Actually the easiest way to reconcile it is: Both sides took the dark side option.

Yet Baras' attempts to kill the SW were utterly retarded - Lord Draagh is a moron, Quinn barely less so. Which is a shame given that he's universally portrayed as a Machiavellian schemer. That said, despite that portrayal the facts of the story suggest that he's a consistent incompetent. Despite his series of spies he's outdone at virtually every turn.

You basically summed up the storyline of KOTOR. Hell the story of Revan can be summed up as "The series of events which happened previously... were merely a setback". I hope Malgus isn't dead (and its more likely than not that he isn't... yet) as his rationale for going rogue was never really fully explained. I'd like to know what epiphany... or more likely what brainfart, caused him to go AWOL before I hit him until he stops.

Assuming she doesn't cut too deep when self harming. Betrayal can be expected but, frankly, most of our companions are idiots. Pearce - Hey, I'm going to storm this fortification on my own with my squad (Taris). Riiiight, cool plan bro. Is reckless idiocy a common trait on Taris? Or have you been spending too much time with Thana? Quinn - Covered extensively. I wish it were the case that he intentionally screwed up the betrayal but, his VA+script, Jaesa's insight and the fact that he does it when called out by the Emperor's Voice means that he more likely than not screwed it up. Jaesa - Jaesa we'd like a word. No, no this is a word between friends. We're all friends here. We're all talking to you because we love you. No it's not an intervention. Ok well maybe it is. Just put down the razor... just put it down. We can't bare to watch you destroy yourself like this. Vette - no examples spring to mind immediately. Doesn't mean they don't exist. Broonmark - He's a self avowed idiot. He hits stuff and enjoys it. Makes me wonder if he hasn't been spending too much time with Jaesa. One of the only companions who's consistently intelligent is probably... the droid. Our closetted mechanical friend. (As you can probably imagine I played Ultima a lot which instilled a general contempt for the intellect of my RPG companions)

Actually Darth Mortis snaps his neck. Also, if you notice the case of Mitt Romney's tax rate, there are two rules that exist. One for the elite and the other for everyone else. Guess who gets the more lenient and satisfactory set.

Its funny you should mention that as I ended up being more interested in Thanaton's fate than my own inquisitor, who I wrote off as an idiot long ago. Thanaton's words, actions and tone gets more and more desperate in a more and more tragically way as he is screwed. He knows it and yet this wasn't entirely his fault. Unlike, say, Baras who just turns on you for no discernible reason Thanaton executes you as everyone who kills a Sith, especially a higher Sith, are executed. This is referenced quite heavily in the story. He ****s that up, not because he's an idiot but because Kallig/Ergast's ghost gave you an unfair advantage whereas Baras ****s up because he's generally an idiot.

Erm, Thanaton ***** himself and gets the **** out of hightail when you butcher his apprentice before him.

I'd love to replace Quinn and request that Talos Drellik get a transfer from Darth Nox to my Warrior

Knowing GL, we'll find out that Dagobah was made from midichlorians and Darth Vader's tears.

Mostly because what they retconned was - Mandalorians being a generic bipedal race - Eradicating these: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/SunGem http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Coruscant-class_Heavy_Courier - Turning: http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/6/65/Basilisk_war_droid.JPG into In fact the only bad retcon they've done was getting rid of the Tower of Hanoi from Naga Sadow's tomb.

Really? I found the innuendo laden dialogue with Poirot-esque imitations of British accents to be hilarious. Seriously you can't walk 100m in Imperial territory without being accosted by one of its strapping gents looking to upgrade your arsenal with the best hardware for the best prices. If you listen carefully there's the odd Scottish, Irish and Mancunian accent lying around as well. For me the American accent on its own wasn't jarring. It was the saccharine touches to the American VA and script which made me cringe and the fact that many accents were overdone. Indeed they were as overdone as the British voices except not in a vaguely homoerotic and thus funny way. Combine that with the monodimensional nature of the Republic's characters and storylines seriously put me off Republic from the get go. If the Sith were like that (i.e. populated by "Rawr Darkside" types like Jaesa or Thana) I'd probably hate it as a faction as well. But Sith goes significantly into shades of grey and still prove to be interesting.

Manaan - Strong KOTOR links and Kolto connection. Telos - Strong KOTOR links, Jedi/Sith holocron den (unless they've moved them since then) Dantooine - Old Jedi links. Possibly the force ghosts of the old Jedi Council. It'd also be nice to see Vjun, Onderon and Dxun. I really hope they don't include Endor.

This. Giving everything a spelled out, idiot proof yet needless explanation is the reason Midichlorians exist: The Force is bacteria everyone. Go home, pack your DVDs, nothing more to see here.

1. The primary motivation stated by Thanaton is because the SI killed Zash. Which is illegal in the Empire (see Xalek in the Academy, the Korriban quests, the light side option to the Tagging quests on DK among many others). This is compounded by the fact that Zash openly advertised to everyone on DK that the SI murdering her with awesome powers in a vision - because she expected to be that SI. 2. We don't get an (ingame) explanation why the Emperor, the Dark Council or why Baras is so strong. We just have to assume they have an inherent power, as would befit the top echelon of magocracies. If anything your immunity to Thanaton is more adequately explained than most other powers: He doesn't understand your relationship with ghosts because Kallig/Ergast didn't give him the Prima strategy guide. As such he can't beat you but then neither can you him until you do the Fedexing. Not all of the Dark Council actually like Thanaton - Ravage being the clear example. Thanaton comes off as a pompous dick which would rub most people the wrong way. Also, the Dark Council don't react to you because you bested Thanaton, its actually stated as the reason for your ascension. After all, why would you want a subpar Sith Lord on the Dark Council? 3. Your suggestions aren't really viable - they themselves don't have a context in which to make sense and would already spell out the obvious. Hell Thanaton's fear is already palpable by Corellia when he freaks out and runs away. What else do you want him to say? Also Thanaton would've killed Zash if he could. He was basically looking for an excuse to do it but none came his way. This was stated before you walk into his trap.

I didn't know that about Jaesa, but then I viewed her as a disappointingly half assed written character. Which is a pity as she could've been fleshed out to be a really interesting character.

The point is, the ending is ambiguous because, unlike, say, Balmorra which was There's no definite outcome to the quests on the later planets. For instance on Ilum: Concerning Corellia: It is entirely possible that:

I mentioned it in another thread: That's because you haven't been following Thanaton's side of things: Thanaton's scared I think, ultimately, the SI is actually very strong, especially the end which feels more satisfying than the SW's. However getting to the end is extremely irritating with railroaded plots (yes Kallig, I know this was a trap, no I didn't have a choice) and non entity companions.

Yeah except the Emperor's the Emperor and Zash is a petty lord. Who knows maybe Thanaton disapproved of the Emperor's actions, assuming he knew about them. But most people wouldn't dare call their boss up on leaving the office at 16h30. I imagine that Zash's work at preserving immortality and rummaging through tombs and rituals probably pissed him off to no end. For the reason why he singlemindedly hunts you down, see above.

Oh yes for my two playthroughs I went "rawr smash" the first time and then went into careful consideration the 2nd time The beauty of the SW storyline, unlike most other storylines, is that you had that option, the one which appeared dark or goody two shoes at first glance, but, upon deeper reflection, was anything but. He is a sadly deficient droid who couldn't murder 2V-C8 To which I point out that in Hoth's airlock, Lord Draagh bumps into you after bumping into your crew. Presumably Lord Draagh didn't know that Quinn was on his side as he royally beat the **** out of him as well. Also Quinn did state that he's studied my combat performance (yet another hilarious, vaguely homoerotic comment), which, disturbingly, Darth Charnus does also (yes my SW is a ****** but he doesn't swing that way folks... If Talos Drellik was around sure...). If he had actually paid attention to any of the homework he did he'd know that 2 non elite droids and himself wouldn't really qualify for the top 50 difficult encounters my warrior faces. I did think of that as I was typing. But noone displays that amount of smugness if they're doing a deliberately half-assed thing. Seriously, the VA in the Betrayal Five incident made his usual smug, contemptful and arrogant tone modest by comparison. And this is considering that him and Baras both contemptfully call you an incompetent moron on Balmorra. Moreover, he begs the SW like a emaciated dog not to mention how royally he screwed up to the rest, mostly for fear that their collective laughter would resonate in his skull for the rest of his days. Finally if that were truly the case that he didn't want to betray you, why didn't he just come out with it? Out of fear of being seen to be incompetent? That attempt made Thana's intellect look inspired. To be honest, that might have been the case if it wasn't for his smug tone before the fight or that he doesn't explain himself afterwards. I mean anyone who put up such a poor show has a lot of explaining to do . Rather he appears genuinely dumbstruck at how his lame-assed trap couldn't do what a wondering elite patrol has more likelihood of doing.

1. To which I put this through - if they had an Skyrim style massively customisable face, how would they have managed to make the conversations as fluid as they did? Judging by a comparison between SWTOR and Skyrim, the answer is they can't. The lip synching on SWTOR is vastly superior to Skyrim and the characters actually feel (more) alive. On Skyrim they don't twitch, move their eyes or really move their lips in synch with the dialogue. It's all very static. All that said the faces and body styles available are pretty poor. The female's body styles range from anorexic to tubby to obese. The Male body styles are manga deformed and the faces generally look samey. 2. Again this is a content issue. They could've created 8 stories and that'd have been awesome. But that would've taken more time and money (more VA, more boss fights, more story brainstorming, more bugs to fix, etc etc) and chances are EA would've done like they did with Warhammer Online and released it a buggy, incomplete mess. (Before people jump on - no SWTOR now isn't anywhere near as bad as WHO when it was released) 3. 4. Lord knows I hated Tython and Coruscant. I love the art direction and I love the feel of the planet. But both are horribly laid out, require inordinate amounts of idle transit and are generally too long (esp compared to Hutta, Korriban and DK) There is however an upnote. Try Sith. As I've mentioned, the Sith Areas are a lot better, their dialogue more amusing and interesting and quests more multifaceted. Also for the sense of space, the later planets offer a much better deal for you. Hoth is just open, beautifully so. Belsavis has a mixture of openness and Indiana Jones ruin hunting. 5. 6. Jedi get a bum deal. Yes the Empire go to Taris, but after other, better planets. They don't get the Coruscant -> Taris -> Nar Shaddaa triple whammy. 6. That's like complaining that you went to London and didn't see the Queen. Hutts are supposed to be fat cats above the affairs of, well everything else. Besides they mostly reside on Nul Hutta, where you see a couple in a turf war. 7. Tattooine is mandatory for any Star Wars game. It's like having a Middle Earth game without the Shire. It may suck but unfortunately thats the requirements of lore. If you like Jawas roll a Bounty Hunter. I'm surprised you found Tattooine universally bad. I personally loved the Dune Sea Quests, especially the Lovecraftian "The thing Czerka found" quest. 8. I hate Alderaan. I really do. I couldn't even easily skip it as the longest parts to do in the planet was... the class quests. Whoever designed House Rist needs their head examined. 9. Again the Empire side get it better on Balmorra. About 40% of the planet is indoors/underground and the rest is outside. The quests are interesting and varied (at the lower end: deal with an official's wife who's sleeping with a spy who stole information, plant explosives on dead bodies to blow up scavengers, etc.) 10. Quesh is more a copy + paste of Hutta. Its a polluted ******** and it shows. 11. Hoth for Republic might be the case, its less so for the Empire. Still there's a lot of transit. With regards to brightness, its actually quite realistic owing to the reflection of the sun off snow. I personally loved the sense of space one got with the planet, a rarity in SWTOR. You seem to be quite fixated with trees - in which case I strongly recommend ploughing into Belsavis. 12. The Galactic Trade Network. Everyone hates the GTN. 13. Gameplay. MMOs are a button mash, which makes people's desires to be competitive in them all the more amusing. I tend to see the non PC/Planet story combat to be a diversion however. 14. Loot. Green items are primarily there to kit out your companions. Aside from that they're a welcome cashflow, especially given the amount of medical droids mysteriously littering even the most inaccessible areas of the planets. 15 [bONUS] quests Isn't that being a little demanding? To script, VA and quality test every single bonus mission that comes your way? Yes they are buggy (finishing the primary mission and losing 2 stages of bonus quest never fails to irk me) but there're other ways to get XP. 16. Voice Overs I find your complaints to be overwhelmingly true for the Jedi side. Conversation choices often hinge around: 1) "Yes I'll gladly sacrifice life and limb for you. I'm so generous I'll give you 100 credits too." 2) "OK I'll do it/Ask for more information/Ask for a payrise" 3) "You're an idiot" Again the Empire get a much better deal. Their stories and responses are more detailed and its rare that I get a series of dialogue options I'm not happy about. Again you expect far too much and are perhaps spoilt by what you have. Recycling is common in even the most successful and excellent RPGs. Hell in Skyrim/Fallout you didn't even talk. Recycled talk is still better than no talk. 17. I pose this question: have you ever had good Customer support? Test it now. Pick up the phone to your ISP/service provider. Who's going to respond? An automated call director. Brilliant. After half a dozen keypad presses you're speaking to a polite bubbly incompetent with a hint of a Mangalorian accent. Want to deal with someone with more initiative? Choose to cancel your service contract and suddenly a polite, bubbly, slightly less incompetent Mancunian's on the phone. Making a focal point of a problem common to the First World life is a bit harsh don't you think? 18+. Addendums: Not your cup of tea, fair play. Did you ever play/enjoy the KOTOR series or the Mass Effect series. The raw content is equivalent to at least two of those games, one for Jedi, one for Sith and that's being extremely harsh (i.e. ignoring the other classes). Given that and that two of those games are the more expensive than SWTOR game and a subscription you're actually getting fairly good value. Except 95% of that material is hack crap. Let's see: Dark Empire, the Emperor's BACK!!! and again. And again. And oh **** it he's dead now. Vuuzan Vong Invasion - hey we're bored of jedi v sith, let's add in a new bad guy! No wait don't go away, we'll kill Chewie and blow up 3/4 Star Wars planets. New Jedi Order - we've run out of ideas so let's have an epic duel between Leia's children And the massive elephant in the room: Lucas' fat grubby fingers Bioware among others created the Old Republic universe and added a whole swath of new ideas to a stagnant series ruled by hacks, from the Lovecratian Rakata to a real Sith Empire, who are faced by a Jedi Order not run by (complete) idiots (work for a Sith Lord we do). They did build on the original canon... then threw the hack crap out. For illustration they turned: http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060717184538/starwars/images/thumb/6/65/Basilisk_war_droid.JPG/250px-Basilisk_war_droid.JPG into

Yes and no (though more yes than no). For every Palpatine there's a hundred braindead Vaders. The Sith Warrior's always portrayed and treated as a meathead. Virtually every single major NPC has something to say about your intellect (or lack of). To them you're a moron but a powerful moron whose primary recourse is to hit stuff until they stop annoying you. And, if you choose to be that way, they're right. Except the beauty of the SW story's writing is that it permits you to be either. You can choose to kill everything you see or you can choose to be a deeply insidious Sith who's seen by everyone as a moron but is actually a master. The beauty of the story is that you overwhelmingly have the choice, compared to, say the Sith Inquisitor who's railroaded into making moronic choices without any Machiavellian recourse: What pisses off most people is that, often without realising that, throughout the storyline they had the choice. Now with Quinn that choice is gone and, because they've gotten so used to it, get pissed off. I personally expected Quinn's betrayal since Balmorra so wasn't overly pissed when it (finally) came about. When I actually saw his betrayal I finally realised that he was so stupid he never could've been a threat: I disagree with you about Quinn's betrayal. After knowing what he knows (and, potentially after being blown up by Baras as well on Quesh) he still opts to oppose the SW? Ignoring the fact that he could've just assisted Lord Draagh (at any point on Vengean's pad/Quesh/Hoth) why didn't the fact that Baras almost killed him (twice) nullify his honor bound obligations? Instead, when you throttle him to the edge of his life or show mercy he changes his mind and swears himself to you? It is somewhat stupid. I only showed him mercy on him because it was such a laughably half assed attempt and I only spared his social standing (by not telling anyone) because otherwise half my crew would probably gut laugh to death. Then who'd fly my Fury or give me a foot massage?

The canon on the last few planets are not fully established: Has it ever occurred to anyone that: