Creative director Charles Boyd stepped up shortly after Keith Kanneg (game producer) onto the forums stage to back up his boss’ words with more information on what can we expect in 2020. SWTOR 6.2 Story will have a heavy involvement of Kira and Scourge as the game continues through the events that started with Ossus and Darth Malgus! He also hints at the secret major thing they are working on for next year’s tenth anniversary of the game.
Please, beware of minor story spoilers below. Nothing from the narrative itself is revealed, no more than a typical movie trailer would reveal any way – only a few hints, but if you want to go completely blind into 6.2, you may want to stop reading now.
Not a day after Keith Kanneg’s first post for 2020, creative director Charles Boyd backed him up by posting another “yellow text” (dev post) on the forums.
Charles’ post is more focused on the story development for this year:
“Thought I’d hop in and add a bit about the story elements in our upcoming releases.”
Game Update 6.1 releases on February 11. It will contain a small story element. Charles finally explained what this means after he hinted at it on the December Developer Live Stream:
“Game Update 6.1 will include a small story beat around the size of Hearts and Minds. Specifically, this will be about checking in with the newly-formed factional groups – Task Force Nova for Republic players, and the Hand for Imperials – and making some initial decisions to guide them as they’re getting ramped up (including Saboteur options for those so inclined). For Imperials, this also means meeting your new liaison, Darth Rivix – he was a lot of fun to write, so I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s reactions.”
I like the sound of that. The story and characters we interact with seem to continue to differentiate the player’s experience between the Republic and Empire.
With the addition of Loyalist and Saboteur options for your characters, you can potentially create an adventure that is truly your own. At least more so than ever before.
Some other interesting story-related hints include the check-in with Kira and Scourge. This new dialogue will set up the events to follow in Update 6.2, which I expect to see some time in the late Spring or perhaps early Summer.
Republic Troopers will have a one-on-one conversation with Elara (yay, I get to talk to my in-game wife). Agents will speak privately with Vector.
The most saucy tease Charles gives out is that “characters on each side will get small hints at what’s going on with Darth Malgus from two different perspectives.” Is Malgus the Emperor’s final weapon?
6.1 will also deliver the Alderaan Stronghold and the beginning of new set of class changes and balancing for the 6.0 Onslaught “era”.
As we know already from Musco’s post earlier this month, BioWare is adopting a new update labeling policy. Following the “story” update 6.1, in the months to come we will get 6.1.1 and 6.1.2.
Update: Patch 6.1.1 releases on April 21. Patch 6.1.2 releases in June 2020. Patch 6.2’s release date was postponed indefinately.
“As Keith mentioned, 6.1 will be followed by 6.1.1 and 6.1.2. After that, our next story beat will come in Game Update 6.2: The One Where Crazy Stuff Happens*. Since it’s still in the works and a bit further out, I won’t go into nearly as much detail, and I’m going to put just about everything in spoiler tags just in case. But the TL;DR is that 6.2 will deal directly with the situation Kira and Scourge bring to light at the end of Onslaught.
*Definitely the final, confirmed update name.“
That’s not everything. Somehow Charles was willing to give out even more teases about the 6.2 story. The next paragraph and the following list are his words.
Specifically, the SWTOR 6.2 story will deal with Satele Shan, her followers, and whatever is up with Tenebrae’s last weapon/ritual/nefarious plan.
- Just to get it out of the way: no, Valkorion isn’t becoming the main villain of the game again.
- That said, I am hoping to include several faces we haven’t seen in a while.
- While the story of this update was introduced as an epilogue to Onslaught, I actually view it as more of an epilogue to Knights of the Eternal Throne.
- I have actually seen at least one person on the internet guess a few of the crazier details, so enjoy debating who’s on the right track
- Seriously, it’s gonna get weird, so buckle up!
Now, the big question in my mind – Who Guessed It Right? Step up and share your guess here, please.
I like how Charles is hyping things up, but at the same time I remember how he wanted to “beef up” the Kira and Scourge’s return a bit more, so he delayed it with over an year later than its original release schedule plan.
The two companions came back with a rather disappointingly short cinematic conversation. I do hope that the future narrative they are involved in will compensate for that. Then I would really be able to accept the “beefing up” excuse from way back in 2018 he gave me in an live stream interview.
From Keith’s post a couple of days ago it was not clear how much of a story we will get. He even called it “story updates”. I admitted in my overview that his wording confused me.
Charles made it a lot clearer and he even managed to get me hyped.
I can’t tell, though, if I’m hyped over the 2020 story or the fact that yet another important figure of the SWTOR team talks not just about this year, but the future too”
“Beyond that, in addition to the content, features, and quality-of-life improvements Keith mentioned that we’re looking to add past 6.1.2 and 6.2, you can expect the storyline that started with Jedi Under Siege and Onslaught to continue through our updates the rest of this year and beyond. After all, we’re in our ninth year, and our tenth anniversary is just around the corner–a very exciting time for SWTOR to be sure!”
While on the topic of SWTOR’s future years development, here is what Keith added later to the same conversation on the forums: “SWTOR will be around for years to come (cuz we’re planning to release something big for our 10th anniversary)”.
I was hesitant to believe this something big is truly big. Now I have already boarded the hype train.
Inner voice: Damn. It’s way too early, Vulkk.
It could be a clever trick to mask this year’s poor quantity of new content (I hope not) or the team has received a really nice and positive boost from EA and Disney.
With all of the new rumors of KOTOR’s reboot after the freelancer project was shut down brutally, and the continuing to thrive old ones of an Old Republic Era movie(s) coming out, I would not be surprised if Disney has already decided to proclaim SWTOR to be included in the new Star Wars Canon.
I would not expect Disney to take all of the game’s story, though. If this ever happens, only the events from Knights of the Fallen Empire and all that followed could probably be included into the canon.
It is also likely that the “something major” could be a new game engine. The old one would be around fourteen to sixteen year old at the time of the tenth anniversary of the game.
Or, last speculation, I promise, how about a new class story. One that is written not how we all thought it possible – as a Hero Class that starts from level 50/60/70, but from scratch! How about that?
I have structured the three possibilities I dream to happen in the order of likeliness they are actually going to happen from most likely to are-you-crazy likely.
Featured image is sourced from Shintar’s blog post on Going Commando.
