SPOILER ALERT: Minor spoilers about the new companions and companion system released October 2015.

‘Give it a Shot’ – SWTOR Alliance System, New Companions and Star Fortress Review

When first introduced to the new alliance cutscenes added to Star Wars: The Old Republic, I hated them. The transition from the fully-voiced, extremely cinematic cutscenes to simple text choices and no camera movement felt like I was playing an entirely different game. I thought at the end of Chapter 9 I would be about to enter a whole new chapter of the jaw-dropping story, but instead, I found something entirely different. This sudden switch turned me away from the alliance system for over a month.

When I finally came back to it, I had had enough time away from the Knights of the Fallen Empire chapters and was able to judge it more fairly. What I found was interesting – there was a lot more content than I had originally thought, especially when it came to story.

New Cutscenes

If you are coming straight from the Knights of the Fallen Empire chapters, these new types of cutscenes will be very noticeable and very jarring. Instead of your character speaking and being a major player in the story, they become a backdrop piece to let the alliance characters speak their piece. This decision was likely made to downgrade the costs of voice acting – to add this content in, they would need to voice each conversation with each class, with each gender, for a total of 16 voice overs per conversation. Initially to me, this was unacceptable – my character was the big hero! She’d saved the galaxy on multiple occasions! One of the reasons I loved KotFE was because it felt like watching a Star Wars movie with my own character as the star. Once I was able to finally get over that hangup, I began to enjoy the alliance cutscenes.

Alliance Specialists

The ‘main’ characters (Alliance Specialists) are actually really neat and pretty well fleshed out, and have a lot of interesting tidbits to share. Three of four are returning characters from different arcs in the game, and the fourth is tied directly to lore that was introduced to the Star Wars legacy in SWTOR. Seeing those characters come to life was fun, especially since one of them hasn’t been seen since before the game launched.

Returning Companions… but not your favorite ones.

Re-recruiting my previous companions was rough for me. I play mainly as a Trooper – my companions aren’t just my haphazard crew, they’re my squad that have served with me in the Republic military and risked their lives with me to save the galaxy. In the new story, they barely acknowledged my character’s ties to them even after everything we’d done together. One refused to rejoin me at all, even though in my previous story we’d come to an agreement and parted on great terms. Picking up the companions of other classes, however, was enjoyable. Their alliance stories are really strongly tied to their companion stories, which can be heard by talking to them as you do your class story. Returning companions range across all the classes, and I highly recommend leveling up the other classes first (and completing their companion conversations) before recruiting them into your alliance. (List of Returning Companions and Guide)

There is an option to bring back all your original companions through a terminal. I decided to leave them to their fates and allow them to return slowly through story, worried that picking them up now might cause me to miss out on their story-return later. Unfortunately, that means I have no idea when they might return – Bioware has already changed the timeline of the upcoming KotFE chapters in the past, and they have given no indication that all the companions will return in the next release. The new companions, specifically the ones from the KotFE storyline, are well fleshed out though and I’m not missing my old companions too much. The only thing I miss is playing dress up with my companions – or more accurately – making them match my character’s armor. The new companions inability to change armor has definitely cut a chunk of fun out of my game time.

Alliance Recruits, More Companions

In addition to the returning companions, there is six new recruits you can speak to and invite to join your alliance. Once recruited, you can also use them as a companion in your daily adventures. Their stories are pretty short, but once you recruit them it is a new novelty to be able to have companions that don’t easily fall into the ‘humanoid’ category and that are not available with any of the original classes.

The majority of these recruits don’t speak basic… so I hope you enjoy the alien talk. I’ve heard many people say they didn’t enjoy the lack of ‘English’ speaking characters. I liked having the variety in species… I can’t say I liked the ‘read and spacebar’ approach I ended up taking with the later alien-speaking recruits.

Star Fortress, Just Another Flashpoint

The Star Fortress missions are PvE content that can be done solo if you have decent gear. The first time you complete each one, you gain a new companion (one of the six Alliance recruits), so the reward is worth the effort. They have three main steps: obtain supplies by doing five heroics on the planet (this can be skipped if you have a lot of currency Crystals saved up), destroy the bunker (a short easy mission) and destroy the Star Fortress (a Flashpoint mission that recommends having 2+ people doing it together). The heroic missions were not very fun – I’d skipped the heroics step on most planets because I already had supplies, and I knew that most heroics were just ‘find ten things and kill them’. The bunker step was just a run and gun, and the fortresses themselves had no interesting gameplay mechanics. In the first run-through there is some fun movement mechanics like a grapple hook, but during subsequent runs it was an annoyance rather than a fun new mechanic. Although each Star Fortress has minor voice-over and visual differences, all six are exactly the same, and weren’t difficult even wearing gear from the previous patch. I was doing them purely for the grind, to see if anything would happen in the storyline, and they didn’t offer any of the fun some of the more difficult Flashpoints have. After the first one, I teamed up with friends and steamrolled through them since they weren’t a challenge anyway. After finishing them all… (the same process six times).. I got a thank-you letter in the mail and a few small rewards.

I did enjoy being able to bring one of the many new companions with me. The player I buddied up with also had a companion I hadn’t seen yet. The days of awkwardly running together with a friend the same companion are definitely over.

Companion Influence… is there even a point?

In the past, there was an excellent reason to raise your companion’s influence, known as affection back in the day. Every thousand points or so brought a new conversation point with your companion, and finishing those story arcs gave a permanent stat boost to your legacy. Maxing them out gave an achievement and some special titles, and because you could only have a small number of companions, you would want to max most of them out to give them a better chance at crafting and gathering.

Now, the conversations with classic companions are unlocked through your story progression, and those achievements have been removed from the game. Because you have so many companions for crafting, you do not need to gain influence with all of them… just the few you plan on using.

Before the changes, I had a very long-term goal of unlocking all my companions on all of my characters, mainly to see their stories. With the change, that is no longer needed and I am left wondering why I should bother with influence at all. I am currently taking the recommendation to pick one companion I like the best, and gain influence with them so they gain a stat boost when they join me in battle. Seeing as my goal has gone from gaining influence with every character to only one… it’s become a lot easier, but means I have less to ‘do’ ingame.

The rewards… are pretty awesome.

Every time you turn in supplies (earned either through planetary heroics or bought with 50 Common Data Crystals), you get a piece of cosmetic gear that was previously retired and isn’t available anywhere else in the game. You can also get gear from the opposite faction of your character – something that was impossible before. (List of Gear) Even better, it is legacy bound, which means even if you don’t love it, you can mail it over to another character’s bank or stuff it in your legacy bank. If you do like it, you can send it to another character to wear too. This addition opened up the pool of available legacy sets immensely.

This is all the legacy gear I acquired while doing all six Star Fortresses and bringing two Alliance Specialists to level 10 Influence.

My favorite part of this is that which piece you get exactly is random. I am a cartel pack addict, and opening these little crates feels exactly the same. Even though I know the chances of just getting a pair of ugly bracers is pretty high, it’s fun to open them up and see what I get. I knew the crates had old gear in them, but I was surprised and excited to find out there are a few extra non-gear items in them too!

Are the SWTOR Alliance System and Star Fortress Flashpoints worth doing?

If you have not tried the alliance system out yet, I say give it a shot. You start with the quest ‘To Find a Findsman’ that will trigger in chapter 9 of KotFE (Guide). Although the story content is not as immersive and intriguing as the KotFE chapters, there is a lot of content to explore, and lots of fascinating conversations to have with the new alliance characters.

The gameplay itself is very ‘grindy’, and is not very fun at all. There are no new gameplay mechanics, no exciting new maps to see, and the enemies are not very hard. The reward boxes are really fun to open, though, and I consider them as fun as cartel packs without having to spend cartel coins.

I don’t think I will repeat the alliance system on my other characters. The Star Fortresses were not very interesting, especially when you have to do six of them. Due to the lack of cinematic cutscenes, I don’t think I will re-watch the alliance cutscenes now that I know each alliance character’s background, especially since many of them are in alien languages.

If you are wavering about trying it out, I highly recommend taking a pause and instead doing the main storylines of each of the 8 classes first, so you get the full benefit from the returning companion conversations. This content is clearly for veteran players starving for new content – not for players who still have the better parts of the game to experience.