That is one of the rare advantages of having such an absurd amount of time between TOR and the original movies. Usually it's nothing but a problem, but it works out pretty well here. It's a bit weird, but then again the whole concept of the Unknown Regions is a bit silly. Of course, so are the monoclimates of various Star Wars planets. Really, what it comes down to is that Star Wars is really bad science fiction and is just fantasy dressed up in sci-fi clothing. Think about it: Tatooine isn't a desert planet, it's just a desert; Hoth isn't an ice planet, it's just the "frozen north." And so forth. This isn't a gripe specifically about TOR, but the fact that so many Jedi are running around in Obi-Wan Kenobi robes is rather silly. Actually, this terrible idea comes from the awful prequels as it is wonderfully explained here (on a side note, the whole set of those reviews are actually quite worth watching, in fact), but that doesn't mean KotOR/TOR need to continue to propagate this. Oh, well.

Realistically, the Star Wars canon has no good concept of time. When the Tales of the Jedi period was conceived of, the writer (Tom Veitch?) I think just chose some random number that sounded like it was "a really long time ago." This is an instance of the classic Sci-fi/Fantasy writers have no sense of scale trope, IMO. Given that, you have to kinda judge the TotJ/KotOR/TOR world through the lens of the writers not really comprehending just how much of a stretch of time they're working with. Whether it's technology (really? ships changed that little in 3,000 years?) or simply aesthetics, it is easier if you pretend this period in Star Wars history is really more like 200 years before the films rather than 3,000. Having said that, I do agree that the aesthetic they chose for a lot of things corresponds a lot more to that of the films than the TotJ comics. Really, though, this criticism applies as much to KotOR as it does to TOR, though (FWIW). I do kinda like the idea that the Galactic Empire was borrowing imagery from an old, legendary Sith Empire (e.g., the Imperial logo, the appearance of Star Destroyers), a la the Nazis seeing themselves as descendants of a long tradition of German Imperialism. (Not that the latter manifested in Nazi imagery so much as their ahistorical propaganda.) Granted, this isn't ever stated in any SW canon, but I like the idea. Yeah, all Bounty Hunters are Boba Fett—this would "work" if Bounty Hunters were Mandalorians, but they're not. Worse, IMO, was the idea of making the Han Solo/Lando Calrissian archetype into a whole class. TOR isn't the first offender (KotOR for example had the "Scoundrel" class), but I've never gotten the obsession with this. The Imperial analog, the Agent, is so much cooler, and having the Republic version be an SIS Agent or Scout (to borrow a KotOR class) would've been a much, much better idea, IMO. Again, the sense of scale thing rears its head. But if you look at some real royal lineages, some of them continued for hundreds of years. Famously, the Habsburgs of Austria (and Spain), for instance. They were Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire in 1273 and good ol' Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose assassination kicked off WWI 641 years later was heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, descended from a branch of the same House of Habsburg. It's not unprecedented. Completely agreed on this one, but I'll mention another pet-peeve planet for me: Tatooine. Tatooine is supposed to be a backwater dump that no one would ever want to go to and that nothing important ever happens on. And yet it comes up in Star Wars over and over again. Even George Lucas pulled this when he made Anakin from Tatooine. It's absurd. Well, it's hard to say where the idea to use Hoth and Tatooine (for instance) came from, Bioware, EA, or LucasArts, but regardless, LucasArts should have nixed the idea. As stewards of the Star Wars franchise in gaming, they do a pretty terrible job with the canon. Still, love the game, and it at least takes a dump on established Star Wars canon far less than some other games (or than, say, WoW does with Warcraft lore).

A number of times in the Imperial Agent story, you see people wearing holographic disguises that are completely convincing. (For spoilers' sake, I won't discuss any examples or provide screenshots of them.) Given how holograms are typically shown in the Star Wars films and even in the game during holocalls, does this make any sense? Star Wars holograms have always been consistently "unrealistic": blue, glowing, and often covered with scanlines. Are there any examples in the Star Wars canon of holograms that are "photorealistic," consistent with the holographic disguises in TOR? Or am I correct in my belief that these holographic disguises don't really fit with established Star Wars canon?

While it's true that there aren't enough abilities to fill a stealth bar, my Imperial Agent will never, under any circumstances, ever need Hidden Strike or Sleep Dart out of stealth. Ever. They don't even need to be on my toolbars when I'm out of Stealth. Without macros to combine these abilities with other abilities, they're wasting space on my bars. More importantly, they're also a pain for accessing easily via keybinds. Using WASD, you basically have easy access to 1-5 accurately. CTRL is bound to companion abilities, so I bound ALT to my bottom bar. Given that I only have, effectively, 10 abilities to keybind, using 2 of them on abilities I only need in Stealth seems wasteful. But when I need them, I need them to be easily accessible—when I want to Hidden Strike a target, I need to do it quickly before I'm spotted. If Backstab turned into Hidden Strike when you're in Stealth, that would solve the problem. If we had macros, I could effectively do this, but since we don't, I don't think a stealth bar is uncalled for.

While I agree with the latter (of course), do you have a source for the former?

So 75-83 Rakghoul DNA Samples will buy you a green-black color crystal, eh? And you get 5 for exploding. Good to know.

Yeah, I've gotten around the issue somewhat since I took that screenshot by buying some orange armor for her. Unfortunately, I obviously haven't found a head-slot item that works. (And it was hell finding any Kaliyo-appropriate heavy armor to begin with.) I'd much prefer she had no head-slot item at all. Or maybe, Mass Effect-style, it disappeared during conversations. (It seems to when you talk specifically to her on the ship, but no where else.) Sadly, the Nar Shaddaa heavy armor helmet is quite awful-looking. (When I tried it on Kaliyo, it looked like the icon not like those two screenshots. And not that I would've liked it with those screenshots, either, but I think those are the Republic appearance.)

It would be nice if the same customization options that are available to the player (i.e., color matching and turning off helmet slots) were available to companions as well. For instance, my IA's Kaliyo is looking very silly here. With her helmet off and color matching, it might look a bit better. And my JK's Kira looks like some weird space-nun. Easily correctable by hiding her head-slot item.

Guess I'm glad I haven't made a trooper yet.

Thanks for the link! That was quite interesting. (And, as it turns out, I'm one of the people he mentioned for whom it isn't a problem to not see gear diversity—I plan to find some nice orange armor and stick with it for quite a long time.) On a side note, I found this rather interesting: Now I'm curious how the cover system and item modification used to work. I assume with the latter that it used to require a modification station—something which, right now, are rather useless. If so, while that makes more sense, it would also be a colossal pain, so I'm rather glad they removed it.

So the model/design doesn't change, just the color? If so, they made color permutations of every single piece of gear for every color palette? Weird.

The patch notes say, "A new "Customize" option now appears on the character sheet. One of the features this button enables is the ability to color coordinate any individual piece of armor with the equipped chestpiece." How does it work? What does it look like? Anyone have any examples? Does it just load the matching pants, gloves, boots, and helmet for your chestpiece? Or does it really recolor your gear?

If you put on a helmet while wearing a hooded robe, it also disables the hood. So it's completely possible to turn it off. I don't know why it's not an option.