Digital Tabletop: Give Into Your Anger with The Old Republic

While I’ve got my max of eight characters on my Republic server, two of each base class which will become one for each advanced class, and had been running a Jedi with my wife who has picked up the game and really liked the force users because they have melee and force powers, The Old Republic‘s equivalent of magic in the Star Wars universe, we also decided to give a shot at trying out the Sith and branching out into evil territory and started some Sith characters on what we’ve decided would be our “Ëœevil’ server. Still PVE, but neither of us are big on PVP in an MMO. We like teaming up to take out NPCs, not other players.

I’d had a little experience with the Sith Warrior in the beta and decided to roll up an Inquisitor instead, naming him after my healer from Dungeons and Dragons Online, my wife going with the Sith Warrior to be the tank/dps to my force power dps/healing. Right away we were having very different experiences story wise. We play on laptops right next to each other and have been letting each other in our story scenes so we could see what the other was experiencing. Her Sith Warrior is well respected and is rising favorably in the ranks, while my Inquisitor is a slave, isn’t well liked by the person weeding out the undesirables, and has developed a serious attitude issue to everyone he thinks is beneath him, which is just about everyone I talk to. To say we embraced the idea of being chaotic evil is an understatement.

While I’m normally one to play the good guy in a game, going mostly Paragon with my choices in Mass Effect, only playing Dark Side once in both Knights of the Old Republic games, it’s actually the story and interactions that have me so in love with being evil. To maybe sum it up with a few fair or unfair comparisons, the Smuggler feels like you’re in the Original Trilogy, the Jedi classes feel like you’re playing in the prequels, the Trooper feels like The Clone Wars. When you’re playing the Sith force users, you feel like it’s the best evil moments from Revenge of the Sith and Empire Strikes Back.

This isn’t to say if you hate the prequels you’ll hate the Jedi story-telling, because it all has that Bioware flair, no, I’m more talking the overall feel for the Jedi feels cleaner, like the prequels, while the Smuggler feels down and dirty like the original trilogy and the Sith, well it feels good being evil and at the height of Sith power, which is what I was alluding to with the Empire and Revenge references.

While you’re a slave, you can do some pretty amazing things, and for both Inquisitor and Warrior you have a rival that’s out to take your spot in the hierarchy that you have to take down. Both are smug little jerks that you’d enjoy taking down a notch or punching in the face even if you weren’t Sith, but it makes it all the better when you manage to get that one up on them, rub it in their face with their life in your capable hands. The companions do play a bit of a role, the Warrior getting what amounts to a Gunslinger for a starting companion that you can keep in line by delivering electric shocks to her on a regular basis, the Inquisitor getting a melee monster that towers over the field and gives even the heartiest of Sith pause, mainly because he wants to eat Force users, and has in the past.

It feels really good to be on Korriban again, having spent so much time on the planet in the previous Knights of the Old Republic games. Where the Jedi starting area sprawls, the Sith are stacks, where you go into tombs all over the place instead of working your way through the mountain passes on Tython. And while the classes play very similarly, the Sith Warrior to the Jedi Knight, the Sith Inquisitor to the Jedi Consular, they have their own flourishes. Instead of hurling small objects or stones at enemies, the Sith Inquisitor lets loose a torrent of lightning, for example. So while the classes fill similar roles they don’t play exactly the same, more like an equivalent which still makes it feel like I’m playing something different. The advanced classes expand a bit more on that as well.

The main Imperial Station does have the same layout as the Republic station, but it does have a very different feel and look as well as the Imperial Homeworld and its main spaceport you arrive after your first flashpoint. The main spaceport instantly reminded me of Taris and Tatooine, but with very obvious differences, as even Taris and Tatooine sharing the same layout have a very different look. The biggest hurdle I think my wife will have is with her companion. While my companion likes me going rather spectacularly towards the dark side, her companion detests being shocked, hates being a slave, and does most decidedly not like her character’s firm slide to the dark side. It’s really the first companion I’ve seen that’s counter to the class, side of the war, and play style of our character, but that’s why you have other companions and gifts to appease them. So it should be interesting either way. The quests are very similar, but with the obvious differences being your choices if you’re playing light or dark Sith. But really, why play a Light Sith when it’s so much fun being the bad guy?


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One response to “Digital Tabletop: Give Into Your Anger with The Old Republic”

  1. […] I last talked about Star Wars The Old Republic, I really only touched on the Sith characters. Like the Republic, there are another two character […]

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