPHEZOURD00D! Still, it’s a surprising turn that does carry a weight.  This is an NPC that has been part of your story for 50 levels.  I really wonder how much he was actually behind.  Believe me when I say this revelation has confirmed at least a second play-through of this class just to see.  But now that the cat is out of the bag, The First Son springs his plan into action.  Activating Children of the Emperor hand picked and placed across Corellia by Syo to take over the super secure bunkers called Guardian Holds that Syo was in charge of protecting for the Republic.

So now the Sith have control of the most secure bunkers from which they can hold Corellia indefinitely.  So it falls to the best one for the job, the Jedi Consular, to take back the Guardian Holds with his army of Voss, Esh-Ka, and crew. And that’s pretty much what the rest of the planet is.  Go to a sector of the city, find a way into the guardian hold there, and remove the Child of the Emperor in charge.  I mean, yea there are some moral issues when you are fighting people who had been loyal to the Republic and/or Jedi for years now suddenly switched to evil by a glowy red eyed puppetmaster. Which leads to obligatory Light Side/Dark Side choice of trying to save them or just killing them.  While I was pretty dark side for this part so I killed them all, I am really curious how one actually saves these guys.  I mean, the were given a piece of the Emperor where they were infants.  They are ingrained with loyalty to him. How do you break that?  Well, that’s my second play-through to find out.

You finally get to the end of the road, the final guardian hold, and from there you are treated to a showdown with the First Son himself.  Master Syo is no more, it is only evil that stands before you.  And oh man is this a great showdown that will test your ability to interrupt, LOS, and keep up heals in order to take down your foe.  Mostly I just busted out Theran.  Even in lower level gear, he was able to keep me going while I pummeled Syo down with rocks.  Speaking of rocks, he does a giant rock drop where he caves in the ceiling and you must interrupt it or instant KO.  After words, you can shield Syo or kill him.  And if you choose to kill him, like I did. You don’t even get the final blow.  He actually comes back at you and you knock him away in to the wall causing a giant rock to crush him.  What kind of Disney Death is that?

Grand Finale

Well, much like the trooper, the story actually wraps up on Corellia.  With the First Son defeated, you are pretty much done.  You get invited back to Coruscant where you meet the new Supreme Chancellor (Former Governor) Saresh, and for the first time in any of the Republic stories, it actually makes mention that she is indeed newly elected and that something happened that forced them to elect a new Chancellor.  They don’t say what that is, but I’m sure we’ll found out in one of these reviews.  Still I like the fact that SOMEONE acknowledges the fact that the Supreme Chancellor for 1-49 is not the same as the one you meet at level 50, cause the trooper doesn’t bat an eye, the Jedi Knight shrugs it off, and the Smuggler probably doesn’t know what a Supreme Chancellor is.

You get a big award ceremony at the end too. But unlike the one for the Jedi Knight or Trooper, here you can totally milk the Republic for stuff for your allies.  Esh-ka want a planet? Yo, Saresh. Give them a planet!  Oh hey, Voss dudes wanna train with Jedi.  I don’t care if you are uneasy with it, Satele. Did you just save the Republic? Let them in.  It was a nice moment where you and your crew essentially get whatever they want from the Republic.  But you know what they SHOULD have asked for?  To not pay taxes again.  Ever.

Looking Back…

So was the Jedi Consular story the KOTOR3 we never got? Or was it the boring slogfest that forum dwellers claim?  Well, the answer is the classic ‘Neither’.  Honestly, the Consular story more than any other requires time to get the most out of it.  It can seem like a boring slogfest at first, and really it’s not until the end of Chapter One that it all starts to come together and become interesting.  If I had only played the first 15 levels? Oh Yoda, I would have dropped the class faster than Physical Education.  But I stuck it out, and honestly I’m glad I did.  It has a sense of completeness by the end, where it actually feels like every part – not just the last chapter or so – was a vital piece of the conclusion.  The Noetikons, the shielding technique, the Rift Alliance, and the Children of the Emperor all came together in a glorious symphony at the end.  But up until that conclusion, you could see it as very hit and miss.

In terms of light or dark choices, they were all pretty much what you expected for a Jedi.  You have more than enough reasons to kill most of the people, but do you overcome that and show them forgiveness because they are not themselves.  And really that’s the best way to summarize the Consular story.  It’s a tale of enlightenment and overcoming our passions and baser instincts to become something more.  Killing the Jedi in Chapter One is justified and full of anger by those who had suffered at the hands of their mind controlled friends or leaders, but we can shield them and overcome that hate.  The Rift Alliance’s own desires and wants come before the needs of the Republic, but they find by working with and through the Republic they get everything they wanted and more.  Looking past the uncertainty and threats of the Esh-Ka and Voss give rise to a powerful army, the Rakata want to make amends to the Esh-ka, you can overcome the betrayals and welcome back to the light all those who were tainted by darkness. On the flip side, the story can be just as much about the accumulation of power.  Taking out other Jedi to secure a more prominent position for yourself, manipulating the wants of the Rift Alliance to make them indebted to you, building an army that answers to you alone and crushing those who would think to betray you.

So would I recommend this story?  Yea.  It had enough for me to merit a second play through, I’d say it’s worth it to try it once.  It’s a slog at the start, but once you get into the thick of the Dark Plague arc, it starts picking up.  I’d especially recommend it for fans of shows like Star Trek or Babylon-5, as the diplomatic parts of Chapters Two and Three really seem to share a similar vibe with shows like those.  Anyway, that’s it for the Consular.  Whenever I finish up my light side character I might come back for one more post about it from the other side of things.  Until then, May the Force Be With You.

<—  Chapter Two ||

SWTOR Class Storyline Review: Jedi Consular – Chapter Two

On By VrykerionIn Class Storyline Reviews, The Old RepublicLeave a comment

<—  Chapter One ||  Chapter Three —>

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Star Wars: The Old Republic class storyline for the Jedi Consular.  If you would like a spoiler-free summary of the second chapter, please look here.  You have been warned.

He is called “Lord of the Large Pants”

With the Jedi Order saved from the threat of the Dark Plague, it’s time for you to get a new job to save the day.  Namely, it’s time to play Star Trek and escort a bunch of diplomats around the galaxy to convince them not to break away from the Republic.  Not even joking.  Meet the Rift Alliance, a coalition of worlds that are thinking of leaving the Republic because they feel neglected and their needs ignored by the senate.  These worlds include but are not limited to places like Manaan and Balmorra.  Although I don’t think Balmorra is a Republic world actually.  However it is funny to see the Manaan representative make mention of the ecological nightmare left on his planet after the events of Knights of the Old Republic.  That made me giggle.  But I’m getting a head of myself here. Before you get to hang out with the representatives, you have to save them.

See they were all on this big party ship that they were going to use as a base camp while working with you, but it got hijacked by the Empire!  So you have to fight your way to save them.  After that, it’s decided that they’d be much safer on your ship than the party boat.  Which, okay, kind of makes sense. But my ship doesn’t even have enough beds for my crew, let alone the rest of these people.  So…  I hope the chairs are comfy?

Balmorra

The first stop on our “fix the galaxy” tour is Balmorra. Essentially the mission is to put the representative from Balmorra in charge of the planet, and in exchange he will make sure that Balmorra joins the Republic.  So it’s NOT part of the Republic at the moment.  In order to change things over, we need to find the old president and have him pass over the authority to the representative.  Because that’s apparently how presidents work now.  No elections, just point a finger and say “Tag, you’re it!”

The real issue is that the now currently in charge Sith overlords have got the president in hiding somewhere, and that’s where I come in.  Well, me and the rebellious revolutionary known only as Zenith.  Zenith is a jaded freedom fighter, and I don’t much blame him considering the history of Balmorra: abandoned by the Republic and handed over to the Sith, and depending on what happened during the Imperial storyline their unofficial support from the Republic Military not only pulled out but also publicly confessed ensuring no future support.  Yea, I’d have a chip on my shoulder too.

You pretty much spend most of the planet playing back up for Zenith in an effort to track down and save the president.  Fortunately, you are a bad enough dude or dudette to do so.  Downside, President is being guarded by Darth Lachris, the sadistic Sith you met at the end of the Imperial Balmorra storyline (Yes, this is what happens to her).  Upside, you get to kill a Sith! More downside, she royally messed up the President’s brain so he can’t do anything even if you save him.  This leads to the somewhat disturbing option of using the president like a meat puppet to pass the torch of leadership.  It’s cruel, unethical, and I did it in a heartbeat.  What? My job was to get a new president for Balmorra, not to make sure the old one lived to a ripe old age.

Quesh

Quesh is the usual short single mission that really isn’t worth talking about usually.  This one does set up some important plot threads for later, so that’s a step up from the Trooper.  The gist is that the Rift Alliance had a secret science lab on Quesh that they totally didn’t mean to neglect telling you about but oh by the way the Imperials are attacking it and it has some superpowerful tech hidden there please oh god fix it.  The super tech in the lab really doesn’t do much except offer you a choice of how they develop it.  Maybe this comes up in Chapter 3? I don’t know.  So far all it did was get me a piece of mail with a severely under level blue quality companion gift.

What Quesh does introduce is two ideas:  the first is that a tracking device was found on your ship, which means that you might have a spy on board.  This is actually a great diplomatic conundrum.  Do you tell the diplomats – one of which may be the spy – and diminish their already low opinion of the Republic’s ability to keep its house in order, or do you keep it quiet and risk worse damage being done by the spy as you try to figure out who it is without letting the others on.  I actually really liked that twist.  Sadly it doesn’t last long as we’ll see.

The other thing that happens is that we see Nadia Grell, daughter of one of the diplomats, join you on a mission and display an impressive use of Force power.  Yes, it appears that little Nadia is a force sensitive and a powerful one at that.  Nothing comes of that immediately, but it does come up more later that I can promise you.

Behave! Or the Jedi will eat you.

Hoth

Your final job for the Rift Alliance is to help a team of their soldiers finish their job and back on their way home.  A task the Republic troops on Hoth have been most unhelpful in completing (Of course, the troops on Hoth just got hit by a surprise attack that knocked out their power, are getting cornered by pirates and Imperials, and are seeking a powerful weapon to use to help win the war. But taking care of the one squad of Rift troops that wanna leave the cold planet while they’re stuck there? Not a big priority shockingly.) The job is to kill one Captain Valon, a two bit pirate who was attacking the Rift Alliance’s shipping routes that has suddenly become a lot more problematic.  See, the word on the street is: Valon is immortal.  Yup. Can’t kill him.  Why even try? And these poor guys are stuck on the ice ball until the Immortal Pirate is dead.  Wow.  Sucky job.

Of course, one quick smack around from a Jedi and the jobs done right? Sadly, no.  While the rest of the team is often getting ready to celebrate leaving, you get a message proving that while you did seemingly kill the man and leave him cold and lifeless on the floor, he is still alive and kicking. It’s up to you know to figure out putting him in his grave. Luckily, you find out that the Empire is after Valon as well.  Something about stealing an experimental healing armor?  No… you don’t think…  I see.  Well, time to bust up a lab for answers.  And after ransacking and pillaging the Empire for some sweet sweet secrets, you find out that yea it’s the armor that keeps him coming back.  You also find out that Valon’s plan is to raise a massive star ship from the ship graveyard and use it as his new flagship as the future immortal pirate leader of the White Maw. (Aaaand he might be searching for One Piece.  Maybe.  No clue.  But hey, it gives us an excuse to rap on the way! Ready Qyzen?)

Ultimately, you find the pirate, use the secret technique of ‘Keep killing him until he stays dead’, and you and the troops get to leave this Popsicle stand.  Afterward, you get a new crewmember! Lt. Felix Iresso has joined the brawl! I’d love to tell you all about Felix but so far at least, he’s a bit of a cardboard cut out.  Seriously, the guy doesn’t have any really stand out-ish qualities while you talk to him on Hoth beyond he is willing to straight up lie to his men if it means not destroying morale.  Beyond that, he’s a soldier aaaand that’s about it.  I mean, he seems like there’s definitely some backstory stuff that I’m sure to get into as I keep shoving gifts into his face.  He seems perfectly happy to leave the military behind to sign on with you. But that’s it.  Kind of a weak sauce companion compared to the fairly strong personalities we’ve met so far.

 

No, Sir. We weren’t trying to steal Pay Per View.

Finale

The finale is short.  Like seriously short.  You finally track down which of the diplomats is the traitor/spy/guy who keeps stealing the cable, but oh no! He was JUST sent off on an important diplomatic mission with Royalty! I sure hope that hi jinks don’t ensue.  To make a long story short, everyone’s dead when you show up.  You just walk through the ship littered with dead bodies until you find the King and Queen of WePaintsOurFaces-vania with the traitor diplomat who to the shock of no one is actually a Sith. Dun dun yea yea.  More importantly, he is one of the Children of the Emperor.  Ah, now that IS different.  You fight, you win, you save the King and Queen. And that’s it.  The finale is seriously just that one fight.  Well, two if you kill the bonus gold star robot boss trapped behind a door.  But it does set up the next leg of the journey with the introduction with the Children of the Emperor.  I do wonder if Miss Kira Carsen will be showing up for  cameo?

Final Opinion

The second chapter of the Jedi Consular story is a lot of set up for whats to come it seems.  The whole traitor thing REALLY doesn’t get played up to its full potential, and it really could have been something great.  With diplomats constantly pushing for more info, the risk high of angering them and the Rift Alliance continually looking for a reason to abandon the Republic that, quite frankly, they owe nothing.  Instead, the diplomats are grumpy but mostly content to just sit around, give you your space, be polite in the face of whatever happens.  It’s not a catastrophic let down because I really do dig the whole political angle of the Jedi being explored, so I would definitely rate it above something like Trooper Chapter 2, but it really could have been something amazing but became satisfied with being meh.

Our new companions feel like two variations of the same archetype.  Both Zenith and Felix are soldiers, but while one seems worn out and just wants to be done, the other is super jaded from broken promises.  Still, recruiting them back to back just makes the comparisons even more startling.  Especially since Zenith is introduced with so much more character and gusto than Felix.  Almost like they blew all their cool ideas with Zenith and had nothing left for Lt. Iresso.

In the end, Chapter Two decides to just settle with doing what it does.  It doesn’t strive for amazing, it doesn’t break down into terrible or tedious – it just is.  Which is a shame.  It really did have potential.  But the whole thing still hasn’t lived up to the horrendously boring snoozefest I’ve heard it claimed to be on the forums.  So who knows what awaits us beyond in Chapter 3.  I mean, besides the Children of the Emperor. (OH YEA!)

<—  Chapter One ||  Chapter Three —>

SWTOR Class Storyline Review: Jedi Consular – Chapter One

On By VrykerionIn Class Storyline Reviews, The Old Republic3 Comments

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the first chapter of the Jedi Consular storyline in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  To see a spoiler-free summary of the storyline please check this page instead.

<- Jedi Consular Prologue || Jedi Consular Chapter Two ->

consular1

Ah yes, the proud Jedi Consular. Fresh off to save the galaxy from the horrors of the Dark Plague that was set up in the prologue.  Will this be another whirlwind tour of fetch the macguffin?  Or will substantial choices that affect the destiny of the whole galaxy be made?  Eh, probably something in between. Let’s get into it.

Taris

Taris.  Oi.  Taris.  No matter how many times I visit this planet no matter the class, I hate Taris.  Luckily, I’m here on better pretenses than to kill rakghouls or rakghoul infecting terrorists.  No, this time I am here to find a Dark Plagued Jedi conservationist.  And if you ever thought those Green Peace guys were nuts and just wanted to sock’em, well this is your chance.  You meet up with a group of soldiers who were working with the Jedi before his recent dissappearance and they help you track down his whereabouts along with his Padawan.  Seems like the Dark Plague has jacked the Jedi’s priorities up to 11 though because when you find this Jedi he has a new mission: DESTROY ALL LIFE ON TARIS.  More specifically he wants to save Taris by removing any non-native life off of it so it can regrow to its natural state.  (Considering that when it was destroyed it was a city planet to supposedly rival Coruscant, does anyone even know what its natural state IS?)

Your mission quickly becomes to track down and stop the insane Jedi.  Between the padawan and the troop of soldiers, you slowly make your way across the planet.  But it’s not without problems.  The Jedi attacks the soldiers while you are out in the field with the only survivor being the commander of the group.  He begs you to avenge his men and kill the Jedi which drives his padawan out to go save her master.  The whole shebang ends with you trying to stop the Jedi from unleashing a chemical apocalypse across Taris, with his now turned padawan at his side.  The choice of how to stop the Jedi and his padawan is up to you. You possess the knowledge to heal the master from the Dark Plague, but his crimes are immense and brutal… maybe it would be best to simply put them down?  Honestly, I must say the conflict of whether to kill or heal the Jedi is probably what makes the best Taris storyline I’ve played so far.  There are legitimate arguments for both sides, and it falls to you to make the decision.   He committed horrible deeds, but did so because of the Dark Plague.  Does that excuse him from punishment? He was willing to kill an entire planet worth of people if you hadn’t stopped him.  Should that be overlooked?  It all comes down to your decision on how to handle it.  This one is definitely a harder choice than say the one on the next planet.

Nar Shaddaa

The second dark plague affected Jedi has taken over the Guiding Hand cult.  With the assistance of the engineering genius, business man, and likes to think himself a ladies man Theran Cedrax, you must infiltrate the Red Lancer gang, prove your worth to them to gain an audience with ‘The Master’ – Dark Plagued Jedi Duras Fain.  You confront Fain and either cure him, or toss him to the authorities for the crimes he’s committed on Nar Shaddaa.

So another Jedi that’s gone off the deep end is one Duras Fain.  His corruption becomes a little less noble than our friend on Taris as he has taken over a cult calling himself ‘The Master’.  The entire goal of the storyline here is to infiltrate the cult and square off against him.  Seriously, that’s all.  He doesn’t even show up till the very end really. Most of the story is actually you working with your new contact/future companion Theran Cedrax and his virtual assistant Holiday trying to get in good with the Red Lancer gang so you can meet ‘The Master’.

Theran is a character.  Gambler, inventor, genius, and would probably be a ladies man too if he wasn’t so devoted to Holiday. Honestly, I don’t have much of a strong opinion of the guy.  He’s pompous and narcissistic, thinks he knows it all and sure that can get a bit annoying.  But for my narcissistic pompous Sage, well, I think I might have just found a drinking buddy.  And who knows, we might end up killing each other! The only thing that worries me is that I’ve heard that Theran is a bit of a pacifist.  Well that’s no good when I kill everyone I meet.  So he stays on the ship with Holiday, thinking up new cocktails.

So you run with the gang and try to get in good by lending some Jedi assistance to their criminal activities.  You are pretty much always given the chance to sabotage their illegal acts or carry them through the help keep up the facade. The choice is pretty much yours because like many moral choices, it’s in the spirit of your character’s actions not an actual choice because it always ends up working out in the end somehow.   I honestly just did what they told me.  My Jedi Sage is pretty much devoted to the idea that since he is a Jedi he’s above the normal mundane concepts of right and wrong, because hey, I’ve got the force, that inherently makes me a better person than you.  So if the ends justify the means that’s fine for me, not for you.  In case you haven’t noticed my dude is a bit on the dark side.

You finally get to confront Fain and it’s pretty much done at that point.  He knows you’re a Jedi and he’s got a pretty good idea why you’re there.  He gives you the chance to cash in and join the cult, which of course is a no go, so there’s a bit of battle and then you get your final choice.  Do you cleanse him?  Well, I said no. Because dangit, I need my strength.  I’m not going to parse it out to help some two bit Jedi with dreams of grandeur. (Unless it’s me that’s the Jedi with dreams of grandeur.) But wait, what’s this? Another choice?  The Nar Shadaa uh… “Law enforcement” (Do Hutts have cops?) shows up to arrest Fain for all his criminal actions under the influence of the Dark Plague.  You can refuse to hand him over and possibly upset the balance and give the Hutts more reason to side with the Empire, or hand over the nutjob and walk away clean.  Well, I washed my hands of the whole thing and handed him over.  All I got was a scowl for it from the Jedi masters, but I helped preserve the Republic’s influence on a neutral world.  That’s worth losing one Jedi that’s not me, right?

After Nar Shadaa, you get a side mission to go find a ship where another Jedi has gone nuts and is trying to blow it up.  It’s short and quick, but you finally get to meet Lord Vivacar the Sith behind the Dark Plague.  At least through a holo you do.  I loved that part because with my Jedi it was pretty much a battle of who is the more snooty and moral righteous about the whole thing.  When the shortest interlude mission ever is done, you can head back to your ship to find out two more Masters have gone silent and it’s up to you to “deal” with them, cause honestly I can’t believe the Jedi Council doesn’t know what I’m going to do at this point and is just using me to help keep a lid on this and silence the problem.

Tatooine

Tatooine gives us yet another Jedi Master to track down.  Mostly following his footprints as instructed by a guide who has come down with “sand rot” from being in the deep desert for too long.  I’m not entirely sure how much of his attitude actually has to do with the sand rot or that he’s just a jerky sand billy to begin with.  Mostly you just retrace all of the Jedi Master’s footprints: Meet with the Jawa and found out that the Master told them to scrap their sand crawler to build war droids for some reason, then following him to a cave where he supposedly had a vision but actually he just found an ancient tablet that details the history of Tatooine.  And for the first time since we found out that vaporator’s speak bocce, we learn something new about Tatooine in the Star Wars universe.  It was apparently a fairly green planet at one point, and was dominated by four species. Of these four, only two remains to survive as the planet eroded away into desert: the sand people and the jawas.  This leads to the revelation that the Jedi may have been doing something with the sand people in the Dune Sea.  A good hunch since the first thing you find is an overrun settlement that the Master has been sending sand people to attack like clockwork. But it leads you right to where our Jedi friend is hanging out.

Turns out that this lost master is looking for a way to stop the “coming darkness” that everyone seems to be harping about.  By studying how the Sand People have survived to be one the oldest species on the planet, he comes to the conclusion that the issue is that the weak and the sick must be cut out of society to strengthen it as a whole. That the Jedi are hurting the galaxy by protecting the weak.  Of course, the guide steps forward and now we finally see what the deal with the sand rot has been.  He asks if the Jedi Master would kill him too because he’s sick.  Which gives you a chance to stop him with the usual shield him or kill him choice.

Alderaan

The last Jedi Master we’re looking for and that may have contracted the horrible Dark Plague that turns normally peaceful jedi into violent loons just happens to be overseeing a peace…  treaty…  on Alderaan.  Crap.  Well, time to crash a summit.   But how do we do that?

At first you try to go through the Republic’s designated ally on the great planet of in-fighting, House Organa, but they’ve already sent a representative along with a Jedi knight, the master you are supposed to find, and a single house sending two jedi for a peace talk is probably gonna reek of attempted intimidation and strong-arming the debate.  With that in mind, perhaps its time to look for a house that HASN’T sent a representative yet.  That narrows down the search to just one: House Teral.  House Teral is in a bit of a rut as it is apparently being constantly targeted by House Ulgo by killing their couriers, sending killiks to attack, and generally being jerks to make sure that Teral is stuck where they are (the reason is a bunch of junk about the inter house politics of Alderaan and I care for it about as much as I care to remember who all the damn houses in A Song of Ice and Fire are – which is to say: Not at all, now kill something!).

Your job on this planet is pretty much “Do whatever House Teral wants” to get you into the summitt.  This is mostly putting an end to the constant attacks and improving their position in the hierarchy among the houses by getting the daughter of the head of House Teral and one of an ever growing number of Organa cousins hitched.  Seriously, I would love the see the Organa family tree.  It’s gotta be like a frickin throw rug.

After you finish with taking care of the mercs and playing love doctor, it’s time to meet at the summit.  Here is where you find out about the somewhat completely insane plan of the last Jedi Master: In order for their to peace in the galaxy, Alderaan must be in constant war.  I don’t really know where that idea came from, but she has brought out every dirty secret that each of these houses had to use against each other.  Luckily I was able to use my inner diplomat to just jedi mind trick the entire room to get them to fall in line (Why is politics hard again?) and starting working to peace.   This of course does not make our crazy Jedi friend happy and you duel her with the all too familiar shield/kill choice.

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FINALE

Well now that all the Jedi Masters have been dealt with. Shielded in some cases, or gutted with a lightsaber in all of my cases (What? Like I was going to weaken myself to help them?)  It still doesn’t bring you any closer to finding the Sith Lord Vivicar.  Or does it? I didn’t really mention it but there were plenty of re-occurring notes being sung by each of the masters during their madness.  A planet: Malachor 3. A person: Parkanas. And a great darkness coming.

When you get back to Tython, it’s your old master Yuon that connects the dots.  All four of the Jedi Masters plus Yuon and one other named Parkanas, had an expedition to Malachor 3.  There they found the spirit of a sith known as Terrak Morrhage, who was mentioned by the noetikons on Coruscant in the prologue. Terrak’s spirit tormented the Jedi and drove them mad, except for Parkanas who remained strong.  However, in the attempt to escape Malachor 3, Parkanas became stuck when rescuing one of the others and they left him there to become prey for the sith ghost.

This leads to the the revelation that these attacks were revenge, and that Lord Vivicar IS Parkanas.  Using this knowledge, the Consular and Master Yuon try to reverse the shielding to try and get a beat on where Vivicar is hiding.  This also sadly causes Master Yuon to turn against you, and begging you to end her life (Naturally you don’t have to).  But you find Vivacar’s location, way out in space.  And now you alone have to defeat him! All by yourself.  And… not with all the jedi…  um..  Miss Shan…  WHY AREN’T YOU HELPING?  What is the Jedi Drizzt too busy sitting in her little room to lend a hand to stop the plaguemaster of a disease that may wipe out the whole order?  Well, if I have to make some sort of huge sacrifice because no one thought to send me with back up just because I was the only one with the shielding ritual, YOU ARE TO BLAME MISS SHAN.

Speaking of which.  After you slaughter your way through legions of mind controlled Republic soldiers (No, you cannot shield or spare them. There lot is to die.) You face off with Vivicar himself.  Of course this leads to the staunch revelation that if he dies, everyone connected to him through the plague will die as well. Hundreds of Jedi he says.  Now, is he bluffing?  Is this some kind of a Sith trick?  Or perhaps you will doom them all?  Well, that’s for you to choose.  You can shield him, or kill him and damn the consequences.

I said damn the consequences, this dude has put me through 15 levels of pain and he’s gotta burn.  This of course is met with praise and reward back on Tython, where I get to record my experiences in my own holocron and get bestowed a title that only six other Jedi ever have received. And all I had to do was kill a bunch of Jedi and one Sith.  I am truly the savior of the order.

Final Thoughts

The first chapter of the Jedi Consular is best described as greater than the sum of its parts.  Each planet is pretty much the same thing over and over: find the Jedi and stop them.  Similar to how the prologue enjoyed playing “Get the thing” over and over.  And on each of the parts alone, I’d rank this down there with the second chapter of the Trooper storyline.  A lot of meh.  However, a funny thing happens when you view the chapter as a whole.  It’s not a tiring search for the same thing over and over.  It’s a mystery story.  Throughout the chapter you get bit by bit more information as to what these Jedi have in common, the true nature of what happened on Malachor 3, and who Parkanas was.

The Dark Plague is also used incredibly well, since it’s actual nature is never fully fleshed out.  You don’t see it manifest in people the same way twice beyond the repetition of the coming darkness, and tortured visions of the events on Malachor 3. In fact, it’s not till the end that you actually find out what the full extent of the plague is when Vivicar reveals that it siphons each infected Jedi’s power into Vivicar. It especially got played with on the last two planets, where no one knows if the Jedi have the plague or not (Alderaan is the best about keeping it ambiguous really).

The Light/Dark choice pretty much was continually the question of whether to sacrifice your own potency to shield the affected, or simply kill them.  Good cases are made for both many times like on Taris, where they killed an entire troop and tried to blow up the planet ( …Again), and while I haven’t tested it with a light side character, it does appear that Vivicar actually calls you out on your actions.  More so than the Jedi Council does, which usually ends up being a “You couldn’t save them? Oh darn.”  Even when you kill your master, it’s treated with “Well, she did ask for it.  Guess that makes it okay.”  I got more scolding from them for prideful remarks like claiming I was the best more than killing their ‘d00dz’. But who knows. I didn’t expect to see so many faces from the Jedi Knight chapter one to make a re-appearance later, so maybe they’ll turn up again (or not in the case of my dark side sage who kills without provocation).

So overall, the chapter was actually really enjoyable.  But the enjoyment didn’t really come until the end of the chapter, so keep that in mind.

<- Jedi Consular Prologue || Jedi Consular Chapter Two ->

SWTOR Class Storyline Review: Jedi Consular – Prologue

On By VrykerionIn Class Storyline Reviews, The Old Republic4 Comments

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Jedi Consular storyline in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  If you would like a spoiler free summary of the storylines you can find them here.

The Jedi Consular is probably one of the most controversial class stories in the game.  From everything I’ve seen since the game launched people have either loved the Jedi Consular and claimed it was the closest thing to KOTOR 3, or found it absolutely mind numbingly boring.  I haven’t seen a ton of opinions that fell into the middle.  Not that I doubt they exist, but they’re hardly the most vocal responses to the class story.  I’d like to think I’m breaking new ground by making a very public voice saying that at least the prologue of the Jedi Consular is quite possibly the most meh story thus far.

To give some context to how I’ve been playing my Jedi Consular, so you have some idea how these opinions were formed.  It mostly came from his voice.  The male voice of the consular just sounded so pompous and proud, so SUPERIOR. I couldn’t un-hear it.  So that’s the way I played him.  A fat, gluttonous, prideful, condescending prick.  He hoards knowledge in the desire to be the best and is not above murder to preserve his standing.  He believes he is morally superior and is not capable of doing wrong because of his ‘advanced Jedi mind’.  In that sense he is VERY dark side with a dash of light choices here and there.  Which might seem like a weird way to play this class, but as you’ll see it fits really well in places.

Tython

The story of the Jedi Consular actually begins with a mystery.  While clearing out the flesh raiders, you are given the task to retrieve the instructional holocrons created by the founders of the Jedi Order but the last one – belonging to a founder that eventually fell to the dark side – is missing.  The search eventually leads you to a village of twileks who speak of one of their local heroes, and this is where the way I played my Consular and the plot met in beautiful harmony.  You see the Twileks and the Jedi don’t exactly have a great working relationship.  The jedi for the most part refuse to get involved in their suffering of the twileks because they have an “Illegal settlement” or in other words they set up a village on Tython without the approval of the Jedi or the Republic.  So the twileks have no rights to be there, but the kind hearted Jedi won’t shoo them out either.  My pompous jerk Jedi hears this and immediately is dead set that these twileks are trespassers on HIS world.  So he treats them like dirt.  How this works out is that it turns out their local hero has set about teaching himself the dark side specifically because the Jedi refuse to help and are considered to be jerks by the twileks.  So I am pretty much enforcing the stereotype that led to this problem in the first place, and I LOVE it.

The rest of Tython is pretty much following clues you find to try to beat the twilek who is slowly going mad with the power of the dark side to a secret chamber that the dark side turned Jedi founder created.  It feels a bit like a Jedi equivalent of Indiana Jones and such, deciphering the riddles of the past to find hidden treasure.  During your mission you find yourself teaming up with a friend of your master: Qyzen Fess.  Qyzen is a trandoshan who wishes to collect points to please his goddess the Scorekeeper.  Eventually he gets captured and apparently this causes him to lose all his points.  I’d debate about all or nothing mentality does not bode well for the religion in my opinion, how one set back can cost you a lifetime of effort.  I imagine it’s bit like coming in fourth at the Olympics must feel like.  “Oh crap, was .05 seconds slow on the turn, now my life has been for nothing.” Qyzen’s fun though, because he has delightful snarky commentary for everything.  I’m not sure if HE thinks it’s snarky, but I totally do.  Anyway, he joins you as your first companion.

The story on Tython wraps up with you getting a lightsaber, beating the twilek and getting a pat on the back from the Jedi Council.  Even dropping the ‘Jedi’ title on you right there, and honestly I liked that a great deal more than the ‘Knight of the Republic’ one the Jedi Knights get.  For one, it isn’t missing punctuation and two it feels more like a title fit for following ‘padawan’.   But things aren’t all happy because your master collapses! She’s got a super bad unknown illness!  WHAT CAN WE DO!? We’ll clearly the most important thing is to move the body to…

Coruscant

Okay.  Now that we have Master Yuon to the republic capital, we need to find a cure.  Consult other Jedi!  They know nothing.  Consult the healers!  They know nothing.  Doctors? Zilch.  Okay, so how do we find the cure for this horrible illness?  Well first we need to figure out what it is.  And for that, we need to ask a bunch of datacrons that have gone missing and/or stolen and/or sold after the Jedi Temple got wrecked.  This raises the question of what a holocron is versus a datacron.  A holocron has a hologram artificial intelligence in it, a datacron has a hologram artificial intelligence in it that apparently knows something useful.  Cause the only holocrons I’ve met so far are the ones that had the Jedi founders on them, and they were boring.  And unhelpful.  And kinda jerks.  Oh and one had an evil Jedi that taught a twilek dark powers to destroy the Jedi and almost got me killed.  Datacrons thus far do not do that.

So you end up chasing down the first datacron, and they have no clue so they tell you to find the second.  So you find the second and they tell you build a house made out of brick.  So you huff and you puff and….   Wait. Getting my stories mixed up.  But you can’t blame me.  It’s the same old thing three times from different jerks who had the cubes.  The only real neat thing to this whole chain of events is that if you are familiar with Knights of the Old Republic you will see some familiar faces.  Faces I wanted to punch in that game too, except now they’re holograms.  I can sill be a jerk to them though and they can’t do a thing about it. So there’s a perk.

Finally, the whole thing wraps up at the ruins of the Jedi Temple where you use the datacrons to learn the ancient Cure Force Disease 3 (It’s like Cure Force Disease 2 but also replenishes all HP.  And for all you ‘new skool’ kids out there, you can call is Force Disease Curaga or something.)  But then an evil Sith smashes the doohickey and makes it so no one else can ever learn the cure.  He then laughs about evilly, name drops the big bad, and then you smack them with a big rock you pulled from the ground.

With the thingamajig now crushed, you and you alone have the power to heal those afflicted with this terrible Dark Plague.  But each time you do it takes a bit of yourself to do it, so if you try to cure too much you’ll likely die.  Not that I didn’t just die to the Random Sith McEvilPants twice already, but maybe the Jedi Consular is just a preferred member and has used up all his in-the-field rezes?

Final Thoughts

The prologue of the consular is full of archaeological mysteries, secret knowledge, and the making of a villainous plot to unleash a terrible plague upon the Jedi…  and it really couldn’t go about it in a more uninteresting way.  Tython is just a big long ‘find the thing’ mission, and then when the ball finally gets rolling on Coruscant it ultimately just boils down into a ‘find the thing three times’ mission.  Really?  That’s all it is?  No matter how you dress up how you find the thing, it doesn’t change the fact that all I’m looking for is a few cubes with talking dead people in them.  All that keeps the Jedi Consular from teetering into total tediousness is the fact that the reasons you’re looking for the cubes is actually really compelling.  The Dark Plague is a constant ticking clock that first just seems to incapacitate but then you find out can actually turn friend into foe.  It strikes your master first, giving a personal stake in this.  And say what you want about Master Yuon, I can at least remember her name unlike Master What’s His Face in the Jedi Knight storyline.  Though may be the reason I remember it is because they actually CALL her Master Yuon instead of just ‘Master’ in most of the cut scenes.

So far the Jedi Consular prologue is probably the second weakest, only trailed by the completely unnecessary Jedi Knight prologue.  The story is actually the strongest part and the only thing that keeps the tedious tasks given a float and pulls it up to an astounding meh.  It doesn’t help that for some reason Tython feels like it takes forever to get done with, followed by mindless cube finding missions like you have a mighty need to make a Tetris. Hopefully now that the Dark Plague story arch has taken off I have some fun ahead of me in Chapter 1, and if not well, you’ll hear about it here as always.