The gameplay...eh. I get bored of it quickly but I also keep coming back, largely for the stories.

The side quests rapidly become tedious as they're the same for every class, but some of them are pretty great.

Overall, I find that while it's never going to be the grand obsession that EVE is (yes yes I know) I keep coming back to it, usually when I'm particularly bored.

I noticed that last night. Frankly, the whole issue could've been resolved immediately if someone had just mentioned that up front. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

I despair that I will never have CLancy Brown voice my character.

------
Jon Helscher

Oh God, it was me. I was the grognard all along.

Thus.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It adds a certain je ne sais quoi to scenes in which he's doing that Jedi thing of being incredibly observant and on top of things, because he's pulling exactly the same face while being completely in command of the situation. Even the NPCs seem to find that vaguely puzzling, though that might be projection on my part. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

---
"Yeah, I'm definitely going to hell/But I'll have all the best stories to tell" -- Frank Turner, The Ballad of Me and My Friends

Which is doubly funny because, even though the storyline is scripted for him to do that off and on, it's like the game itself doesn't expect it. Even his superiors in the Order have basically told him, "You're a Guardian, Miletus. That means you're the Force's blunt object. Let the Council do the thinking." :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"I'm the Force's blunt object. Not the Council's."

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>Thus.

...Miles O'Brian is a Jedi Knight? That might explain his astounding feats of engineering on a decaying Cardassian starbase with limited support and (mostly) Ferengi-procured parts.

Or so how my headcanon goes.

I'm using that one as well, for the most part. After a lot of the usual flailing around, I appear to be working mainly on a Smuggler character for the moment, though I've got to say that after 12 levels, Captain Karfelz Eyridun is getting mighty tired of slogging around trying to get his ship back. Frankly, at this point it would probably have been easier to get another one. I expect this to be doubly disappointing when he does finally get it back and, inevitably, it turns out he's gone to all that trouble for the Crappy Starter Ship.*

Similarly, I can't decide whether the "all your characters are related" thing is a lot of fun or the naffest design feature that's ever been included in a game. It's amusing, but I dunno, because they're all the same player's characters, it's like it crosses some kind of "acknowledging that you are, in fact, playing with dolls" line. :) The family tree screen is particularly fun, in that it requires no logic whatsoever in the association of characters of different species. What's that you say? Your zabrak Republic Trooper and your Mirialan Jedi Consular are brothers? Why not?

--G.
* I might be a little jaded about computer games in general at this point. :)
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

So far, the I enjoyed the Smuggler. Really liked the Sith Warrior.
Still working on the Jedi Knight and Bounty Hunter. Haven't really started a Trooper nor Imperial Agent.

As a funny, I have a Pure Blooded Sith related to a Twi'lek. :)

"When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

If you follow the asterisk back, you'll note that that was in reference to BioWare games I wasn't fond of; so I have bothered and kind of wished I didn't. The setting doesn't bother me so much, but it's nowhere near as kind to people who are shit at video games as some of their earlier offerings. :)

--G.
Jesus Christ, the fucking wolves, man
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zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I've noticed that, particularly in the case of those terminal things that are used to unlock destinations in the "quick travel" system. Upon arriving back at one of those points later, I can be reasonably assured that my AI pal will be standing on the device while I'm waving bye-bye to the invisible shuttle.

>Still not sure what Corso's excuse is, though. (Corso Riggs is the
>Smuggler's first companion and Bioware's standard-issue fangirl bait.)

In Corso's case I'm inclined to think that it's basically just because he's not that bright.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yeah of all the companions that one could get in TOR I liked him the least. Well okay to be completely honest it was a tie between him and Kaliyo from the imperial agent storyline. As a Smuggler I wanted to leave Corso somewhere on Coruscant while he was busy being amused by something shiny. As far as Kaliyo goes I wanted to give her the Rasputin treatment before leaving hutta. Which if I'm to be honest was perfectly in line with my imperial agent's MO (which was by far my favorite storyline before I stopped playing TOR).

------------
~If you want my input the red explosions are really pretty and if you did enough you might live for a few more excrutiating seconds

My not so humble contribution to cyberspace

I take every opportunity I can to say this; fuck Corso Riggs.

Jorgen supremecy. Nothing like Shepherding around with your every loyal catman who carries a laser gattling gun.

------
Jon Helscher

Oh God, it was me. I was the grognard all along.

"When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Vette, my sweet, you are going to get us both killed horribly if you keep standing on Darth Baras's desk."

--G.
The Empire is just always funnier when the game breaks kayfabe than the Republic is.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

And here I thought it was just my Vette.
Thank you. NOW I understand why some of the events in the game actually occur.

BTW, she looks very nice in some of the Inquisitor's gear.

"When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

The fact that everyone has the same "unique" companion is a bit disorienting. Tends to detract somewhat from the convincingness of the game world. I keep wanting to compare notes with other Sith warriors I encounter out in the wild. "Say, that's a nice-looking Vette you have there. Can she shoot straight? Mine's developed this terrible pull to the left."

(I especially enjoy the little tag that appears if you put your cursor on someone else's companion. "Level 24 Corso Riggs," it says, like that's a type of something.)

That said, I don't enjoy playing villains, but I like the weird dynamic that's developed between Caractacus and Vette simply because I'm playing him as little like a villain as possible. The canned dialogue in any computerized RPG is never going to be particularly nuanced, but I like to think that he's completely bemused that his graduation present from the Sith Academy was a slave, and she's just baffled by his entire attitude toward life, which involves being really polite and kind (albeit somewhat sarcastic) to people whenever possible, and then, when faced with no viable alternatives but fighting, using his limitless inner fury to become a terrifying engine of annihilation for exactly as long as necessary, after which it turns off and he's all laid-back and friendly again.

Mind you, this is also a guy who dresses like a fighter pilot and only takes off his helmet when talking to his secretly emancipated twi'lek slave (secretly because if anybody knew he'd manumitted her it would presumably get them both killed). A lot of the minor Imperial flunkies he interacts with on a day-to-day basis probably assume that he's More Machine than Man or some similar bullshit Sith Lord thing, but no, it's just that he likes it that nobody can see what he's up to, or even really know whether he's listening to them. Half the time when Darth Baras is talking, I expect Caractacus is making "blah blah blah" faces in there, having trained himself to do so without moving his head in the telltale side-to-side fashion.

(The real reason I never have him take off his helmet is because it makes him sound like he's at the other end of a phone line, and I (heart) the game designers for thinking of that and presumably reprocessing all his available audio accordingly.)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"Never have that damn thing down in front of me. How I do I know you're not making faces at me under that thing?"

Mace Windu is a Light Side Sith that just never bothered telling the Jedi Council when he was made a Master.

------
Jon Helscher

Oh God, it was me. I was the grognard all along.

Darth Stig?

"Some say he's a Jedi who got confused while filling out the job application, and every time he leaves to 'meditate' he's really going pod-racing. All we know is..."

Darth Stig.

(That's actually a scan of a panel from some Elseworlds-style "alternate interpretation" comic version of Return of the Jedi in which ye olde redeemed Anakin Skywalker survived offing the Emperor - and so is alive in the Triumphal Denouement when the Rebels are standing around discussing what to do now that the Empire has been routed. He's basically Darth Vader from that episode of Battlestar Galactica where Starbuck and Apollo thought they'd died and gone to Heaven, but the effect is also kind of hilariously Stig-like.)

That said, now that you've put the image in my head, if I could alter the colors of Caractacus's costume, I'd totally make it all white.

--G.
Some say he's more machine now than man...
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.