Today we'll be discussing the Sith Inquisitor Nar Shadaa storyline that I managed to complete over the weekend. Not that I'd much further to go since Log XX was done at level 24 with Nar Shadaa 3/4 complete. Since then, I've finished off the rest of the planet as well as taken a little side jaunt to Korriban and made it to level 25.
Mechanically, there's not much to comment on. Level 25 brought with it the usual minute advancements in combat power and access to speeder bikes. Of course, I haven't got the requisite 48,000 credits required to actually buy said bike just yet, but my experience with Kelynn showed that all you need to do is quit crafting and don't buy anything else for a couple of levels, and you'll earn the cash you need for your bike. Until then, we walk.
So, on to the Spoiler section, after the portrait as usual.
Kelynn, Level 35 Vanguard, Republic Fleet
Tasia, Level 25 Sith Sorceress, Tatooine
Alia, Level 12 Jedi Shadow, Coruscant
Leanra, Level 3 Imperial Agent, Hutta
The glittering jewel of the Hutts conceals SPOILERS in its shadowy depths.
The Screaming Blades have many secrets. Some of them are SPOILERS.
After arriving on Nar Shadaa in search of the fourth part of the artifact of Tulak Hord, you discover that said MacGuffin is in the hands of a renegade Sith named Lord Paladius who runs a cult in one of the bad parts of town. Since he'd ignored your master when she asked him nicely for the artifact, you're there to ask him not so nicely. So you go about stealing his cult out from under him.
That's actually pretty fun. Granted you're mostly doing the same things you normally do, but there's actually a branching mission structure where you can be peaceful or violent about your takeover, which was pretty interesting. In the end, you do have to beat down Paladius to get the artifact from him, and you can choose to kill him or spare him at your discretion. Despite being a Light Side character I went with kill, since he'd betrayed me once before, so there was no reason to suspect that he'd be any more trustworthy in the future.
Then the ghost of Lord Kallig tells you that your master is planning to betray you and suggests that you retrieve his old mask from a Sith on Korriban. Which I did, and now I'm looking for the next artifact chunk on Tatooine.
All well and good, but there are a few hiccups along the way. For one thing, in the final battle against Lord Paladius, he uses the artifact piece he's got to drain you of Force energy. This is shown when you try to shock him in the conversation and nothing happens. "Let us resolve this matter with our lightsabers!" he declares. Except that when the fight itself happens, my Force powers work just fine and he goes down to the same Force Lightning barrage that everyone else does. Seems like a bug.
The ones that bothers me more, though, are the ones with the Korriban side jaunt. For one thing, when I get into the SIth's chamber, he's got a couple of apprentices with him. When I initiate the fight in conversation there's an animation of them both igniting their lightsabers at the same time the Lord himself does. It's pretty cool. Except that when the fight actually starts, they vanish...and not a stealth vanish or something. They're simply not there and do not participate in the fight at all. It was pretty jarring.
What was worse, though, was the mask. The game knows Tasia is a Twi'lek. When I tried to claim the mask from the Sith guy and said that it was my inheritance because I was descended from Lord Kallig, his response was: "A Twi'lek slave inheriting a Sith artifact? The only thing you'll be inheriting is a slave collar!"
So why is it that when I put on Kallig's mask, I look like this?
Seriously, it was bad enough when they pulled that shit with the ghost of Lord Kallig back on Dromund Kas. At least then, I could fanwank the idea that maybe Kallig himself had been a human or pureblood Sith and that Tasia was descended from a Twi'lek lover or something. But what the hell am I supposed to here? Say that Tasia cut her lekku off, which contains a good chunk of her brain mind you, just to wear the mask? Because there's no way in hell she's fitting them under that thing. And if she did and those boxy things are cybernetic implants that replace the lost brain functions or some such, why is it the lekku spring back out when I take the damn thing off?
It's just sloppy, and it breaks immersion for me that they couldn't be bothered to make any kind of allowance for one of the most popular races out there. Since the mask is a plot item and an orange piece of gear to boot, I've just gone ahead and set my head slot to off, so that I get the mechanical benefit without having to explain how I got de-Twi'leked to people.
But it's still bitterly disappointing that Bioware could be so slapdash about this.
Dude you're preaching at the choir - How many stupid head pieces do I suffer through? One or two glitches here and there I'd accept, but my head garb is always some new flavor of wrong.
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