Man + Skirt: A Review of SWTOR's Jedi Consular Story PART 1

Leading up to the launch of  Star Wars: The Old Republic, One of the biggest issues that seemed to come up in all of the discussions amongst eager players to be was the skirt. No kidding, almost every forum discussing the Jedi Consular included some guy or another whining about how he didn't want his character to run around the galaxy wearing a skirt. The next most common complaint was about being pigeon-holed as a healer, which... whatever.

Gender-policing aside, the Jedi Consular was definitely one of the most awaited classes in the game. The Consular was introduced in the Star Wars RPG and was an intriguing distinction: a Jedi who focused on the more intangible aspects of the Force itself.

Right away, there was interest in the more indirect cousin of the Jedi Knight. We were told that there would be a story focusing on the mysteries of the Force as well as  behind-the-scenes political story-lines dealing with the Republic. I was certainly intrigued by the bits and pieces that we were told about leading up to launch. Telekinesis and double-bladed lightsabers? Count me in! Unearthing lost knowledge and immersing oneself in the depths of the Force? Sign me up.

I knew early on that I wanted to play my Consular dark-sided. How could I resist the idea of a Jedi who looks a little too closely at the dark side? I love the idea of a fall from grace precipitated by innocent intellectual curiosity.

It took me longer than I would have liked, but I eventually finished the Jedi Consular game a few months ago. After having mulled it over for a while, I'm going to relate my experience of it.

First of all, I refer to this as the Consular game because it is exactly that. Each class quest in SWTOR is about the same size as either of the KoTOR games and takes around he same length of time to finish. This is excluding Flashpoints and Planet quests. Finishing this game is a commitment making plot and characterization as essential as game-play.

So I'll say this much for now. I loved it. Overall, I loved it. There were some parts that didn't work for me and some that were just okay. But the parts that were awesome more than made up for the parts that weren't.

Speaking so generally, I decided to make part one of the review spoiler-free. The rest of it won't be. I'm going to review each chapter of the game separately so, if you're new to the Consular's game, wait until after playing each chapter before reading my take on it.