Category Archives: Legacy of the Sith

January 16, 2025 · 9:01 am

Mists and Shadows: SWTOR in 2025

It has been tradition for me to kick off a new year of Star Wars: The Old Republic with five bold predictions of what we might see in the weeks and months ahead. Last year I went two for five which is pretty good by my standards especially since the two biggest swings I took last year were hits. That said, I’m going to skip predictions this year. When it comes right down to it, the ongoing SAG-AFTRA voice actors strike which seems to be affecting SWTOR makes it very difficult to guess what might happen this year, particularly in regards to two topics that most interest me: where the current story might go and whether we might get an expansion or at least an expansion announcement this year.

Until the strike is resolved, speculation about the story and expansion ought to be put on hold. I support the aims of the voice actors and their union, and I think it is entirely reasonable to believe that a humongous corporations like Electronic Arts, SWTOR’s publisher, do not have the best interest of their contractors and employees as their highest priority.

I am in no position to say exactly where SWTOR stands with regards to the strike. There has been some voice work in both the newly added Relentless Replication operation and the Dynamic Encounters, but I am very reluctant to speculate about those additions and whether they count as exceptions.

I have no doubt that Broadsword fully intends to continue development despite issues caused by the strike. Galactic and PVP Seasons require little-to-no voice acting, and plenty of non-story content from flashpoints to Dynamic Encounters could be implemented without it as well.

Dynamic Encounters are SWTOR‘s version of “Group Quests” and I’ve very much been enjoying them. They are semi-random quests of various types, many without any combat at all. I always enjoy taking my characters out into the world, walking from place to place, meeting people, getting into adventures. Unlike Dailies and Heroics, the pace of the Encounters is less hectic, and I don’t feel like I need to race from quest to quest or objective to objective. I go where I want and complete the encounters I want. It’s not an efficient source of Conquest or Tech Fragments, but it is relaxing and that’s a greater reward to me.

What is SWTOR without Story?

In light of the strike, however, I think this is a fair question to ask. Patch 7.6 “Galactic Threads” launched without implementing its story, Until the strike is resolved, I think any future “Critical Path” story updates will be delayed as well. SWTOR‘s story and it’s fully voice acted interactions remains one of its biggest assets and strongest selling points to new and returning players. But if the story is delayed, where does this leave players?

I don’t imagine they will present the story with subtitles. At the very least, we have all seen the community react poorly to this style of gameplay when it appears during important moments in the story.

The game’s last major story update, Desperate Defiance, shifts between SWTOR’s traditionally fully voiced staging and the “KOTOR” style in which our character’s responses are related in text and the character animations are limited. Last June, Ashley Ruhl, SWTOR’s narrative director, took to the forums to discuss why and how the choices to use these styles of interactions are made.

Any discussion of this topic must acknowledge the reality that players of  Star Wars: The Old Republic have a lot of very different expectations when it comes to the content the game ought to produce, and that these expectations come from very different points of view. First off, SWTOR is expected to regularly produce the kind of content that every MMO offers: solo play, group content, PVP, raids, dailies, cosmetics, achievements, and gear. On top of that SWTOR is most well known for creating story and character development at a level that frankly other MMOs do not match: fully voiced dialogue, regular cinematic cutscenes featuring 48 lead actors across three languages and a huge supporting cast.

Let me be clear, none of these expectations are unreasonable. Nevertheless, we also have to accept that SWTOR is not the biggest MMO on the market. SWTOR hasn’t changed its subscription pricing in the United States since launch, and it hasn’t charged for an expansion in a decade. I am certain the costs associated with every aspect of creating this game has gone up, and the development team has the challenge of doing what they can with the resources they have.

As a player, I also understand the frustration. I was disappointed that my first major conversation between my character and Sahar, the expansion’s major addition to the cast, was done in the KOTOR style. For me it deflated much of the drama leading up to that moment.

I’m not going to tell anyone how to value their subscription and their play time. If you only want to pop into SWTOR once a year to catch up with the story, I get it. I’ve often called SWTOR the theme-parkiest of theme park MMOs and how often do most people go to DisneyWorld or Six Flags in a year? If you’d rather challenge yourself against the constant stream of new raids only World of Warcraft can supply or the large scale PVP of New World, I completely understand. We live in an age of subscription services, and no one can or should keep up with them all. For example, as their fees have increased and their quality and quantity of their shows gone down, I’ve gotten into the habit of juggling my streaming services. I don’t see any point in subscribing to Netflix for more than one or two months a year, and it makes sense that others view their MMO subs the same way.

I can only answer the question for myself. I use SWTOR’s 180 day subscription plan, and every six months I ask myself if I’m getting my money’s worth from my sub. It costs me more to go out to a movie than to play SWTOR for a month. I truly believe I get more fun from a month of SWTOR than I do from two hours at the cinema, so it’s always been a short conversation. But other people may feel different. A great many players are just here for the story, so taking a break from the game until the strike is resolved is more than reasonable. Should SWTOR add other types of content to tide us over until the strike ends? I’m certain that’s the plan. The next Galactic Season should start in a month or two, and I imagine we’ll get more Dynamic Encounters and perhaps a new Venture. Will we see extra emphasis on group content? Maybe. I don’t know. Honestly I don’t think SWTOR has the resources to satisfy all the expectations players have of the game. As always, it will be a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Don’t look to me for solution to this problem. I understand subscriptions remain SWTOR‘s biggest source of revenue, but Broadsword has introduced the “Join the Fight” and “Master the Fight” bundles to entice players to subscribe for more than a month at a time. I believe that these bundles are solid deals if you want some extra Cartel Coins to spend, but they are skippable if you don’t. I don’t relish the thought of paying more for SWTOR, and I don’t believe SWTOR should or will raise its subscription price unless World of Warcraft does so first; I imagine they are rather like two competing gas stations across the street from each other, forced to match prices. Should SWTOR charge for expansions again? Shadows of Revan, SWTOR‘s last paid expansion, cost $19.99 US, and I would gladly pay that for an expansion with the same scope and content. Would other players? I don’t know.

For me, a big part of the appeal of the game comes from the fact that I get to play with so many fun and funny people both within my guild and the community of people I’ve gotten to meet over the years. I love raiding, I enjoy dipping into Galactic and PVP seasons. There is almost always something I want to do when I log on.

But I can’t speak for other players. All I can really do is hope that the strike is resolved quickly, and the voice actor’s are satisfied with the agreement.

Yes, Chef

Ok, I lied. I do have one 2025 prediction to make. It is obvious to me that the next Venture will revolve around Porgs. This Venture will introduce players to the months long process of breeding, hatching, nurturing Ahch-To’s beloved and delicious avian friends. That’s right, I said “delicious.” This Venture will be the means Broadsword finally introduces the cooking crafting skill to the game. Players will need to journey across the galaxy collecting rare ingredients, uncovering ancient recipes from lost ruins of the Sith, Jedi and Rakata. We will learn to build campfires in the wild, construct fusion ovens in our strongholds, navigate crowded, tension-filled kitchens and battle the fiercest Beskar Chefs to discover who reigns supreme in the kitchen stadiums of the galaxy. At the end of our journey, we will finally earn a vaunted Mandalorian Star proving that we are worthy to stand with the greatest chefs in all of Star Wars lore.

And it all starts with the humble Porg. Of that I have no doubt.

 

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Filed under General SWTOR, Legacy of the Sith

December 15, 2024 · 9:01 am

The Face I Had Before the World Was Made

During SWTOR’s 7.6 livestream, Eric Musco announced to everyone’s surprise that the game’s character models were being updated, and my initial reaction was this: “I hope they know what they’re in for, because if they don’t get it exactly right, people are gonna freak.”

And they did. I was one of them. The very first version of the updated characters we saw on the PTS was very rough indeed. I posted my shocked first impressions on the forums, but I kind of regret it. I fear I helped stir the pot and encouraged the frenzy that we are seeing in some corners of the community. That was never my intent. I believe what Broadsword wants to do is a good idea and I want them to succeed. I want to be careful in my comments and criticism, because I think we’ve seen improvements since the initial version of the PTS, and I believe the team is determined to get it right.

First and foremost, I have no experience with 3D modeling and I don’t know what specific challenges the art team faces in working with SWTOR’s teenaged game engine. My initial gut-reaction has been these aren’t the changes I would’ve made. Let me be perfectly clear, that is not useful criticism. To say “I would have done differently that thing I don’t know how to do” is not helpful at all.

If you’d like the perspective of someone who does know what they are talking about, definitely check out the commentary on this subject by Sultana on Bluesky. Sultana has experience with 3D modeling, has played with the game’s assets and has fascinating insights.

As for me, I do think I can fairly talk about the aesthetics of the changes and how I am reacting to them. I am absolutely not the first to point out that SWTOR’s characters tend towards a more animated style, and swinging too far towards realism clashes strongly with how we’ve come to see our characters over the years. The sweet spot would be for our characters to appear naturalistic without necessarily being realistic. This is a tough line to walk, especially as the environments and objects and outfits around us have become more realistic in recent updates.

We have seen, to different degrees, animated properties from Star Wars’ own The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch shows to Arcane on Netflix and the Spiderverse movies blur those lines between the semi-realism of their setting and the stylistic flourishes of their character designs, and I believe  SWTOR should be able to strike that balance as well.

The main focus of the developer’s attention right now is on our characters’ faces, and I think what we saw with the launch of 7.6 is on the right track. Star Wars is predominantly a cinematic property, and I think ultimately the goal is that we should feel like our characters look like movie stars, as dashing as Harrison Ford and Oscar Isaac and as beautiful as Natalie Portman and Daisy Ridley.

For the most part, I think the male faces are there. I like the heavy lower eyelids, but their lips still seem dry and parched to me. As for the females, while they’ve come a long way, they’re still not quite there. For better or worse, hard contours work on males, but on female faces, they need to go, especially on the neck and where the cheeks meet the the mouth and upper lip area. Light and shadow should be all we need to define those shapes when the character is smiling or shouting, but the transition between the two areas should be smooth as possible in neutral expressions. My main issue is that sometimes the characters’ appearances can change dramatically in different settings and lighting. On the character select screen a character can look fine, but in darker location with higher contrast, the textures on the skin comes off as too stark.

Regarding changes to the bodies of characters, Musco has made it clear that these are even more so a work in progress, and it shows.

The six pack abs on the portly Body Type 4 males has long been the source of jokes, and we can see with the new iteration that they have given these characters a more naturalistic appearance. That is a very good change. Comparing a Nautolan that still uses the old textures to an updated human, we can see more definition around the collarbone, shoulders and arms on the Nautolan, but because they’ve turned down the intensity of the textures on the human to soften wrinkles on other parts of the model, those details feel soft now.

Looking at the back of one of my female characters (on the left, below) we can see the opposite problem. The updated model seems to use the original textures (as seen in the middle) but they are now more intense; those old textures have not aged well. The Trapezius muscles are overly prominent, and the textures on different parts of the bodies don’t quite connect to each other You can see this in the shoulders, especially in how they don’t quite match front to back and in the gaps of the armpits where they should join the torso.

My larger point is that I would like to see the character updates focus less on muscles and anatomy and more on flesh and blood. Yes, there are all sorts of muscles on the back, but in real life it’s the shoulder blades and the curve of the spine that define a person’s back. The result of the over-definition of the older textures is that characters can look literally thin skinned and even emaciated (especially Body Type 1s). The emphasis on sculpted muscles works for Body Type 3 characters who are supposed to be jacked, but everyone else should look like a real person and not a greased up body builder.

“Just make the hard parts look hard and the soft parts look soft!” That’s easier said than done, but it doesn’t mean I want Broadsword to give up. I do believe many of the changes have been improvements. The extra glint of light in the characters’ eyes is a subtle touch that adds a lot of extra life to our characters, and to me, that Body Type 4 human looks better than his Nautolan counterpart.

MMO-RPGs are works in progress, and sometimes not everything works the way we want it to. That sucks sometimes. I don’t love that my characters look off right now, but there are things about games like this that I hated more and have endured longer. As players and customers, we should be engaged with the developers about this process in constructive ways. Screaming and shouting feels good and makes for solid click bait, but it doesn’t help the good people at Broadsword make the game better.

That’s the goal. That’s what we all want.

 

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June 27, 2024 · 10:01 am

Pits and Potes and Skiffs

While I still intend to write about the story of Star Wars the Old Republic’s Desperate Defiance update, I’d like to instead start with a look at a brand new Aurebesh sign that has ties to not only one from the earliest days of SWTOR but also to an extremely obscure bit of Star Wars lore from more than twenty five years ago.

Much of the action in Desperate Defiance takes place in a new area of Hutta called the Minboosa District. Now that I’ve visited Minboosa as part of the story and seen how the changes have also affected “regular” Hutta as well as the Karagga’s Palace operation, I want to take a moment to appreciate how impressive the updated Hutta looks. The old yellow cast to the areas was intense and alien, but now every corner of Hutta is thick with haze and smog. Being outside on Hutta feels gross; it feels like it’s going to stick to your character even when you scramble indoors, and it’ll take more than just a long sonic shower to wash it all off.

At first glance, Minboosa shares similar architecture to the town of Jiguuna on Hutta where Imperial Agents and Bounty Hunters begin their class stories. Minboosa is perhaps a bit more densely packed with buildings, but once you venture outside the town itself, you can really appreciate the changes. Soaring trees, Tibanna gas refineries and landing platforms tower overhead like skyscrapers on Coruscant. Nem’ro’s palace feels positively quaint by comparison.

The center of Minboosa is, of course, the cantina. Shining above its entrance, is a holographic neon sign. This sign is similar to the one above the cantina in Jiguuna, but there are some differences. It’s this earlier sign with which we’ll start. The neon declares that the cantina is called “The Poison Pit” and features radiating circles that act to focus our attention on the logo and the letters atop it; below the three lower letters are framed by octagons and follow the arc of circles. These design elements feature in many examples of the holographic glow that illuminates the player’s journey across the galaxy, most prominently on nearby Nar Shaddaa. The purple creature at the center is a Chemilizard, one of Hutta’s native species that evolved to survive off the pollution that resulted from the Hutt’s short-sighted mistreatment of the planet.

The writing used in this sign is not technically Aurebesh, rather it is a variant known most commonly as “Galactic Standard.” I’ve written about the different types of Aurebesh before, but in general I imagine these alphabets are at least legible and perhaps interchangeable to most of the characters in the game world.

The neon sign above the cantina in the Minboosa District shares a similar design to the Poison Pit sign. This difference that jumped out at me immediately is that this graphic employs a “traditional” Aurebesh font familiar to anyone who’s encountered these letters in other Star Wars media or even Galaxy’s Edge at Disney. While sharing a similar circular design to the previous graphic, this one places the word “skiff” in a horizontal shape which acts as a base for the central graphic which helps enhance the feeling that the speeder is floating above the ground.

I imagine it must have been an interesting design challenge to create a new neon sign for the cantina in the style of one from well over a decade ago, but the artists at Broadsword pulled it off. The two signs are similar, but different enough that they can be told apart at a glance.

However, I do want to explore the meaning of this sign. The image in the center depicts a skiff, a light, open-top repulsorlift “hover-boat” first seen during Return of the Jedi during the battle above the Great Pit of Carkoon.

The name of the cantina, the “Dirty Skiff” sparked a very specific memory for me. Throughout the history of the various Star Wars action figure lines from Kenner and later Hasbro, the toys often includes additional gimmicks: cheap collectible coins, digital bobbins with poorly recorded bits of dialogue or sound effects, and, perhaps most unusual of all, “Freeze Frame Action Slides.” These were two-inch square frames with a small, still image of a scene from one of the Star Wars movies. These images were meant to be seen through an “Action Slide Viewer” (Sold separately, of course; batteries not included, of course) a toy shaped like a pair of Macrobinoculars that allowed you to look at the slides in a manner similar to the old Viewmaster toys. The Freeze Frame Slides could also be used in a traditional slide projector, something familiar to anyone who grew up in the era before digital photography. If this all sounds weirdly retro to you now, believe me, it was nearly as silly back then.

The Freeze Frame Slide included with the “Pote Snitkin” figure, a character both obscure and ridiculously named even by Star Wars standard, features Luke Skywalker in battle during Return of the Jedi’s Sail Barge rescue with a caption that stuck with me all these years.

Some of my Star Wars friends found the phrase “cleaning skiff” to be quite amusing and imagined that it might have come to be slang in the Star Wars universe for “kicking butt.” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think it’s too far a leap from “Cleaning Skiff” to “Dirty Skiff” which, depending on how dirty your mind is, could have all sorts of additional meanings.

Is this holographic sign an intentional homage to an odd accessory from a twenty-five year old action figure? I can’t say for sure, but once I made the connection, I knew I had to share it. And it’s not the first time something from Star Wars toys seems to have inspired something in SWTOR.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: there is so much weird, dumb, silly and wonderful lore across the history of Star Wars. None of it should be taken seriously, but it’s funny what bubbles to the surface sometimes.

 

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Filed under Aurebesh to English, Legacy of the Sith

June 18, 2024 · 9:01 am

Spring Has Sprung

At the end of May, SWTOR’s game update 7.5 launched. Called “Desperate Defiance”, it includes a continuation of the expansion’s main story, the next PVP season, a new springtime event, and a system of activities called “Ventures” the first of which is focused around our character training Lane Vizsla’s Basilisk prototype droid project: Bessie. And there is even some Aurebesh for me to translate!

It’s a busy time for both SWTOR and Star Wars, which also saw the debut of the new Disney+ series, The Acolyte. I haven’t been able to make time for all of it, and my desire to cover all of 7.5 in a single post has proven to be impossible. Between the ongoing Galactic Season, a new PVP season and my regular activities, the addition I’ve spent the most time on over the last three weeks is the “Festival of Abundance” the game’s new spring-time event. Given that I publically speculated that there was a gap in SWTOR’s yearly calendar where a spring focused event could naturally fit, I was, as you can imagine, glad to see this addition.

One of the aspects I enjoy most about MMO-RPGs is simply being in the world the game creates for players. I like having an excuse to go out and do things. In SWTOR, these things are most often dailies and heroics, stuff I’ve repeated many times over the years. So I embrace events like the Feast of Prosperity,  the Swoop Rally and now the Festival because they offer a relaxed change of pace. Their focus is less on combat than on just existing as a person in the game world.

If I want to fight and test my skills there are already plenty of ways for me to do so in this game. This new event instead offers me opportunities to pet baby Tauntauns, cook vomit inducing pies, dance around a futuristic Maypole and traverse the galaxy hunting hidden eggs. It’s all very silly, and I’ve been having fun with it.

That’s not to say there is no combat. To my surprise, the event’s story quests include encounters with a few fairly tough opponents. Don’t forget to put your pants on and have a companion at your side, or you might be in for a rough go.

In general, however, the event’s objectives have been very low key. That’s just the way I like it. There are lots of activities and achievements, including many hidden ones, to chase and plenty to keep me busy during my play sessions. I honestly enjoy that I’ve been able to summon my favorite companion and hop on my favorite speeder and just run around and do stuff for neat rewards. There will be plenty of time in the weeks and years to come for me to put my game-face on and jump into the action, but for now I’m having a good time with the event.

Is it perfect? Not quite. The Festive Footwork quest to dance at the holo-ribbon could be more interactive. As it is now, you approach the pole, click a button and wait. That’s it. Being able to move around, try different dance moves or cross the holo-streams for different results might’ve been fun. In addition, if you want to earn more than a handful of the rewards, you really need to commit wholeheartedly to the event. I know Broadsword wants players coming back again and again, but I think the rewards, especially from the story quests, could stand to be more generous with the event currency. And, to be honest, I wish the armor and weapon rewards were legacy bound. SWTOR has done so much to make Legacy gear an integral part of the game, but that I’ve had to “farm” up currency for multiple pairs of both versions of the goggles for all the characters who could use ‘em doesn’t feel great.

But other parts of the event do feel good. Setting a pie on an empty table is satisfying. Chilling out while I zap fishies or dance around the holo-pole for Conquest points beats the heck out of any heroic mission. The “dark side” option at the end of the story made me laugh; that my Sith Inquisitor has put on display an ancient, obviously active Sith relic in the barn of her farm feels very much like something she’d do. And given that the event is mostly about being nice, healing sick animals and sharing pies, it’s fair that those who walk the path of the Dark Side should get the last word in one regard.

And that’s just the tip of the 7.5 iceberg. There are elements of “Desperate Defiance” from how it advances the story, its presentation and a major change in the cast that I want to discuss, but that must be a topic for next time. And later after the series concludes, I also want to explore The Acolyte’s parallels to SWTOR’s lore.

But this post is late enough as it is! Next week, I’ll be back to my routine, but for now I encourage everyone to check out the Festival of Abundance and have some fun with it.

 

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May 3, 2024 · 9:01 am

Good Riddance to the Yellow Filter

Wednesday’s SWTOR Livestream previewed the new additions coming to the game with Game Update 7.5, Desperate Defiance, but I want to focus on just one: the visual change to Hutta’s environment. One of my goals with this project is to examine the symbols in SWTOR, but not just their literal meaning, but also their connections to the worlds inside and outside of the game. The changes to Hutta does not involve fake space letters, but the meaning does involve something symbolic that I think is worth exploring: the “Yellow Filter”.

Color is an extremely powerful tool in visual storytelling. It can be used not only to differentiate locations, but also suggest a mood and meaning to places and the people in it. Within Star Wars lore, The Empire Strikes Back best demonstrates the use of color as a means to enhance the story. Hoth is “cool” white and blue; Dagobah is covered in “lush” greens and earth tones; and Bespin is primarily lit in reds that swing from “passionate” to “hellish.”

SWTOR is often staged in a similar way, but over the years it has also been influenced by other cinematic techniques popular at the time. Hutta is a case in point. The Hutta players have experienced since launch is bathed a bright yellow color grade. But why? Yellow can mean different things in different contexts, but I think we can agree Hutta is yellow to suggest the world’s corruption and pollution.

If we take a step back and look at how yellow grading is used in other media, we can see that SWTOR was likely inspired by movies and TV shows like Traffic and Breaking Bad which applied a yellow color grade to scenes set in Mexico. In those cases, this effect serves to make the action set there among the drug cartels feel not only more arid and hotter than scenes set in the United States, but corrupt and rotten as well.

So, of course, I can see how the SWTOR of 2011 might have been inspired to use a similar visual shorthand for Hutta. But in the years since, the meaning of the yellow filter changed, and in many case it has become known as the “Mexican Filter.” Even if we leave aside the fact that casting locations in a yellow color key does not accurately represent their actual appearance, the filter has become used to imply that a location was not only hot and arid, but foreign, poor, different. And it did not go without notice that people who lived in the locations that get the yellow filter treatment from not only Mexico but also the Middle East and Asia almost always have brown skin.

I am not saying that Yellow Hutta is racist and that the devs who made it are racists or anyone who prefers the original version is racist, but I do think that SWTOR is an evolving thing, and new players are experiencing aspects of its game for the first time well over a decade after it launched. I am glad that the team at Broadsword is willing to make changes and updates to the game, even after all this time. I believe that Hutta’s yellow filter has not aged well. It is at the very least clichéd and at the very worst reminds players of a filmmaking trope that has become lazy and often racist itself.

The updated Hutta of 7.5 shifts the color cast towards the earth toned end of spectrum. Certainly there is still plenty of yellow, but a bit more reds and browns instead of orange as well. In addition the cloud cover is now at ground level and the entire environment feels murky and clammy. I can see how many people might prefer the first iteration of the world. Certainly the strong primary color cast of the original Hutta is very dramatic and immediately marks it as an alien world, but, to me, the new Hutta feels sticky and I can practically smell the swamps and polluted air. And when we do see different colors, whether they are the nameplates of enemies or the neon sign of the cantina or an oil slicked rainbow, they pop a bit more.

I think the muted color tones and smog of the new Hutta does a better job of implying that the current environmental catastrophe is something that has been done to the planet by its Hutt overlords and not simply how it has been all along. To me that is more interesting symbolically than a hackneyed yellow filter that these days just says “hot and poor.”

 

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April 30, 2024 · 9:01 am

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

This week, while we await news of SWTOR’s next major update, I thought I’d take a beat to catch up on a few topics in the game that I’ve missed in the last few months.

Lighting in a Bottle

Let’s start with a change rolled out officially as part of Game update 7.4 that adjusted the way cinematic interactions are lit, “using environment lighting for more accurate shadows, detailed self shadowing on characters, and more custom lighting control in cinematics.” This new approach to lighting had already been introduced without fanfare in the stories from recent updates, but it was retroactively applied to the origin class stories and expansion content where it had not been used.

I’ve been playing through some Origin Stories and Fallen Empire chapters lately, and for the most part the change is very positive. Generally the lighting feels more natural since scenes are lit using ambient sources and not direct overhead lighting in each scene. Occasionally some shots seem a bit on the dark side when our character’s back is to the main light source, but overall, even run of the mill cutscenes feel more visually alive. The difference is especially noticeable in Knights of the Fallen Empire and Knights of the Eternal Throne. Several of the characters in those expansions have custom models, which did not play well with the spotlighting used in the dialogue scenes. During my playthrough, I’ve noticed that Lana, Vaylin and Valkorian look much better without harsh highlights on their faces.

This change can be subtle, and you might not even notice it without a side-by-side comparison, but it’s a positive one that improves the overall cinematic quality of all the game’s stories.

No Free Conquest Lunch

An unannounced change in 7.4.1 was the large reduction in the number of Conquest points awarded from the daily Reputation objective. A single level 50+ character could with a single click-a-day of a reputation trophy easily complete not just their personal Conquest goals, but very nearly even a guild’s small yield invasion target, all without ever stepping outside their stronghold.

Last year when discussing gameplay loops, the World of Warcraft Youtuber SoulSoBreezy remarked that MMOs need to provide players with two things when they log on: “Things to Do” and “Things to Work Towards”.  While there is overlap between the two, especially in SWTOR, I would say that Conquest, Daily Areas and Heroics are essentially “Things to Do”. If you complete Conquest on one character, you can switch to another. If your guild reaches their invasion goal, well, it will all reset next Tuesday.

“Things to Work Towards”, however, tend to have conclusions or at least breakpoints. Players can work towards completing Class or expansion stories, gearing, filling reputation bars, clearing Operations, ranking up in PVP, unlocking Achievements or collecting various rare cosmetic rewards.

Players tend to “Work Towards Things” at their own pace, or the pace of the groups with whom they play, buy “Things to Do” are meant to fill the gaps and time so that a player feels like their time isn’t wasted if they aren’t engaged with their favorite form of gameplay. Conquest, for example, rewards currencies that can help players advance towards their other goals.

When Galactic Seasons were first announced, my fear was that it was going to be just another “Thing to Do”. To my surprise, I’ve really enjoyed the system. I don’t disagree that Galactic Seasons share DNA with Battle Passes with a healthy dose of FOMO, but it’s also something that gives me different options when I play, and often helps guide group activities for my guild which remains the best part of my SWTOR experience. On reset day during the Seasons, I check out what rewards I hope to earn that week, and it’s satisfying when I do.

Until the current season, SWTOR’s Galactic Season also came with a Reputation track associated with each season’s theme. There was criticism that it was just a progression track on top of a progression track, and that Reputations that go away after the season ends are kind of pointless. But I didn’t mind because I knew I could complete the daily Reputation objective and not have to worry about Conquest at all while a Galactic Season was active. It’s not even a close call for me: I’d rather spend ten minutes mediating on Voss or exploring someone’s stronghold as part of Galactic Season objectives than running heroics or daily areas for Conquest points. And as someone whose every other reputation track is maxed out, this was a nice luxury during the Season.

However, by logging onto one character on each server and clicking a reputation token once a day, I was also able to complete the bulk of the previous Galactic Season reward tracks with quite literally minimal effort. It also made me want to delay completing the Reputation track as long as possible so that I could continue to take advantage of the daily reward. On my home server, I did the math and worked out how to complete the Reputation track during the very final days of the season. Shintar amusingly called this “degenerate gameplay” and speaking as someone who took full advantage, I won’t fault Broadsword for the change. Part of the goal of the Galactic Season is to reward players for engaging in different types of activities around the game, and popping on only long enough to click a Rep token is probably not what they had in mind.

Ever since coming out of lockdown, I’ve become less interested in SWTOR’s “Things to Do”. I still complete Conquest on multiple characters, but my goal is to expend as little effort as possible in the process, but I still feel like there are plenty of “Things to Work Towards.” Nevertheless, for other people and guilds, Conquest is a bigger deal, and the Reputation change negatively impacted a lot of players. To compensate, Broadsword came around and essentially doubled the rewards for completing Heroic missions, and players without a lot of free time can still put up a fair number of Conquest points in a short gameplay window. I think this is a fair compromise. Nevertheless I would also like to see the Conquest reward for completing a Galactic Season objective be a little more generous, and the objective for completing multiple Season objectives be reduced from four to three so that it can be achieved twice each week.

A Night on the Town

In addition to the current Galactic Season, Game Update 7.4.1 also came with a dash of story content for players. Ever since unfinished “Date Night” souvenirs found their way into the decorations list last year, players have known something was cooking on the romance front. All credit should be given to Broadsword for waiting for Valentine’s Day to roll out this addition.

The Date Nights are romantic encounters with Lana Beniko, Theron Shan, Arcann and Koth Vortena available to players in relationships with those characters. These four companions were logically chosen because they are the only four which can be romanced by every character regardless of their Origin Story or gender. And based on my experience on social media, Lana and Theron are by far SWTOR’s most popular romances making them natural choices for the initial batch.

As of this writing, I’ve only played Theron’s and Arcann’s Date Nights. My flings with poor Lana never make it past the return of my character’s original romances. As for Koth, while I honestly do like him; I can’t say I like like him, but they’ll get their shots sooner rather than later.

These interludes are short and sweet. Theron’s datapad is the perfect metaphor for everything that is charming and infuriating about the guy, and the conversation it sparks feels true to both his character and mine. As for Arcann, I don’t think we’ve ever seen him this relaxed at any point in the story. It’s a revelation to see in a character mainly known for his self-pity and brooding. Good for him!

There are achievements related to completing the Date Nights for each character multiple times culminating with a decoration related to each encounter. Arcann’s souvenir is a pair of wooden training sabers, mounted with a romantic Aurebesh inscription flanked by crests from Zakuul. This recreation was not complicated to make, but it was my most requested translation in a very long time and I’m always happy to oblige!

But, yes, I did describe these scenes with the words “dash” and “short” for a reason. These are conversations akin to the dialogues scenes characters have with their companions between each planet of their class’s origin stories.

When it comes to story, SWTOR players are like Kylo Ren demanding MORE, and I’m no different. I can’t deny that these feel very short. When the Date Nights were announced, my hope was they’d be something like the Class specific interludes on Rishi during Shadows of Revan. Those weren’t much longer, but still felt more satisfying. On the one hand, I’m not too upset. Lana, Theron, Arcann and even Koth have had lots of time in the spotlight in the last several expansions, but the same can’t be said for many of the original romantic companions. I don’t imagine Mako, Felix, Risha and Andronicus stans will be satisfied by a cut scene that takes less time to play than to read this post.

I don’t know what my conclusion is. The Date Nights I’ve played had nice character moments and are absolutely sweet. Would I have preferred a single ten minute mini chapter featuring one of those companions to four two and a half minute scenes with each of them? Maybe.

Going forward, we’ll be getting one or two more Date Nights with each Galactic Season. I am eagerly anticipating the return of some of my favorite companions, and that maybe, just maybe, their dates have a little more meat on their bones.

 

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Filed under Aurebesh to English, General SWTOR, Legacy of the Sith

February 29, 2024 · 9:01 am

Action Figures Each Sold Separately

When considering topics for this blog, the translation of Aurebesh is often the easiest part of the process. Beyond the literal meaning of the words we see in the game, I also aim to consider their context and meaning within Star Wars: The Old Republic or within Star Wars lore as a whole. This week’s project’s context is different than any I’ve discussed before, and while the translation was indeed straightforward, my recreation led me to a different corner of Star Wars history.

The first time I saw this decoration in a friend’s Stronghold there was something vaguely familiar about it, but I couldn’t quite place it. Only when I looked it up in the Cartel Market and saw its name did I recognize what inspired this addition to SWTOR. The decoration, the Vehicle Maintenance Energizer, shares its name with a toy created by Kenner in 1982 as a part of its Star Wars action figure line. The toy was meant to function as a tool shelf and refueling station for the lines’ various vehicles and spaceships from Luke’s Landspeeder to his X-Wing Fighter.

Like many, many members of that first generation of Star Wars fans, I grew up with Kenner’s Star Wars figures, and discovering that this decoration pays loving tribute to the vintage toy made the kid in me very happy.

SWTOR’s version of the Energizer was designed by Tanner Hartman, and he has shared views of the decoration and higher tech update of the Energizer that clearly shows fidelity to Kenner’s original. The decoration is interactive and when clicked opens up in the same manner as the toy. Among the decoration’s many details are the tools left on the table and in the drawers that are based on the actual accessories included with the set. Each of the decoration’s tools are stamped with the Aurebesh letters “CEC”. This is a clear indication that the Energizer is a product of the venerable Corellian Engineering Corporation, maker of many fine starships including Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon and the Smuggler’s very own XS Freighter.

This decoration has been on my to-do list for a long while, but I wasn’t sure how to cover it in a way that does justice to its source material. Typically I try to present Aurebesh elements from SWTOR in a context where modern players understand it as their characters would. But in this case, I realized the point of view this item really needs is that of a kid wandering the aisles of a Sears or Toys R Us store in 1982.

I should also mention the very off-brand SWTOR logo that I placed on the box. Kenner’s Star Wars toys typically featured their own versions of the Star Wars movie logos in their packaging, and I wanted to make something along those lines. My faux design of the logo is bad, and close to unreadable, but I don’t think it’s so far off from what Kenner might have actually produced back then.

I hope you’ll forgive this indulgence in a different kind of recreation. That said, if you came for some Aurebesh, I won’t leave you hanging! When activated the decoration opens up and activates monitors one of which has Aurebesh text. The translation reveals that they are diagnostic displays that are entirely appropriate for the Energizer’s intended purpose. While including a dash of inspiration from Back to the Future, the technical readout does a very nice job of striking a balance between seeming both realistic but not quite mundane, and fantastic but not quite ridiculous. When it comes to technobabble, this is a remarkably difficult line to toe. The vehicle seen in the top display is the Jan-Tan Dualray speeder, which Tanner Hartman also helped create for SWTOR; in addition, part of that speeder’s engine can be seen on the Energizer’s table, ready for repairs!

Cop-Eras Tour

Finally, I do want to briefly touch on the SWTOR team’s latest livestream, which introduced the content of the next game update, 7.4.1. Despite being a .1 patch meant to serve as a bridge between major updates, I was impressed with what Broadsword had to share.

Since our first visit during the Traitor Among the Chiss flashpoint, I’ve hoped we’d find a reason to return to Copero, a world overflowing with picturesque beaches and snowcapped mountains. There is no way I would’ve predicted that it would be the location of the Stronghold Keith Kanneg teased late last year. That the next Galactic Season is structured around unlocking a stronghold that based on the preview seems so very breathtaking, exceeded my wildest expectations.

The other significant addition coming next month are the Date Night missions. For many players, romances are as an important part of the roleplaying experience as galaxy shaking conflicts with epic enemies. Based on my social media feed alone, I sometimes wonder if Baldur’s Gate 3 might be less a Dungeons and Dragons game than a dating simulator, and that is true of SWTOR as well. And yet there hasn’t been a ton of action for our characters in the area of romantic entanglements during Legacy of the Sith.

My guess is that since there are so many potential romances available to players, it must be a challenge for the developers to find spaces to fit those characters and interactions within the main story. As a result, there have been a few flirts here and there, but probably not as much smooching as many players would like. The Date Night stories should help to address that. Ashley Ruhl and Caitlin Sullivan Kelly fairly addressed why the Fallen Empire romance companions are the logical choices with which to start. Simply by the numbers alone, I am certain that Lana and Theron are SWTOR player’s two most popular romances.

There are many, many other companions for our characters to fall in love with, and the team indicated that each will have their moment to shine. That said, it will take a while to get to them all. As with all things SWTOR, patience is a virtue.

I am not expecting the “date nights” to be full blown chapters with action and adventure and multiple encounters, but I do hope there is some depth to our interactions that will make them satisfying to revisit again and again. During the Fallen Empire era, numerous major companions were shoe-horned back into the game in very brief recruitment missions, and I hope that when their turns come up Risha and Mako and Vector and Felix and the rest get the attention they missed last time around.

Finally the team closed out with a preview of the next major update, 7.5, which will see a return to Hutta as part of the main story, the conclusion of Lane Vizla’s quest to rebuild a Basilisk droid, as well as the debut of a new springtime event. Given that we are on the cusp of Spring already, it suggests to me that SWTOR’s next major update will be sooner rather than later.

After last year’s drama, it’s nice to hope that there will be lots to do and explore in SWTOR in the months ahead.

Graphic Design in My Passion

Returning or new visitors to this entry may notice that the SWTOR logo on the toy box in the thumbnail above does not match the actually readable one in the final version of my mockup. I have long been accused of having a dry sense of humor, but this visual joke landed face flat in the coarse, rough and irritating sand, and I received some truly negative reactions to what I intended to be an obviously bad joke. Chastened, I have gone back and adjusted the logo to be in line with Kenner and Hasbro’s actual house style. In an act of defiance, however, I’m leaving the original design in the thumbnail as a warning to future generations.

 

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Filed under Aurebesh to English, General Star Wars, General SWTOR, Legacy of the Sith

January 24, 2024 · 9:31 am

Can’t You Hear the Thunder?

This week, as I await the next game update, I thought I’d check in on my Hardcore challenge one last time. First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who entered my Shae Vizla raffle. Because the raffle required an extra step of including a screenshot of their player’s story progress, most of the entries I received came to me via email, but it also allowed folks to share with me their experiences on SWTOR‘s new Asia-Pacific server. Hearing people’s stories about how much fun they had starting fresh on Shae Vizla was very cool to see, and I was especially impressed to learn how many people attempted, failed and triumphed at my hardcore challenge. It’s gratifying to know that I’m not the only one who gave it a go! Everyone who entered received a prize, and if you haven’t heard from me check your email or the in-game mail of the character who entered. Otherwise, leave me a comment below and I’ll track you down!

As Shae Vizla entered its third month, we received an answer from Broadsword to the hotly debated question about whether server transfers would be allowed to the new server, with the confirmation that they will be coming sooner rather than later. I think this is very good news for players in the region who want to make the server their home. Yes, it will affect the economy, but I don’t think that is sufficient reason to not allow transfers. I know I’m not alone in being very attached to the characters I’ve played the most over the years, and allowing players access to their main characters is an important part of making sure Shae Vizla has a chance to succeed.

I’m also glad to see that free transfers will be included for subscribers as well. If you were transferred off an APAC server during the old server mergers, it’s only fair that you shouldn’t have to pay to get back now that one exists again. Broadsword has indicated that they will limit the number of credits that can be transferred, and I concede that is a reasonable step to control the economic impact transfers will have on the local economy.

The question of what the future holds for Shae Vizla is a fair one to ask. My general impression is that older MMOs tend to close down servers, not open new ones, and I imagine Broadsword is closely watching Shae Vizla’s progress. I very much hope it finds a large enough population to sustain a reasonable amount of endgame activity. Xam Xam and Shintar report that now that the excitement of the launch has cooled off, and we find ourselves between Galactic and PVP seasons, things are quieting down on Shae Vizla, and I hope transfers help the server find a stable population of players and an identity of its own.

The move to the Amazon cloud services gives Broadsword the ability to more easily set up servers these days, but I doubt we will be seeing an explosion of new servers. I think it’s possible that we might see some limited time “event” servers akin to what Classic World of Warcraft has done with their Hardcore and Seasonal servers. I’ve watched the WOW Classic community bounce between Classic and Hardcore and new Season of Discovery events, but I don’t know to what degree SWTOR would be able to chase those fads. Could Broadsword try? Sure! I would absolutely give an official hardcore server a go, but I don’t think I’d want to see the SWTOR team devote the kind of energy that goes into something like WOW‘s Season of Discovery if it comes at the expense of content on the live servers.

Overall, I think the addition of Shae Vizla is a good sign for the health and future of the game, and I look forward to seeing what else the game might “serve” up.

 

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Filed under General SWTOR, Legacy of the Sith

January 8, 2024 · 9:01 am

We Can’t Rewind: Five Predictions for 2024

My list of predictions of what we can expect to see in Star Wars: The Old Republic for the coming year has become an annual tradition in folly. Despite the fact that I thought for certain there were one or two slam dunks among last year’s prognostications, I ended up missing especially badly. Indeed, if not for the addition at the very end of the year of a hat that also shows our character’s hair, I would’ve put up nothing but goose eggs.

It’s not clear to me if the Life Day Officer’s hat is working as intended, but perhaps it suggests that the good folks at Broadsword are thinking about how to solve the problem. Time will tell.

Clearly my predictions should be taken with a grain or two of salt. If I’m going to be completely honest, if I start getting them right, I suspect this list will be significantly less fun to make, but at this point nothing can stop me now. So on with the show!

What’s Shae Up To?

As part of the last update, we have learned that Mandalore herself, Shae Vizla has gone dark and no one seems to know where she is and where she’s doing. So what is she up to? The answer is obvious: nothing good. It’s never a good sign in SWTOR when one of our companions goes rogue. I have a feeling Shae means to rip some pages from the classic Theron Shan playbook and make our characters’ lives a blizzard of torn paper.

But what exactly is her plan? I think she’s gonna bust Malgus out of jail. Shae and Malgus are former co-workers after all, and she has experience getting into highly secure locations. “The enemy of my enemy is my ally” feels like Mandalorian logic to be sure, and I imagine Shae’s hatred of the Hidden Chain is blinding enough that she might think she can trust Malgus to help her take down Heta Kol. This is probably a mistake.

Ever since he was captured, we’ve all been waiting for Darth Malgus to have his “You should’ve killed me when you had the chance!” moment, and I wonder if it’s coming this year. Perhaps this will be the thing that kick starts the story into high gear and leads to some hotly anticipated revelations about Darth Nul.

It Takes a Very Steady Hand

I like to include one impossible dream among my predictions each year, and this one is likely it. But I hope raiders get some love and attention this year. First off, let me get this out of the way: no, I don’t think Nightmare R4 is in the cards this year, or ever. That it launched as a “Hardmare” was a clear indication to me that no Master Mode iteration was in the works even before Eric Musco came out and said as much.

I don’t consider R4 to be one of SWTOR’s more successful operations; story mode raiders can’t complete it on Story Mode; and its final boss on Veteran Mode is more difficult that most Nightmare bosses. Anyone who raids knows this, and I’m certain Broadsword is well aware of R4’s participation and completion rates.

That doesn’t mean SWTOR should abandon operations content. Raiding is a vital component of any MMO whose importance goes beyond the number of players who actually do it. For one thing, much of the game’s institutional knowledge or “paratext” typically is passed down from raiders who dive into the game’s stats and creates the guides that help other players gear up and play their class even if they never set foot in group content.

Raiding is fun. Raiding is aspirational content for new and veteran players alike. Despite the fact that Dread Fortress is more than a decade old, I was thrilled to see my friends Kats_Tales and Capt_Roman recently defeat Brontes on Nightmare and earn their Wings of the Architect!

With a couple of exceptions, I think SWTOR has done a very good job making operations accessible to all players. As a guildmaster and raid leader, there is nothing I enjoy more than taking players intimidated by the thought of joining a raid and showing them the ropes. Working with friends and teammates to overcome a challenge they thought out of reach is one of the best feelings in the whole of this game.

Raiding is fun. The Dread Master saga told throughout the first two expansions worth of operations is one of SWTOR’s best arcs. Gods from the Machine is an epic capstone to the Iokath story.

Will we see a new full-scale Operation this year? I don’t think so. But it’s been more than five years since we journeyed into the Hive of the Mountain Queen, and I feel like we are overdue for a new lair boss. An addition of that scope does not feel impossible or too much to ask.

Could we uncover a rogue Basilisk droid on Ruhnuc or awaken a giant Firaxan shark on Manaan or revisit the final fight with Tenebrae, Vitiate and Valkorian from Echoes of Oblivion in a raid group? Who knows? But I do think it is content worth advocating for.

A Room With A View

Last month Keith Kanneg marked SWTOR’s twelfth anniversary with an overview of how far the game has come during what must have been a tumultuous year for the developer team. I think he has every right to be proud of the team’s additions to the game last year, but Keith also knows the players well and was sure to give us a tease of what to expect in 2024, including a return to a place with “quite a view.”

If I were a betting man, I’d wager that that Papa Keith is referring to a long rumored Stronghold that certainly would come with a “penthouse view”, but since this is an exhibition not a competition, I am free to suggest a different option, and instead I’ll guess that we will be returning to Oricon.

Oricon has been a much requested location for a Stronghold, one for which Sith characters would have a strong affinity. As players who have journeyed into the Dread Palace know, the jagged spires atop Oricon’s fiery, volcanic landscape have a heck of a view, and nothing ties a room together like liquid hot magma. I can imagine all sorts of potentially cool areas that could be included in an Oricon Stronghold: a throne room, a smelting forge and even portals in space and time to hidden chambers. And, hey, if we are returning to Oricon, maybe we’ll find out what Dread Master Calphayus has been up to all these years.

Who Rang? Huyang!

One of the things that has allowed SWTOR’s story to flourish despite being part of the sprawling shared continuity is that it more or less exists in its own corner of the Star Wars universe which lets the game’s storytellers play in their own sandbox without having to worry about what is going on in other media. To be sure, SWTOR has always embraced its ties to Star Wars history from Knights of the Old Republic and the Tales of the Jedi comics, but in recent years the game has been more willing to bring in elements from modern Star Wars lore, especially in the realm of cosmetics.

When it comes to characters and storylines, however, there are few direct connections bridging the thousands of years that separate SWTOR from mainline Star Wars lore. During Jedi Under Siege, players who met the slumbering ancient Jedi Master Ood Bnar, who first appeared in the Dark Empire comics, know that SWTOR is willing to play with concepts that exist across the ages. There is one newly prominent character in Star Wars media who could, and perhaps even should, make an appearance in SWTOR.

I refer, of course, to the droid archivist Huyang who first appeared in The Clone Wars cartoon, but last year had a significant role in the Ahsoka live action series. For countless millennia, Huyang guided Jedi in the construction of their lightsabers. Even during the time of SWTOR, he would be considered unfathomably ancient, and there is no reason he could not be around for our characters to encounter.

Before you say it, yes, it would absolutely be fan service. But I’m on the record that not all fan service is bad. I also understand that SWTOR’s story has other things on its mind right now, but Huyang already shares similarities with one of SWTOR’s existing protocol droid models, and perhaps with a few tweaks and customizations we might discover Huyang in a workshop on Tython or Ilum helping a class of eager Padawans build their first lightsabers.

And it would be even cooler if his appearance was tied to an unexpected bit of exploration or a side-quest for the players to discover.

Darth Nul is a Porg

At this point, I can only hope that you admire my commitment to the bit. If I have to keep it going, I’m gonna go big. Big and stupid.

We haven’t seen Darth Nul’s face. We don’t know she’s not a Porg. No one can tell me that it is impossible. Heck, I’m even willing to accept that Darth Nul could be a stack of Porgs in a trench coat. And if you think about it, it all makes sense that she would be a murder of Porgs. Who better to see the Force potential of every living being in the galaxy than the Porgs? They were drawn to the ancient temple on Ahch-To. Porgs made a bee-line for Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber. They followed Rey when she left the planet. IT’S ONLY LOGICAL.

Here’s the thing: my very first Dumb Top Five List was the template for my annual predictions, and on that list was a request for Loth Cats. As everyone knows we got an adorable and mewing Loth Cat as one of the ultimate rewards of the latest Galactic Season. Could Porgs be next? Don’t count them out! Please, Broadsword, don’t count them out. I’m running out of Porg jokes!

What do you think? Let me know what you hope to see in SWTOR in the months ahead! In the meantime, I hope everyone’s new year is off to a good start, and that 2024 is a fun and rewarding year for SWTOR and all of you who took a moment to drop by this silly blog. Cheers!

 

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Filed under Dumb Top Five, General SWTOR, Legacy of the Sith

December 28, 2023 · 10:01 am

Fortune and Glory, Kid

This week, to end the year in style, let’s take a look at a pair of unexpected additions to SWTOR from Game Update 7.4, Chains in the Dark: two propaganda posters featuring none other than Heta Kol.

These new posters were a surprise to be sure for two reasons. First, these graphics, as well as some other Republic and Imperial fleet posters were unannounced additions, but it’s also odd that Heta Kol would be promoting herself on the Fleet hubs while the forces of her Hidden Chain invades the worlds of the Empire and the Republic.

Within the context of the game world, two explanations spring to mind. Perhaps the Hidden Chain sliced into the Fleets’ advertising systems to illicitly include their own propaganda as a form of digital graffiti. Another possibility is that the Republic and Sith Empire are so hard up for ad revenue these days that they’ll take credits from anyone. Frankly, that second explanation feels all too realistic and plausible.

But let’s take a close look at the posters themselves. The text of both uses the Mandalorian alphabet which was created for Attack of the Clones but continues to be used and refined in live action Star Wars including The Mandalorian. As with the Mandalorian language banners introduced in the Spirits of Vengeance flashpoint, these posters translate not into English but into the Mando’a dialect, which was first introduced in the Republic Commando novels but has also been developed in other media.

Because the text does not directly translate into English, the challenge in translation was two fold, and I decided to create both Mando’a and English language translations of the posters. Typically, my recreations feature letter-for-letter transcriptions whether the source is Aurebesh or another alien typeface, but in these cases the English language translations do not exactly align with the Mandalorian originals. Fortunately, the message of these posters is direct enough that the changes I made don’t feel like they have dramatically upset the posters’ original designs.

As for the translation itself, Mando’a is not a fully developed “conlang” or Constructed Language like Dothraki, Elvish or Klingon, and most of the usage we see is chiefly concerned with the kind of things Mandalorian are typically going on about anyway. Since the intent of the posters is to be propaganda that delivers a short, direct message, I don’t think I needed to look for nuance in my translations, despite the temptation.

The design of these images are similar to wartime propaganda posters that you might have seen in real life or scattered across SWTOR’s worlds and Strongholds. Both posters feature a powerful portrait of Heta Kol against a background that propels the viewer’s gaze upward to the sky, along either beams of light or launching spaceships.

The background of the second image features an emblem that is new to players with this update. This seems to be the symbol of the Hidden Chain, and it is also featured prominently on the swanky new red and bronze armor worn by Mandalorians of the Hidden Chain. I think the iconography of this symbol is worth exploring.

Let’s start in the center, that hexagonal shape has its origins in the breast plate of Boba Fett’s armor and has over the years come to be symbolic of the entire Mandalorian aesthetic from their armor and spaceships to their art and architecture, particularly as seen in The Clone Wars and Rebels shows. On either side of the hexagon, two shapes that appear to be links of a chain seem to pull apart the hexagon which is broken into two pieces. The symbolism is clear: the goal of Heta Kol’s Hidden Chain is to tear apart the traditional structure of Mandalorian culture.

I don’t think Heta just wants to be the next Mandalore. She truly wants a revolution that will remake Mandalorian culture into something else, for better or worse. This is why Shae Vizla has reacted so strongly and stridently to the Hidden Chain’s challenge. Heta isn’t being subtle in her intent as we saw when she destroyed the Clan Cadera banner on Ruhnuc for all Mandalorians to see. This perspective reinforces the central theme of SWTOR’s story over the last two expansions. Darth Malgus wants to break free of the endless cycle of conflict between the Jedi and the Sith, which has left him chained physically, mentally and metaphorically. Similar questions are on the mind of Sa’har Kateen and Shae Vizla as they try to make sense of their places in a new and changing galaxy that is still emerging from the ashes of the war with the Eternal Empire.

To me, this is all very cool. These graphics echo the themes of the story, and the story is connected to their design. Sure, they are neat posters, but they also enhance the player’s experience of the story within the game world. You don’t need to know the literal meaning of Heta’s propaganda to understand its intent, and that’s a mark of very good design.

My Hardcore Journey – Act Three

Finally, let me share the conclusion of my Hardcore Journey with the completion, just barely, of Act Three of the Jedi Knight story.

My biggest surprise about this challenge is that it turned out to be harder than I expected. My choice of Shadow for Combat Style turned out to be most fortunate; the ability to exit combat with Force Cloak saved me from certain death on multiple occasions. As I neared the conclusion of the Jedi Knight story, I barreled ahead at full speed, and took on the Emperor for the first time in years, with only a vague memory of the encounter’s mechanics. T7 was defeated quickly, and I would’ve followed soon after had I not hit Force Cloak to reset the encounter. A quick Google search reminded me what to do, but even so I only survived by the skin of my teeth.

Looking back at the experience, my main piece of advice is to take it slow. While within the level range of a planet and wearing only quest rewards for gear, a group of two or three enemies could be a lot more dangerous than I might expect, and my companions weren’t always as helpful as I would’ve liked them to be. “Kira! What are you doing?!”

One thing I would change is to fuss less with heroics, and do more side quests. I rate the experience gains from planetary side quests higher than the gear upgrades from heroics. Entering nearly every new planet while three levels lower than the mobs I encountered was usually fine, but led to some spicy combats that would’ve been trivial with a couple more levels under my belt.

As for crafting, I stuck with Artifice and it did eventually result in a steady supply of purple quality color crystals, but I found it more trouble and expensive than it was worth to craft level appropriate lightsabers or off-hands, and I suspect this would have been the case for any other crew skill I might have selected. That said, next time I go, I think I’ll give Biochem a try. My Jedi Knight never wanted for medpacks, but I wonder if a constant supply of stims could have helped out more.

I also want to remind readers that as of this post, there is still more than three weeks to enter my Act Three raffle. All you need to do to enter is to show me that you’ve completed Act Three of any class story on the brand new Shae Vizla server. I’ve received many entries already and it’s been neat to hear about folks’ journeys on SWTOR’s new home down under. It’s also been gratifying to hear that many of you have taken up my Hardcore Challenge as well. This raffle features the biggest prize pool I’ve ever offered, and there is still plenty of time to enter!

Finally, let me close out 2023 with thanks to everyone who has visited my little corner of the Internet this year. I strive to have a slightly different perspective on Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I’m looking forward to new adventures in the year to come, and I hope to see you there as well!

 

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Filed under Legacy of the Sith, Mandalorian to English