T w e n t y S i d e d
I wrote out the prologue of The Old Republic smuggler story a couple of weeks ago. What I left out was the characterization. For all characters, the player is presented with three responses to every dialogue option with few exceptions. There are actually several different characterizations that could be represented in these interactions; they don’t always align to the same three concepts. That’s in addition to choices that can affect your Light Side/Dark Side alignment, *and* the occasional option that can raise the influence level with your companion. Light Side/Dark Side and companion influence choices are *mostly* consistent, but I’m pretty sure every companion has some nonsensical options. And for what it’s worth, former writers and producers of the game have confirmed some of these as mistakes that got missed on play-testing. The remaining dialogue can be used for character-building, if that’s your thing. As a reference, the Imperial Agent can repeatedly choose options that establish her character as (in my case): Pro-Imperial/Bureaucracy, Anti-Sith, opposed to the Empire’s xenophobic policies, in favor of quick, practical assassinations as solutions to problems, independent and dismissive of anyone other than her own subordinates, and supremely confident. And that’s just the subset.
I can do that because at least *some* of the writers incorporated these choices into the game often enough that I could actually build a dialogue history that supported my own thoughts on Rix’larril’an. There was a spectrum of identities the creators considered. I find the Smuggler to be much harder to characterize, because they confine the dialogue choices, and the assumptions that underlie them, to a pretty small range. There are two things that have to be acknowledged as part of the Smuggler class. First, the Smugger is a Republic-only class (all of the classes are only one faction or the other, to be clear.) Some Republic classes give you tons of options to be “evil,” the Smuggler doesn’t. In fact, I think it may be the *least* “evil-capable” Republic class. Second, you aren’t just playing a “Smuggler;” you’re playing a “Smuggler With A Heart of Gold.” And it’s clear, frequently, that’s how most of the writers classified the character choices.
It doesn’t help that the starter planet for the Republic Trooper and the Smuggler, Ord Mantell, is a Republic world currently engaged in a civil war between the Republic-aligned government and separatists who want to take Ord Mantell out of the Republic. The characterization of the separatists is all over the map. Both separatists and refugees describe the Republic as uninterested and uncaring, a journalist defects to the separatist cause, and about half of your interactions with Republic officials are indeed cynical, uncaring, and frequently corrupt. The separatists are also, as you eventually discover, backed quietly and discreetly by the Sith Empire. You do a quest for a refugee that the game *really* wants you to believe is a spy for the Empire hiding among the refugees trying to infiltrate the Republic base. The separatists are also drugging local teens to turn them into rage-filled killing machines. At least, that’s what one kid named Paul claims happened after he ran away from home to join the separatist movement.
As the Smuggler, you get *one* dialogue option to express any sympathy for the separatists. You get two options when interacting with a separatist: kill or don’t kill. In fact, the separatists *are* the enemy on this planet. Anyone highlighted in red is more likely to be a separatist than any other enemy faction, including beasts. Seems like a Smuggler, someone who is, in fact, delivering a *load of blasters for a crime lord,* would be a bit more open on allegiances. But almost every quest prompt ends with the following options: do it for the Republic, do it for the fun of it, or do it for money. If the quest is part of your storyline, you will also usually get options to do the quest because, well, because it advances your plot. You *do* occasionally get to choose a dialogue option that indicates you don’t care about the war, and these options do in fact pop up throughout the Smuggler’s class story. But considering the second and third chapters take you into *literally* working for the Republic, it rings hollow. Han Solo never cared about the Rebellion against the Empire, either.
That is the main reason why Chapter One of the Smuggler story is the most enjoyable. While the treasure-hunt storyline is grab-bag level in originality (shocking twists and revelations and all), you at least feel like an independent operator and not a Republic Agent. Sure, you have to ignore the Planetary stories if you really want to separate yourself from that feeling, as all the planetary stories are faction-centric…you *can*. Skip the planetary stories, that is. You don’t have to do them. You can always come back later if you want to see what it’s like with that character.
Working for Risha, the first stop is Taris. Taris was introduced in Knights of the Old Republic. At the end of the first part of that game, the Sith fleet commanded by Darth Malak levels the entire planet. As you can see, some of the kilometers-high skyscrapers that covered most of the surface are still standing, but the factions are stationed on the ground level that was formerly buried under the durasteel floors of the Undercity. Risha is here to find a navigation chart owned by former crime boss Davik Kang, another reference to KotOR. The chart was allegedly in a vault located underground, which means it may actually be more accessible now than it was before the planet was destroyed. If it wasn’t for the Rakghouls, which are basically werewolf zombies, sort of. Skavak hires mercenaries to track us across Taris, intending to seize the astrogation chart after we find it and reclaim it. This, of course, doesn’t work, and we’re done with the first planet of Chapter One.
As long as you stay away from the planetary story, you won’t have to deal with faction alignment dialogue choices here. You’re primarily interacting with an associate of Risha’s: Beryl Thorne, who makes multiple appearances throughout the Smuggler story. As I said previously, your *primary* companion is Corso Riggs, but his story pales next to Risha’s, who should have been put in place from the start. With Beryl you can be petty, dismissive, and greedy; but most of the best lines center around being a smart-ass. This is pretty on-point for how the writers conceived of the character, but once again is also the problem. Any other viewpoint seems lackluster and obligatory. It really does feel like they couldn’t conceive of the Smuggler being multi-dimensional. Compared to the agent, the Smuggler is simple and boring. *Not* un-entertaining, to be clear; Chapter One is not only the best part of the Smuggler storyline, it is genuinely enjoyable. And as you will likely remember, the best part of Chapter One, by far, is the Nar Shaddaa section.
I won’t recount the entire experience again; I wrote it up pretty thoroughly here. As with Taris, you can completely avoid dealing with the Republic on Nar Shaddaa. You actually get some diversity of characterization here. You start out by dealing with an extremely uninterested and fickle Hutt, which leads to series of setbacks and fetch quests all over Nar Shaddaa that leaves the Smuggler grumpy and trigger-happy. The story actually feeds naturally into a character just trying to get a job done who increasingly turns to violence to get it over with faster. There are quips, there are threats, and there is getting revenge on the Hutt by allying with a Wookiee the Hutt was poisoning so that he would finally lose a gladiatorial match and be torn apart by beasts. Also, while I agree with the general sentiment that the playable Nautolans don’t look quite as good as the bespoke Nautolan NPC’s that were in the game from the start, seeing Nuleen narrow her eyes and wrinkle her nose in anger as she draws on the Hutt is just adorable. I forgot to grab a screenshot.
Remember when I talked about hopefully we were done with things breaking? Well, we had a pretty strong rainstorm yesterday with wind and lightning, not horrible but bad enough, and we lost power for a few seconds. The washing machine happened to be going right then, and it locked up. It’s a new enough washer that all the controls are electric, and it was just stuck. We unplugged it, left it for a while, and when we plugged it back in, it didn’t reset. It went right back to acting like it was frozen in the middle of a cycle. We researched repairs and finally committed to the idea that it would probably be best to just replace it (we replaced our old dyer just a few weeks ago). After all that, for reasons I don’t remember, I opened the door (it’s a a top load) and left it that way. Plugged in, so it was still on and acting like it was running, but it wasn’t. And it wouldn’t reset. One method for resetting the *motor* specifically, oddly, was to turn it off, turn it back on (couldn’t actually do that, of course) and then open and close the door 6 times in 12 seconds. I tried that; it didn’t do anything. But anyway, like I said, I just left the door up.
About an hour later, it started working again. We heard it start making noises, and the lid light was blinking. We closed the lid, hit the button to resume the cycle, and it basically redid the entire cycle and has been working fine ever since.
So, huh.
That’s it for now, see you next week!
Skylines of the Future
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
Why I Hated Resident Evil 4
Ever wonder how seemingly sane people can hate popular games? It can happen!
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
I think there’s a general tendency for writers to consider “good guy” writing uninteresting and rote, and “bad guy” writing to be challenging and fun. You have to work harder to make a villain likeable and interesting to engage with in classic fantasy stories (which I think Star Wars largely consists of). So as a result the writing tends to be better, I think. I played a Jedi Consular when I played SWTOR, but I can’t say I remember many of the plot beats of her story.
Some parts of the Smuggler base story (and to be clear, I’ve never taken a Smuggler into the later expansions, so I have no idea how they are characterized there) I think may have been affected by the idea “we can’t make this guy too evil.” But at the same time, I dismiss that. The impetus for such a governing concern would be EA’s insistence that the game be child-friendly, or at least teen-friendly. Yet, unsurprisingly, the Sith Warrior is the most popular class, followed by the Sith Inquisitor, then the Jedi Warrior. That’s Steam stats from two years ago; It wouldn’t shock me if it was different at launch. And all of those classes have extremely specific “evil” dialogue options. You really get to kick the puppy a lot. It shouldn’t surprise any experienced player; though, that while Dark V is indeed the most commonly achieved alignment rank, it only beats Light V by a hair. And yes, that is even given that the Sith Characters are the most popular.
Many people want to be the bad guy without actually *being* bad. That matches my experience in games. I tend to come out neutral no matter what, unless I’m trying to max out light and dark. I appreciate that more than one class in SWTOR results in a neutral character if you consistently make pragmatic choices and leaves your moral alignment to the extremes. Always meant to discuss that with my last Philosophy professor but never got around to it.
Oddly, according to the same Steam stats, Smuggler is the *least* completed storyline.
It sounds like the washing machine went in to ‘safety mode’ with something like an internal fuse. Basically it hibernated until it had a steady supply power. I imagine the lid trick is like in cars, where you turn off the ‘check engine’ light with a combination of key turns and holding pedals.
I’m sure that is correct, I just never found this exact solution mentioned. The other possibility, depending on the type of memory used for the timer module, is that the timer itself was the only thing “stuck.” If it uses SRAM which has a battery backup, and only clears due to specific events, it could be that the timer was literally telling the machine it *must* be operating, because there was still time left on the cycle. Then when the timer completed, it released the controls to normal operation. It would help if I knew exactly what part of the wash cycle it was in when we lost power, because I do know even though the machine has a “pause” feature (that gets triggered during a power loss, I happen to know) there are certain cycles you can’t activate it during. Like the final Drain and Spin…there’s no point. At least, from a certain point of view.
Certain cookie clicker responses can increase or decrease your influence with companions. These choices aren’t always intuitive, as companions have unique personalities and preferences.