ExtraPenguin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
extrapenguin) wrote2022-02-16 08:09 pm
extrapenguin) wrote2022-02-16 08:09 pm
Entry tags:
SWTOR: Jedi Consular chapters 2 & 3
I meant to write a post at chapter 2 ... but then I had to go and play chapter 3. Screencap album. Note that I completed this before the 7.0 patch.
Chapter 2 starts with Supreme Chancellor dead-before-the-end and the Jedi Council telling us about the Rift Alliance – a coalition of worlds that might leave the Republic, and keeping them in is important for Reasons. The new Barsen'thor gets a promotion to Master to have the rank and gravitas to keep the Rift Alliance happy. Then Jina got sent to meet them on a ship ... only to discover the ship was sabotaged and was going to burn up in a planet's atmosphere. She went there with her trusty Trandoshan to get him some jagannath points, then killed the Sith who'd taken over the place and took the LS choice to get everyone to pitch in and steer the ship to safety instead of ditching and crashing the ship on some inhabited settlement. (Also, this is the first time you meet Nadia. More on that later.)
Gettin' that promotion.
Then the Rift Alliance moves onto your ship! This is actually pretty exciting. Anyway, what follows is a pretty standard "But what has the Republic ever done to us?" griping session and we're tasked with proving them the Republic cares. Step 1: free Balmorra (one of the member worlds) from Imperial occupation. Easy!
(The Rift Alliance, at the start, has 5 members: Alauni of trade hub Saleucami, Diab Duin of ore-rich Aeten II, Shuuru of kolto-producing Manaan, Augin Blaesus of finance center Erigorm, Tai Cordan of Balmorra, and Tobus Grell of Sarkhai, a world new to the Republic which was immediately invited to the Alliance.)
Balmorra's plot was cool – Jina liberated a droid factory and killed the Sith governor, Darth Lachrys, who's an important questgiver on Impside Balmorra! In doing that, she freed the President from carbonite, only to discover that he'd broken completely and couldn't give Tai Cordan the handover of power Cordan so desired. And there were a few interesting choices in there, like how to handle a maker of war droids in both an ethical manner yet also to give support to the Republic, and how to deal with a collaborator data analyst. Pretty cool stuff! Also, this is where we got Zenith.
The Quesh interlude was actually tolerable again. Senator Grell told about a secret research lab on Quesh that had suddenly gone incommunicado, so we (and his daughter Nadia) went to investigate. Nadia displayed some Force powers in dispatching the Sith infiltrators.
Jina, nonetheless, draws her lighsaber to be ready.
I think war was declared at this point? Or after Hoth.
Then we went to Hoth so we could free some Rift Alliance soldiers from pirate duty. This was mostly nonmemorable – there was an Imperial defector for 5 minutes and the main pirate had some regenerative armor stolen from the Imps, and we got Felix Iresso, but that was it.
Chapter 2 ended with us resolving a plotline about one of the people aboard sending communiqués to the Imps. Turns out it was Blaesius, who pretended to be a trembling coward only there for comic relief but turned out to be a Child of the Emperor, a type of deep cover agent set to bring down the Republic. He failed, of course, but now we have them as the main enemies and we still need to find the Republic an army from somewhere.
Enter Belsavis (and chapter 3). All those Esh-Kha the Rakata locked up for wanting to take over the galaxy? Well, there's your army! And conveniently enough, there's an Esh-Kha branch that doesn't want to commit genocide on all the other species. Now we just have to go find Hallow Voice and wake him up from stasis. Easy, right?
Except that the guy we were supposed to rendez-vous with for tomb intel is a Child of the Emperor, who murderated his entire team save for one. (The bit where the sole survivor came to tell us was excellently cinematographed. All of Belsavis looked great, actually.) Then it was a race against time and the Child of the Emperor to free Hallow Voice and his followers.
Belsavis was fun! We got some help from a renegade Rakata just running around trying to atone for the misdeeds of his ancestors, and the Child tried to get Jina locked up in the psych ward for deludedly believing she had Force powers. (The giggle from Jina was 100% appropriate.) Hallow Voice was interesting and I greatly enjoyed the Esh-Kha worldbuilding.
Hallow Voice getting de-stasised
Except that while we were on Belsavis, Senator Grell got kidnapped by a Sith who'd apparently gotten too curious ... so the First Son deleted his personality and name. The guy tortured Senator Grell to death and hoped Jina's head would be enough to earn his name back, which, wow, harsh. Anyway, Nadia and Jina killed him dead and Nadia learned that we can't always cheat death. Then, turns out that Senator Grell left Nadia to Jina in his will! So Jina got a padawan. (This is a much more reasonable spot to get a padawan than the Knight story, where Kira is only your padawan so they can have her refer to you as Master for voice acting purposes.)
Then we went to court the Voss. A local Republic representative suggested helping a mystic in his trials; Jina took on Nadia (the padawan needs educating and none of the other companions were obviously more suitable) and went to help, saving Gaden-Ko from imperials at least twice and giving him a pep talk and good advice. It was nice and worldbuild-y though not as great as Belsavis. Gaden-Ko and his entourage – though not all the Voss – joined the Rift Alliance, which was nice.
Gaden-Ko, having completed his journey
The real kicker came at the end, though. The helpful local Republic representative was actually a Child of the Emperor and tried to kill us. After her defeat, though, she let out that the First Son didn't know who he was: the First Son persona only came out when necessary and the host persona had no clue. At this point I thought about the male characters in the story, considered that after Blaesius they would probably not have another Rift Alliance member be a secret Sith, and came to the conclusion that it had to be Master Syo Bakarn, the Consular's helpful questgiver.
Of course, the characters didn't know they were fictional and thus bound by rules of narrative, so they didn't twig on. Thus, when Master Syo sent them to capture an Imperial dreadnaught for the Republic, they assented ... and discovered the ship was full of bombs. The droid on the bridge who informed them of the fact was hilariously chipper! We defused enough bombs to ensure other ships in the vicinity would be safe (though, idk, space doesn't have pressure waves so what were we reducing, amount of shrapnel?) and Nadia managed to hack into some databanks – but only barely; she had to take an escape pod instead of returning to the Defender with the rest of us.
The pod ended up crashing on Corellia, which the Imperials were invading and which the dreadnaught was threatening. A brief excursion to pick up Nadia from her escape pod later, and she delivers the recording she was decrypting, which shows that the First Son is ... Syo Bakarn, Jedi Master!!! Everyone is appropriately shocked and horrified.
Can't recall where this is from, but it's nice so I'm including it here
Corellia's schtick is that there were several Guardian Vaults, places full of soldiers and matériel for purpose of holding Corellia, and Master Syo was in charge of them all so the Children of the Emperor took them over. Jina gets sent to get them all back. The individual Children weren't that memorable, though one of them had a Jedi friend who hoped he could be brought back, which stuck to my mind. Each vault also ended with a chance to speak to the First Son – and appeal to Master Syo to break through the mind control. The third vault was the main one, which had a basement access where the First Son was hiding. I took Qyzen Fess, my beloved Trandoshan, with me, and together we defeated the First Son. Jina managed to talk Master Syo into being victorious over the First Son and seizing control of his body again, which was nice and satisfying.
The grand finale was a speech to the Senate. Jina was inspirational and Jedi-y, and asked Hallow Voice what the Esh-Kha wanted instead of presuming to speak for them.
L to R: Diab Duin & Shuuru, Alauni, Hallow Voice, Tai Corden, Gaden-Ko, Jina, Chancellor Saresh, Jaric Kaedan, Satele Shan, Holiday, Zenith, Tharan Cedrax, Felix Iresso, Qyzen Fess, Nadia Grell.
Companions three through five:
Zenith: Terrorist who wanted to lead Balmorra – Tai Corden dumped him on Jina mostly just to get him away from Balmorra, I think. Very harsh on anyone who might possibly have been a collaborator, even on a minor scale. I did not vibe with his ruthlessness and conviction only he could be correct, though I guess he's an exercise in diplomacy for a LS Consular and the one guy who vibes with a DS Consular.
Zenith & Jina on Balmorra
Felix Iresso: The male love interest (save for the potential quick hookup with Tharan). Not my favorite romance, but nicely low drama and I think the most tolerable take on dude hitting on female character in the game? He has a subplot about getting experimented upon by the Sith during a short stint as a POw but as I'd been spoiled for it it was sort of anticlimactic. The relationship ends up being chill and functional, albeit a bit forgettable.
Felix & Jina on Belsavis
Nadia Grell: The best-introduced final companion in the game, as she hangs around as a non-comp NPC for all of chapter 2 first and has significant plot lines. The companion conversations end up more padawan-raising-y than those of the other Force classes (Kira especially is only your padawan for voice acting reasons and it shows), and she's young enough the perkiness is excusable and fits. What is not excusable is how she's the love interest for male Consulars. Like, what???? Just make Zenith a girl, Bioware. FFS.
Nadia & Jina on Voss
I finish with this image.
All in all, I think this is my favorite class story so far, and I doubt the Bounty Hunter can dethrone it.
Chapter 2 starts with Supreme Chancellor dead-before-the-end and the Jedi Council telling us about the Rift Alliance – a coalition of worlds that might leave the Republic, and keeping them in is important for Reasons. The new Barsen'thor gets a promotion to Master to have the rank and gravitas to keep the Rift Alliance happy. Then Jina got sent to meet them on a ship ... only to discover the ship was sabotaged and was going to burn up in a planet's atmosphere. She went there with her trusty Trandoshan to get him some jagannath points, then killed the Sith who'd taken over the place and took the LS choice to get everyone to pitch in and steer the ship to safety instead of ditching and crashing the ship on some inhabited settlement. (Also, this is the first time you meet Nadia. More on that later.)
Gettin' that promotion.
Then the Rift Alliance moves onto your ship! This is actually pretty exciting. Anyway, what follows is a pretty standard "But what has the Republic ever done to us?" griping session and we're tasked with proving them the Republic cares. Step 1: free Balmorra (one of the member worlds) from Imperial occupation. Easy!
(The Rift Alliance, at the start, has 5 members: Alauni of trade hub Saleucami, Diab Duin of ore-rich Aeten II, Shuuru of kolto-producing Manaan, Augin Blaesus of finance center Erigorm, Tai Cordan of Balmorra, and Tobus Grell of Sarkhai, a world new to the Republic which was immediately invited to the Alliance.)
Balmorra's plot was cool – Jina liberated a droid factory and killed the Sith governor, Darth Lachrys, who's an important questgiver on Impside Balmorra! In doing that, she freed the President from carbonite, only to discover that he'd broken completely and couldn't give Tai Cordan the handover of power Cordan so desired. And there were a few interesting choices in there, like how to handle a maker of war droids in both an ethical manner yet also to give support to the Republic, and how to deal with a collaborator data analyst. Pretty cool stuff! Also, this is where we got Zenith.
The Quesh interlude was actually tolerable again. Senator Grell told about a secret research lab on Quesh that had suddenly gone incommunicado, so we (and his daughter Nadia) went to investigate. Nadia displayed some Force powers in dispatching the Sith infiltrators.
Jina, nonetheless, draws her lighsaber to be ready.
I think war was declared at this point? Or after Hoth.
Then we went to Hoth so we could free some Rift Alliance soldiers from pirate duty. This was mostly nonmemorable – there was an Imperial defector for 5 minutes and the main pirate had some regenerative armor stolen from the Imps, and we got Felix Iresso, but that was it.
Chapter 2 ended with us resolving a plotline about one of the people aboard sending communiqués to the Imps. Turns out it was Blaesius, who pretended to be a trembling coward only there for comic relief but turned out to be a Child of the Emperor, a type of deep cover agent set to bring down the Republic. He failed, of course, but now we have them as the main enemies and we still need to find the Republic an army from somewhere.
Enter Belsavis (and chapter 3). All those Esh-Kha the Rakata locked up for wanting to take over the galaxy? Well, there's your army! And conveniently enough, there's an Esh-Kha branch that doesn't want to commit genocide on all the other species. Now we just have to go find Hallow Voice and wake him up from stasis. Easy, right?
Except that the guy we were supposed to rendez-vous with for tomb intel is a Child of the Emperor, who murderated his entire team save for one. (The bit where the sole survivor came to tell us was excellently cinematographed. All of Belsavis looked great, actually.) Then it was a race against time and the Child of the Emperor to free Hallow Voice and his followers.
Belsavis was fun! We got some help from a renegade Rakata just running around trying to atone for the misdeeds of his ancestors, and the Child tried to get Jina locked up in the psych ward for deludedly believing she had Force powers. (The giggle from Jina was 100% appropriate.) Hallow Voice was interesting and I greatly enjoyed the Esh-Kha worldbuilding.
Hallow Voice getting de-stasised
Except that while we were on Belsavis, Senator Grell got kidnapped by a Sith who'd apparently gotten too curious ... so the First Son deleted his personality and name. The guy tortured Senator Grell to death and hoped Jina's head would be enough to earn his name back, which, wow, harsh. Anyway, Nadia and Jina killed him dead and Nadia learned that we can't always cheat death. Then, turns out that Senator Grell left Nadia to Jina in his will! So Jina got a padawan. (This is a much more reasonable spot to get a padawan than the Knight story, where Kira is only your padawan so they can have her refer to you as Master for voice acting purposes.)
Then we went to court the Voss. A local Republic representative suggested helping a mystic in his trials; Jina took on Nadia (the padawan needs educating and none of the other companions were obviously more suitable) and went to help, saving Gaden-Ko from imperials at least twice and giving him a pep talk and good advice. It was nice and worldbuild-y though not as great as Belsavis. Gaden-Ko and his entourage – though not all the Voss – joined the Rift Alliance, which was nice.
Gaden-Ko, having completed his journey
The real kicker came at the end, though. The helpful local Republic representative was actually a Child of the Emperor and tried to kill us. After her defeat, though, she let out that the First Son didn't know who he was: the First Son persona only came out when necessary and the host persona had no clue. At this point I thought about the male characters in the story, considered that after Blaesius they would probably not have another Rift Alliance member be a secret Sith, and came to the conclusion that it had to be Master Syo Bakarn, the Consular's helpful questgiver.
Of course, the characters didn't know they were fictional and thus bound by rules of narrative, so they didn't twig on. Thus, when Master Syo sent them to capture an Imperial dreadnaught for the Republic, they assented ... and discovered the ship was full of bombs. The droid on the bridge who informed them of the fact was hilariously chipper! We defused enough bombs to ensure other ships in the vicinity would be safe (though, idk, space doesn't have pressure waves so what were we reducing, amount of shrapnel?) and Nadia managed to hack into some databanks – but only barely; she had to take an escape pod instead of returning to the Defender with the rest of us.
The pod ended up crashing on Corellia, which the Imperials were invading and which the dreadnaught was threatening. A brief excursion to pick up Nadia from her escape pod later, and she delivers the recording she was decrypting, which shows that the First Son is ... Syo Bakarn, Jedi Master!!! Everyone is appropriately shocked and horrified.
Can't recall where this is from, but it's nice so I'm including it here
Corellia's schtick is that there were several Guardian Vaults, places full of soldiers and matériel for purpose of holding Corellia, and Master Syo was in charge of them all so the Children of the Emperor took them over. Jina gets sent to get them all back. The individual Children weren't that memorable, though one of them had a Jedi friend who hoped he could be brought back, which stuck to my mind. Each vault also ended with a chance to speak to the First Son – and appeal to Master Syo to break through the mind control. The third vault was the main one, which had a basement access where the First Son was hiding. I took Qyzen Fess, my beloved Trandoshan, with me, and together we defeated the First Son. Jina managed to talk Master Syo into being victorious over the First Son and seizing control of his body again, which was nice and satisfying.
The grand finale was a speech to the Senate. Jina was inspirational and Jedi-y, and asked Hallow Voice what the Esh-Kha wanted instead of presuming to speak for them.
L to R: Diab Duin & Shuuru, Alauni, Hallow Voice, Tai Corden, Gaden-Ko, Jina, Chancellor Saresh, Jaric Kaedan, Satele Shan, Holiday, Zenith, Tharan Cedrax, Felix Iresso, Qyzen Fess, Nadia Grell.
Companions three through five:
Zenith: Terrorist who wanted to lead Balmorra – Tai Corden dumped him on Jina mostly just to get him away from Balmorra, I think. Very harsh on anyone who might possibly have been a collaborator, even on a minor scale. I did not vibe with his ruthlessness and conviction only he could be correct, though I guess he's an exercise in diplomacy for a LS Consular and the one guy who vibes with a DS Consular.
Zenith & Jina on Balmorra
Felix Iresso: The male love interest (save for the potential quick hookup with Tharan). Not my favorite romance, but nicely low drama and I think the most tolerable take on dude hitting on female character in the game? He has a subplot about getting experimented upon by the Sith during a short stint as a POw but as I'd been spoiled for it it was sort of anticlimactic. The relationship ends up being chill and functional, albeit a bit forgettable.
Felix & Jina on Belsavis
Nadia Grell: The best-introduced final companion in the game, as she hangs around as a non-comp NPC for all of chapter 2 first and has significant plot lines. The companion conversations end up more padawan-raising-y than those of the other Force classes (Kira especially is only your padawan for voice acting reasons and it shows), and she's young enough the perkiness is excusable and fits. What is not excusable is how she's the love interest for male Consulars. Like, what???? Just make Zenith a girl, Bioware. FFS.
Nadia & Jina on Voss
I finish with this image.
All in all, I think this is my favorite class story so far, and I doubt the Bounty Hunter can dethrone it.