Daily Archives: December 22, 2011

An opening crawl for a crawling opening.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….


STAR WARS

Episode IX

AN OLD TROPE

It is a period of civil delay. Rebel spaceships,
queueing in their hidden base, threaten to win their
first victory against the evil Galactic Empire, just as
soon as they can get out the door. During the planned
battle, Rebel spies intend to form an orderly line to
steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the
DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power
to destroy an entire planet but very long delays at its
toilets. Not pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents,
because they’re all a bit held up trying to get to their
ships, Princess Leia casually saunters home aboard her
starship; custodian of [item not found] that can save
her people and restore freedom to the galaxy, she phones
ahead to let them know that she might be slightly delayed…

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

It’s the little things which are making me smile with respect to Star Wars: The Old Republic at the moment. For example: right click your companion’s portrait and you can instruct them to sell all the trash loot from your inventory, similar to the peddling pets feature in Torchlight which impressed me back in the day. In SWTOR the companion dashes off for sixty seconds (a timer appears on their portrait) and then returns to you, wherever you may be, and hands you your profit. It’s one of those simple ‘quality of life’ mechanics which avoids the player having to spend time and effort doing maintenance on their inventory, something which I very much appreciate having come to SWTOR from Skyrim: Thanes of Inventory Juggling; certainly if there isn’t already a mod in Skyrim to do something similar, I can’t imagine it will be too long in coming.

Of course I also like the feature in SWTOR because it’s terribly amusing to picture Khem Val, also known as Shadow Killer, also known as The Devourer, turning up to a small remote outpost and eating the merchants there, then shouting “I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE SALE WITH THESE MODEST GOODS!” before looking around, then repeatedly slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand and muttering “No, no, no! How many times Khem Val?! Make sale first, *then* devour puny alien population!”