Is it my story? Um...kind of?

It's nothing like previous generations of cRPGs, what I think of as literate RPGs, wherein you got more than three choices, you saw exactly what you're going to say, and writers were free to create enormous branching conversation networks from there. The "mood wheel" necessarily forces the writers toward simplified conversation trees and, as a result, coarser, less nuanced responses.

SWTOR does an uneven but mostly good job of at least giving you three different responses, instead of, say, Dragon Age 2, in which you could always say precisely the same thing in one of three vocal inflections. In fact, it's extremely, painfully obvious when SWTOR forces you like that. And it's obvious because it's not that common.

My feeling of autonomy, of acting like my character instead of nudging somebody else's character to the right or left of the same track, varied by class:

• Imperial Agent was by far the best. Vastly different potential actions covering most of the natural impulses I had in response to events. The events themselves were often terrifyingly restrictive/forceful, but my options for responding were varied and I felt satisfied with what I could do 90% of the time. (Sometimes - particularly the end of Act 1 - I was absolutely floored that the writers thought to give me the option I was secretly, hopelessly hoping for. Good job.)
  
• Smuggler was pretty good. It had a tendency toward "same thing, different voice," but since the class story's strength was its dialogue, that voice distinction was valuable. And it did give different action responses. I was playing a wittier version of the character I was sort of writing.
  
• Trooper I've been iffy with, especially since I did exhaustive versions of some companion conversations and saw that every possible path through the entire conversation led to precisely the same response lines and precisely the same affection gains. Not a fan, guys. I wasn't playing me or even anybody I could really identify with.
  
• Sith Warrior rarely gave me an intuitive choice, but it gave options for strongly typed roles. It's strong LS/DS, but managed not to feel forced or cliche about it. My Warrior felt like she was mine.
  
• Sith Inquisitor was pretty bad. Three variants on "herp derp I'll do the stupid now!", which made it a cascade of hilarity rather than a roleplaying experience. Fun as hell itself, but it wasn't "my" story.
  
• Jedi Knight was a traditional Somebody Else's Story, and it was meant to be. I was okay with going for the chosen-hero ride.
  

So while I rarely felt like I was truly controlling my destiny, I was usually satisfied with the experience as crafted.

It doesn't really feel like my story in my opinion.

Main Reason: Illusion of choice. Your choices don't matter (With the possible exception of Agent story) because in the end, you always reach the same thing. Get the same ending. Also, your options are limited.

For example, at the end of Belsavis involving Skadge on my BH, I wanted to shoot that guy's face off, but I can't. The game won't let me.

The only way I can make it feel like my story is if I RP.

All of my characters choices are based on how I think my Jedi/Sith/BountyHunter/Trooper should answer. Not how I think the story wants me to answer it. Hell, I picked a Sith to fully embrace the dark side and somehow found myself making lightside decisions to the point where I am now light I where I was just dark II earlier in the day. I do immerse myself in the game as much as possible so to the extent it can, all the Alts I play have been MY STORY.

But then I also play the characters how I see them in my head. All of them have a backstory. Even if they have a story given to them by BioWare, I mold those stories to fit my own need and play style. My Mara was once a Jedi. According to me. My Shadow is from a clan who has ties all over the galaxy, which actually comes from the EU comics and books. (Diath) My trooper was pressed into service when his "brother" became a Jedi.

It's all about how much you can make it feel like your own and I've done that in most cases.

My story? Some classes moreso than others. Best fit with the character I had in my head when I created him was Bounty Hunter, going will all dark side choices. Hutta started him off with just the right feel. Smuggler, on the other hand, while I like how Gunslinger handles, the story was jarring from the start with who I knew in my head my smuggler is.

This is all on me, however, as I do create my characters with personalities & backstories etc. So I don't expect the SWTOR class story to necessarily jibe. It is tedious when every time my smuggler has a conversation with a female NPC there is a good chance that I'll see a prompt to [Flirt]... and my smuggler is capital N capital I, Not Interested.

I do enjoy seeing how the class stories unfold, regardless. But as a roleplayer, my story is the one that's playing out in my own head. That's okay too.

There are some restrictions, to be sure. After all, we can only choose different outcomes not create our own.

Still, my main toon is a Sith Warrior. I had a very clear idea of how I wanted to play with him, how I wanted him to behave and so on. For the most part, the game allowed me to do that. In some instances I was extremely pleased with the way I was able to shape him - an example would be the world quest on Hoth, where, IIRC, I had to find and fight an old Jedi stranded there since the war; I defeated his pupil and then fought him until we came even and the ice cave started to collapse around us so I said "Screw it!" and chose not to continue to fight but rather to bail out of the cave before it was too late. I haven't had that scenario in my head before I played the game and I didn't know what was going to happen beforehand but this outcome fitted the character I had imagined so well.

It's similair with my Smuggler alt I'm leveling up now. I imagined her as this kind of shady character; not evil, per se, but greedy and shady - she's a criminal after all, the scum of the Galaxy. And the game allowed me to go there, with her making dirty deals with fellow criminals, the Hutts or even a Sith while on Tatooine where I helped her kill (!) the Jedi who was chasing her . The game gives me the option to make her this snarky, cynical individual who cares only for her own profit while sometimes (just sometimes!) a slightly tarnished heart of gold shines underneath this. Again, the situations and the outcomes are preconcieved by the devs, sure, but I still have the opportunity to shape her personality in the way I wanted before I got to actually play.

It's been a few months. How does eveyone feel now concerning "Your Story".

Sith Warrior: 10/ 10

Bounty hunter: 10/10

Sith inquisitor (my main) 4/10

Inquisitor story had many bad things in it that almost completely killed it for me and made me want to forget it all and imagine a new story. At best I could call it 'generic'. I expected more.

First off, you overestimate the control any of us have over events that happen in our real lives.

I'm not troubled by the events that happen in the SI story. Im troubled by the words that come out of his mouth at times, and those I SHOULD have more control over.

Sith Warrior: 10/ 10

Bounty hunter: 10/10

Sith inquisitor (my main) 4/10

 

Inquisitor story had many bad things in it that almost completely killed it for me and made me want to forget it all and imagine a new story. At best I could call it 'generic'. I expected more.

I'd call it less generic and more underwhelming. You spend the first act getting macguffins for a ritual. Then you spend the second act getting macguffins for another ritual... I haven't bothered to get to the third act.

I mean you compare the fall of the apprentice on Taris to the fall (or not) of Jaesa. It's obvious a LOT more time and energy was put in for the Warrior's storyline to feel more impactful. You could do something like Jaesa's conversion in much shorter time (after all, most of the Act 1 quests are figuring out just who the heck she is), and have it feel as powerful, BUT the Inquisitor's story line is more Snidely Whiplash for how it deals with that subject.

I mean I understand they wanted an "internal politik" storyline for the Inquisitor... but when I got right down to it, I thought that the Warrior line should have been more about front line style escapades, while the Inquisitor got the Warriors storyline (with tweaks). It fits much better with the themes of the character (The Sorcerer who runs a spy network and is heavily engaged in undermining his/her boss while causing the fall of a special jedi? HOW DOES THAT NOT FIT PERFECTLY!?).

The Jedi Knight's story just feels to... formulaic to be "my" tale. "Here's four planets! Go stop our superweapons!" then "Here's three planets! get maguffins!" While you slowly build yourself into some paragon. It's to videogamey and they don't vary things enough to make you involved beyond just kinda doing it.

I think it also says something about "our story" when you talk to people about the False Emperor Flashpoint and half of them would happily join Malgus (particularly light side characters). Why? Because his position on how the Empire is currently is the position a LOT of players feel resonates. He wants to modernize the Empire's armies and power structure, and get rid of the racism and short sightedness of the current regime, which is what a lot of players basically are doing. It seems stupid if you're running around as a Twilek or Chiss or Rattataki, and are attempting to keep in place a power system that you're a second class citizen within.

One thing that should also be noted, is that (for me at least) the voices that are given to the characters make it seem like it'd be impossible to roll a certain way. I honestly couldn't run as a light side male Inquisitor because the voice just sounds so... EVIL. And by the same token, it seems like I wouldn't be able to run a dark side male consular because his voice sounds to much like a standard high society good guy. Generally the female voices are better, but not by much.

I would say that it does not feel like my story but for like the characters story, but this could be in part because of how I create them in my head. Instead of creating an actual back-story for all of my characters I went into each one with an idea of what type of person they were:

Smuggler: Money as main motivation, but still a 'decent' person

Sith Warrior: Honorable, but still Evil as that is simply how the Sith are

Jedi Consular: Paragon of Good

Trooper: Willing to do ANYTHING to protect the Republic

Sith Inquisitor: Completely and utterly INSANE

Bounty Hunter: Will complete a contract but is not a mass murderer

Jedi Knight: Sarcastic hero who does not always see eye to eye with the Council

Imperial Agent: A good person making the best of a bad situation

The only time I have had trouble is with incorporating the Legacy system, mainly with my Trooper being the child of my Inquisitor.

I've found for me that different classes have different responses to the questions. Both the Jedi Knight and the Sith Warrior have felt like my story in the way that were I in their shows I feel I'd respond the way the do. Both have offered me opportunities that if I was living in that setting I would walk away from or take advantage of and I've been able to play my characters accordingly.

On the other hand, my Smuggler which was the first story I played felt nothing like my story. It wasn't that the choices weren't there or the motivations but that the whole storyline felt too unoriginal. All I could feel whilst playing it was that I was playing some distant ancestor of Han Solo. I've got a ship that feels far too much like the Falcon, a crew that feels too much like A New Hopes assortment (A wookie, a princess, a novice Jedi, an annoying droid) and I seem to be suffering much of his misfortune such as a bounty being placed on my head by a crime lord who has a hideout on Tatooine and being pulled into fighting for the good guys regardless of whether or not I want to. Of all the storylines it just felt like I was given the least amount of chance to shape my character and the smuggling side of it felt more akin to being the FedEx guy. I love Han Solo but that didn't mean I wanted a storyline like his rather than my own.

My jedi sentinel story does feel like my story, i enjoy every moment of it. Especially since starting corellia where i meet old friends from earlier in the story Just that moment of "holy crap i saved you at level 3" or "i remember redeeming you much earlier on in the story" Things like this just give huge replay value.

does Mannaeus come back? funniest conversation in the game

No, not really. My "head canon" for my characters is a fair bit different than what ends up happening on screen, in many cases. For example, while my Sith may be less wantonly thuggish and "eevil" than many others, he is in no way "an agent of the Light" as Jaesa called him after I slaughtered everyone close to her, turned her Jedi Master to the Dark Side, and then killed him because I could... somehow I still ended up with light Jaesa simply because I had 500 more LS points than DS points. My Warrior does want to change the Empire from within, but he doesn't want to radically change the Empire's socio-political structure. He firmly belives that there is a time and place for Sith power struggles and maneuvering, but he also understands that the Sith need to put the good of the people of the Empire before their personal gain.

Vette is an exceptionally useful creature, and while my character does experience some modicum of affection and perhaps even lust, she is still his property--albeit property granted a degree of autonomy. He removed her shock collar because the illusion of freedom made her more useful to him than forcing her to bear an obvious reminder of her servitude. She may be looked upon as a concubine but he would never take her as a wife and lose the ability to form an alliance with another powerful Sith family. He also would like to make sure to have legitimate Sith children, because he sees the continuance of the Sith as an important thing for the Empire.

Quinn will be tortured to within an inch of his life, restored to relative health, frozen in carbonite, and thawed once in a while for more torment. When I get bored with that, I'll thaw him out, have him demoted to a non-com, and have him given a billet on some backwater like Hoth or Tatooine.

That's as far as I've gotten with the story (Taris now), but Bioware's "your story" gimmick is just a marketing ploy.

Depends on the class. Some of them work better than others. My latest character - a Sith inquisitor with a tendancy towards light sided decisions for various reasons - had a decent enough balance for a while, but it didn't last. Ashara joining was a touch strange, as she'd apparently gotten it into her head that my character was trying to forge a peace between Empire and Republic and wanted her help to do that. Ok, fine. I never said anything of the kind, but sure. Whatever makes you happy. By act three, it's as if they just stopped trying to let players choose how their character thinks, and switched to "look, your character is super dark side and anti-traditionalist. Deal with it". I literally can't fathom why I'd have wanted Xalek as an apprentice, but all my dialogue options during his recruitment scene can effectively be summerised as 'you're great, murder is awesome, tradition sucks', or 'I'm too impatient and want this guy because I need an apprentice now for some reason'. Wat.

It's best I not think too much about the apparent necessity of having all my Inquisitor's allies and followers kneeling before her at the end, after she's elevated to the Dark Council for some reason. Perhaps there's just some intricacies of the Sith hierarchy I'm not grasping, but if there was an option to not do that? I'd have taken it. Light siders having the same ending as dark siders with a slight variation on what Darth title you're given (and how does that work, anyway? Do the dark council know that you're light side? Why would they be ok with that?) was pretty damn disappointing, considering the implications.

And now my brain stopped working bleurghtired.

I wouldn't say any of them feel particularly "my story" considering the dialog options are non-branching and severely limited in most cases.

Particularly since my inquisitor is my main character, and the one I bond with the most, but his story didn't for the most part go anywhere I wanted it to go. Mainly due to the way he behaves in the story (or doesnt, since the inq is a brainless puppet in the class story). Also I hate the way the relationship with Ashara turned out. (back then I hadn't realized that I can cancel the convos and restart, though)

Bounty hunter has a great story I can relate to, but I cant get the same feeling I do with my "main" character. Same for the sith warrior who has the story I like the most. (even though its chocked with Sith cliches and SW bad-assitude, thats why I love it. Compare it to SI story which was the complete opposite)

On second thought, propably the story that feels most like "my story" is that of the bounty hunter. Everything synches together so well.

ps. So far I havent gotten excited about the smuggler story at all. Only started with JK story.