Republic Saboteur, Part 2

My Republic saboteur's journey continues. 

Since I learned that Imperial saboteurs have a special alternate ending for one of the Onderon dailies, I was curious to see whether there was a similar Easter egg for Republic saboteurs. There was, though it's somewhat less cool than the Imperial version (in my opinion), since it's only a bonus.

The daily mission to destroy Imperial listening devices has a bonus to find and take out the Imperial surveillance commander. As a saboteur you tell this person to hold their fire instead and that you secretly work for the Empire. They point out that you're not being very helpful by destroying their stuff, and offer you the option to do something useful for them by planting some listening devices inside the city. If you take it, you get a follow-up task to do just that, which feels kind of ironic considering that the main mission's objective was to do the literal opposite.

On Mek-Sha, I was kind of surprised that there wasn't even a mention of committing sabotage by influencing the vote so that the fuel sale would be blocked. (After all, if you play Imperial side, that's what Veek and Indigo expect you to do.) I guess you could argue that directly sabotaging the sale would've been kind of obvious, but it's not like you couldn't have come up with some way to shift the blame.

Instead everything proceeds just the same way as it does for a loyalist, until you get to the Imperial attack on the docks at the very end, where you arrive just in time to see Narlock confronting Major Anri - and the saboteur option is to just shoot him, which I did. Anri is confused by the unexpected assist for a moment but knows better than to ask too many questions when you prompt her to get a move on. So once again, the Republic's plans fail because you were too late to stop the Imperials. Oops?

At the debrief afterwards, Narlock is replaced by a Nautolan with an eye patch and a Scottish accent called Captain Prenton, and Arn wonders how the Empire could do this to "us" twice in a row... gee, I wonder.

I have to admit I felt kind of bad about this particular act of sabotage, because it was so cold and personal. It's one thing to (not) press a button that triggers something bad, but quite another to directly shoot someone in the back who thought you were their ally. You also get to hear about how Narlock had a daughter and Junker Jott agonises about having to tell her about her father's death. She later writes you a letter asking whether you saw what happened. Junker also writes you a letter, saying he reviewed some security footage (gulp) that showed Major Anri so it was probably her who killed Narlock (phew).

You continue on to Objective Meridian, which is pretty unremarkable from a saboteur point of view as a Republic player. For all the devastating losses you inflict on the Republic fleet on Onderon and Mek-Sha, it doesn't look any smaller during the attack on Corellia and I didn't notice any differences to the loyalist outcome during the battle. The only thing I'll say is that like on Imp side, the ending with you leaving your buddies behind after the Malgus fight without a care in the world feels so much more natural as a saboteur than as a loyalist. I briefly considered not committing sabotage on this last step since I still felt bad about Narlock and handing the facility over to the Empire seemed like kind of a big deal, but it turned out to be just another opportunity to be just a second too late to press the button that was meant to prevent the shields from going down... it was simply too easy to do.

At the post-battle conversation on the fleet, things got a bit buggy as an angry Theron yelled at my smuggler for not using the fleet to protect the civilians the Empire was bombarding and then ran off... just to then proceed to contribute jokey comments to the rest of the conversation while invisible.

In the debrief on Nar Shaddaa, NR-02 introduced me to Darth Xarion. Unlike on my agent, I didn't even have my smuggler ask about being allowed to join the Empire properly; I think she quite enjoys being a chaotic force not strictly beholden to anyone. I just chose to have her complain about Malgus trying to kill her on Corellia, which of course just got her the response that he didn't know about her real loyalties since they're a closely kept secret.

All in all, the things that really stood out to me about the Onslaught arc for Republic saboteurs was that coming from a defensive perspective, with the Republic always caught on the back foot and scrambling to deal with Imperial attacks, it felt so much easier to justify the sabotage as failure and much less suspicious than the way the Imperial saboteur always makes it all the way to the objective of an offensive strike just to then mysteriously fail at the finish line.

Also, the Republic is incredibly chill about failure compared to the Empire. The Sith were always angry and seeking to place blame, but the Republic attitude can pretty much be summed up as "too bad, so sad". It's almost comical how they're only mildly disappointed by mission failures causing hundreds and thousands of deaths, and it's never anyone's fault, just a tragedy. All they do is talk about how they need to find ways to soldier on anyway.

If you asked me whether I preferred the Imperial or the Republic saboteur path up to this point, I'd honestly struggle to choose. The Republic version seems much more believable, but on the other hand the consequences of sabotage on Imperial side feel a lot spicier (what with angry Sith blaming and trying to murder each other), which is more entertaining in a way, even if the way you keep getting away with it is much less convincing.

Imperial Saboteur, Part 2

Continued from part 1!

I completed the rest of the Onslaught base story on my saboteur agent and there were some interesting things to see. However, first I'd like to note that I also did a round of dailies on Onderon and was quite surprised when I realised that one of the daily missions has a cut scene with a different outcome if you're a saboteur! It's the one that tells you to hunt down a Republic assassin, and to be honest I always wondered why the end of that took place in a phase, considering that you just kill him (usually). However, if you're a saboteur, you get to talk instead of attacking straight away and you have the option to distract the guards to help him escape! How cool is that? Now if only the quest giver had remembered that King Petryph wasn't alive in my playthrough anymore...

As for Mek-sha and beyond: There are a couple of opportunities to randomly be nice to people aligned with the Republic, which generally didn't strike me as a wise thing to do in public, not to mention unlikely to actually achieve anything, so I didn't always choose those options, except to try out the concept on Tau, to whom my character said something like: "You have nothing to fear from me, Jedi". I think her reply was something along the lines of: "We'll see about that".

When you infiltrate Junker Jott's base to steal the schematics for the failsafe, you can intentionally leave evidence of what happened, which results in Anri's diversion at the end being less successful. At least I think that's how these two things were connected... it wasn't entirely clear to me what Anri's diversion being less successful actually meant in practice.

I didn't get to find out because I chose to commit maximum sabotage again by simply not triggering the failsafe and pretending that it just didn't work.

Darth Malgus doesn't go ballistic on Darth Shaar during the debrief at the end the way he did on Savik, so I chose to actively throw her under the bus by saying that her whole plan was bad when Malgus asked me about what I thought went wrong. It was fun to see Shaar get pretty mad about that, though Emperor Vowrawn downplays the whole thing when you talk to him later.

I already felt that my sabotage on Onderon was pretty suspicious, but having a second mission in a row fail in the exact same way - because I mysteriously couldn't press the right button when left in a room on my own - made things even worse, so I was pleased to see that at least Darth Malgus seemed to agree. He sent me a pretty angry letter afterwards in which he asks: "How is it that you, who have accomplished so much, display such incompetence?" Good question, Malgus; very good question.

In the run-up to the attack on Corellia, you can try to sabotage Krovos' proposal to bomb civilians on the other side of the planet by suggesting that she's hiding something, but it doesn't work. (Good on you, Krovos.)

During the actual attack on Corellia, you see the consequences of your sabotage on Onderon and Mek-sha, as the Imperial fleet struggles and several ships get blown up before your strike team can make it to the surface, which I thought was another neat difference compared to the very successful assault that loyalists get to experience.

The Objective Meridian flashpoint goes the same as always, with Malgus being back to talking nice to you. It struck me as kind of amusing that the ending with you escaping without displaying any concern for your fallen companion - something that always struck me as a bit weird - is something that actually makes sense for a saboteur. I mean, Malgus was obviously on to me, so good riddance to him!

At the end of the flashpoint you do actually get to choose again whether to do what the Empire wants or make the whole mission a failure. I did the latter, though this also made it the third time in a row that I mysteriously failed to press the right button when left to my own devices so I don't know how the Empire can continue to put any faith in me at this point.

Jonas Balkar actually gave my agent a holo call right in front of some Imperial guards just before I was about to meet the Dark Council and nobody batted an eyelid. You can chide him for calling you at a bad time and he responds that calling during the actual meeting would have been worse. That's a false choice, Jonas, and you know it!

Watching the Dark Council play blame games with each other about who was responsible for the mission failure was admittedly quite amusing, though it's once again surprising that the finger doesn't get pointed at your character more directly. One thing of note was that while Vowrawn talks about reinstating the Hand, he didn't ask me to return the Alliance to the Empire as a whole - though Lana kept making comments later as if he had.

In the chat on the fleet afterwards, Theron is actually very angry that so many civilians died on Corellia and questions the point of being a saboteur if we can't do more to prevent this kind of stuff. In the in-person debrief with Jonas later, you can also ask whether you can join the Republic properly now, and he's kind of evasive about it and says that you're more useful continuing to be an undercover agent - I can't say I'm entirely convinced by that argument. He does introduce you to Master Sal-Deron via holo, however.

I also had a note here saying ,"Why does Anri still admire me so much?" because she only met me on Ossus and I've done nothing but mess things up for the Empire since then. I guess she might still have been impressed by my character's prowess in combat.

All in all, Onslaught has some pretty interesting content variations for saboteurs - in fact, I found out while doing some reading up on the subject that there's an additional variant if you agree to become a saboteur at the beginning but then always choose not to sabotage at the crucial moments, making you a sort of triple agent... oh god, does that mean I need to take another character through this to see that dialogue?

I also have to say that your character's not really a very convincing saboteur here and I don't think it's great storytelling for the most part, as your repeat failures are just too obvious - you kind of have to tune out any concerns about realism at that point, and just agree to roll with it for the fun of seeing how much the game will let your character get away with while still praising you for how amazing you are. The question is whether that will actually end up going anywhere. Continued in part 3.

Onslaught in Review

As I said previously, we still don't have a launch date for Legacy of the Sith, but it can't be far off now, and I don't expect us to get another major content update before then, so I thought it would be interesting to look back on how Onslaught has gone as a whole. I wasn't sure what conclusion I'd come to when I first started writing this, but honestly, now that I've added it all up, this has been a pretty ace expansion.

Features

After Bioware tried (and failed) to reinvent the wheel for the last two expansions (with the single player focus in KotFE and Galactic Command in KotET), it was nice to see them refocus on simply adding features that players had actually been asking for in one form or another.

• Nautolans as a new playable species: They ended up looking a bit more... weird than most people expected I suppose, but I still think they were a good addition. Based on forum polls and the like, Nautolans were easily the most requested species that wasn't available yet - so much so that after this, I'm not actually sure what playable species they could add next. Sure, there are lots to choose from and you can find people suggesting pretty much all of them on the forums somewhere, but I haven't seen anything else have the same kind of consistent demand as Togruta and Nautolan had before they were added.
  

• Spoils of War: Gearing was a mess towards the end of KotET and needed a revamp desperately. I think the new Spoils of War system worked out well overall! It's not perfect, but what ever is? I'd say its biggest flaws are that a lot of set bonuses and Tacticals they introduced were pretty useless so that there ultimately weren't that many viable choices to make about what to get, and that drop rates for both types of items were pretty poop, meaning that most of the time, you were better off just saving fragments to buy from a vendor, even when all you were doing was gambling at Kai's. Still, overall the ease of gearing up in terms of item levels was amazing, and everything being bound to legacy so that you could gear all your alts in one fell sweep has been super neat.

• Material storage: I liked how they never even advertised this as a feature; it was just suddenly there and amazing, freeing up tons of space in cargo and legacy bays across the land. This is the kind of quality of life improvement we all love to see. Separate but related, they also added all those event currencies to the legacy currency tab.
  

Story

I didn't love the Onslaught base story quite as much as Jedi Under Siege, but it was still excellent overall, making use of the game's large pre-established cast and adding all kinds of great little touches to remind players of their class identity. Over the course of the expansion, we then got three more story installments:

• Echoes of Oblivion: This was a pure love letter to the game and its community, taking all kinds of loose ends that had been left dangling in an unsatisfying manner and tying them into a neat little bow.
  

• Spirit of Vengeance: Probably the least interesting of Onslaught's updates, it still introduced Rass Ordo as a likeable new character and laid the seeds for what's hopefully going to be an interesting arc about the Mandalorians facing off against an intriguing new villain.
  

• Secrets of the Enclave: The expansion's second piece of story that was actually different for both factions (after the Onslaught base story), this again featured a plethora of interesting character moments, even if it didn't advance the plot very much.

If I were to criticise anything, I guess you could point out that there is no clear theme to all of these to tie Onslaught together: a bit of Darth Malgus here, some Mandalorian stuff here. Then again, this is pretty in line with how things used to be in SWTOR's "good old days": After all, Rise of the Hutt Cartel was only really about Hutts for a very short time; all the content added after its launch centred on organisations like Czerka or the Dread Masters.

"MMO Stuff"

It seems to me that after the early years of most content additions being standard MMO content and the wild swing in the opposite direction with KotFE & KotET's story chapters at the expense of all else, Bioware has finally settled into a nice balance between continuously adding engaging story installments while also consistently churning out repeatable content to keep dedicated players busy in the gaps in-between.

• Two new planets: Onderon and Mek-Sha were both smaller than I would have hoped, but they were fully fleshed-out planets with datacrons and everything. The Onderon daily circuit is decent fun. Unfortunately Mek-Sha felt a bit half-baked with its somewhat random selection of side missions in different places, some content being quite buggy initially and none of it ever really becoming very rewarding.

• One new operation: Nature of Progress (or Dxun as most people call it) is a brilliant op in terms of story and undoubtedly the funniest piece of group content Bioware ever released. The fights are mostly good fun as well, except for the last boss, whom I find kind of tedious mechanically to be honest.

• Three new flashpoints: Objective Meridian, Spirit of Vengeance and Secrets of the Enclave. I stand by what I said about Objective Meridian seeming a bit dull at first blush but being interesting to replay. The last boss(es) can be infuriating but in a good way (to me anyway). Spirit of Vengeance was a bit meh - some neat little Easter egg achievements couldn't make up for the fact that it consists of too much boring trash and the environment isn't exactly thrilling to look at either. Secrets of the Enclave is probably my favourite of the three, meaning it's fairly fast-paced, features decent boss fights and includes some beautiful environments to feast your eyes on.
  

• Two new world events and more: We got the Ultimate Swoop Rally on Dantooine and the Feast of Prosperity as a seasonal event in autumn. I liked both of these as creative non-combat additions. I found that swooping gets quite boring quickly if you do it for too long but it is something different. I also enjoyed the little mini-games coming with the Feast and the way it livened up the world boss pugging scene - I'm quite looking forward to doing that again this year actually. Finally, we also got the Alderaan stronghold and Galactic Seasons for what it's worth.
  

Summary

I know people always complain about wanting more from Bioware - and it's not like I'd object to being given more! - but honestly, looking back at all this, it strikes me as a pretty decent tally for a two-year long expansion that came free with the subscription. Especially considering that for a lot of that time, Covid was interfering with the devs' working patterns as well.

I like that there's a clear effort to balance single player story content with MMO features and additions now, and most of it was really good quality as well, with just a couple of not-so-great items on the list but nothing completely awful or boring. If Legacy of the Sith can deliver in a similar way, I'll be one happy camper.

Finishing Up My Flashpoint Levelling

In real time it took much, much longer than expected - four months! - but Nautalie the Shadow has finally hit level 75. Here's how she spent her last few levels levelling through flashpoints:

Blood Hunt
I levelled: 70-70

Even with completing both the weekly to do five veteran flashpoints and my personal conquest by doing this flashpoint, I just missed out on levelling up from this one, but that wasn't entirely surprising.

When we entered, one person left instantly, presumably because that person hadn't run Blood Hunt in a while and still thought that it's the horrible pug killer it used to be a couple of years ago. We got a replacement that resulted in our group having two tanks and a healer, with me being the only damage dealer. Unsurprisingly that made for quite a slow run - Torch went through no less than four "firestorm" phases for example - but on the plus side we were never really in danger of dying.

I noticed that one of the tanks and the healer were from the same guild: Nostrum Dolus, who were known as the best SWTOR PvP guild in the world back in the days of 8v8 ranked. I remember always being relieved whenever I saw one of their members in a random warzone back in the day, because even one of them was enough to give our side a significant performance boost. They've been inactive for many years now though. I made no secret of my fond memories in party chat and they claimed to have been the guild's actual founders, who apparently hadn't played since Rise of the Hutt Cartel.

Hammer Station
I levelled: 70-71

I couldn't resist getting a quick random in on another Wednesday morning, which reliably placed me in Hammer Station. Nobody in our all dps group was level 75, which made things a little more challenging than your average run, though not terribly so.

We spent about a full minute standing in front of the elevator shortcut, waiting for someone to slice it, before we admitted to ourselves that nobody had slicing and moved on.

Someone also charged right past the turrets again, which - unsurprisingly - was not a good idea in a full group of levellers without a healer. (Remember: it traps you in combat for the rest of the flashpoint so that nobody can regenerate any health.) One guy died and was lucky in so far as I was able to stealth out and revive him afterwards.

Objective Meridian
I levelled: 71-72

With only seven of what are probably the most unpopular flashpoints selected, I wasn't surprised that I had to wait a little while for a group to be formed. Then I had a couple of pops that someone always rejected, as if they knew what might be coming... but eventually I got into what was probably the least offensive of my choices, the new flashpoint Objective Meridian.

This didn't prevent someone from leaving the moment we zoned in. I don't really get it, as this one's really quite fun and easy, but I guess just like I have a dislike for Hammer Station, for some people anything that's not Hammer Station is unacceptable. Fortunately the others weren't perturbed by this and the group leader queued us for a replacement almost immediately. Two or three trash pulls later the group was full again.

Incidentally, this was a full consular group! The other three characters were Sages. Fortunately one of them was a healer, which made things a lot smoother than they could have been otherwise. In hindsight I think this might also have been the first time that I ran this flashpoint on veteran mode - I can't tell for sure since the achievement counter treats solo and veteran mode as the same thing. Or maybe I did it with my guildies once just after Onslaught had come out.

Anyway, thanks to the healer it was mostly a walk in the park. I took it upon myself to taunt things off the Sages in an attempt to keep things simple for them too. This worked very well for the most part except for the last boss, where I just couldn't hold aggro to save my life. Also, the others enjoyed spreading out across the entire platform so that I spent more time running around chasing Malgus in circles than actually doing damage. We even wiped once, as all but one of us got knocked to our deaths near the end. (Resilience didn't save me. /cry) On the next try we got him down without problems though.

Depths of Manaan
I levelled: 72-73

I had re-queued for this one because Nautalie was at the step in the Forged Alliances arc where she needed it for story progression. I got into a group with two other damage dealers and a tank. The tank left the moment we zoned in and we replaced him with another dps.

I didn't have a great feeling when we almost wiped on the very first pull. I don't know if our damage was just that low or what, but I felt like I had to blow every single cooldown on every mob group to make it through alive.

On Sairisi I made the mistake of not asking whether everyone knew what to do, which resulted in people spending ages hitting shielded targets and being utterly useless. Meanwhile I was tanking and just running back and forth between the two kolto stations just to stay alive. (Did you know that there are only two kolto stations next to Sairisi? Made survival quite a tight affair.)

Anyway, eventually we did get him down and started watching the cut scene featuring Jakarro. I had space-barred through but apparently somebody else was watching, so I waited, and waited, and waited... and suddenly we were all kicked out of the instance as our group lead had disconnected. Now I was lead and we ran back in, but the DCed guy came back on within a minute anyway.

At this point one of the other dps quit and I queued us for a replacement. Unfortunately the previously DC-ed guy chose this moment to leave the group as well, causing the group finder to bug out in the usual manner. Disheartened by how this kind of situation had gone previously, I asked the last person remaining (a Commando and the person who had joined us after the start to replace the tank) whether she wanted to continue with companions or quit... and she wanted to go on, yay!

So I summoned my influence level 6 Qyzen to tank and she whipped out Elara to heal and we finished the instance just fine. We did have one wipe on Ortuno as my trooper friend wasn't quick enough to put Elara on passive to drag her out of the puddles of doom, but once she knew to watch out for that we downed him just fine, even if it took a while.

After the run she whispered me asking if I wanted to join her guild. I declined politely, explaining that I already had a guild, but it still gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

What a hero.

Battle of Rishi
I levelled: 73-73

This was a pretty smooth and fast four-dps run. We skipped a lot of trash though (which is admittedly pretty easy in this flashpoint), which once again resulted in barely any XP for me.

Also, I was kind of bothered by how everyone just kind of expected me to stealth everything for them without even saying anything. There is this bit where you have to click on consoles in three different rooms and one guy literally just ran past all of them to the next boss and then presumably made himself a cup of tea. At least the other two hung back a little to make sure I didn't get in trouble (which I actually did once, though I cloaked and fortunately the mobs evaded instead of going after the rest of the group).

At least I did learn how you can indeed successfully stealth all three consoles. I already knew that it could be done but had never done it myself before, always failing at one in particular, but the unspoken pressure put on me in this run forced me figure it out. Yay I guess?

Legacy of the Rakata
I levelled: 73-74

Sod's Law had it that after grumbling about a run where we skipped so much trash that I barely got any XP, the next day the group finder put me into a full stealth group (two Shadows and two Scoundrels). Mind you, I think we still killed more mobs than the group in Battle of Rishi, simply because there are some objectives on Rakata Prime that require it, plus there were a couple of "oops, I forgot I wasn't actually in stealth" pulls. (Nobody called them that, but I've seen enough of this kind of thing to recognise it when I see it.)

In the end I didn't mind too much because at least a full stealth pug is something unusual and entertaining. On the last boss it was interesting to me that people prioritised killing Arkous over Darok, as I'm used to doing it the other way round.

Czerka Core Meltdown
I levelled: 74-74

Queueing for what I knew was going to be Nautalie's last levelling flashpoint, I had only four options selected: Czerka Core Meltdown and the three traitor flashpoints. I settled in for what I expected to be a bit of a wait but got a pop almost instantly - which meant that it couldn't be anything other than Czerka, seeing how most people seem to avoid and rather dislike the traitor flashpoints. And so it was.

It was another four dps group, and the Commando in the group immediately said that it was his first time. I replied that this was fine and that I'd explain bosses. Unfortunately the rest of the group wasn't quite so co-operative, and the Gunslinger pulled the first boss while I was still typing. It felt deserved that we quickly wiped on that attempt, even though I can't say for sure that it was directly related to the untimely pull.

On the next attempt we killed it just fine, with me tanking and dragging the Duneclaw around the room like a boss. Props to the other group members for clicking the kolto stations though - I couldn't reliably have done it myself without messing up the positioning, and while my health did get pretty low a couple of times, making me sweat, we all survived in the end.

We more or less repeated this performance on the next boss: me once again trying to explain for the Commando while the Gunslinger ran in and pulled anyway. At least this time we didn't wipe, though the Slinger messed up the first pod by popping it too early, before the boss was actually in range. Things went okay though once I taunted the boss off him and resumed tanking. The rest of the flashpoint went smoothly enough.

But then... we were done and I still wasn't 75! Even after handing in the Czerka story quest I was still just a sliver away from dinging.

I considered my options and didn't like either very much: queueing for another flashpoint would have been the most "true" to the project, but dinging on the second mob would have felt kind of anticlimactic and the event would have just been overshadowed by still having to run the whole rest of the flashpoint afterwards. Getting the XP somewhere else on the other hand felt a bit cheeky... but was also going to be much faster and easier... and it was really only a tiny sliver! So I went back to Coruscant to pick up Nautalie's class story again and soon dinged 75 from killing a bunch of back alley thugs.

Full debrief about the project to follow soon!

Reviewing Objective Meridian

When I talked about the part of Onslaught's story that takes place on Corellia, I said that the Objective Meridian flashpoint probably deserved a post of its own... this is that post.

Functionally, it works the same as the previous three flashpoints we got over the last couple of years (Crisis on Umbara, A Traitor Among the Chiss and Nathema Conspiracy): there is a single-player story mode that you're meant to play through while making your way through the main storyline and which has all the cut scenes and dialogue. Then there are repeatable solo, veteran and master modes that are virtually devoid of cinematics and more about having fun with the combat and pursuing rewards.

However, this is already where the commonalities between Objective Meridian and those other flashpoints end. In fact, in every other aspect they are pretty much opposites.

The three flashpoints forming the traitor storyline wowed us with beautiful new environments, with each new one more stunning than the last. Story mode aside, they were also fiendishly hard however. (Nathema Conspiracy slightly less so, but still.) I didn't view this difficulty as a bad thing exactly; instead I found the challenge interesting - but after beating every difficulty once or twice, I started to dislike having any of them pop up as my random of the day in the group finder, as it always meant having to work so much harder than in most other flashpoints.

By contrast, Objective Meridian is visually quite dull. I'm biased in that I never liked Corellia's environments much, and this is just more of the same. The trash feels old-school as well, with wide and open spaces in which groups of enemies stand around neatly spaced out so that you can actually just run past a fair number of them without even engaging. I did enjoy the story very much, but in terms of flashpoint visuals and mechanics I wasn't at all impressed on my first run.

On the other hand though... it's really fun to re-run! I'm actually happy when it pops up in the random group finder because I know it won't be too long or difficult (though like Dxun when compared to other operations, it currently seems to award less loot than the older flashpoints for some reason). The fights aren't boring - Malgus and Tau in particular are quite well done in my opinion - and you may well find yourself wiping a couple of times the first time around while figuring out the mechanics, but once you understand what's going on the tactics are straightforward enough to execute without pushing you to your absolute limits.

Speaking of fight mechanics, another thing that was a pleasant surprise for me is that while the flashpoint's layout and progression are the same for both factions, the bosses actually have different mechanics for each side. I had expected it to be more like Assault on Tython/Korriban Incursion, where you essentially deal with the same content only with a different skin. But no, here every boss actually has their own unique mechanics (and Imp side actually seems more of a pain to me than Rep side, but maybe that's because I've only done the former on master mode once and am therefore less familiar with it).

Tl;dr version: My first impression of Objective Meridian wasn't great, but it's really grown on me with each subsequent run. On the other hand I got both Crisis on Umbara and Traitor Among the Chiss as my random master mode several times over the past couple of weeks (once we even got Copero twice in a row!) and as pretty as they are, it always elicits groans. It's really made me think about the comparative value of dazzling the player with a great first impression but being tedious to repeat vs. the other way round.

Musings on Onslaught's Story, Part 3: Corellia & Beyond

After either helping or sabotaging the Republic fleets on Onderon and Mek-Sha, it's time for the big battle for the Meridian Complex on Corellia. Once again, spoilers abound!

On both factions, the briefing before the battle includes a lot of exposition about ships and battle plans. I couldn't help but think that to the type of player who just wants to jump straight into the action to get up close and personal, this could be a bit boring, but personally I appreciated the call-backs to weaponry developed in previous storylines such as the Isotope-5 powered ships of the Empire, and just the general effort to convey that both sides have competent leadership with an actual plan. Also, your involvement in these briefings emphasises that though the Alliance may have lost a lot of its power, it and by extension you are still considered very important to the war.

However, since you are also known for being good at kicking arse in person, you get asked to assist the ground troops, which leads to you doing the new Objective Meridian flashpoint. I think the flashpoint will deserve a post of its own later on... for the purposes of this one, it's enough to know that you spend some time fighting either Republic defenders or Imperial invaders in the streets of Corellia, until you get into the Meridian Complex itself, where it comes down to either shutting down or protecting the installation's shields.

The first place where you expect to do this turns out to have been rendered useless as controls have been rerouted to another level... by none other than Tharan Cedrax, yay! That leaves only one consular companion unaccounted for now. I'm really pleased that Bioware managed to weave his return into the main story here, and it fits well too. The encounter with him also features some pretty funny lines depending on your choices - I have to admit that I had to chuckle when I ordered him killed on my Marauder, and his last words "Holiday, I'm sorry" prompted Major Anri to go: "Holiday? What a weirdo." Also, my Sage looked hilariously put out when she recognised him.

On Imperial side you also get the option to flirt with Darth Malgus himself around this point! His response is a character-appropriate "ugh" before moving on. I just loved this.

Finally you have the big showdown between either you, Tau and Arn vs. Malgus or you and Malgus vs. Tau and some unnamed Republic soldiers/Jedi. These are both pretty well done and the fights quite interesting - though I swear the first time I did them they either bugged out in some way or I was completely zoned out because I came away thinking that they were really boring and the boss(es) had seemingly no interesting abilities.

Then I heard others talk about the fight and was confused when they mentioned all kinds of stuff happening of which I had absolutely no memory. The second time around I definitely noticed the actual mechanics too, so I have no idea what was going on there. (EDIT: On replaying the fight again last night, I think at least the first instance of me failing to notice any mechanics may have been simply due to the fact that if you have both Tau and Arn set to dps, they burn everything down very quickly, even Malgus.)

The one bit I found a bit wonky is what happens immediately after the fight, as your big feat of heroism basically consists of making a superhuman jump in a cut scene to get to the crucial console in time, which... didn't feel very heroic to me personally. Even worse, both your wounded opponent(s) and allies roll off the platform in the final moments and you just run off without as much as a: "Gosh, I hope he is/they are alright!" At least to me it didn't feel right for my character (any of them!) to have zero concern for the people that just fought by her side only two minutes ago.

On the plus side, everyone does definitely survive, and I do highlight this as a positive thing because I went into the final fight actively worrying about Malgus or Tau dying, which would have felt like a colossal waste to me considering how little time we've had with these characters so far. I didn't even want to have the option to kill either of them, not yet! So I'm glad to say that they lived to fight another day. Some enemies are just too much fun to have around for me to want to defeat them too quickly.

After securing victory for your faction in the final battle (from what I understand this is one place where you can't sabotage/betray anyone), you get a lot of honours bestowed on you. Regardless of your class, you get asked to integrate fully into the Empire or Republic or to make a conscious choice to maintain your independence. I thought that was actually an interesting question even for a loyalist, because while my trooper was instantly on board with simply serving the Republic again for example, my loyalist agent never liked being under the heel of Sith who had a 50-50 chance at best to be either competent or capricious. So while she's still definitely loyal to the Empire, it's because she cares about the people of the Empire. She definitely had no interest in going back to subjecting herself to the direct authority of the Dark Council again.

Then there are some neat rewards for you depending on your class: troopers get promoted to the rank of Colonel for example, while Jedi get offered a seat on Master Gnost-Dural's newly reinstated Jedi council. My warrior was basically offered her old job back (yes!) and I haven't played through the story on my inquisitor yet, but I heard that you get the option to go as far as to claim your old Dark Council seat back. All of this is simply awesome, period. I don't know how they are going to keep this much class specific detail straight if the story is going to stay generic, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth here.

Also worth noting is that Republic characters finally get to meet the new Supreme Chancellor Galena Rans, and she seems pleasant enough to deal with, which is nice. Republic leadership has not been painted in the best light for the last few years, and we really needed someone actually embodying the Republic's values at the helm again.

Anyway, you won and got your just rewards, time to roll the credits and do dailies, right? Not so fast!

For the first time in an expansion story, Bioware decided to not just wrap things up, but to also make it very clear where we'll be going next. (At the end of KotET Lana was worrying about trouble brewing ahead, but that was all very vague.) Back on the fleet, Tau or Anri introduce you to two people who want to meet you and who helped them out of the rubble after the battle: Kira and Lord Scourge! Finally! Now people can stop spamming each and every one of SWTOR's social media posts with "When's Kira coming back?", regardless of the post's actual subject...

Also, it turns out that Scourge was the mysterious Sith that attacked you on Mek-Sha, to test whether there was anything of Vitiate left in you. Also, it turns out that these two were the "mysterious observers" you could see in the distance from your base on Odessen just before the expansion. I remember someone on Twitter calling it (unfortunately I don't remember who it was) and me thinking that this was a weird theory, but they were completely right! Good on you, whoever you were!

For the Jedi knight, it's a great little reunion and involves some romance too: Kira is now open for some same-sex loving and Scourge can be romanced too! I was really hesitant about how to react to the latter on my knight because I wanted to romance him so badly back in the base game, but that was seven years ago at this point... since then my Guardian's gone through a lot of story and ended up with Arcann. I chose some of the flirt options anyway, just to see where they would go, and then pulled out at the last moment. I kind of thought there'd be an "I can't, there's somebody else" dialogue option or something, but since there wasn't, my knight basically just ended up saying that she thought it wasn't wise to rush into anything and that they'd talk about it again later. Cheeky minx likes to keep her options open!

Anyway, the big question with Kira and Scourge was always going to be why they hadn't shown up any earlier, considering everything you went through with Valkorion and that destroying the Emperor was literally Scourge's entire purpose in life. Surprisingly, they have a good excuse! They were busy destroying the Emperor's original body, which he had still stowed away somewhere as a sort of life insurance. (I did remember hearing/reading about that before at some point, so it didn't come out of left field for me.) Afterwards they were afflicted with some kind of disease caused by Vitiate's decaying body that knocked them out for more than a year until they were rescued by Master Satele and her new students, but then it afflicted them and they are currently stowed away on a distant transport ship, more or less comatose until someone comes to rescue them. Kira and Scourge want your help in saving them and destroying the Emperor's last legacy.

I thought it was a very interesting choice to finish on such a... not cliffhanger exactly, but obvious plot hook for the next story update, whenever that's going to come. I guess the folks at Bioware felt that making players feel too obviously "done" at the end of the story wasn't good for long term engagement. I can't say I minded though; the main story still feels like it wrapped up in a satisfying manner, and this is more of a tease of what's to come next. That said, I thought that going back to the old Emperor in any way, shape or form was the last thing I really wanted from the story, but Kira and Scourge kinda sold it to me. Of course, it also sounds very much like this next story update is then going to be the same for both factions again, which I'm less keen on, but I guess we'll see.

Bonus for Imperials only: They also get a scene that shows Darth Malgus strapped to a medical table while a doctor and a droid talk about what a nuisance it is to have to repair all those cybernetics again. The droid remarks that even the explosive device was damaged and needed taking out (forget subtlety, apparently Acina just decided to plant a bomb inside Malgus' body, dang), though the damage doesn't seem to have been caused by the debris under which he was buried... we have a brief moment of the doc going "oh noes" as he puts two and two together before we switch to a view of Malgus having set the lab on fire and demanding to be off with the medical droid. Exciting! So he's going to be on the loose as well now, another potential future plot thread. I guess we'll find out where he really stands on the subject of Republic vs. Empire when he isn't being kept on a leash by Acina or Vowrawn.

All in all, Onslaught's story has been very enjoyable to me, ramping up nicely after a bit of a weak start and finishing with an ending that once again has me excited about whatever's going to happen next. It has it all: class-specific dialogue options, companion returns, hanging out with entertaining NPCs - I couldn't really have asked for more!