Attempting to use a boring cliche like "your Force is nothing but particles in your blood!" is plenty reason to lose faith in Lucas. He established the Force as one thing in the original trilogy, and then tried to be "deep" by doing the midichlorian thing. Everyone I knew who saw The Phantom Menace was simply irate at him doing something so blatantly unoriginal (because it falls under the disprove religion trope) while totally spitting in the face of what the original trilogy established. There's plenty of terrible examples, like the whole "there is no father" bit for Anakin and Padme's thing about being elected queen (poor attempt at a parallel with what we consider modern government). Someone once said that the reason Star Wars was incredible back in 1977 was because Lucas knew he was making a movie about spaceships, robots and laser swords. In two decades his view of himself changed into some attempted "genius" producer/director and it shows in the prequel trilogy, when in reality it should have still been treated as a movie about spaceships, robots and laser swords.

My troll-o-meter is blinking between orange and red right now, but I'll bite with one word: midichlorians

"Have you seen what the Sith are wearing? It's almost as if every fashion designer in the galaxy went to the dark side..."

Indeed, but the OP is talking about strictly martial skills. Sparring can only take you so far, because the rest is dependent on combat experience, where theory doesn't always apply. True enough. I can agree with this, but we really lack a frame of reference. I mean sure, Mace Windu was one of the best duelists of his time, but how would he stand against a staple of the Old Republic era like Darth Malgus (himself very skilled with a lightsaber) or the Hero of Tython?

You have to admit that Obsidian being involved begs the question "will it actually be complete and not have removed content this time?".

On my Jedi Knight, Watcher One. I liked the fact he was someone who clearly was focused on his mission without any of the strange attachment to slaughter that some expect from the Sith empire. I could have used someone like him around in place of Doc or Rusk. Would have been weird to have three former imperials in my crew, but I could have overlooked that.

Except most of his moves for the prequels made absolutely no sense, and trying to chalk it up to artistic license doesn't make it any less nonsensical. The fact that he attempted to destroy the mysticism of the force with the midichlorian bit should be enough of a warning sign. I agree with this. As long as he's giving orders from a command chair and has very limited (if any) action scenes, I think it'll be fine.

They really should have taken the Zevran approach with Quinn. Basically, the quinncident happens if you did not have him at a certain level of affection by a certain point in the story, but it doesn't happen if you got a certain level of affection by a certain point in the story. Maybe have him tell you the plans of those who wanted to act against you, but him saying that he trusts you more and that is why he wants to help you stop them or something. This would also play well into the fact that some people have started relationships with Quinn only to get the incident. Kinda tears that story apart.

Not to mention that with a suitable replacement it wouldn't create an issue. If you lost quinn but got random generic imperial medic or a med droid to replace him, at least you still have full companions. On Skadge, though... BW's issue in characters like Skadge is they wanted to add the character that doesn't play well with others, kinda like what Lord Scourge is to the JK story. it just kinda went over the top.

Hopefully this gives Bioware an idea of what to do for april fool's day this year.

They really should have written some sort of scuffle or given the player an option for the BH and Skadge to actually fist fight, with the BH winning and Skadge grudgingly agreeing to follow the BH. Kinda like a more amusing version of

Agreed. JK is basically a star wars movie that never happened. Personally, the point of the BH story is to show that while allied with the empire, you still do your own thing. They did make a point to show that you're no one's lapdog.

I'll support this. Very nice idea, OP.

This makes me very sad. While abridged, Master Gnost Dural's holorecords were a great way to introduce people to the lore behind TOR.

At least in the case of Kaliyo, she could work but introduced later in the story rather than being your first companion. I think that's what rubs people the wrong way. If you had been given time to establish your IA and then meet Kaliyo and have her join you, it would have made a little more sense. The type of thing she does is something that usually happens to people who have been in the information business for a long time. You do the same thing over and over and then realize you could make something extra on the side. You don't usually just jump into that sort of thing after getting your feet wet. Not if you don't want to get caught, anyways. I'm starting to think one of the universal constants of TOR is that everyone has a female bounty hunter.

Well, that's more given to circumstances than anything else. You have a slicer with a heart of gold and a weakness for ugnaughts, a scoundrel that's been on the run, a 19-year-old mandalorian, a jawa with wanderlust, and Skadge. Erm...isn't he a good 30+ years older than the bounty hunter?

I was more replying to the part of it requiring massive amounts of work separate from what we currently have. I'll admit, my post was written more along the lines of what BW could have done with both classes during early stages of development. I know it's impossible for them to do anything like this now.

Not really. I could see Smuggler and BH starting out on Hutta (move the IA story to Ord Mantel to work with the separatists on behalf of the empire), doing their thing until lv10-ish. Then you get contract offers from both the republic and the empire as you reach the end of Hutta, allowing you to choose which of the two you can side with. If a contract sounds too iffy, it could instead be a big-paying job that pushes you into its respective faction. Seeing that most of the companions for the smuggler and BH are independent, you could even keep the companion sets as they are.

Hah Sith Warrior + Khem Val would definitely be interesting. Something else to mention is that in the old Star Wars RPGs (the tabletop kind) they created stand-in characters to use in player campaigns for the more iconic Star Wars characters (the most famous example of this is Jodo Kast, who was an RPG stand-in for Boba Fett before he was developed into his own character). I don't think it would be that unrealistic to have stand ins for the companions we choose to kill/get rid of. I do like the droid idea, too. One of those melee imperial assassin droids would be nice to stand in for Skadge, for example.

While I understand your frustration, class stories would take a hell of a lot more effort for the current state of the game, between stage design, balance, character voicing, and cutscene creation. I mean, realistically speaking, if you want class stories to continue with Makeb, they'd have to push its release back 6 months to a year . That's time I doubt EA would want to spend seeing all the resources already tossed into TOR during development. Yes, Makeb is currently an attention and cash grab, but it is also a show that the game isn't dead. TOR is laughed at outside of these forums for being an expensive game that had to go FTP within its first year, so at least with this they can say "our game is doing fine! See, we even have an expansion in the works!". Smoke screens and PR, but that's part of business too. >.>;

This wouldn't have been so bad if you started out neutral and then decided to work for either the republic or empire by the time you had to choose your advanced class. Character-wise the smuggler and bounty hunter are too close to lines of gray and self interest to really be part of either faction. Not to mention that I highly doubt the republic felt themselves above hiring bounty hunters (much like I doubt the empire would have seen themselves above dealing with smugglers if it meant advancing the empire's goals) Of course, this would have meant two storylines for smuggler and BH (one republic, one empire), and possibly two sets of companions depending on which faction you chose. Worst of all, I'm sure someone out there would then have been stupid enough to cry over smuggler and BH having more story content than the Jedi and Sith classes.

Well, depends on how that plays out. For example, I started Tatooine last night on my bounty hunter. I was sent to kill the sons of whatever to begin the search for the Czerka facility, and had the option of killing lead warriors of that group. I'd assume choosing to kill them may just have them steer away from me out of fear, while letting them live (which I did as Mako was with me) may have them randomly ambush me from that point of the story on, as I "made enemies" with them. That might be a way to implement consequences and going through with the threats you get based on certain decisions. As most have said, light side choices empire-side are more rational, and even the game itself shows you that some sith that show these dark side traits are outright stupid and a detriment to the empire instead of a benefit.

Very impressive. Bookmarking this when I get home tonight.

I can attest to this. I still have to look at the keyboard to do anything, but have managed to learn to play 50/50 (half binds, half clicks) thanks to my time spent raiding in WoW. I disagree here. Sure, lolPvE and whatnot, but on the BH I'm currently leveling I usually snare melee enemies and walk backwards while shooting missiles and other stuff at them. I'm sure it'd be trickier when applied in PvP, but doesn't warrant removing that entirely. Well, unless strafing is better, even if it does rely on more open space.

I'm guessing you mean Satele from the trailers. Satele is a little up there in age by the time our characters are running around. Not General Garza age, but still...