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Kaltamze finished her journey! Chapter three was a good note to end on, as this was great and the final battle spectacular.
The conceit is that since the Republic is about to head back into war, we need to ensure as many troops as possible are free to join the front lines.
Belsavis: A bunch of pilots have been imprisoned for war crimes. They're still patriots, though, so they're helping put down the prisoner uprising the Imps started, and as a result we need to gather them all throughout the prison. The final decision here is whether to save the squadron's leader from a terentatek/rancor/something or to take captive the Sith Lord who conned them into bombing civilians. As the CO begged Kaltamze, she chose to capture the Sith Lord, even if General Garza was slightly miffed.
There were two interludes – I think the first one was the prison asteroid, where Sergeant Jaxo led an infiltration to save a bunch of Republic POWs. Alas, it was a trap, and Imperial warships turned up to bomb the camp to smithereens when we'd come to organize the extraction. Then came the ludicrous moral choice: save Jaxo, who'd had to go to a crawlspace to get a signal out, or complete the mission by venting the crawlspace to vacuum (which would magically improve the shields?). It wasn't a choice at all, as Aric kindly pointed out. I'd seen people go on about how the Jaxo Decision was sooooo haaaaard, so I suppose it hits harder if Jaxo is your chosen waifu and love interest rather than just someone who helped you once and invited you for drinks later. I asked Garza to give her a posthumous medal.
Voss: Here an important Senator with personal connections to the Chancellor is convinced the Imps are gonna invade Voss, so he keeps a company of Republic troops essentially on permanent vacation. We and an SIS agent are here to basically subvert the Imps' invasion plans, and save all of Voss. An experimental warhead all the way from Ord Mantell in the prologue reappeared! A nice callback, even if Voss is one of those places that is cool the first time and becomes more and more bleh the more you play its quests.
The second interlude was on Coruscant: A senator in the Imps' pocket wanted to charge us with something, but Garza and the SIS gave us evidence the senator was corrupt and treasonous, so we got to listen to his BS and then go "Well, actually the senator's being paid off by the Sith Empire. Here's the evidence!" and sod off. It was entertaining.
Corellia: This was the actual assault on General Rakton! We freed some smugglers' ships so they could bring extra troops in, we cut off Rakton's communications, and we went in in style! A bunch of people from before turned up, like the Safecrackers of Quesh/ch2 and the former vacation regiment from Voss. The assault on the Bastion (Corellian place Rakton had appropriated as his HQ) was cool, too – there were three passages, and there was some management of which approach to take ourselves and which troops to assign to the other ones. (I went infantry vs their walkers, walkers vs their infantry, and chose the mines and traps for myself, on the logic that two characters, player & comp, can navigate traps better than a walker can. It seems I chose correctly!) This was an altogether excellent end to the whole story. And then we got to Rakton in the Bastion! He gave a very nice speech about how we'd ruined Corellia's hopes, the Empire truly was the best for the entire galaxy, etc, and I actually ended up liking him. He did nice setting up some traps before while not being full on scripted god mode, and I guess I vastly prefer patriots to villains who don't believe their own propaganda. Still killed him, of course, which triggered a very nice evac cutscene as the Imps decided to bomb the place to smithereens.
Then Supreme Chancellor Saresh gave all of Havoc Squad medals! \o/
Newly bemedalled. L to R: M1-4X, Tanno Vik, Elara Dorne, Kaltamze, Aric Jorgan, Yuun.
I still haven't done the final companion conversations on the ship, but other than that, I'm done! I gotta say, for all that people rag on the Trooper, this one was much more enjoyable to me than the Smuggler or the Jedi Knight. Being a soldier with orders from up above made all the video game questing very naturalistic (no "but why am I suddenly a privateer?"), and growing your squad made companion acquisition feel smooth (instead of having a ragtag bunch of misfits turn up). The villains, too, were compelling, and the chapter end fights good, especially for chapter 3. If you find being a Republic soldier a compelling/interesting deal, you will love it.
Kaltamze finished her journey! Chapter three was a good note to end on, as this was great and the final battle spectacular.
The conceit is that since the Republic is about to head back into war, we need to ensure as many troops as possible are free to join the front lines.
Belsavis: A bunch of pilots have been imprisoned for war crimes. They're still patriots, though, so they're helping put down the prisoner uprising the Imps started, and as a result we need to gather them all throughout the prison. The final decision here is whether to save the squadron's leader from a terentatek/rancor/something or to take captive the Sith Lord who conned them into bombing civilians. As the CO begged Kaltamze, she chose to capture the Sith Lord, even if General Garza was slightly miffed.
There were two interludes – I think the first one was the prison asteroid, where Sergeant Jaxo led an infiltration to save a bunch of Republic POWs. Alas, it was a trap, and Imperial warships turned up to bomb the camp to smithereens when we'd come to organize the extraction. Then came the ludicrous moral choice: save Jaxo, who'd had to go to a crawlspace to get a signal out, or complete the mission by venting the crawlspace to vacuum (which would magically improve the shields?). It wasn't a choice at all, as Aric kindly pointed out. I'd seen people go on about how the Jaxo Decision was sooooo haaaaard, so I suppose it hits harder if Jaxo is your chosen waifu and love interest rather than just someone who helped you once and invited you for drinks later. I asked Garza to give her a posthumous medal.
Voss: Here an important Senator with personal connections to the Chancellor is convinced the Imps are gonna invade Voss, so he keeps a company of Republic troops essentially on permanent vacation. We and an SIS agent are here to basically subvert the Imps' invasion plans, and save all of Voss. An experimental warhead all the way from Ord Mantell in the prologue reappeared! A nice callback, even if Voss is one of those places that is cool the first time and becomes more and more bleh the more you play its quests.
The second interlude was on Coruscant: A senator in the Imps' pocket wanted to charge us with something, but Garza and the SIS gave us evidence the senator was corrupt and treasonous, so we got to listen to his BS and then go "Well, actually the senator's being paid off by the Sith Empire. Here's the evidence!" and sod off. It was entertaining.
Corellia: This was the actual assault on General Rakton! We freed some smugglers' ships so they could bring extra troops in, we cut off Rakton's communications, and we went in in style! A bunch of people from before turned up, like the Safecrackers of Quesh/ch2 and the former vacation regiment from Voss. The assault on the Bastion (Corellian place Rakton had appropriated as his HQ) was cool, too – there were three passages, and there was some management of which approach to take ourselves and which troops to assign to the other ones. (I went infantry vs their walkers, walkers vs their infantry, and chose the mines and traps for myself, on the logic that two characters, player & comp, can navigate traps better than a walker can. It seems I chose correctly!) This was an altogether excellent end to the whole story. And then we got to Rakton in the Bastion! He gave a very nice speech about how we'd ruined Corellia's hopes, the Empire truly was the best for the entire galaxy, etc, and I actually ended up liking him. He did nice setting up some traps before while not being full on scripted god mode, and I guess I vastly prefer patriots to villains who don't believe their own propaganda. Still killed him, of course, which triggered a very nice evac cutscene as the Imps decided to bomb the place to smithereens.
Then Supreme Chancellor Saresh gave all of Havoc Squad medals! \o/
Newly bemedalled. L to R: M1-4X, Tanno Vik, Elara Dorne, Kaltamze, Aric Jorgan, Yuun.
I still haven't done the final companion conversations on the ship, but other than that, I'm done! I gotta say, for all that people rag on the Trooper, this one was much more enjoyable to me than the Smuggler or the Jedi Knight. Being a soldier with orders from up above made all the video game questing very naturalistic (no "but why am I suddenly a privateer?"), and growing your squad made companion acquisition feel smooth (instead of having a ragtag bunch of misfits turn up). The villains, too, were compelling, and the chapter end fights good, especially for chapter 3. If you find being a Republic soldier a compelling/interesting deal, you will love it.