Monday, August 17, 2015

SWTOR Companions: Big Changes

On Friday, the data miners over at TOR community posted the first information about the changes to the companion system coming in Knights of the Fallen Empire.  Sadly, BioWare failed to deliver the information at Gamescom like they said they would.  Thus, the data miners came though.  You can check out the article here, they DO label when the spoilers start:  https://torcommunity.com/database/update-previews/858-companions-in-4-0.

This is all, of course, not set in stone.  There will likely be changes.

NO SPOILERS BELOW.

This week will likely all be about companions on this blog.  So, lets get started with the big picture.

Right now, the companion system is pretty static.  Each class gets 5 companions (not including the ship robot) through the story.  Plus, two companions were released afterwards:  Treek and HK-51.  That's pretty much it since launch.  Some companions received some new ambient dialog for the expansions, but no new stories.  Overall, it has been pretty limited.  What you had when the game launched is mostly the same as it is now.

BioWare is fundamentally changing the system.  The new system looks to be more like a collectible system, so you will have a lot more companions to choose from.  Some of the companions will retain their heavy story focus, like the five new ones coming in the expansion.  Others may just be there to fight with, or craft for you.  In the data mining article, creatures were even listed as new companions.  So instead of five companions, you may have 20 or more at some point, ranging from some originals, to new story based ones, to more generic ones.

I'm pretty excited about the potential of this new system.  While I love the story based companions, I would like a more dynamic system where I can work to obtain even more.  For example, I think a Zakuul Knight would be a very cool companion to be able to get, even if they have no story.  I like the look of them.  Just think of the wide array of possibilities in the Star Wars universe.

So far so good!  More tomorrow.