Revisiting the Consular

Although I started what seemed like a recurring series of posts relating to the various goings-on on the Onslaught PTS, it eventually became clear that this sort of thing would stop being viable pretty quickly. I had already seen several things I'd reported on be changed within a day or two after a post about the PTS and changes were becoming more substantial and reasonably fast-flowing as time went on.

Besides, it's only (theoretically) a week until 6.0 launches anyway, so to make another post so soon to the apparent deadline, when things may yet still change drastically compared to where they were on the PTS, is just horribly impractical. As such, most of my thoughts from the past however-many-updates are being collated into a "The Good, The Bad, and The Eeehhhhhs" post for a few weeks after 6.0's launch. 

Today's post, therefore, is to be on a different subject altogether. For the past two months, I've been taking a brand-new Consular through their class story.

The Consular's is not by any means my least-played story or not even the one that is the most outstanding; the latter honour goes to my Gunslinger (I think) while the former honour used to be shared across five classes; Agent, Consular, Inquisitor, Knight, and Smuggler. I've played through each of these stories in-full twice each, and the only reason why my Hunter, Trooper, and Warrior have seen more is due to my relatively turbulent history with individual characters of those classes.

Two things factor into why I decided to replay the Consular storyline. The first is because, well, my current 'main' Sage is an instant-60 so therefore lacks any class titles. The second is because the last playthrough wasn't really 'mine'; I shared the majority of the story with a friend who took their new Shadow along for the ride. Apart from forever searing my eyes with how absolutely nightmarish their character was, this meant that I never really had much opportunity to really memorise the story as a lot of the time it was drowned out either by us making silly screenshots or comparing the Light and the Dark perspectives.

Of course, that's not to say that I didn't take the opportunity to recreate the aforementioned screenshot when the time came...

Both of these points also essentially means that, now that Consular companions have been trickling back into the game, I had a particularly outdated viewpoint on every single one of them. I was keen, therefore, to not only experience an individual Consular playthrough again and to see what new things I would pick up this time around to relay back to the recent new stuff.

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I'm also really pleased with how well the Sith Acolyte's lower half-robe fits with the Light Devotee's chestpiece

To begin with, this was the first time I had taken a female Consular throughout the story as a whole. My first Consular was a female Twi'lek named Kriallia (I would later reuse the "iallia" part of her name for "Vhiallia"), but she only got to the end of Tython before she was removed for reasons I can't quite recall. I think I just really wanted to give Shadow a try, as I had soon created a Jedi Shadow, my first and so far only Dark Side Republic character.

Ironically enough, nearly the exact opposite situation occurred with my first Inquisitors. My first Inquisitor, Deive, was an Assassin who made it to the end of Korriban before he was deleted and my first Sorcerer, Vorilakor, was born. I find it very amusing that that Sorcerer's name would prove to be one letter off being an anagram of "Valkorion" years before he entered the game.

Anyway, back to the Sage.

Because I've been in the process of creating a fair bit of lore behind each of my different characters, a lot of them have in-game names which I will eventually be changing to suit that new lore. Case in point, my new Sage, Vihala Relles, has essentially taken the place of Vhiallia within that lore by stealing her 'actual' name.

It seems that the game supports this usurping, since Vihala actually managed to receive a Black / Black dye from one of her Cantina Crates. Thus, she is now the first and only character of mine to have received one in this manner. 

In terms of actual story, this playthrough did little to shift my overall views on the Consular storyline. The first Act is still my favourite of the three, largely because when you go Light Side it's a very "Jedi!"-style storyline. The second and third Acts are okay, but they definitely don't feel as satisfying to complete in comparison to the first.

This being my first full run-through with a female Consular, there were obviously several new interactions which I had throughout. Notably, this opened up the Felix Iresso romance, which I'll touch on in a bit, but this also meant I could see some... attention... from one Tharan Cedrax.

Tharan is one of those characters who I never really liked. I don't know exactly what it is about him, but I just remember that by the time I had finished his companion story I was thinking really quite ill of him. I think the first instance of this might have been how he approved of handing the Imprisoned One's casket over to Czerka because otherwise it would destroy science and that's bad! Buddy, releasing that thing would likely result in a lot more science being destroyed and you'd only have yourself to blame for it.

Anyway, so in some ways I already knew what was going to happen before it did. I like browsing SWtOR fan art every once in a while because goddamn there are some talented artists out there who have turned their attention to this little game. Among those people is the artist Isriana, who created this comic.

If you can't access it, allow me to set the scene. Tharan proposes to "express his gratitude" to the Consular for allowing him to tag along, which of course means that this is a fade-to-black romancey type conversation starter. The character in the comic turns him down, only to find that the very next time they talk, Tharan is under the impression that the 'fade-to-black goodness' had actually happened and that he has to call it off, resulting in conversation options which only express disappointment that their connection was not to be.

So, of course, I got to that conversation, followed the comic's script pretty much to the letter, and - surprise, surprise - Tharan proceeded to tell me that our relationship was not to be. The assumption is that somewhere along the line the romance flag is just perpetually activated, preventing the rejection of his advances from actually holding true. 

That moment of unpleasantness aside, Tharan didn't really improve himself in my eyes all that much. Again, I still have no exact idea what's causing me to dislike him so much, especially as this time around I never actually used him beyond that one moment where he's an obligatory companion. He didn't even get the chance to utter a single "did I mention I'm a pacifist?"!

On the subject of Companions, I think I've discovered a newfound respect for Zenith. I still wouldn't say I particularly like him, but I do at least have a better understanding of him now that I've gone through the story again. Similarly, the original incarnation of Nadia has gone up slightly in my estimations. I'm guessing that this is due to the lack of the romance subplot since although she is still very naive at times she had less opportunity to demonstrate it, if that makes sense.

I realised while doing his various quests that I had completely forgotten two thirds of Qyzen's companion questlines. I recalled the portion on Tatooine with his father's bones and the Terentatek, but I had completely forgotten about Veneb Drassk and his backhanded attempts to eliminate rival Trandoshan hunters. Incidentally, when Drassk is finally confronted, Qyzen and the player first meet with a yellow-skinned Trandoshan named Brek, who then later becomes Qyzen's right hand when he establishes his own clan.

Guess who you'd then find still acting as Qyzen's second-in-command while recruiting the Warstalkers in Fallen Empire? 

That's the sort of thing I love about coming back to stories after seeing content beyond them. There are just all sorts of things that you can tell the writers looked back on in some form to use as a call-back. Another great example is Aric Jorgan, who towards the end of his story begins to understand the point that Harron Tavus and co. were making, that the Republic does not care about its soldiers. His willingness to walk away from the Republic in Fallen Empire fits in quite well with that, as by that point the war with Zakuul had very much destroyed a lot of the values the Republic held dear.

Yes I know his armour's white here when in the next screenshot it'll be black, but shush

So, finally, the big one. Felix Iresso. Iresso always was my favourite of the Consular companions, largely because he's pretty much the first companion you get who really fits in well with the light-side Consular. Qyzen isn't overly fond of providing too much help, Tharan - as mentioned - is apparently too willing to let dangerous things loose if it means science gets saved, and Zenith is a bit overly-pragmatic and hard-lining at times. 

Now, this is where I had trouble deciding where I wanted Vihala to end up. Since Vhiallia was an instant-60 she had no class romance until Nadia became an option following Jedi Under Siege. I felt that by that point Nadia had evolved beyond herself as well as beyond the Consular's teachings so I was okay with her being an available romance option (her original romance is easily one of the creepiest romances in the game in my opinion). However, at the same time I also felt that if I were to continue with this line of thought I once again wouldn't have a Sage who was seeing 'their' story, just someone who was doing exactly the same things as another character in their entirety.

Plus I also didn't particularly want to regret missing my chance with Felix.

I'm very pleased I decided to follow through with pursuing his romance, and it made me appreciate his character even more. I don't know where I would rank his romance of all of the ones I've seen (maybe I should do a list) but I know already it's probably going to be one of my all-time favourites. It was a very sweet part of his overall character story.

I need to see how his Alert Jailbroken goes now.

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I'm pleased I finally bit the bullet and replayed the Consular story. It's something which I'd been considering doing for a very long time now, largely because of the lack of class-titles for an instant-60. What really pushed me to do it, however, is the fact that there is a good chance that at some point in 6.0 I would like to aim to make my Sage my main, and there are quite a few things I like to do on each of these respective characters before I feel they've 'earned' that title. 

Firstly, exploration. I like my various mains to just have a fully-explored map (and, ideally, as full a Codex log as possible) because I'll be playing them often enough and they'll probably be going down to those worlds at various points so to see a mostly-empty map would just be irritating after a while. I'm fairly sure there are still some worlds the original Vhiallia has never even visited once. Having taken the new Vihala through her story up to the point of starting Makeb, I took the opportunity while questing on the other planets to explore them in-full. 

Secondly, Macrobinoculars and Seeker Droids. I've only just started the questline again on Vi so I can't say that this is something that's already been done and dusted, but it's certainly the next step. Her predecessor never got beyond just picking up the mission items the first time so both are on equal footing on this one. 

Thirdly, as many side-quests as physically possible. I may have boosted her to 70 immediately upon her creation courtesy of a few thousand unspent Cartel Coins, but this is because I am not at all a fan of the levelling process in any game I play. Happily, in this game, I absolutely love the levelling content so I was of course just content to plod along each planet doing any and every quest I could find. I still needed to get her to Command Rank 300 before Onslaught launches just to get that Tier IV Flair, so of course any additional CXP I could get was better than nothing!

Finally, the HK-51 questline. Not only does this correspond to a previous point regarding Codex entries, but doing this questline also involves one of my utmost favourite questing areas in the entire game; the Theoretika. Of course, that also means doing all the associated digging up of all the various parts but that's fine. I can tolerate that as it's nice and peaceful and something I can also do while scanning things with the Macrobinoculars and digging things up with the Seeker Droid.

Efficiency!

All I'm saying is, I'm grateful I don't feel like switching mains very often!