And you know what? It was great. The conversations that you can vote on and the way that you feel like you're playing out a real story instead of just breaking and entering a dungeon makes all the difference. It was probably the most fun I've had playing Old Republic so far, and I haven't exactly been having a bad time to date.
I'll talk more about the specifics of the Black Talon in the spoiler section after the portrait.
Speaking of the portrait, today's portrait will be of my Jedi, Alia. She's the one who's appearance changed at all this time out. Tasia's participation in the Black Talon didn't score her any gear of note, despite how much fun it was.
Alia, on the other hand, is progressing nicely through the Jedi Consular content. She's level five now, and has made some progress on her personal story. It's going much the way I'd expect it to so far, but there may yet be some twists and turns ahead. We'll see. Honestly, though, there's not much else to say about her adventures just yet.
Tasia, Level 16 Sith Sorceress, Imperial Fleet
Alia, Level 5 Jedi Consular, Tython
(SPOILERS for the Black Talon Flashpoint coming up!)
(The SPOILERS are coming, the SPOILERS are coming!)
This is probably the most well-known Flashpoint out there, since it was playable at several conventions and trade shows as early as 2009. In fact, I'll append a video of a game developer walkthrough of the Flashpoint dating to '09 at the end of this post if you'd like to have a look at it yourself. The Flashpoint coverage starts at 9:32 if you just want to jump ahead.
Anyway, this is the "Spare the Captain" or "Kill the Captain" quest, where the captain of the Black Talon has disobeyed orders to engage a Republic battleship, the Brentaal Star. You can either kill his ass for disobedience or spare him and take advantage of his combat experience. Since Tasia is a Light Side character and her roll was higher for the crucial conversation piece we ended up sparing him, though Matt's Dark Side Sith Marauder scored the Dark Side points he needs because he wanted to kill him despite what actually happened.
So we repelled the Republic boarders and then stormed the Brentaal Star and captured the turncoat Imperial General and got back home in time for tea and crumpets. It was a blast.
There were some interesting oddities, though. For instance in the Light Side version of the Flashpoint you have to fight a Jedi Padawan who's guarding the General. That Padawan happened to be a female Twi'lek. Which is, of course what Tasia is. And what the Sith Warrior starting companion is. So out of five people involved in the fight, three were female Twi'leks. That was just amusing.
We also managed to skip right past an optional boss because none of us spotted him the first time. We ended up having to go all the way back to finish his sorry ass off. It was totally worth it, though, because I needed the Dromund Kaas Commendation I got off his corpse to buy some gear I want.
Overall, the first playthrough of Black Talon was great. You can replay a Flashpoint once a day, so we can go back and do it Dark Side just to see how it changes, and to score more xp and loot both of which are decent in the Flashpoint, though I expect that it will be progressively less fun each time you do it.
Still, I highly recommend the Flashpoint as an example of The Old Republic at its very best, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the Essene Flashpoint works from the Republic side when we get the band together for our first Guild Night.
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