Release Date: Aus 2006 Genre: Third-person shooter Publisher: LucasArts Developer: Pandemic Studios Platform: Playstation 2, Xbox Players: 1 Classification: T (Teen)
Mercenaries:
Playground of Destruction was originally a suggestion then a birthday
present if I remember correctly from my housemate Brok who praised it as an
awesomely fun modern combat style third person sandbox game which he had played
on the original Xbox and then bought it for me on Playstation 2 which was very
nice indeed. Mercenaries was a creation by Pandemic Studios
an LA based developer with an office based in Brisbane who had created games such as Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2 and Destroy All Humans! and interestingly published by LucasArts.
I had never heard of this game before but was interested and said I would give
it a go.
Mercenaries tells a fictional story of in the Korean Theatre
of War called the Song
Initiative where the president Choi Kim
actually offers peace to South Korea which angers his son Choi Song
who stages a violent coup storming the capital and killing his father before
the country goes “dark” expelling foreigners and giving no communication to the
outside world. After it’s discovered by the Australian Navy that North Korea is
creating and selling Nuclear Weapons, the Allied
Nations led by Colonel Samuel Garrett forms and heads off to North
Korea on the offensive and is soon joined by the South Korean Union led
in secret by the American CIA operative Agent
Mitchell Buford, the People's Liberation Army led by Colonel
Zhou Peng and the Russian Mafia led by Sergei
Voronov.
The very epic title screen and intro
You are a Mercenary working for Executive Operations, or ExOps who are
apparently the league of kick-ass mercenaries and you are basically tasked with
capturing or killing the Deck of 52 for a handsome sum of 100 million dollars no
less. The Deck of 52 is basically a full deck of cards each one representing a
person of interest to the Allied Nations with the number cards being the lower
ranked and the royal cards being the more powerful VIPs with Song himself
included as the ACE OF
SPADES! You have a choice of three different characters Mattias
Nilsson, Jennifer Mui and Christopher Jacobs with Brok suggesting I use
Jennifer as she has some pretty good one liners and also because I hardly ever
use a female character so I thought what the hey.
The Deck of 52 from the Exops initial briefing screen, please excuse the subtitles it was the only one I could find.
This initial story is shown to you via actual live footage
pieced together then has one of the most terribly acted dialogues between one
of the officers in Exops and Fiona Taylor who is
your main contact in the organisation though unfortunately she sounds like
she’s come straight from an episode of Round the Twist as her high pitched
lighthearted sounding Australian accent is annoying and not suited to the role,
what I’d give for someone with a posh British accent either male or female
similar to M in the Bond films rather than this bimbo who would be perfect on
the set of Playschool. And having to listen to her updates every so often was
still draining but anyway. As well as the Deck of 52 you also do various other
mission for each faction sometimes attacking another faction that you were
previously working for resulting in your standing to drop with them. The
Chinese and South Koreans were the biggest enemies with the Russian Mafia
antagonising both and the Allied Forces being enemies with no-one except the
North Koreans of course which were permanently hostile.
The game intro was partly made of real-life footage
The game world is basically set up as a sandbox where you start
at the Allied M.A.S.H, this is your default starting area for the game and also
the place you end up when you die. From there you can basically go anywhere,
“commandeer” a vehicle and go visit any of the 4 factions, search for the
number cards or collectibles such as the national treasures, or just cause
destruction such as destroying North Korean Monuments, South Korean listening
posts or just random mayhem. One of the favourite things my friend Brok used to
do was come across a group of NPC’s from any particular faction fighting and
basically watched the action unfold, often with hilarious circumstances as this
unpredictability makes up the beauty of the game. Some faction missions
involved going after number and royal cards themselves though most show up as
emails on your PDA which
hint of their locations and you go and search for them. There are also some
“Car challenges” represented as dollar signs on the map that you can enter and
race to a particular area though most of the time I didn’t want to go wherever
it went.
You're just driving along then all of a sudden you come across a heated battle
Your PDA
(Personal Digital Assistant) is basically your access to intelligence and
support during the game featuring different screens including a map, your email
inboxes, the Merchant
of Menace shop which is provided by the Russian Mafia selling everything
from guns, to vehicles to airstrikes. There is also screen which has four
sections involving Deck of 52, bounties you have found such as Monuments,
WMD blueprints, National Treasures and South
Korean listening posts, and statistics of all the things you have done,
such as soldiers killed, distance travelled, favourite choice of vehicle and
other information about their exploits and a screen which shows the players
diplomatic stance with the various factions. You gain this and two other generic
weapons including an Assault Rifle and M67 Frag Grenade before driving backwards
out of a low flying plane into North Korea’s southern province which provides
the theatre of war for the first half of the game. So basically my goal was to
just finished the game, being the first time I wasn’t going to go for %100 completion,
it looked pretty good fun, sort of like a military version of GTA.
Your PDA screen showing you diplomatic stance
Unfortunately when I first started playing the game there
was one major issue, as I’ve probably mentioned before I don’t play any first
or third person shooters on console anymore with the exception of Red Dead
Redemption which had the lock-on feature most of the time but still got
annoying in the parts where you didn’t even if they were few. In Mercenaries
you don’t have the lock-on feature at all and it makes aiming and shooting and
general movement somewhat difficult and annoying when you are trying to shoot
specific enemies. This was especially annoying when trying to use a sniper
rifle and set aim on atarget but I
couldn’t get the thumbstick to line up as the feedback made it move too far to
one side or not far enough and this was even worse if you were under fire at
the time, I often had to resort to firing the sniper rifle from the hip which
was actually pretty effective with practice. Strafing while firing
also took some practice too
Daring frontal assault on a roadblock
This led to me delving into the realm of PS2 emulation again
which I had previously been unsuccessful at, I thought that If I could get the
emulator to work I could then be able to configure the controls to aim with my
mouse but unfortunately I could not get the game working properly. It had a
setting to use either the system memory or video memory and every time I had it
on system memory the screen would go all white with some sort of bloom issue and
on the video memory it worked but had massive slowdown especially when there
were a lot of particles (like dust) I made a video of my attempt to play the
game like this and it’s pretty damn hilarious.
My attempt to emulate the game, it ran a leeetle bit slow XD
The other problem was in cars the button for accelerating was
the X button and it was the same for reloading while on foot, so I couldn’t use
the W key for example to both walk forward and accelerate in vehicles. So I
don’t think I’m ever going to try and emulate PS2 anymore it just never works
properly which is a shame cause there’s a heap of games on PS2 I’d like to get
going via emulator to see what they look like. Failing this almost made me
refuse to play the game altogether but I decided to soldier on (literally, or
maybe mercenary on) and continue with the game, and I admit even with this flaw
it was still pretty good. I did dabble at first with an invincibility cheat
from the action replay but stopped using it when I realised it affected
vehicles too, so from then on it was gung-ho going the way it was meant to be
played… mostly.
It’s hard to a judge a game that was made in 2005 by today’s
standards but I’ve got to admit the gameplay was pretty good, even with my old
worn out PS2 controllers and the slightly jerky gameplay and having to move and
aim using the joysticks, I found that Jennifer the character I chose to play as
moved quite fast, probably the fastest of the three. I did have a bit of
trouble learning the controls as they were more complicated than most of the
PS2 games I used to play, you can jump and reload of course, and melee using
bash, which is one of the most important abilities I feel as unless you use a
stun grenade it’s the only way to stun a number card in order to perform a
takedown and handcuff them. There’s the action button which is mostly used to
get in and out of vehicles, there’s the L1 and L2 button which are used to
throw/select grenades which I managed to muck up under pressure several times
and then there was the R1 and R2 button which was used to fire your current
weapon or switch between them. The L3 and R3 buttons were for crouching and
using binoculars/weapon scope and the DPAD had a variety of functions.
This guy's gonna get it
Pressing up and down on the D-pad cycled through you support
options, these were often the difference between failing and completing a
mission depending on the difficulty. Support options include supplies such as
health, ammo, repair kit and weapons, vehicles inc jeeps, trucks and even tanks
and helicopters further into the game, and finally artillery and airstrikes
which were great fun to use. You obtained most of these when starting a mission
as they were given free of charge or cost a certain amount but could pick them
up on your travels or unlock them through completing the main game or various
challenges. The most important support item is the extraction beacon as this is
used to evacuate your subdued number cards. I found entirely by coincidence
that you get credit for capturing the number card alive as soon as you get them
on the chopper, if it is destroyed after it takes off you still get credit you
just lose money for the destroyed support chopper this led to me being very
sloppy and calling the chopper into some very dangerously hot areas though
funnily enough it never got destroyed by the enemy on the way in just on the
way out, I guess they just allow this so you can get credit for getting the
number card in alive. Another problem I had was that bashing an enemy once
stunned them bashing them while they are stunned kills them which led to me
accidentally killing a number card on several occasions.
I swear getting them on the chopper was a huge relief most of the time.
Other common support items are the Medivac which sends a
helicopter to take you back to the Allied M.A.S.H the mash is always your
starting point when you load the game after having saved and it always has some
jeeps and soldiers around to start you off again, this is also where you can
change your outfit when you acquire new ones. Another item that you pretty much
always have access to is C4, C4 is always useful for blowing up stuff provided
you can get close enough to set it and works on pretty much anything. Most of
the time I only brought in heavy vehicles and airstrikes when there was just
too much military presence to deal with or too many things to blow up with C4
though it made things difficult when a number card was in the thick of it
leading to me to decide it was just too hard to get bring them in alive and
carpet bombing the area was the simpler solution. I must admit It was only the
extra money that made we want to bring them in alive (you only got half the
bounty for them being dead) it was pretty much always the easier option to
shoot them or blow them up from afar but of course you want to strive for that
record as every time to jail or finish off anumber card it is reported on the number card screen of the PDA.
A video showing some of the airstrikes and vehicles you can purchase from the Merchant of Menace shop. This player is using the unlockable North Korean Elite model
Pushing left on the D-pad toggles the flags above friendly
and enemy soldiers heads allowing you to easily see which faction they are from
which is useful in a few cases. Soldiers which have a flag on their heads
permanently are officers who have the special ability of seeing through your
disguise. You “disguise” as I put it is one of the most powerful and useful
ability in the game I think, cannot count the number of times I used it.
Basically when you get into a north Korean vehicle out of view of any NK
soldiers or any kind of officers it shortly flags you as “disguised as North
Korean” and you are able to travel safely among them without fear of being
attacked, you can also do this in a civilian vehicle as the North Korean Army
will not attack civilians seemingly no matter where they drive. This feature is
obviously very powerful when used properly though there are a few things I
could nitpick like I’m driving around in a jeep with no doors and windows and
I’m still disguised apparently, and if I’m in a fully enclosed tank somehow
officers can still spot me. And how can civilians drive almost anywhere they
want, I swear I drove a civilian car into that many fortified military bases
and even crashed into a tank at one point but still my disguise was safe.
I'm a civilian news reporter! yes really. In case you didn't know these journalist trucks were regularly parked inside the M.A.S.H and you could listen to the news reports of what you had accomplished.
Playing the game felt relatively ok once I got used to the
controls and it did take me awhile as I had to have the instruction book open
sitting there so I could refer to it, but once I got that down it was all good.
The vehicles were quite fun to use with the ability to honk your horn to load
up your vehicle with friendly soldiers and with three different options for
example you could exit by yourself with everyone still inside, command everyone
else to exit or everyone gets out at once which was really helpful especially
when you were driving into the danger zone and wanted some cover for when you
got out though often I just led my allies to their untimely deaths which is why
I was glad the word doesn’t spread around and others refuse to get in for the
next mission.
Having allies in your vehicle is helpful as they can attack
enemies with the mounted guns available, Brok quickly pointed out that a
certain type of the South Korean Jeeps had a rocket launcher mounted on the
back and had unlimited ammo when used by an npc, this really came in handy and
was a hell of a laugh when I was driving along and watching the trigger happy
npc obliterate any North Korean vehicle that I drove past. The vehicles handle
pretty damn tightly, those jeeps I swear have uncanny handling, I was driving
like a bat out of hell and could still take corners like I was stuck to the
road whereas if this was any kind of realistic car game I would have been
wrapped around a tree long ago. Tanks and helicopters were easy enough to drive
(and fly) apart from the joystick aiming difficulty of course, I must have
driven dozens of tanks and heavy vehicles over the most ridiculous of terrain
and used helicopters numerous times to try and speed up a mission or just make
it easier. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t but it was all part of
the fun in Mercenaries.
Hold the line friends!
Accepting contracts and capturing or killing number cards is
the main part of the game obviously, the missions ranged from destroying an
enemy base to escorting or rescuing VIPs and even delivering a sports car to
the docks. The different factions often plot against each other and many
missions involve attacking another faction which is currently friendly to you, so it helped to do all one factions missions
in a row though they generally increase in difficulty as you go on. If I had previously completed a mission that involved antagonising a faction and they could change to unfriendly or hostile and would attack on site. I had to somehow make a furious dash into their base and then go to the guard outside the HQ and give him a bribe of a certain amount so I could start receiving missions from that faction again.
Oops wrong tower
Entering
faction bases involve going up to a soldier outside the HQ and then you can go
into the building/tent etc, the faction leaders themselves are generally quite
funny to listen to especially if you walk around while they are talking. I noticed that they voiced their displeasure if you had previously completed a mission from another faction that involved attacking them. One
neat thing I noticed was that Jennifer could understand what the Chinese were
saying when they spoke in their native language. After a mission is passed you
usually get a message of the whereabouts of another number card which can
actually be found randomly on the map even if you don’t have the message, most
of the royal cards are included in missions for the factions but some are also
found on the map.
"Well
if it isn't the Mercenary who destroyed my tanks and killed my men, well that money
helped so I'll instantly forget about it, here's some more missions. Oh and did you know you can press the Triangle button to STAND UP?"
Working through the Deck of 52 is obviously a long process
as I took three breaks from the game while playing as it took a lot of playtime
to get through, sometimes when trying to finish a hard mission I only got that
done for the entire play session for one night. Capturing or killing a card can be as easy or as hard as
you make it, often I tried going in with just what I had but obviously the more
you spend on extra vehicles, supplies and aerial support the easier it is. I’ve
had some trying times, losing cards to trigger happy allies, wayward bullets or
explosions, poorly aimed tank shells or airstrikes, one of the most common ways
I fudged it up at early game was accidentally smacking them twice killing them.
Of course once you do have them captured and cuffed it doesn’t end there,
getting the chopper down safely requires either escaping the area or ridding it
of enemy presence, and even then you need to find a reasonably flat spot so the
chopper can land, man the amount of times I saw that freakin “landing zone not
clear” warning was hella annoying, I’ve even gotten impatient and sloppy at
times and ended up getting credit for the capture then seeing the evac copter
blown to bits because I hadn’t made the area secure. Going After the Aces is an
entirely different kettle of fish as when you start an Ace contract you are
helicoptered to a different location as the Ace’s have their own area which
count as one big mission.
Gotcha!
I was impressed with the amount of weaponry and vehicles and
general resources available in the game, you’re able to carry a primary and
secondary weapon, most of the time I had an automatic weapon such as an M4 in
the first slot and an RPG or Sniper Rifle in the second and man did I have times
where I wished I had one or the other, at least at times when I had the sniper
rifle I usually had C4 to use. I spent most of my time purchasing jeeps and
helicopters from the Merchant of Menace as I often found tanks or knew where
the friendly factions kept theirs but man those airstrikes were oh so fun to
use, the smaller ones like the surgical strike were great for blowing up things
such as tanks while the larger strikes were for when you were just like screw
it I’m, just gonna blow everything to the moon. The way these were called in
varied, the airstrikes were usually way of satellite or ground laser. With the
satellite strikes you took control of a birds eye view camera to pinpoint the
location and were very accurate, the ground laser was done by a vertical laser
aimed from your location that you had to make sure that nothing was in that way
to block where you were pointing. The artillery strikes however had a very
dangerous way of marking as they were done by throwing a beacon onto the ground,
and did I mention that you couldn’t throw particularly far and after that
beacon was thrown you had to get the fack out of there fast as it didn’t take
long for the bombs to start falling, I hardly used artillery because of this.
Calling in a surgical strike via ground laser.
The size of the map in mercenaries was fairly impressive,
there was heaps to explore intentionally or unintentionally. Mercenaries is a
true sandbox in a way that there’s so much stuff happening around you, more so
then Red dead redemption and GTA for example as in those games the random
events seem to revolve around you, but in this game it seems you’re just
driving along and you all of a sudden drive into a full on pitched battle
between two factions with tanks and everything, sometimes I just screamed and
got the hell out of there as fast as I could, this was usually when I was on a
difficult mission and didn’t want to die, but other times listening to the
recommendation from Brok I just sat at a safe distance and watched the carnage
unfold and it was lots of fun to see out, who’s going to win? etc There are
places on the map that are permanently under control of one faction and you are
attacked no matter what you’re standing with them, there are places on the map
which seem to be constantly besieged by conflict, and then there are the edges
of the map where if you stray too far are identified as a deserter and are
bombed by allied planes. Goddamn that was annoying as it was usually by
accident and I was all like “Wait sorry, NO I’LL GO BACK NNONONONONONO AAAHHH!
‘BOOM!’ resulting in afailed mission.
Random things happen on missions too, mostly scripted but they are still good,
like when I was delivering that sports car for the Russians, you’d think it’d
be easy but no the game throws everything under the sun to try and block your
path and there’s also a lot of random funny things happening like npcs crashing
helicopters and falling from the sky.
Oops that wasn't supposed to happen
Regarding the collectibles Brok had to continually remind me
to look for them as sometimes I was just so intent upon completing the missions
I didn’t think of it, I ended up collecting a few though, enough to unlock some
extra features like new weapons and supply drops and the ability to use other
characters models such as Agent Buford of the South Koreans and even Indiana
Jones for some reason. Had a lot of fun with that and also destroying the
statues was pretty fun. Sorry if I spoil it but for those who don’t know it
there are actually two maps, you start off in the relatively warmer southern province with more vegetation and then after the first two Ace contracts you move
to the colder more snowy northern province. The map change doesn’t change too much,
just continues the story with new missions in a different environment and the
bases are all in different spots to change things up a little, also there seems
to be a bit more warfare happening then the last map and of course more
collectibles to er, collect.
Your PDA showing part of the Southern Province, you can see the South Korean base on the map.
The Ace contracts as I said before are each set in
entirely different instance on islands away from the main map, I was impressed
by the scenarios as they had some pretty impressive moments which I’ll
describe. In the Ace of Diamonds contract I was running through the jungle then
the a nearby car exploded and I was ambushed by covert jungle marines in
camouflage and at the end of the mission I had to blow up the base as it was
the only way to kill the Ace and a crane actually landed on him. Another moment
was when I was doing the ace of Hearts contract and had to fight through all
these enemies around cargo crates until from watching a video I realised I
could just summon an enemy jeep, put on a disguise and drive all the way to the
end bit, several moments like that got me shaking my head at the way you could
make things indefinitely easier with just a small change.
The Ace of Diamonds mission done on Xbox360, which features the covert jungle marine ambush i mentioned, though this player manages to get the Ace of Diamonds out alive even with enemy soldiers and tanks shooting at him no less, whereas I just blew up the base with him in it.. Interestingly enough someone made a comment on the video saying "The cheat way is to clear that base first, where the ace will appear.
Then go up and destroy the supergun, then you find the ace on his own" *facepalm* wish I'd thought of that.
The graphics in the game obviously look dated by today’s
standards, but it looked pretty damn good for a game made in 2005 as when the
PS2 was released the industry thankfully had gotten over that awful transition
to full 3D phase in the late nineties and early 2000’s, sure textures were muddy
and the view was blurry and hard to see into the distance but it was
workable.I didn’t have too many qualms
with the interface, the icons were relatively easy to see and things such as
circles which showed you where to get into vehicles which really helped. The
game’s graphics were fine not much more to say, I liked the little details like
the soldiers milling around in the faction bases and things like the miniature
map of the area in the Chinese base and some of the explosions were pretty
spectacular with almost no slowdown.
Good time to leave I think
The sound and music was pretty good, the
soundtrack at the start was quite memorable and the sound effects were spot on
apart from a few annoying voice actors and some acting in parts. I swear
there’s this bit in the final Ace Contract the Ace of Spades General Song who
I’ll add is fleeing with the codes for the country’s nuclear arsenal and a
captive you’ve saved says “you must stop him!” and she’s like “stop who?” and
I’m like “fackin General Song the Ace of Spades you dumb bitch! who do you
think?” and then the guy is like “he has the codes” and she’s like “the launch
codes?” Fuaaaarrrr! but yeh anyway otherwise it was fun to listen to. The
troopers themselves yelled different things and the allied were the funniest
obviously being in English telling you to get moving before they were even in
the vehicle and other things like “let’s see what this tin can can do”.
"Stop Who?"
Despite my issues with the game is was enjoyable overall,
sure there was the stick aiming using my slightly worn controllers, the
confusion of which button to press resulting in me flailing around, the sometimes
muddy graphics making long range sniping difficult and the fact that I just don’t
think I could go through that again for fun. Despite all this the game damn fun
and entertaining enough as Brok sat down with me to watch almost every session
I did, this was the beauty of this particular game, as if he was watching me
play Star Wars the Old Republic for instance he’d probably be bored shitless. Having
him there helped a lot though, having played the game through before had a lot
of advice which helped immensely, I never thought how useful it was to have someone
watch you play as they saw and suggested things that you would never think
about.
On to plan B!
A sequel Mercenaries
2: World in Flames was created in 2008 though Brok claimed that it was not
nearly as good apart from the upgraded graphics. I was talking to Brok about
the ideal situation where Mercenaries Playground of Destruction was remade on
PC with full mouse and keyboard support and how awesome that would be, if this
actually happened I would be ecstatic and would definitely try go through it
again and would place it in a much higher regard then I already do. Though we
can dream can’t we?
Hello, it’s time once again to get Hustlin’ or technically
talk about what Hustlin’ I’ve done. It’s been a few months but as far as I can
remember I had to finish the “Forged Alliances” leadup to the Shadow of Revan and I ended up doing the Depths of Manaan and Legacy of the Rakata flashpoints where you expose Dark Arkous and Colonal Darok as Revanite Traitors. I did it in "Solo Mode" where you are joined by a powerful bot companion that heals/tanks and does damage to help you so that you can complete the flashpoint to continue the story. So once that was done I was ready to start the main expansion on my Guardian.
These Czerka droids are TNT (di-no-mite!)
Not sure whether I
mentioned this but I’ve joined yet another guild as the newly named Reclaimers
basically just died soon after moving to the Harbinger so I eventually found a
pretty active aussie guild called Eternal
Oblivion and have been in it ever since, it’s been going good, they are
active, have an active forum and raid regularly though I have not yet taken
part unfortunately. I decked out my Valiant Jedi armor with new
level 55 mods and also a new colour, I decided to have a bit of fun with new
dye modules so I used some of the white and light orange dye modules Kxan had
made to colour my gear giving me orange armor and a new white coat. Since the
Shadow of Revan series had a distinct lack of conversations that was able to
influence your companions affection, so I decided to do what I’ve been wanting
to do for a while and smash it up with Lord Scourge, so I gifted him my old Remnant Arkanian Knight
gear which when paired with the white and light orange dye module made us look
like a pretty good team.
Lookin boss on Rishi
So anyway, before I started the Revan first I had to pimp
out my crib, yes my new Coruscant apartment which as a subscriber bonus I got
for 3 credits woo, I decided on the basic 3 rooms layout as I really didn’t
want to spend the heap of credits and cartel coins to get access to the rest of
the house. So then I got busy decorating, as before I used the entrance room as
a sort of utility hub and garage with my speeders and the three storage access
machines Ship, Legacy and Guild and also a wall mounted galactic trade network
kiosk though I did realise that there was also one that was able to be placed
on the ground (oh well)
Entrance room
I covered most of the floor with those merchants rugs
and the walls with republic banners, jedi guardian symbols, the trophy frames
and some other picture frames including one of the Jedi Temple on Tython. I
went a bit more extravagant with this decoration buying a proper space lounge
and gambling table for the guest bed and entertainment room and a chess table
and orange sheeted bed which was quite expensive (in credits) on the GTN, I
recently added a Rishi palm tree (replacing the idol) and a scary looking dread
throne which I left for Lord Scourge (hopefully he likes it). Unfortunately you can't see my companions there in the pictures as I
forgotten to take photos when I furnished the apartment so I took them
after I had started the Fallen Empire expansion where you are separated
from your companions and do not encounter them again until later in the
story.
Hallway
Entertainment room and crew bedroom
My Bedroom
The new storylines are now started from a console on your
ship and I can confirm that it actually lists all the expansions and storylines
that you’ve yet to do so you know which one to pick. After the events of the
Forged Alliances questline you start the new expansion while flying through
space as usual before crew member says to you that they feel something on a
planet called Rishi. I can’t
exactly remember what happened specifically but you land on Rishi which is
basically a like some kind of Star Wars ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ style of
planet, you even get a pirate themed armor set and Lightsaber,
ArrrrRRrrRRrr! Unfortunately I didn't actually wear mine that much so I've only got a few shots here.
The Pirate-themed Rishi Gear set
Rishi is a tropical planet with lush jungles and its main city Raiders Cove has ramshackle
buildings and walkways which still incorporate wood as a building material
which was very weird to see in SWTOR, this is partially due toa bird-like species called the “Rishi”
themselves who were the primitive natives of the planet. And then you’re
mistaken for some sort of leader of apirate gang who are also cannibals, so you play along with that doing
various missions and finding out information until you get back in contact with
Lana and Theron.
Raiders Cove, main city of Rishi
Qaraah, one of the Rishii primitive bird-like race native to Rishi
Who you work with
continually against many pirates and Revan’s forces also recruiting Shae Vizla in the Blood Hunt flashpoint which is
basically on an island and is various chambers shaped in a circle with a
central area designed to be a series of challenges before facing Shae (aka
“Torch”). The storyline on this planet culminates with the Battle of Rishi where
Revan lures both factions fleets to Rishi in the hope of letting them destroy
each other, but by battling Revans forces you are able either reprogram the
anti-air defense from the ground to attack the Revanite ships (Light side
choice) or the ships of the other faction (Dark Side choice). You then manage
to get in contact with Satele
Shan and Darth Marr
and get them to stop fighting and work together, sounds like a damn Disney
story doesn’t it?
Smashing it up in the Battle of Rishi
Collaboration between leaders.
So that finishes off the Rishi part of the story, you then
find out Revan has gone to Yavin
4 and you follow him with the newly formed alliance between the Republic
and Sith Empire forces. Yavin 4 is a jungle planet home to the Massassi and if I’m not
mistaken was the site of Luke Skywalker’s new Jedi Order during the Jedi Knight
series. You’re teaming up with the Empire at this point and there is lots of
back and forth banter between Republic and Empire character who have been
forced together. THe distant trees make an interesting view as it looks like they are an actual texture instead of individually rendered and indeed when you take a speeder off the platform it descends into the trees then the screen goes black and appears under the canopy reinforcing the fact.
The main Yavin base camp
This was taken with Uxan but I like the shot, it shows how the canopy is sort of like a texture almost.
The missions you do on Yavin 4 are basically the daily
missions you do eventually with the exception of the story ones, interestingly
once you get to the final mission to confront Revan you have the choice of
starting the actual Temple
of Sacrifice Operation or doing a very easy non-heroic mission where you
join up with all the heroes from the expansion and go up against Revan. This
only takes about 3-4 minutes then you’re done and you also get a level 192
mainhand for your companion. After this I found that you actually get a mission
to complete all of the daily mission and then you get to choose a box that
contains a set of up-to-date 192 level gear for one of your companions.
Surface of Yavin IV
So
basically if you do all of the dailies 5 times you can deck out all of your
companions in new gear, you can even do the Revan battle mission as many times
as you like which I think is kind of silly. I mean you do have the option to
defeat Revan without requiring completion of the Temple of Sacrifice raidand seeing the proper climactic conclusion
which is good, but just defeating him again and again to get weapons for all of
your companions is kind of lacklustre. But oh well he’s defeated but not dead
as you release the “good” side of Revan and you are treated to a rumour about
the Emperor returning and a pretty cool cinematic of the Republic and Sith
forces leaving the planet.
Revan is defeated!
The gang leaving the planet.
So that was the end of the Shadow of Revan expansion, after
that I decked myself out in an 186 level Yavin Pummeler
gear which I dyed a light brown and yellow colour which looked kind of Aussie
hah well not as aussie as the green and gold but I wasn’t going that far.
My new Yavin Pummeler gear
I
also joined a group and got the Fleet Datacron which wasn’t as hard as I
thought just a bit of group co-ordination needed.
I have... the power!
I joined a guild run of the Dread Fortress where we
got all the way to Dread
Master Brontes but weren’t able to defeat her but that’s a lot further then
I had gotten before.
And that's not my guild btw it's another guild
I also managed to get the Rishi Datacrons because of a
lucky glitch so I didn’t have to do the whole Grophets thing which I never
would have done anyway.
Never thought I'd say this but thank god for glitches
I also got a group for the second last of the of the Macrobinocular
missions but unfortunately it bugged
out for me and I got stuck. Though it was pretty impressive you were jumping
across fast moving speeders Nar Shadaa though obviously it was only the scenery
moving.
ooh boy here we go, jumping puzzles!
Then as I like to say I was back on my ASSassin and it was
time to start The Rise of the Hutt Cartel Story, so off to Makeb I went where me and Xalek met up with Darth Marr who
tells us basically that the Empire is losing the war and is in the shitter so
you gotta get some valuable resource called isotope-5.
Wow has no idea things were this bad
So the premise is
roughly the same as the Republic story except this time you’re going in secret
and trying to get the mineral for yourselves. You get a crack team to help with
military and science personnel and you go at it wheeling and dealing and
stealing and killing along the way. It was ok and good to see the Empire part
but damn I really don’t think I’d wanna do it again with every character unless
it’s required as Makeb is such a grind.
These drill site mission were a major pain even with my stealth ability
SPOILER ALERT What actually happens in
the end as with the Republic story you evacuate the planetas it’s presumably going to collapse but the
Empire secretly finds a way to stabilize the planet to continue mining and
leads to the bonus series being about the Regulators
causing trouble with the mining operation amongst other things.
Makeb's terrain was difficult at time
I also checked our my guild sister Empire guild “Secret
Squirrel’s” guild ship which was quite a sight indeed, I didn’t even know we
had one, and I don’t think I’ve even looked in Eternal Oblivion's ship either.
Wow what a mess
I started the Dread Seed and Macrobinocular missions with the intention of
doing them on the Empire Side, I think I’m at the final missions for both now
but are unable to do it as I need a group for it.
Lazors! This was quite a fun mission in the Macrobinoculars/Shroud series
Thankfully finding the Dread seeds wasn't as hard this time due to previous experience.
I also accidentally started
the Shadow of Revan expansion chapter trying to find out which level it was or
something and now I can’t abandon it and start again but oh well I guess I can
always watch the cinematic again on youtube. One of the last things I did was
use my commendations to by myself an entire new set of Yavin
Duelist gear which has a helm that makes me look a lot like a droid, I dyed
it a dark red and light purple colour which makes an interesting look indeed.
My new colourful armor
I
also went looking to buy a new lightsaber as the one I had was annoying me with
its delayed activation time. Though the one I bought the Reckoning’s
Exposed Saberstaff was quite unique with it’s well.. ‘exposed’ nature it’s
looks a bit too industrial especially with the handgrip pattern looking like
it’s from a modern day tool or machine and not something a Sith Lord would use though
I could possibly try out it’s similar alternative the Retribution’s
Exposed Saberstaff or even the Blademaster’s Saberstaff
which is new on the Cartel Market.
I decided it was time to treat myself with a new character
and create that Jedi
Consular that I always wanted. He was to be named “Qxan” after my Druid in
WoW “Qbui” as he is going to be a Sage
using the Telekinetics
skill tree and that’s as similar do the Druid’s Balance spec as you can get. I
went with the Mirialan as I was
going to go Miraluka
but already used them for my Bounty Hunter, I spose I could have unlocked
something else like Chiss
but I just found Mirialans best for healers so I went with it, I was however an
unusual coloured Mirialan being a very yellow colour instead of the usual green
but this went well with the healer class type. I also chose the normal styled
body as I wasn’t atank this time and a
delightful mullet style mop of hair and as one final change I bought the extra
Mirialan tattoos from the Cartel Market to make me different to everyone else. Due
to me not wanted to level up too fast I bought the White Acute Module from the
Gree who sells them on the fleet to bring my experience back to normal
otherwise I’d level way too fast and my quests would go grey with all the new
boosts involved.
My new Jedi Sage
So I went out and had great fun discovering Tython again
running around and hitting things with my training saber and throwing force
telekinetics around. This time for my Light/Dark side stuff I decided to just
do what I want and not just be good all of the time especially when I have no
companions, I especially liked the dark side options of taking revenge on the
fleshbeasts when they injured a Padawan and blackmailing the two lovers into
keeping their romance a secret.
Ah a moral dilemma (spoiler: i made those fleshbeass PAY with their lives)
The Story for the first chapter of the Consular
revolves around a mysterious illness that affects several Jedi Masters
including your own Master Yuon
Par and you go around collecting several Jedi” Noeticons” (I think that’s
what they are called) which contain the knowledge of previous Jedi Masters who
you talk with to gain insight into the illness. I picked up the companion Qyzen Fess at the end of the
Tython questline and he is a great help being a tanking Companion, in his
original skin he’s missing an eye so I picked a customization where he still has
one hah.
Me and Qyzen in Coruscant, yes I looks pretty ridiculous
I go my Lightsaber on Tython with a Ritual similar to the
Jedi Knight, so I finished off that planet then headed off to the Fleet and got
my Jedi Sage training and
also picked up the gathering skillBioanalysis,
the crafting skill Biochem,
and the mission skill Diplomacy, all
of which I’ve never done before though it’s kinda funny when I think about it I
should be doing Underworld trading again and then I could be a damn drug
Kingpin with my crew being well versed in crating drugs though I suppose you could
argue they have an ability to talk themselves out of trouble.
I finished Coruscant without too much
trouble, picking some interesting conversation options when I found Qyzen
didn’t approve of some Light Side ones and having a fight with my own master
before eventually sacrificing some of my power to heal her. I found Sage combat
pretty good throwing force telekinetics around though I sort of wish you could
do it without your lightsaber out but of course you need to be able to block
too. I got the STAP Royal
for my speeder as I didn’t know what else to use but it was pretty cheap on the
GTN and a nice golden colour that matched my skin (sortof) and I then jumped
back into the Corellian
Defender-Class Light Corvette and did some space missions but it's kind of a letdown when you’re
usually all pumped to see you’re new ship and then it’s just the same one for
your main but meh it’s my fault for choosing a Jedi Class again instead of
either Smuggler or Agent though definitely going to go Agent next as I need to
make another Imperial character.
"Ahh this thing again"
So after finishing Coruscant I continued on
with my Trooper. My Trooper as far as I can see was back on Nar Shaddaa doing the bonus
series and following up on my companion Aric Jorgen’s mission to
find his lost Sniper Squad the “Deadeyes”. The bonus series was pretty dark
with you flushing out an Imperial prison renown for interrogation and torture.
Imps be torturin,
Aric’s companion mission was basically about the SIS
withholding information about his Squad from us. Though we managed to find out
that the Deadeyes had been captured and went down to investigate but found they
had been taken offworld so the hunt continues. I then did the Maelstorm Prison
flashpoint and woke up Revan,
yep that Revan, the one I was seeing a lot of on my Guardian recently though
this was the first time we had met him.
Argh big monsters!
Revan is initially concerned that he lost control of the Emperor and war might break out, but calms down when told that it has already happened.
During this time I managed to get to
the romance stage with Elara Dorne and managed to sex her once or twice which
made a good ending to this session as my subscription was running out so I
decided to leave it there and continue with my Trooper in the next session.
It's hard to be romantic when all I can see in this shot is my right ass cheek
So that’s it for now, nothing groundbreaking this time
around, stay tuned for the much awaited Knights of the Fallen Empire
expansion which brings with it some BIIIIIG changes so I will have something to
rant on about in the coming post. Oh and one other thing, I did see a certain
new Star Wars film.
And it was pretty damn good, nuff’ said.
