Cascaded Imperial Chivalry

Knights of the Fallen Empire has received a great deal of much-deserved attention from virtually all quarters.

Indeed, it's safe to say that it has received much better attention and to some extent publicity than Shadow of Revan, which was pitched as "the" big thing for SWTOR. This completely free update has received a fully-animated CGI Trailer rather than using the in-game engine to render cutscenes for trailers as what happened with Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan. A full-CG animation hasn't been done for this game since the brief HK-51 Reveal back in 2012, which even then was under a minute and just a teaser, and it's excellent to see another CG trailer even if it's still strange knowing that a free update received one whilst the two paid full expansions did not.

Some information was, as many know by now, leaked accidentally on Saturday but I decided to hold off on presenting my thoughts until the announcement was officially broadcast.

The full trailer can be viewed here, you can read the press release yourself here, and a Developer Blog update detailing more about the update, including the new Level Cap of 65, here.

Critiquing Class Stories #8: The Imperial Agent

Here we are, folks, the final Class Story critique!

The Imperial Agent is the second of two Imperial classes who many claim to have the best story in-game, the other of course being the Sith Warrior. It's my own personal favourite, but, looking at it analytically, does it also deserve its high pedestal?

Spoilers, spoilers everywhere (and not a drop to drink).

Critiquing Class Stories #7: The Sith Warrior

The Sith Warrior is one of two classes which has a story claimed by many to be the best. It's easy to see why, as you're constantly in-action and constantly gaining more and more power until eventually right at the very end only the Dark Council can attempt to withhold you.

Beginning to run out of ways to say "Spoilers!", thank goodness there's only one of these left!

Critiquing Class Stories #6: The Sith Inquisitor

The Sith Inquisitor is another class whose story has received criticism for being "boring". Going into this critique, this stance seems to me to be one which is more privy to points-of-view more so than any other, because whilst most stories can appeal based on mission objectives and character, this story features history and archaeology extremely heavily, more so than anything else.

Spoiling spoilers.

Critiquing Class Stories #5: The Bounty Hunter

I'll be honest; deciding on which class to kickstart the Imperial faction critiques has been rather difficult. I decided to go from weakest to strongest, which was fairly easy for the Republic. Empire, though, has very strong stories and so deciding which is the "definitive weakest" is difficult. That said, the Hunter's storyline is the one of the four which I feel I could be most critical of.

Spoilers have returned after yesterday's neutral foray.

Critiquing Class Stories #4: The Jedi Knight

The Jedi Knight's story is deferred to by many as the "definitive best" of the four Republic classes. With this statement in mind, how does it hold up?

Spoilers spoil things.

Critiquing Class Stories #3: The Republic Trooper

Today I close off the Ord Mantellian team by looking at the Trooper's story, mainly designed around a character whose primary purpose was to execute rapid infiltration and exfiltration missions. How do the developments from simple Sergeant to influential Major hold up?

Spoilerphobes be wary, as ever.

Critiquing Class Stories #2: The Jedi Consular

The Jedi Consular is privy to a story which many deem as the weakest. As someone who played through both a fully-light and a fully-dark take on the story, I must admit that whilst it was more fun going Dark the Light story did feel lacking. Overall, though, how does it hold up?

As usual, spoilers!

Critiquing Class Stories #1: The Smuggler

It's been a very slow two weeks for this blog. I haven't really found much to report on that's new save for the proposed Operation Victory and the bug which the Patch Notes for 3.1.1 pointed out with regards to the Appearance Modification Station.

In an attempt to keep things flowing for the next few weeks until something new actually does present itself, I'm going to satisfy my "inner critic" by turning to everything that has been in the game since get-go which is uniquely class-based, from class stories to companions, every couple of days. Unlike my Rishi class missions "glance-over", which kept details to a bare minimum, these posts will be laced with spoilers and so should be avoided if you've yet to complete the particular class.

So, without further ado, I launch this with a detailed look-over and critique of the story of the Smuggler.

A Touch of Class

3.0 brought in something which a lot of people have been clamouring for ever since before 2.0: actual unique missions for each individual class. For 2.0, the only time we got to see our classes engaging in wholly unique scenarios was aboard their spaceships when flying to Makeb, so these are the first wholly "new" missions pertaining to our classes since the game came out.

Admittedly, these missions are annoyingly limited - the larger story was still the exact same, barring the snippets in conversation where your character's title was read out - in that each mission was placed in the exact same time window and was only seemingly a means to re-accessing the Old Town area of Rishi to turn in the Dailies which you still had remaining before heading to Blood Hunt.

That said, they all had several factors which were interesting. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers here, but I will briefly touch on each and every single mission.