20 days of SWTOR, day 16

[virtualvoyages]

My favorite character companion?  But I haven't met them all.  I don't even think I've met half of them yet.  How about I just blather about the companions I have met instead?

With one exception, the companions my characters have collected so far fall into one of two categories: characters I like and characters I may not exactly like, but find entertaining anyway.  The one companion I can't stand?  The Trooper's first companion, Aric Jorgan.  He is a dick from word one, blames your character for everything and tells you to your face that he doesn't respect you and doesn't think you're command material.  Excuse me!?  He's not entertainingly annoying; he's just annoying.  Also way out of line, and you're given no real way to deal with it.  I don't know how the Republic military works, but I'm pretty damn sure you can't talk that way to a superior officer in any real life military without getting in trouble for it.  The fact that Lt. Jackass is apparently the romance option for F!Troopers rather makes me want to throw things.  (For so very many reasons.)

Companion Characters I Like: (so far)
Bowdaar is a very nice, sensible wookiee.  I sometimes think he may be the "mom" of my Smuggler's crew.  Risha is still a bit of a mystery, but keeps being a better person than I expect her to be.  (And I can see why people want to romance her.)  I haven't gotten to the point that Akaavi joins the crew, but her introduction was awesome and I fully expect to like her.  (And possibly write her into my ficverse.)

T7 is so much fun.  I love the dialogue and I'm enjoying how much personality T7 has.  I also like what little I've seen of Kira, who appears to be about as much a rogue Jedi as my Knight is.  I expect them all to get along swimmingly.

Qyzen is also the awesome.  I'm not even sure why.  Somehow, he's just an incredibly likable big-game-hunting lizard dude.

(So far, I'm finding the companions the best part of playing Jedi.  But that's largely because I've still got "uck, Jedi" issues.)

Mako is awfully sweet (though she has a bit of a dark streak), and it would be awesome if my Bounty Hunter does actually get to romance her.  They'd make a cute couple.

I expected Vector to be boring, but he turned out to be very likable, if rather odd.  I love his combat dialogue, particularly his surprise at succeeding in fights.  And his companion stuff, so far, has been really fun.  Who'd expect to get to go to a Kilik party?

Vette has quite the mouth on her and is entertainingly baffled by my light sider Sith.  Practically every time my Warrior does something good, she's all WTF?  But they're developing a nice sisterly rapport that I find charming.  And Quinn is... I don't know what Quinn is.  I almost put him in the other category because I mainly find him entertaining.  He's so passionate about the Empire and so at a loss as to what to do with a giant Sith Zabrak flirting with him.


Companion Characters I Don't Exactly Like But Find Entertaining: (so far)
Corso is a sexist ass, but he's also completely dippy, and all of 19.  I'm sure my Smuggler would like to borrow the Sith Pureblood social emote from time to time, but, while I find him an appalling romance option, I do actually find him entertaining.  And I do have to admit that his heart is in the right place, and that his unbelievably backwards views of romance might be the result of his being both little more than a kid and having grown up in the back of the back of beyond.  (I also suspect he has zero actual romance experience.)

Kaliyo is completely untrustworthy, homicidal, and the worst "friend" anyone could ever have.  She is also hilarious.  I have done more spit takes on her dialogue (in cut scenes or just prompted by location) than any other companion so far.  Did she just say she felt like burning down the Imperial capital while they're walking through it!?  Did she just ask for twenty credits to get somebody to lick her feet?  "Dibs on the head!?"  Kali, no one else wants the head!  Did you just cheerfully offer to shoot my Agent if he actually changes sides!?  And her first companion mission?  Bwahahahahaha.  Oh, Kali, what did you think he was going to do?  She's a horrible, horrible person, but a very entertaining fictional character.

Khem is another horrible person but entertaining fictional character, at least so far.  (My Inquisitor has only just gotten him.)  He has some wildly funny dialogue - often centered around eating Force users, so I like him in that sense.  I can't imagine inviting him in for tea, though.

20 Days of TOR (Redux)
Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Why did you decided to start a blog?
Day 03 – Your best SW:TOR playing experience Your first day playing SW:TOR
Day 04 – Your favorite SW:TOR quest or quest chain
Day 05 – Favorite item(s) in game
Day 06 – How many active characters do you have? Do you suffer from "altitis"?
Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name
Day 08 – Your favorite class so far, and why
Day 09 – Favorite attack or special move
Day 10 – Crafting: yay or nay? What professions, if any, do you seriously pursue?
Day 11 – Bad in-game habits and flaws
Day 12 – What's a typical TOR gaming session look like for you?
Day 13 – What do you hope Bioware will add to the game?
Day 14 – What aspect of the game upsets you the most?
Day 15 – Have you created a unique headcanon for your characters? If so, what is it?
Day 16 – Your favorite character companion
Day 17 – Your favorite in-game location
Day 18 – Your favorite outfit
Day 19 – What strange things do you keep in your bags or bank?
Day 20 – Conclude with a free day! Write about a SW:TOR topic that the previous 19 days failed to address

Comments

[nebelstreif]

Man, it's like I wrote this! (And I guess that, at some point, I will!) My two cents on two companions:

You're totally right about Risha: she keeps surprising me by being better than my expectations. That is a really, really pleasant surprise. That said, I've frozen my Smuggler's playthrough at the end of Chapter 1 -- one, because the smuggler is hard, but two, because I'm hoping against hope that my fem!Smuggler will be able to romance her.

As for Khem Val -- oh gosh, I hated him for the first fifteen or sixteen levels, especially because, while I respect his never-wavering desire to eat every Force user he encounters, I wanted to be light side and, you know, not murder everyone I came across. But once I figured out that he loved Cultural Artifacts before all other things, and with a few developments in his plot (he is a strangely loyal beast), he started to grow on me. I mean, I don't take him out on walks like I used to, but he definitely has a place in my crew.

[virtualvoyages]

Now I'm looking forward to finding more about Khem Val.

[nebelstreif]

I'd like very much to say that Khem Val has been the biggest surprise of my Inquisitor's story, but that would do a disservice to how amazing the entirety of the Inquisitor's ensemble cast is. (In my personal opinion. I know that miarrow was rightly-squicked that the young, almost childish Ashara is the male Inquisitor's romance option -- but Ashara and my female Inquisitor have an awesome "bromance.")

But Khem Val has grown on me, and he only rarely threatens to eat me know.

[nebelstreif]

Also: man, I'm really sorry you don't like Jorgan! I mean, he is really... grumpy. I would be, too, if I got demoted because I unfairly took the fall for a crack team of commandos defecting on my planet. But I mainly give him a pass because of his voice actor.

[virtualvoyages]

If he'd started being a jerk after having the blame dumped on him, I'd be more sympathetic. But he's an ass from the get go (in fact, he's such a jerk that his taking the fall seems to have no impact on him at all - it's not like he could become more of a jerk) and he's flat out disrespectful to his commanding officer (you) to a trully stunning degree. Sure, you go from his subordinate to his boss, and that's got to irk, but like I said, I'm pretty sure you don't get to talk to your superiors that way in any real military.

Maybe he gets better, but my impression so far is not good.

[nebelstreif]

One of the things that constantly throws me about Jorgan is that he starts every sentence sounding critical.

"So that's your plan, commander?"
(beat)
"Okay, I think that might work."

I think one of the reasons that I've ended up liking Jorgan so much, is because my first two romantic companions were 1) Kaliyo, and 2) Corso. Kaliyo is batshit insane and not my friend, and Corso comes on far too strong, far too quick. In comparison, I saw (see) romancing Jorgan as a personal challenge, a veritable "romancing the stone." I like that you have no flirt options for the first five thousand affection points.

[virtualvoyages]

Heh. And I think I might like him better on a M!Trooper. I know he's just as much of an ass, either way, but wearing down his jerkiness to be comrades seems to have fewer unfortunate implications.

Of course, the fact that my trooper is one of my personality-less grouping characters could factor in to this as well. If I'd had a chance to give her a personality, maybe it would all play much better.

(And holy crap is Kaliyo all kinds of wrong as a romantic companion. O_o I mean, she's all kinds of wrong, period, but you'd have to be just as much a homicidal maniac to actually have a romance. Of course, sleeping with her as part of one's campaign to remain alive is rather messed up, too.)

[nebelstreif]

As soon as my Inquisitor hits 50, I plan on rerolling my Trooper as a pureblood Sith. I know that it isn't a particularly "defensible" RP choice, but I think I'll have more fun playing one -- a willingness to do wrong, inspired by a constant need to prove your loyalty to your superiors, is a bit more engaging than "I'm a perfect soldier, I follow no unethical orders."

[virtualvoyages]

I can think of any number of interesting ways one could go with that, whether or not it's "defensible." But then I've played in plenty of pen and paper RPG games where people turned off the wall sounding ideas into gold.

[loquat.myid.net]

I have no insight into companions aside from the general observation that monstrous characters who consider it socially acceptable to eat other sapients are always good fun.

The Board of Directors are all fools. You should eat them.
/Wrex

[virtualvoyages]

That would probably be because nearly everyone has fantasies during their workday of feeding particularly difficult coworkers, bosses, customers, clients, or the like to alligator pits or Khem Vals.

Or is that just me?