Sunday, June 30, 2013

Sith Inquistor Done!

The following contains significant spoilers for the Sith Inquistor storyline in The Old Republic.

I finished my third class storyline in The Old Republic: the Sith Inquisitor. By and large it was a very good story. However, it did have two major flaws.

The first flaw was the motivation behind the villain for Chapters 2 and 3, Darth Thanaton. He is presented as a arch-traditionalist who takes you in dislike for violating traditions (I think). However, I could never really understand exactly why he felt this way.

Your master, Lord Zash, uses you to kill her master, Darth Skotia, in Chapter 1. I think this is supposed to be the non-traditional move that Thanaton opposes. But Sith killing Sith is a normal state of affairs. The primary rule seems to be "don't get caught". Zash arranges things such that she has an ironclad alibi for Skotia's murder.

As far as I can tell, this is pretty much standard for Sith. I don't see what the tradition that got violated was. So I don't really know why Thanaton became the enemy. I think that Bioware did a poor job explaining the motivations of the main villain, and as a result, my attitude to him was more confused or bemused than anything else.

The second flaw is that there were two major strands in the Inquistor story, and they were not in balance. One strand was all about Force ghosts and ancient mystic secrets. The second strand was about building a power base. The force ghost strand becomes too dominant for much of the game, with the power base coming in second. Then at the very end there is a abrupt and jarring shift in focus to the power and political game.

I think either the Force ghost story should have been the sole focus of the Inquisitor story, or its importance should have been reduced slightly, and the power base story been expanded in scope.

Ignoring those two flaws, the story was very enjoyable. If you just accepted that Thanaton was the villain, or that the Force ghosts were not involved in the last bit, the story went very nicely. I actually was neutral in alignment, some light and some dark, and I think it worked out quite well. I started Light Side, but then some NPCs became annoying, and the [Shock] option became too tempting.

Mechanically, the Sorceror was a fun class. I played as a healer for the last 25 levels or so, and it was quite viable. I would run with a tank, Khem Val, let him gather everything up, and then DoT things up, or Force Storm for AoE, and keep healing Khem.

I did try using a DPS companion a few times. I found that though the DPS companion did more damage, I kept getting aggro from the other mobs in the group, and I had heal both myself and my companion. I found that to be more annoying than just keeping Khem healed up.

Now what story next? I am thinking Trooper, to get the last buff and to balance Imperial/Republic. I was thinking of going Dark Side, but I'm having a real hard time being the bad guy.

6 comments:

  1. I've been enjoying the Trooper story so far, although I'm only partway into Chapter 3. I went with a female Trooper, so I don't get the same romance options as the male Trooper does, but I've already taken Elara's story to completion. (Not too hard to do if you do things by the book.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've stopped playing SWTOR for the time being, but if there's one thing which did NOT catch my attention was the personal questline.
    Playing one evening a week plus the questline being submerged into countless kill ten rats quests, I just could not remember what and why was going on.....
    Honestly, they should make so that ALL the questing experience is the storyline. LotRO has the same problem, where you follow the epic questline, but you quickly get swamped in insignificant side affairs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. As far as I'm aware, Skotia wasn't Zash's master, just a higher-ranking Sith she had issues with.

    I agree that Thanaton was an awkward villain, as I never quite got his hatred for the player character either. It was like having some weird kind of stalker.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Skotia was Zash's superior (maybe not master/apprentice relationship), because when he dies, she moves up in rank and gets his stuff.

    What's really odd is that Thanaton does the same thing. His superior on the Dark Council dies mysteriously and Thanaton succeeds him.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wasn't EVERYBODY's issue with the inquisitor character that he or she was a sith picked out from among the slaves? They made that clear right from the start on Korriban.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I fully agree on the SI storyline. The tank was interesting, mechanically, but the story killed it - especially the end. If they had focused on the force ghosts and building the character's personal power it would have been much stronger. After the final quest I was left wondering why a Dark Councilor was jetting about in a Corvette (at best) and being browbeat by low-level daily quest givers.

    ReplyDelete