The long hiatus and the return of the Data Pad

   I know a lot of you know about my personal situation and what affect it had on my game playing and thus writing about the Knights of the Old Republic. As I now approach the 5 month point upon which I was not able to play and write about my thoughts and feelings about the game, I have put myself into a position to resume playing of Knights of the Old Republic and catch up on the chapters that I have missed and my feelings towards the end of the expansion over the course of the next several days I am going to re hash each chapter and put out a blog on said chapter as I complete them. Needless to say that with the help of some of my friends I was able to get back into the swing of things with my Main Character the Jedi Knight and play through Chapter 13 through the end of the Expansion and even to the Interlude Chapter with HK-55.

   In this entry of the blog I am going to go through some general thoughts over the last 4 chapters and some of the end thoughts I have with the overall feeling of the expansion. First of all while the storytelling in these chapters are really good, the tag line your choices matter once again falls flat as a pancake as it really does not matter which choices that you make within these last chapters the results are somewhat the same. The ending especially none of the choices matter. The end of the expansion is the same. That really bothers me. With that last choice there really should have been a consequence with that decision and not a matter whether or not the escaping shuttle is damaged or not. I had much higher hopes of the ending of the expansion, and the subsequent announcement of Knights of the Eternal Throne coming up should have been an epic choice that dictated the direction the new expansion should have went. 

   The only time where your choices really do matter in the heat of the moment is during the Alliance Alerts in the Chapter 16 and in the Interlude. Chapter 16 had Broonmark which is the Talz companion from the Sith Warrior which if you are a true light side character you are forced to kill him as he will not listen to reason. I am really curious as to see his reaction to the Sith Warrior when I get that far with him. The second choice is during the Interlude when you are dealing with SGT. Rusk and Skadge. Since Skadge is one of the original companions that a lot of players around the community wanted to place in an airlock and open the door, the ability to choose between the two is rather refreshing. I of course chose to go with Rusk as the Knight and Rusk are old friends and Skadge is a waste of space.... However I did not kill him I just him to prison so I expect some sort of letter or story arc that talks about him a little later on.... Making that choice matter even more. 

   The Interlude chapter where you play as HK-55 and get the companion Z0-0M is one of the funniest and most fun episodes of SWTOR that I have ever experienced. Z0-0M is by far the most entertaining part of the mission until you save the Exarch..... I will leave that to your own experiences. The scripting with HK-55 was a little off as I was expecting more of what makes the HK's the HK's but overall it was a very pleasing chapter which I will get into more detail later.

  Now as we approach the end of the expansion and the Fall of discontent until the Enteral Throne is released, what are the overall thoughts of the expansion? It was a solid expansion with some notable flaws. Mainly a lack of group content in one way or the other. In the end the community got 4 flash points (The Star Fortresses), One PVP arena (Rishi?) and something of a placation with the Enteral Championship. To me this is not a complete expansion to keep the fan base happy regardless of how many companion alerts you throw at us. In my opinion each expansion should have the following formula. 2 Operations, 2 PVP areas and 8 flash points. In Knights of the Fallen Empire there should have been an Operation at the end of the Star Fortresses arc where there was some sort of super fortress that needed to be taken down. There was natural progression towards it, this was by far the most obvious thing that the Developers should have been looking at. The second Operation should have just dropped with the last chapter being Arcann's flagship. Yes I know we go through that in story but we did the same thing with Shadow of Revan where one was story that could be soloed or an operation. That should have been an option as well. The remaining flashpoint should have been planets under attack from Arcann after the events of chapter 14-15. Pick 4 planets, in this case I would say Balmorra, Courscant, Coreilla, and Drommand Kass, these planets would be under assault from the  Eternal Empire and you had to rescue a place, something similar to the Assault on Tython and Korriban. This I feel would have made the player base feel better about the content they were getting. What we were given was lackluster at best. 

   For those that have been following my blog here know what my major issue with the entire expansion has been and that is the companions that we care about. I was starting to praise the team on tricking in the right companions getting some of the love interests but the last 3 chapters of the expansion does barely do anything about the momentum. Sure the Sith Warrior gets Vette back if they did not decide to romance Jasea. Otherwise it was mostly non consequential companions given back to the populace. There are key companions from each class that needed to comeback at the end of the expansion. or at least given some sort of reason why they are still missing. I once felt sorry for the Smuggler and the Bounty Hunters as the beginning of the expansion they were given the shaft on which companions came back as it was not until Chapter 12 I think that someone from those classes were coming back. Now I feel sorry for both the Consular and the Inquisitor as they have the least number of core companions back. Pardon me as I list out who is missing from each class just so I remember.

Jedi Knight: Kira, Doc, Lord Scourge

Jedi Consular:  Tharan, Zenith, Lt. Iresso, Nadia

Smuggler: Corso, Risha, Akaavi

Trooper: Elana, Tanno (This is a technicality)

Sith Warrior: Jaesa, Quinn

Sith Inquisitor: Khem Val, Adronikes, Ashara

Imperial Agent: Vector, Ens. Temple, SCORPIO (Also a technicality as the end of the expansion will tell you)

Bounty Hunter: Mako

   As you can see from the above list the Trooper and the Bounty Hunter are on easy street when it comes to the companions that they started with. The issue comes from the fact that the female love interest there is still out of the picture. I only got a slight hint of Elana's whereabouts when I did the chapter with Aric as the main focus. I am not sure if Torian gives a hint towards Mako to the Bounty Hunter in his chapter but I can do some additional research on that later. This list should be balanced and it is not. I feel that at the end of the expansion each character should have had 2 missing people, instead of this mess. 

  Now we get to the grind factor of the expansion, No real end game content just an event that really is for new players rather than the hardcore players who have been loyal to the game for years. The Dark versus Light event. This is to encourage the new players to get characters up to the end game section. However the rewards that are given are only given to characters that were created during this event rather than giving credit for the players that have already achieved this feats through the five years that the game has been out. Which means that if the hard core players want the spiffy rewards they have to at least make 2 new characters if not a new full suite of characters and get them through the game all over again. Those players that have already done the grind of each story line and done all of the things that are required in the event are getting shafted. The long time players that have reached Legendary Rank already should really only have to get one character get to the first level of rewards before the rest of the rewards be unlocked because of the time we have already put into the game. I have done the first two levels of the event and already I am kind of tired of working a new character through the classic story line. I am wanting to get to the new companion level, which it looks like I might be able to do without doing at least one of the previous tiers of the event. But still to do a massive grind like that is still a pain since I have done all of this for at least 1 if not 2 characters. Does not move me the way it should.

  Well that is it for the return of the Data Pad. I hope you enjoy this writing again as I am trying to get back up to speed and make sure I have everything covered. Thanks again for reading.