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.
Vrykerion 