Running through the forests of the Endor moon, hearing the battle horns and chirps of nearby Ewoks (which, I might add, you can’t kill and don’t get points for), I stumbled on a familiar looking trap which which had caught some unwary droids.

Tatooine and a battle near a Jawa settlement sends the locals scurrying for shelter.

Not so much a memorable moment, more an excuse to show me standing on top of the Millennium Falcon. Because it’s the Millennium Falcon

This, so far, is my favourite moment. While fighting on a Drop Zone map, I had just respawned (I die a lot so that’s a frequent occurrence) and I heard a noise, like the whining of large engines. Remember that scene in Return of the Jedi where the Executor crashes into the Death Star? That noise. I looked around and saw a Star Destroyer falling out of the sky towards the ground. The audio and visual cues were stunning and I stood there watching it gobsmacked. I also got killed twice but I just had to watch it. A fantastic moment to witness.

If you play, have you had any non-combat moments like this?

I had meant to play the Agent story last of the original eight (yes, despite starting playing five years ago, I still have not got Legendary status. Yet.) but hey, free stuff. So Quyn said good bye and Quynlanthas, Chiss agent, was reborn. Quynlanthas, incidentally, was the name of my Blood Elf Paladin in WoW and the name itself was a pseudo Thalassian adaptation of the Kiffar Jedi, Quinlan Vos so, in a way, the name has come full circle. Anyway…

With both an XP Boost and a few levels of Story Class bonus xp legacy thingies, I managed to get to level 25 in about half an hour – or at least, it seemed like that. I was 25 before leaving Dromund Kaas, that’s for sure. I think I got 4 levels for completing Black Talon once and also three levels for turning in the Warzone introductory mission and the daily mission. I didn’t have to do any side missions (beyond Heroics for gearing purposes) and rapidly pushed through the story.

And what a story!

It didn’t take long for me to get absolutely gripped by the story which I feel, so far, is the best of the six I’ve finished. I still think that Chapter One of the Smuggler story is great and I do quite like the Sith Inquisitor story but with the Agent I really felt like I had to make some decisions that mattered – in terms of character if not in terms of the game overall. Not only that but it felt like one of the first stories where the events of Chapter One were relevant to the conclusion of Chapter Three (and the class specific mission on Rishi as part of the Shadow Of Revan storyline was also quite significant, especially as I didn’t have to bother with Makeb so had little gap between the two stories in which to forget what the hell had happened).

What I particularly liked about the agent was that the dialogue choices felt somewhat appropriate and in character. Imperial lackey or not, I rarely felt that Dark Side choices were a simple exercise in puppy kicking (as they were for the Jedi Knight) and the Light Side choices didn’t seem to be that twee (as I recall they felt for the Sith Warrior). I’ll admit, I wanted to say something else in that last sentence but edited it so as to avoid spoilers or implication of spoilers. And yes, there is a certain James Bond-esque feel to the Agent story.

I also subsequently found out that some of the choices that could be made had an impact on later events in the story – to such an extent that I’m almost disappointed I didn’t discover them myself (although they wouldn’t have suited this particular character). And now I’m working my way through Shadow of Revan and really feel that it suits the agent well. I also skipped the interminable prologue flashpoints so when I got to Rishi and found Lana and Theron, I was given the option of saying “Who the hell are you?” which was a nice touch.

The class itself was a joy to play – I became a Sharpshooter Sniper – and I’m surprised at how easy it was to level, XP boosts or not. I know companion effectiveness has been changed (for the better) and I am ignorant of any other changes to class damage itself but my memories of some planets being an absolute slog to work through because of the sheer numbers of random mobs. The agents AOE from cover seemed to take care of most and the companion took care of the rest. Warzones were a joy to play – although I haven’t attempted any since passing level 40.

So yes, at the moment I’m thoroughly enjoying Agent and looking forward to experiencing KOTFE with him. Just need to have a word with that Revan bloke first…

Oh, and if you were wondering about the title, wonder no longer. All the way through the Agent story, this was the theme tune I had in my head:

Forgoing a brief history of other Star Wars space combat video games (do not ask me how much time I spent in Star Wars Galaxies: Jump To Lightspeed but suffice to say I became a master pilot in all three factions multiple times!) I was delighted to see that one of the game modes in Star Wars: Battlefront is “Fighter Squadron” which does exactly what it says on the label. You get to fly either an X-Wing or A-Wing against a TIE/LN or TIE/IN. Then I tried the Beggars Canyon training mission and, well, frankly, I sucked. Partly this is because the default controls out of the box are KB/Mouse or Joypad – there doesn’t appear to be any native joystick control.

To avoid a dull story, I ended up installing some Saitek software that would let me program my Cyborg Evo joystick (because as much as I covet one, the funds I save for a Saitek X52 end up getting spent on running shoes as I can justify those and can’t really justify the former). It doesn’t appear to be the most gracious way to do things and some of the bindings didn’t really seem to work (nor would the in game settings options let me use the joystick to set keys myself) but at the very least it worked and I was flying.

Oh boy!

There’s no arguing that Fighter Squadron is quite simplistic, even compared to Larry Holland’s classics. There’s power distribution after a fashion – you put power to engine to fly faster or to weapons to shoot harder (essentially the throttle control). There’s no real concept of shields but the rebel ships have a “Shield” power which gives them limited invulnerability and missiles are also classed as a power rather than consumable, limited commodity. Vehicle repair is possible via power-up tokens and it is also possible, again via a power-up token is the ability to fly either the Millennium Falcon or Slave One.

The graphics and sound of both hero ships, by the way, are phenomenal.

Although you are ostensibly flying against other players, numbers are achieved via AI controlled drones which count for points and vehicle kills (for achievements and unlocks) if not player kills. Other players are a right bugger though and I have not, as yet, found an easy way to spot them in the midst of a throng until you see the name above the ship. Given how quickly some of them repeatedly targeted me, I’m sure there must be a way.

The moment that sold it to me, though, was while I was piloting an A-Wing. I was still getting to grips with the controls but had found myself being targeted and shot at by (presumably) another player. In desperation I pushed hard forward and dove towards the ground. You see, unlike other space combat games, the focus is not so much on “space” and taking it’s lead from the great scenes in The Force Awakens, the epic XvT battles take place in planetary atmosphere. Which means there’s ground. And trenches. And buildings. And guess where the health and hero power-up tokens are?

So I dove to the ground, power full to speed and juked around some buildings and into a ravine, snagging a health token as I went and resisting the urge to shout “Woohoo! Now this is podracing!” Admittedly, I celebrated too early because I found myself running out of space real quick and at that speed I couldn’t pull up in time and flattened my ship against a ravine wall, the ignominious message “Killed by yourself” flashing up on my screen. But for that brief moment, it was exhilarating – evading my pursuers at ground level, daring them to follow, feeling the speed of the ship as landmarks whizzed by. Later on I had to try the same thing in the Falcon but I am no Rey and once again managed blow myself up in style.

It’s moments like that which make Battlefront a game worth playing for me and that’s what I’ve found so far – it’s full of little moments that are memorable. I’d like to get everything set up correctly because even aside from Fighter Squadron, it’s possible to fly ships in other game modes (like Walker Assault) and my efforts doing so have, so far, been so laughable that my call sign may well be “Porkins”. But I can only get better with practice.

(This image is not from Fighter Assault but I sometimes watch the overhead battle taking place at the beginning of a ground based match. Oh, and the header image was shamelessly appropriated from EA.)

As a side note, I am in the middle of making some minor adjustments to the blog and the layout (which might explain some of the not quite proper sized images) and, as such, will be removing the title of the blog before long and reverting it back to “Dragon’s Mind”. So if you happen to like the blog and if you happen to want to link to it, please call it that and not “Get The Girls” which I have decided is vaguely problematic after all this time.

So here we are, August the 1st and my first Chilled Blaugust post. (Although don’t tell anyone but it’s actually August the 2nd and I’m backdating this just because I can.)

(Header picture of Sabine Wren on a ROTJ Speederbike by artist Ingo Römling, reprehensibly used without permission but will be removed on request)

I have been to conventions before but not for many, many years (the last was a Blakes 7 convention back in February 99, the biggest was Wolf 359, a Babylon 5 convention in 1997). Celebration, though, was not really a convention in so much as it was a, well, celebration. There was a fantastic menagerie of people in cosplay, a huge number of stalls and exhibits and panels aplenty.

We arrived early, paying the exorbitant travel fees having decided not to risk M25 rush hour traffic, so that we could make sure we bagged wrist bands for the Rogue One presentation and the Cosplay Championships. I had figured that, as there would be people queuing overnight, we wouldn’t be able to get tickets to see Mark Hamill (although we probably could have done) but my son was keen to go to the Cosplay event and also wanted to see the panel about Ashoka Tano which clashed with both Mark Hamill’s event and the presentation by Fantasy Flight Games. Those three panels were the ones I really wanted to go to and, typically, were all at the same time. Hey ho.

So, an overview of what we saw:

Ashoka’s Untold Tales was a panel featuring Dave Filoni, Ashley Eckstein and Pablo Hidalgo talking about what happened to Ashoka Tano between the events after Season 5 of Clone Wars and the beginning of Rebels. It was quite an interesting insight and I’m delighted not only that Ashoka became the character she did after her inauspicious start as Anakin’s padawan in the Clone Wars film. Also, it’s a testament to her character that she has become so popular that she gets a panel all about her at an event like this. (You can read a full liveblog overview of the panel on the Star Wars site which saves me trying to recall all the detail. Also, it has the pictures from the presentation, which are fantastic.)

Costumes of Rogue One was the main exhibit about the forthcoming Star Wars tale. It was a small collection of the costumes of the main group of heroes, the primary antagonist, two new stormtrooper types and classic stormtroopers. It was fantastic seeing them. There were also a couple of models of new vehicles from the film. Pics of the costumes after the text.

Fantasy Flight Games stand I am an ardent fan of both X-Wing Miniatures and Imperial Assault and could not miss an opportunity to see what they had on display. Unfortunately they didn’t have the new Imperial Assault figures that had been released during the week which I would definitely have bought. Fortunately, given they were being sold for more than I would normally pay, that saved me some cash. I wanted to have a go at the Armada demo that they had running as it’s another miniatures game which looks great but that I’m not quite prepared to splash out on given my heavy investment in the other two games. We did play the new Rebellion two player board game though which plays a lot like the old PC game of the same name (unless you live in the UK in which case it was called Supremacy.)

The idea of Rebellion is, unsurprisingly, that one player is the Rebels and the other is Imperials. At the beginning of the game, the Rebels choose a planet on which to hide there secret base and the Imperials have to find it. As one onlooker pointed out, at it’s very core, it’s almost a game of battleships. Of course, it’s not quite as simplistic as that and each turn lets you assign actions to your heroes/leaders to do various things from persuading a planet to join your cause to infiltrating the enemy and so on. I’ll be honest in that I spent most of the demo a bit overwhelmed by the noise and activity around us so I didn’t really understand quite what was going on, although I get the impression it could be a solid strategy game. We didn’t even get to do a combat phase between our ships and vehicles (the game has hundreds of beautiful little miniatures, from little Rebel Troopers to two detailed little Death Stars). At the moment I’m not sure I’d actually splash out on it over another Imperial Assault expansion or even an Armada core set – but never say never.

I left the FFG stand having splashed out on a TIE Interceptor expansion for X-Wing which got me a couple of alternate art pilot cards for Poe Dameron (one of which I’m willing to give away to anyone who comments and asks for one). Unfortunately, I forgot to get any pictures of Rebellion but here’s a preview of the ARC-170 from Wave 9 of X-Wing.

The EA stand was an obligatory stop although they were only demoing Battlefront and had a few PCs letting people play the first chapter of Knights of the Fallen Empire. Lots of people were queuing and as we could play at home, I decided not to play (although the set up looked fantastic and another long time SWTOR player and I both lamented how the game doesn’t look as great on our systems as it did on the demo ones) as we could play it at home – although I subsequently learned that they may have been giving t-shirts and freebies out to anyone who completed the first chapter. D’oh! Oh, and there was a lady in an awesome Bastila Shan costume but, once again, I failed to get a picture. Instead you get these guys and at least Darth Revan is SWTOR related.

Rogue One. Presented by Gwendoline Christie, featuring the main cast of the forthcoming film and with a great sneak preview of some of the behind the scenes work (as well as unveiling the new poster), this was definitely the main session of the day. Nothing major given away (well, almost nothing major – it depends on whether one of the actors accidentally gave out a major spoiler or was misheard!), the footage was great and Alan Tudyk was fantastically funny. I would spend an hour listening to him telling anecdotes – so very glad he’s going to be in Star Wars. They also showed the new trailer but as we weren’t in the main hall, we only saw it from a recorded perspective. It rocked. But from now on I don’t want to see any more about it.

The Cosplay Competition was the final session we went to. It was presented by Warwick Davies and featured some absolutely fantastic cosplay. Relevant highlights were Shae Vizla from SWTOR, a SWTOR inspired Jedi General, Atris from KOTOR 2 and an astounding outfit of the giant alien Grummgar from Episode VII (in Maz’s Castle scene). We thoroughly enjoyed it and I am amazed at the levels of dedication and creativity that went into the costumes. (Picture below of the four category winners is not mine but I will give credit – or remove it – on request)

There was so much more than that but I feel exhausted even trying to write this up so I will endeavour to write another post with some thoughts and reflections. In the meantime, some more pics.

Rogue One Costumes:

I’m sure it’ll make for some amusing tales of calamity and woe from an appalling FPS player.

Life – don’t talk to me about life!

On the plus side, how good was The Force Awakens? And, oh em gee, did you see the finale of Star Wars: Rebels?

So let’s kick it off. As I’m obviously currently in the throes of playing SWTOR again, I guess it might be time to do a little catch up on some of the Dramatis Personae, especially as my mains have swapped so much that, well, I don’t really have one. So here’s the team:

Rouf Tankin: The Scoundrel

I recently got back into playing Rouf after switching spec to Scrapper and taking him quickly through Makeb which, honestly, didn’t seem too bad this time around. Far better and easier than I remember it from when my Trooper slogged her way through. Rouf is, well, Rouf. If he had a motto, it would be drink hard, play hard – although somehow he seems to have ended up becoming an almost respectable representative of the Republic. Still, if it earns him credits and introduces him to the ladies then what’s the harm?

Thrace: The Loyal Soldier

This is Thrace when she was level 40, quite a while ago. For some reason I don’t have many shots of her at all, even though she was, for a long time, my main. I got her to level 60 after a few missions in Stranglethorn Vale Rishi and I’m sure she’s still hunting down pirates there somewhere.

Avycen: The Mauler

Possibly one for Njessi’s Hall of Shame because of that Covert Energy Torso Armor putting his finery on display but regardless. I’ve had a hard time getting into the Jedi Knight storyline and the only way I’ve made it more interesting is by cosplaying as Darth Maul from Clone Wars (Season 5). He is currently my first character to be making romantic in-roads during his main storyline by flirting outrageously with Kira. I’m wondering at what point the subject of him being half the man he used to be will come up. Avycen is the character I’m playing most at the moment because I gather the JK story is quite relevant to the KotFE story and I’m interested to see how it pans out. (Let’s put it this way, the direction taken at the beginning of Chapter 2 made me raise an eyebrow so I’m rolling with it for now.)

Darth Kralias: The Cruel Leader

Dark Side Manquisitor who used to be Guild Leader of our Imperial guild once upon a time (and according to the Guild background story, still is… I can be such a geek at times.) Delicously cruel but languishing on Makeb somewhere. Can’t wait to Dark Side it through KotFE with him soon.

Stormdog: the Cliché

Yet to come into her own as she’s mainly been levelled through PvP. Hell, I can’t even remember what her spec is – Mercenary perhaps? The one that would be Commando if she was a Trooper. I actually really want to play the BH story through but I’m determined to get through JK first.

Lord Drakonya: the Outlander

Drakonya is a Sith Marauder who also ended up being entirely Light Side which was interesting. I wasn’t sure about Marauder for a long time then suddenly it really came into it’s own, with the only downside being that I levelled mostly with Quinn who was a pain in the arse. They nearly got romantically entangled and Drakonya definitely led him on for a bit but she was just playing with him, wanting to see if he could walk without the corncob up his arse. As soon as he came on to her, she dropped him like an eagle might drop a tortoise to check if it’s a god or not. Drakonya ended up being the first character I took through KotFE because the Sith Warrior story, via Rishi, Yavin and Ziost, just worked really, really well. Currently on R&R in Odessen.

Not shown is my Agent. He’s in hiding.

So there we go; maybe over the next few weeks, you might get to know some of them better.

Aside from new story content, which I will come to in due course, I think the biggest changes are the introduction of level syncing, overhauling the companion system and enabling Solo mode on old Flashpoints. They’re by no means the only changes – see the Patch Notes here – Now that the update has been out for nearly two weeks and I’ve had a chance to play and check out the features. Here’s what I think.

So the most controversial change that is causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the official forums is level syncing. SWTOR 4.0 has followed the example of some other MMOs (such as Guild Wars 2) when it comes to adventuring on lower level planets – specifically by lowering your characters level to something more appropriate. As it works out this is 1 or 2 levels above the maximum recommended level of the planet.

Let me get this out of the way right now: I think this is a fantastic change and welcome it. One specific reason is that my son has started playing the game recently and although I had a selection of characters to choose from, the only ones that benefited him were the those at his level. Now I can bring any character and while still being significantly – even laughably – more powerful than anything we might encounter, both he and I will prosper from questing together. Secondly, I out leveled so many planets that I never did a lot of the quests or planetary story arcs – now I have a reason to do them on new characters or go back and do them on old characters. I appreciate there are many people who like being level 60 (or 65 I suppose) and go back to old planets having seemingly godlike powers and being virtually immortal but for me, I hated it. It was boring and meaningless. Sure, it made gathering crafting mats easy so there’s that but I didn’t like the fact that there was content that might have challenged me (in so far that any of the content could be said to be challenging) but because I’d missed it or skipped it on the way up, it became trivial.

Level synccing in action on Alderaan (above)

Similarly with Flashpoints. When the game was released, I did run a few with some of my then populous guild. But they played more than I did so I was always behind the leveling curve. Although they were happy to help me out at times, they were higher level than the FP might require (I’m thinking Taral V as being a memorable example) so could pretty much solo the bosses. I just remember being a spare wheel, told to keep out of the way and let them do it. I got little to know XP from the mobs, no loot because everyone rolled on it and had all the fun sapped out of the instance because, well, there was no risk or challenge. Or, in some cases, need for me to be involved.

One downside to the level syncing, however, is that coupled with the increase in XP rewards, leveling happens very quickly now. Last night, for example, I took my level 21 Jedi Consular through a solo run of The Esseles. When I finished it (and I will say it was barely a challenge; I might as well have been level 65), I was level 24 – I had gained 3 levels just with that one run even though I was downsyncced to level 10.

I will no doubt ruminate on level syncing and the possible possibilities it brings again in the future, but let’s move on to the changes in companions.

The two main changes to companions are that a) any companion can be any role and b) they don’t need to be geared any more. Companions have always been integral to the game since day 1 but they’ve been limited in that each had a particular role it was suited to and who you adventured with depended more on how you wanted to play the game than which companion you liked. My Sith Warrior spent a lot of time with Malavai Quinn because he was a healer but I would rather have had Vette as a companion. Now that’s a viable option – I could use Vette and have her be a healer if I want. Or, as last night on my Consular, if a situation isn’t going well (it was a Taris Heroic, not the Esseles), I can change my companions role to something which might help. Why not get another companion out? Because at the moment, I only have the one.

Not having to gear companions is also a good QoL improvement although I do keep thinking that I’m not sure about this change. Changing primary stats from a class specific stat (like Aim for Troopers, Cunning for Smugglers) to a one-size fits all Mastery stat was a good idea – there is nothing more frustrating as a Republic Smuggler than finding Blaster Pistols with Aim – and coupled with the introduction of a load of adaptive armor (adaptive meaning it can be worn by Light, Medium or Heavy armor users rather than moddable, which is what the Orange custom gear is), gearing companions would have been so much easier than it was. So it seems a shame to remove that small aspect of the game.

On the other hand, it was more annoying than rewarding and overlooks the fact that companion combat prowess is now tied in to your Influence level with them – what used to be Attraction – and that is a Good Thing and makes the whole conversation/gift giving thing much more worthwhile. Are companions currently overpowered? Not sure. I can see why lots of people seem to think so but then there’s also this video of a guy in 204-216 gear doing a low level Heroic on Coruscant without his companion and “bossing” it, as my son would say. Still, he is effectively level 18 while the mobs are level 11 so, yeah, maybe not that representative.

What about some of the other changes?

• New levelling experience – I’ve yet to get back into this but I think I noticed a small change in where I could turn in a quest on Tatooine that saved me 10 minutes of travel so that’s encouraging. Shintar has written more about her experiences and thoughts about it all.
• Legacy Wide Datacrons – I’d like to say that the reason I never bothered doing datacrons was because I’ve been waiting for this change. That’s not entirely true but the thought of trying to get some of them on multiple characters filled me with dread so now I don’t have to do that, I may chase a few down!
• Flashpoint revamp – Solo modes for some story Flashpoints (like Esseles) is great, even if it’s a bit dull because you don’t lose. However, making all Flashpoints viable to characters of all levels is superb. Except that I still don’t PUG…
• Crew Skills – Yup, this is possibly one change I’m luke warm about and will get a post of its own.

So all in all, an interesting and solid patch. There are one or two things I’m not sure about – they seem to have removed the bonus series quests from some of the planets or, at any rate, changed the level requirement of them so that’s not fantastic given that they said they wouldn’t be removing any content at all. And I also noticed that, while the change to the Heroic missions is welcome (and a very useful way of getting to a planet!), the Balmorra-R heroic “Mandalorian Terror” no longer awards a title upon completion. They didn’t mention that removal either otherwise I would have made sure I got it prior to the patch. Oh well, my own fault I suppose. But they’re little things really and don’t detract from a good experience.

Any highlights for you?

While my SWTOR habit has been sporadic, my other gaming has not. I ended up finally sinking a lot of time into Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas, finished Dishonored, Arkham City, Saints Row 3 and 4, tried and failed to get into Dragon Age: Origins, lost a lot of time to Cities: Skylines and Minecraft and, well, yeah – you get the idea. In some ways I wish I had kept up blogging to share how much a lot of these amused and entertained me or, in the case of DA:O, perhaps had a dialog about why I struggled getting into it (two main reasons I think: not being able to get into the combat and the fact that it frustrated me by crashing a lot).

I have also missed on geeking out about all those Marvel films, Man of Steel (I may be the sole member of the “Actually enjoyed Man of Steel” club), Mad Max and others. Not to mention that in less than two months there’s going to be the first in a wave of new Star Wars films, which I’m obviously incredibly hyped about. In fact, there’s almost never been a better time to be a Star Wars fan: not just because of the new films but also because of products like X-Wing: Miniatures, Imperial Assault board game and other Fantasy Flight products which I have been getting into and playing with my son. We saw the end of the Clone Wars TV series when Lucasfilm was acquired by Disney and the beginning of the Star Wars: Rebels cartoon which is surprisingly entertaining. And let’s not forget the new SWTOR expansion… but more about that in the next post.

So yeah, it’s good to be back. This time I’ll try to stick around.