I'm expecting to see more planets like Belsavis and Voss. Places with new races, new creatures, new spins on the current conflict and more mysteries from ancient histories. Down with the establishment! Into the unknown, I say!

First: unless you're some kind of weird gunslinger-with-a-shotgun, you've got no nerfs incoming. So don't worry about that. As for your companion issues--make sure you've got something useful in every slot. Implants and headgear (especially +endurance, +defense, +shield/absorb), should be especially helpful. If that still isn't working out, you're going to need to do one of three things: 1. buy/craft the best robotic gear you can get at your level and play tank while your protocol droid heals you (he's not *that* bad at healing, especially when fully skilled--his damage ability is totally useless, though) and play the part of the tank. This might work for you, especially if you find that you can take down most melee before they reach you, and the incoming ranged dps is all that's wearing you down. 2. Reevaluate some of the skills you haven't been using. Take an especially long look at anything that stuns, slows, or immobilizes your opponents. If you're finding that Bowdarr's running around screaming or Corso's constant lobbing of grenades breaks these abilities, turn them off. 3. Slog through the next few levels. Maybe consider working with a human partner or running some flashpoints to get some character and gear levels above the current content. The next couple companions that you get will allow you to double down on DPS, and the last one does minor damage, while doing some decent crowd control and healing.

The gun is a quest reward; I don't think anyone has found another with a similar look so far. I think the jacket drops on Esseles.

Star Wars + multigenerational social engineering + subtlety = Dune - lengthy monologues.

Having the shotgun holstered on our backs, like Ash in the Evil Dead movies, would be beyond awesome. Though for now, if anyone asks, I'm carrying my shotgun in my hidden compartment.

What we need to do is go down to that big plaza in Nar Shaddaa and fire our weapons at the statue for hours. Down with the NeX shop!

Humans.

Limiting the number of species that can hold powerful positions is extremely useful in consolidating power. The interests, desires, and emotional reactions of humans are narrow and predictable. Further, these facets of humanity can be manipulated en masse much more easily than if you had to deceive and manipulate Duros, Gran, Wookiees, Trandoshans, Mon Cals, Rodians, etc. The best you can do to attain power in such diversity is to rise above the infighting that you also work to inspire. In the end, though, you aren't going to have the kind of galaxy-dominating power you want as a Sith Lord if you can't wield the people as a cohesive weapon. That doesn't mean you have to hate or feel threatened by the aliens, but the impossibility of integrating their needs with your goals does limit them to being useful as outsiders--mercenaries, contractors and the like.

In Obi-Wan's experience, there's no such thing as "luck."

The Jedi of the Clone Wars era generally make more sense if you think of Yoda as a backwards fundamentalist.

I think it's a vaccine, not a cure, but regardless-- Rule #1 of Star Wars continuity: for all statements that can seem contradictory, there exists some contrivance or set of contrivances that explain it away. This one is easy: the strain of the rakghoul disease that still exists on Taris has, in the generations since its introduction, become biological rather than magical in nature. This could be due to the positive force energies that have been healing the planet of its wounds or whatever. Alternate: the viral agent that converts a sentient being into a rakghoul is infused with the force. That is, the disease attaches to and infiltrates cells as a normal virus would. It reproduces in the same way a virus does. However, the structural changes it makes on the genetic and physiological level is itself a force power. Thus, a normal anti-virus could stop the spread of the disease in the same way that one who kills people using the force may be slain by a blaster pistol.

Revan was also a turning point--for the worse, in my opinion--in how Bioware started telling stories. The whole concept of a character you owned taking part in epic events was trashed in favor of you being told just what sort of epic character you are. Old-school Bioware games made you feel like you were influencing a world. New Bioware games feel like reading a comic book.

I haven't. I would also not support changing the "Willpower" stat in TOR to "midichlorian count", because that would reek of Phantom Awful. That said, I was disappointed that our swoop bikes weren't customizable and that there weren't any race tracks. And the distinct lack of pilotable starfighters. And the lack of choice in space transport.

I think people like Maul for the same reason they might "fall in love" with a dancer that they've only seen on American Bandstand. They can project every sort of attribute and ideal onto them without risk of being wrong, with none of that pesky "reality" to disappoint them. For instance, I knew who Darth Maul was the first time I saw her. Yes, her. For I knew her to be a crossdressing woman, a former circus acrobat, who was unknowingly yearning to see her first snarky forum post. Yes, she had a cruel side, but once she met a man like me? All that seeming evil would melt away. Any departure from that ideal in EU media is wrong, and going against George's canon, as far as I interpret things.

Jeff Bridges, reprising an earlier role he did. The prequels would require title changes: I. The Fascist Menace II. Attack of the Nihilists III. Revenge of the Jesus Bonus points if we could also properly cast Obi-Walter Sobchak and Maude Amidala.

Making this up as I go: 1. Make Anakin something basically along the lines of Han Solo with a lightsaber. What the hell, we'll just say that Anakin was Corellian, too. There are wars going on involving clones. Obi-Wan is kinda his teacher, sidekick and best friend, usually giving Skywalker some pretty great advice that saves him from certain doom. 2. When Skywalker achieves Knight status, Palpatine secretly uses various criminal organizations to set up a series of lose-lose situations that no brilliant-pilot-and-unequaled-force-user could resolve, eroding Anakin's self-confidence and forcing him to question his own awesomeness at every turn. 3. Make Mrs. Skywalker another Jedi, of middling ability but spirited, adventurous, playful, and clever. The marriage isn't actually a problem for anyone, except Yoda, because Yoda is an ancient virgin with a wounded heart. 4. Paranoia builds. Anakin follows a red herring leading him to believe that the criminal organization that nobody believes is targeting him is, in fact, being run by a senator that happens to be Palpatine's biggest rival/closest friend. To make it George Lucas-y, we'll say that this Senator is Joe Organa, father of billionaire playboy Bail Organa. Make this almost believable to the audience as well. 5. As Anakin stumbles upon "the truth", Mrs. Skywalker is brutally murdered by some mysterious assassin. Her entrails are sent to him as a wreath for Wookiee Life Day. While trying to cope with this, Anakin meets a Hutt who is wearing her face as a mask and has been feeding her other organs to a young slave named Boba Fett. Her uterus is mysteriously never recovered. 6. Anakin justifiably snaps. Revenge, murder, and a Godfatheresque montage of tightly timed assassinations follow. At the end of the sequence, Joe Organa dies by Anakin's hand. His organs are mailed to his friends on the Senate. 7. The story is on all the holos on Coruscant. Palpatine uses this to make a successful play to take over the senate. Optional: social commentary on reactionary thinking. 8. Anakin realizes that he was set up and goes into hiding for a while. Palpatine's agents and Kenobi are trying to hunt him down to either convince Anakin to search his feelings and realize that he's really an okay guy, or to ignore that mushy Jedi love crap, because love is what got him into this mess, right? 9. Palpatine tracks down Anakin while Kenobi ends up finding the kids that nobody knew about. "I just thought she was getting fat," is a line that is quoted often outside of theaters. Kenobi hands the kids over to Bail Organa and goes off to chase down a rumor after having a vision. 10. Anakin is taken advantage of in his emotionally vulnerable state, given a pardon, a new face and new identity as Garth Bader, which is mispronounced by a passing Duros as "Darth Vader," and charged with the task of tracking down and killing all the Jedi. He has his doubts about what he's doing, but it turns out that he's pretty awesome at killing Jedi. So awesome that he convinces himself that Jedi-killing is his destiny or some quasi-Calvinist nonsense. 11. Kenobi is somewhere near the end of Vader's to-do list. When Vader catches up to him, he had spent a couple years learning some crazy Force techniques from non-Jedi that Vader would have no idea how to deal with. Kenobi beats Vader in a climactic, mind bending battle of all-out forcefulness. Maybe end the fight with a force-flamethrower technique to rival Palpatine's lightning. I don't know. 12. Anakin gets rebuilt and Obi-wan goes back to the Organas, convincing them to part with Luke. The isolated and lonely Jedi wanders off to hide on a massive failure of a planet that no one in their right mind would go to willingly, where by some Force-coincidence he meets up with Anakin's out of luck gambler cousin, Owen.

I don't care about who's the most powerful. Pure power, by its general inability to create laughter or fun, bores me. An unpretentious, wily old coot that can spin allegories and multi-layered parables on command, ignores the rules without turning to the in-your-face-drama-queen side of the force, and can kick some *** when needed? That's the Jedi I'd most want as a friend. Bindo > All.

I'm paraphrasing pretty heavily, but I seem to recall encountering a scene that went something like this: Sith Lord: And now the pieces are all falling into place. Oh, it's all making sense now. This whole desperate plot has unraveled before my eyes: clueless commanders chasing a hopeless cause, never realizing that they simply cannot send their best field agent to target, undermine, and murder me without utterly failing in their diplomatic mission! Smuggler: Not a word of that fantasy has any relation to reality... ... Except the part about me being the best.

Because the battle of Yavin is the first story in the Star Wars setting that we got to experience in the real world. Most people who were born before 1990 think of A New Hope as "the beginning" of the Star Wars universe; everything outside the classic trilogy is either backstory, filler story, or follow-up.

Maybe you will in a couple years. From what I understand, chapter 3 isn't the end of the story. There is more in store for the eight characters and their crews in expansion packs and the like.

It's all in how you frame it. Basically, traditional Jedi would uphold that they are married to the Order, to the light side of the Force, or whatever. To commit to something else would be selfish, egocentric, and unfaithful. The Force (or the head writer at Bioware) seems to feel differently: having love and passions for things outside of the Force can inspire one to greatness if handled with wisdom and maturity, or be the short road to ruin if personal passions lead to choices that are not in the best interests of all lifeforms at hand. What you do in this interpretation of the universe aren't so important as how and why you do it.

Obviously, we need to start even more absurd rumors. I'll start: I can say with certainty that both Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca are both descendants of Jolee Bindo, creating what is far and away the coolest legacy in all of Star Wars.

It seems to be a shorthand audio cue in Hollywood productions that an accent means a character is most likely to follow one of the following archetypes: RP English: Oppressive aristocrat. Cockney: Artful criminal. Scottish: Stubborn, chaotic, powerfully strong drunk. German: Dangerous scientist. French: Impotent buffoon. Any accent in the Iberian family: Sex object. Russian: Scheming, blundering megalomaniac. Other accents seem to have a much broader variety of characterizations, or just aren't used very often.

If we could also block and parry lightsaber attacks with our scatterguns, that would be pretty awesome.

Each stage of a bonus seems to give about half the xp of the parent mission. The final turn-in of a multi-stage bonus mission is about 1.5x the xp/credits of the parent mission, plus three commendations. So after looting and mob xp is taken into account, you're basically getting 4 missions worth of goods in a single mission area. Sometimes that's worth it, sometimes it isn't. The "kill 10 elite mobs" bonus missions are too time consuming for me, personally.