SWTOR 7.6 Galactic Threads Story Overview, Delay, and Why That’s A Good Thing

SWTOR’s next solo story update “Galactic Threads” features a ton of characters and multiple arcs nearing their end, but the story won’t be coming alongside Game Update 7.6. We’ll talk about what’s happening and why the delay is good.

Hoth music played as SWTOR’s story leads, Ashley Ruhl (Narrative Director) and Caitlin Sullivan Kelly (Principal Writer), took the virtual stage of Broadsword’s 7.6 Livestream to share some juicy details about the storyline “Galactic Threads”, including announcing its delay and decoupling from the main update release.

It’s no secret that Legacy of the Sith and the Mandalorian Civil War storyline haven’t been popular, but they aren’t bad, just misplaced and mistimed. The delay will likely make it better.

Galactic Threads Story Overview

Structurally, the new story is going to be a bit different from past updates, potentially similar to the story on Voss “Old Wounds”. You’ll have access to multiple concurrent missions on different planets focusing on different threads in the Legacy of the Sith Storyline.

The new story “Galactic Threads” will take place right on the heels of “Desperate Defiance”. Caitlyn and Ashley issued a spoiler warning before recapping the recent events and providing an overview of what we’ll be doing after 7.6 launches.

We also got to see a WIP teaser cutscene of Jekiah and Rass Ordo meeting with the Alliance Commander and Lana Beniko on Oddessen.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, the Alliance Commander’s face does look fancier. We’ll have a whole piece on that soon (tomorrow).

Major Characters in Galactic Threads

Each of these characters will play a significant part in one of the mission “threads”. They didn’t elaborate too much on the order of these missions beyond implying that there is some choice you can make.

It’s unclear if you’ll have access to all of them at the same time, or if it’ll be more like a fork in the road as you see with some planets in the Origin Stories.

Jekiah and Rass Ordo

As Arbiter, Jekiah Ordo, along with his younger brother Rass will be taking charge of the hunt for Mandalore (Shae Vizla),

Arn Peralun

Arn Peralun, former Jedi Padawan and current Jedi Knight will be assisting Republic players on Elom as we learn more about Darth Nul.

Major Anri

Major Anri, now attaché to Darth Krovos, will be assisting Imperial players on Elom as we learn more about Darth Nul. She’s meant to be a stand-in for Krovos, but I think it’s worth noting that Darth Rivix was not mentionted this time around.

Akaavi Spar

Akaavi Spar will help the Alliance Commander hunt down Heta Kol and the Hidden Chain. She hates them and loves Shae and Jekiah. Torian Cadera was not mentioned. It’s unclear if Akaavi will only be present to supplant Torian or he’s just absent entirely.

I highly recommend taking a peek at those modernized Tatooinian assets too! They look a bit more fresh and clear than I’m used to, especially after seeing it in Star Wars Outlaws. It reminds me a lot more of the Tatooine Arena Deco Bundle.

Talos Drellik

Talos Drellik, our favorite archaeologist (not a fighter) formerly part the Imperial Reclamation Service has been focused on excavating the Ruins of Nul on Elom. With the help of his team, he’s managed to breach the ruins brought down by Malgus.

It’s unclear what he’s doing on Nar Shaddaa, and to what extent he’ll be present alongside Arn Peralun or Major Anri.

Lana Beniko

Everyone’s (yes, everyone’s) favorite Sith, Lana Beniko, will primarily remain on Oddessen in an administrative role. She will likely be the main questgiver tying all the threads together.

However, she will be accompanying us into the field on one of the missions, likely to Ilum.

Galactic Threads Story Not Coming with Update 7.6

Most notably, the storyline is delayed and will not be released until after Update 7.6. Ashley Ruhl gave the following statement at the end of the speech:

So, that is all we wanna talk about [regarding] the Galactic Threads storyline today. There is so much in this update, and we’re so excited for ya’ll to get to experience it.

There is a caveat. So, while this production is very well underway, we currently do not have all the elements we need to complete this story and to deliver it to you.

So, with that in mind, we are delaying the Galactic Threads storyline—just the storyline—until we can complete the story to our quality standards and what you’re expecting when you play the story. The moment we have everything we need to finish the story, we will get it in your hands.

But we’re very excited for you to be able to check it out. There’s so much here and we are very, very happy to give you this chapter. But to say that, this is the only part of 7.6 that is going to be delayed. There’s a ton more stuff that we have coming up in the stream and really hope that you’ll take a look at it.

Ashley Ruhl, SWTOR Narrative Director

Yeah, it’s pretty vague on the why part. The only substance offered is that they do not have all the elements needed to release it such that the story is up to their standards.

My gut reaction is that they’re trying to avoid what happened with 7.5 “Desperate Defiance” having so many KOTOR-style cutscenes on top of releasing genuinely unfinished animation for the climax of Sa’har and Ri’kan’s story.

For those who aren’t familiar, Ri’kan’s face wasn’t fully animated for the first month that the story was out, and there were other issues with the boss fight and such too.

That being said, it’s odd to refer to animation as a posession (“we do not have all the elements”), even if they are technically game assets. It’s definitely possible that it could be something else.

For example, it may have something to do with the ongoing SAG-AFTRA (labor union) Video Game Voice Actor’s Strike which began in July 2024. Other live service games like Genshin Impact have released updates without English dubs since the strike began.

If this is the case, it’s quite possible that Broadsword can’t use or doesn’t have (and subsequently can’t animate) the voice recordings. Given the outrage over KOTOR cutscenes in 7.5, I suspect most of you prefer to wait for the strike to end so you don’t have to read a whole bunch of silent dialogue. I know I do.

As a side note, one thing we know isn’t the cause of the delay is the Comlink System coming with 7.6. We know this because it’s used in other game systems like Dynamic Encounters and the new Cartel Market Deco Bundle.

The Delay Is Great

If anything, I think this delay will help them to catch up a bit, and depending on how much of the main content they’ve been able to stage and animate, might actually be to everyone’s benefit.

The animators and cinematographers could spend more time on scenes that otherwise would have been KOTOR cutscenes, including ones in the past, or improve animations in other parts of the game.

We know that the combat cutscene animations are quite rough for classes that don’t use a Lightsaber or Blaster Pistol. This could be an opportunity to expand their reusables library.

Even if it doesn’t result in animation polish elsewhere in the game, that’s still good news because it likely then won’t affect when the 7.7 story will be released.

Arguably the biggest problem with 7.0’s story is the fact that we effectively get a single Chapter every 6 months. Truly, I think the Legacy of the Sith storyline is better than most people think simply because players have forgotten what has happened. It’s just way too long and it’s easy to forget what happened if you only play through it once.

Many people aren’t interested in immediate encores unless it’s a genuine masterpiece, and the supreme must be rare by definition. Immediate includes replaying within 6 months.

Of course, that assumes the player even has another toon to replay it in the first place. How many toons do you have that are level 80? Gotten Legendary Status yet? How many of them are up-to-date in the story?

Let’s not forget how Legacy of the Sith has been told either. The whole thing with the Mandalorian Civil War is substantial enough to function as an entire Act IV in the Bounty Hunter Origin Story. That’s fantastic, assuming you’ve been playing through all the post-launch story as a Mandalorian.

The audience will have a hard time keeping track of the overall plot, and you can’t be invested in something you forgot about, and you are going to forget because the Mandalorian story only sometimes goes halvsies with Maglus and Sa’har.

Often, the Mandalorian Civil War says “No. Wholesies.” Mandalorian Civil War goes wholsies, so now it’s not 6 months anymore, it’s a year since you’ve gotten anything remotely substantial in terms of story you care about.

We see the same problem happening with fantastic TV shows that only get new seasons once every few years, and we all know those recap videos can only help so much.

That’s why so many of us rewatch past seasons in the months leading up to the next season, or disengage completely from the good ones that aren’t worth the effort. Last I checked, passive entertainment is supposed to be effortless.

The way I see it, the delay with SWTOR’s story has a good chance to enable existing content to be improved or make the rest of 7.0’s story better by being more condensed. I hope you see it that way now too. You might even appreciate how SWTOR Needs World Between Worlds now, more than ever.