Around Alderaan: Nar Shaddaa at Night

Instead of sticking to my roots and fully functioning with my Trooper I’ve gone and gotten my legacy (“The Sunspots Legacy”) at level 30 and then moved onto a bunch of alts. As a result, I’ve really retarded by progression up through the levels but I am enjoying a great deal of the storyline flow.

Right now, I’m leveling my Smuggler through her storyline and that’s lead me off of Taris and into Nar Shaddaa. I know I haven’t shown any screenshots from there, but it’s another neon-glittering city-world like Coruscant.

To show the majesty of the artwork that Star Wars: The Old Republic puts into places like this, I figured that I’d tiptoe out on the edge of a taxi platform and get a shot of what it looks like at night with all the loglo lighting up the sky.

City-planets like Nar Shaddaa used to be a mainstay of the galaxy, but with the war against the Sith Empire looming in the recent past, planets like Taris represent the terrible destruction wrought.

Here’s a visual of my lovely Smuggler, Kaspar riding a taxi through the glow of Nar Shaddaa.

I’ve been following a plot line where she’s seeking the treasures of a long-dead system lord/mobster fellow who went pirate and hid his junk in some unknown reach of space. It’s lead me to a multitude of familiar planets—I suspect that Tatooine and Alderaan will soon be on the list.

Finally, I’d like to leave everyone with my favorite sight in the entire game: my ship.

As a Smuggler, SWTOR gives us a shout out to the most famous Star Wars smuggler of all time: Han Solo. How do they do that? Well, apparantly the fastest ships in the galaxy have always been Corellian Freighters.

Booyah! You can make the Kessel Run in how many parsecs?

Around Alderaan: The Tiniest Jedi Master

Why Master Jedi Shan, you seem quite small today… I was playing my Jedi Knight in Star Wars: The Old Republic today and this is what happened when I went to converse with the leader of the Jedi Council.

Needless to say, she’s become somewhat pint sized. She may be the daughter of Bastila Shan, but I don’t recall her mother being that tiny and her father certainly wasn’t a small man. So I’m not sure why Satele is the size of a gerbil.

“You see, Padewan, I was meditating on the immensity of the universe.”

“Thrust deep within my mediation I realized how insignificant we are in light of the Force. Struggling with our emotions between the Light Side and the Dark Side.”

“Do you think you could give me a ride to the bathroom? …I need to use the little Jedi’s room.”

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If I were going to guess, I think that what happened is that the game uses the same model when in the cinematic and when she calls me on the holo. It shrank her model down to the gerbil-size and overlayed it with the blue-coruscating lines a mere minute before when we spoke over the holo—but when it came time to put her back to her proper “human” size, it failed to do so.

The result? I’m an immense towering behemoth of a zebrak standing over a Master Jedi.

Of course, the game is kind enough to also have me incline my head down to her and she looks way up at me as well. That’s either a curious effect or my pattern-seeking brain is adding it to the scene because it fits.

Around Alderaan: SWTOR and Troopers as a newbie

As you might have guessed, I’ve gotten into Star Wars: The Old Republic, a new MMO released by EA and Bioware, and I’m running around a bit. It’s been something of an odd experience with a strongly narrative-based system that tells you a story as you play. In fact, the Flashpoints (instances in the game) are really Star Wars episodes.

Republic Trooper armor is something to look at—and it’s absolutely reminiscent of the eventual stormtrooper armor that will make its debut 300 years later when the Sith Empire manages to take over the galaxy. It just hasn’t happened yet.

Of course, like any game, you’ll notice that I have an almost-clown suit of mismatched, yet colorful armor pieces that I’ve collected going about my missions.

This shot was taken on the desert-planet of Tantooine, the erstwhile home of Like Skywalker.

The dune-held countryside of this region is like my own home to an extent. Tall mesas of reddened-rock thrusting out of ever-changing dunes. Although the presence of the Imperial soldiers leaves something to disdain.

I suppose I’ll sally forth and blast a few for old time’s sake.

This is a shot from Alderaan—a lush landscape with snowcapped mountains, conifer trees, and a cloudy sky all day. Through green fields I walked while supporting House Organa against an incursion by the Empire. Alderaan, and House Organa, of course are Princess Leia’s erstwhile home planet and adoptive family respectively.

It’s a beautiful and majestic world with wonderful people. It’s sad to know that in 3,000 years time it will be vaporized into so much space rubble by the Death Star, killing the entire population in a show of force by the Sith Empire.

 

Oh yeah, did I mention: you get a spaceship.

My trooper has a lopsided winged craft with a bunch of guns on it called a Thunderclap. Although, you’ll probably like my Smuggler’s ship better—it’s a Corellian light freighter (think the little sister of the Millennium Falcon) with extra-heavy engines retrofitted into the chassis for perfectly legitimate and legal purposes, of course.