Things Left Unsaid

Things Left Unsaid is a story mission in SWTOR which players will only access in one specific circumstance. They have initiated a romance with Koth Vortena, Lana Beniko, or Theron Shan at the end of Chapter IX: The Alliance of Fallen Empire and then a companion who they were in love with beforehand comes back. Reinitiating the romance with them unlocks this mission, which is essentially the “break-up” conversation.

It is something which I have often seen people regard as “heart-breaking”, as this is one of the few times when any of these characters – two of whom have apparently been beloved for years – are genuinely upset.

I have only one experience with this mission myself, but not in the way you might expect.

~~~

For this tale I will take you back to 4.0, when I was slowly but surely taking select characters through Fallen Empire. One of these happened to be my Sorcerer, Vahnora. While most of the characters who had started Fallen Empire were being taken through it because they were my “actual” main characters, Vahn just started this path because of two Alliance Alerts. Talos Drellik and Xivhkalrainik (Xalek) are two of my favourite companions in the entire game, and so I wanted to see how their missions went when they were reunited with an Inquisitor character.

I took her up to the point of starting Chapter X: Anarchy in Paradise and went no further. After all, she had unlocked those two Alerts; what else really was there? Along the way, she started a romance with either Koth, Lana, or Theron, and I genuinely cannot recall who it was.

5.0 rolled around and, initially, nothing much changed. She just existed for a couple of months, basically. 

Then Andronikos Revel’s return was announced for January 2018. The first Inquisitor companion to return since October 2016, and Vahnie’s husband. Of course, I simply had to see this. A couple of days after this revelation I logged on with her, opened the chapter panel, and started Chapter I: The Hunt of Eternal Throne. I had by this point become really disenchanted with the whole “completing all sixteen chapters of Fallen Empire” gauntlet, so I just took the easy route out.

This is where the problem started.

Whenever a character bypasses Fallen Empire, whether by skipping straight to Eternal Throne and beyond or by creating an instant-70 character which starts at Jedi Under Siege, choices are pre-allocated. Republic characters get most of the “good” actions while Imperials get most of the “bad” actions. This meant that Vahnie had gone from the pragmatic Sith that she was to being a mass-murdering psychopath who had quite happily let innocents die on Asylum and Zakuul and caused Koth to disappear.

These don't really mean much practically apart from losing Koth permanently, but I had forgotten something crucial from her initial run of Fallen Empire. The romance.

When Andronikos returned and I reaffirmed their relationship, I got an extra mission. You guessed it; it was Things Left Unsaid. A bit taken aback, I promptly followed the markers to the Commander’s personal quarters to see which companion would be awaiting me and… there was nobody there.

Evidently, the game had kept the little romance flag which had been activated at the end of The Alliance but starting Eternal Throne early meant that it was also inactive at the same time. Thus, the game was trying to make Vahn break up with somebody who both was and was not in a relationship with her at the same time. That's taking "it's complicated" to an entirely new level right there.

The annoying thing about this was that there was no way for me to “force the issue”. This was a story mission, so I had no ways of abandoning it. Not even the presence of the companions themselves had an impact. Lana was obviously still present, and I had not yet started the Iokath+ storyline so this was before Theron went gallivanting off. I recalled Koth from the terminal, and still no companion appeared. This mission was literally impossible to complete.

This also apparently had other side-effects as well. Vahn was one of my many characters eligible for Arcann's Alert Unmasked Regret and yet she never had access to it. At the time, I theorised that the unsolvable nature of Things Left Unsaid had caused this as Arcann is a new romance character. Even though I had no intentions of having Vahn romance him, the game was thus presumably unable to present a new romance while the old one was still “unfinished”. 

In mid-August of this year I finally bit the bullet and contacted Customer Support to see if they could fix it. I should stress that the main reason why it took over two years for this to happen was because it took a similar time for me to start using most of my characters to a similar extent as one another. Back in 2018, Vahnie was just “another character”, one who I would use only to get the Commanding Inquisitor achievement but otherwise leave mostly alone. 2019 and 2020 have seen all eight of my classes become used prolifically for the first time ever.

It only took eight years.

Whereas before it was just a mild nuisance and something I could live with as I barely used her, this meant that it gradually became more and more annoying to see this one mission which could never be completed. It even got to the point where I rolled a new Sorcerer to eventually take Vahnie’s place just to circumvent the issue. I became disillusioned with this one very quickly (Dark Side Sorcerer, ew), so this never came to fruition.

Unusually for me, the new “unused” Sorc is still around and has not yet been deleted.

Happily, this proved to be an issue which Customer Support was able to fix. I was a bit apprehensive about contacting them as this was an issue which I had pretty much made for myself: I was not sure if they would be able or even willing to fix this issue because of this. Fortunately, they were, and so I can breathe a sigh of relief at last.

Incidentally, this also confirmed that Unmasked Regret really was locked away until TLS was completed. Even though Vahnie started Jedi Under Siege in 2018, which meant that it should have been auto-completed, I found Arcann's Alert ready and waiting for me to complete after this whole issue was fixed. Have I mentioned how much I like that Alert yet?

~~~

I am sure that Things Left Unsaid is a decent mission to witness when seen “properly”, but this is not something which I shall ever be seeing myself. As I wrote about a couple of months ago, I am finished with all the story content across my eight main characters, most of whom have happily resumed a romance with a class companion.

The only two exceptions to this are Cal Pheiya, my Gunslinger, and Miora Berrine, my Guardian. Cal originally had a romance with Corso Riggs but eventually romanced Koth while Miora had no pre-existing romance before she fell for Arcann. Miora would thus have always avoided this mission, while Cal avoided it because I decided not to resume the romance with Corso. Indeed, I actually rejected him as a potential follower entirely.

I am not sorry, Corso. Go stand over there under the "good riddance" banner with Broonmark, Kaliyo, Skadge, and Theron, if you don't mind. Just do me one last favour and save a space for Lana, okay?

If there is one thing I have learned through painful experience, it is that skipping Fallen Empire can be quite aggravating at times. Neither my Juggernaut nor my Sorcerer have access to HK-55, even after completing his Alert, because their starting Eternal Throne early has somehow caused this to glitch out as well.

Neither of those characters really need him yet, so for now I am simply happy with Things Left Unsaid being fixed. My sincerest thanks go to the CS rep who was able to get it sorted.