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[personal profile] alias_sqbr
So I finished the Imperial Agent storyline, and overall quite liked it! I did think it could have been a lot more clever/nuanced, I kept unfavourably comparing it to Andor. Also all the sidequests I did to level up were pretty meh, and even the good bits felt underwritten. But overall I had a good time.

After finishing the story and deciding I didn't want to continue on into the expansions with this character (for spoilery reasons explored below), I tried out the Jedi Consular and Jedi Knight stories and well... let's say I ended up just restarting the Imperial Agent storyline with a new Agent I hopefully will want to do the expansions with.

Content note: A defeated villain commits suicide.

I don't remember all the details so am going through a plot summary and it's showing me the consequences of choices I didn't make, it's interesting.

So! On Hoth you recruit Raina Temple, a perky, Australian accented Imperial officer who thinks Agents are the coolest and wants to be just like you when she grows up finishes training.

This is the one time I was glad for the forced heterosexuality of this part of the game, since even seeing a flirt option while she was talking about how much she looks up to my character would have felt pretty squicky. I only give Bioware partial props for her being black (to the extent ethnicity makes sense in this setting), since there's the option to change her appearance to a variety of colourings including pale skinned and lighter haired :/

For the most part I found Raina inoffensively dull. She has very slight force powers, which she has been hiding her whole life: all force users in the Empire must either die, or submit to Sith training, which she would not survive. Despite this she is intensely, unwaveringly loyal to the Empire, to the extent of hunting down and murdering her own father for the crime of...hiding her force abilities from the Sith. Labriar tried to persuade her to let him live but she was firm, which was enjoyably uncomfortable. The game acknowledged that Raina should, by this logic, also turn herself in. Part of her motivation was to save him from being tortured when the Sith eventually caught up with him but it was still a bit hypocritical (on top of the fascism etc)

Ok, so! The republic team Labriar is working with as a double agent is: manly, grizzled boss Ardun Kothe, creepy sleaze Hunter, and some blandly nice soldier types with zero personality.

The next mission is to help the Republic set off a whole bunch of bombs towards the Empire. At the last minute, the brainwashing reset serum kicks in, and WatcherX asks how she wants to proceed: reprogram herself "better", or remove the programming completely. The three options are eternal freedom, power, or revenge, and I chose freedom.

Ardun Kothe reveals himself to be a former jedi, and he says that brainwashing her was unforgiveable. You can kill him and his team, or let them all go.

And then just as Labriar is cancelling the bombs, Hunter shows up and says he told the Empire about the bomb control station and it's about to be attacked by the Empire. So who IS this guy? Who is he working for?

The minister for intelligence (who used to be Keeper) says he knows that Labriar has undone her programming, but won't tell anyone. He admits that he set it up but is unapologetic: it was the only way to convince the Sith not to kill her.

I decided to have Labriar be fairly accepting of his logic, though the whole situation shook what remaining faith she had in the Empire.

It becomes increasingly clear that Hunter is part of a Secret Organisation called the Star Cabal who have been manipulating the Empire and Republic behind the scenes for centuries, and are currently setting them up for a war that will decimate both sides. I think setting up a True Villain Worse Than The Empire is really lazy storytelling, as is having the only non-likeable Republic agent actually a secret villain. But ok, sure.

It turns out the Star Cabal hide their secrets inside a maximum security prison, which is a blatant excuse for a Prison Heist where Labriar had to go undercover as a hardened criminal, but it was pretty fun.

At this point I was taking Vector with me everywhere since he was (a) My bae and (b) More likely to approve of Labriar being polite and trying not to murder literally everyone. But I took Kaliyo along as a "pretending to be a hardened criminal" wingman and we had a great time... Until she got hit with a spray that increases violent tendencies and she tried to kill Labriar, saying "I've been waiting for this for a long time". Afterwards she said "I have nothing to apologise for" and stormed off so I went back to hanging out with Vector.

I think the fact you can only have one companion is an example of the game being underwritten: other Bioware games let you have 2-3 companions who actually talk to each other and react to each other's reactions, which is a lot more writing work but also adds a lot to the experience. But this game just has a few short cutscenes on the ship where they some of the companions talk together, and like...I don't think we ever see Kaliyo and Vector talk past his introduction (she thinks bugs are creepy) or really see Raina talk to anyone.

Vector and Dr Lokin are friends though, they have some creepy cute conversations about music and the scientific tests Lokin wants to do on Vector's body. They end up teaming up off-screen to break into a lab of Evil Scientists who turned out to be drawing on Dr Lokin's past evil research and were responsible for Vector being Joined. Vector says something like "Dr Lokin offered to try and cure us but we do not wish to stop being Joined. That said, we do not like that it was forced upon us." (He uses a mixture of I and We, so I amuse myself by thinking of his pronouns as He/They)

Dr Lokin claims to have left the evil lab because they were too evil even for him, but Labriar made him promise not to do any more Evil Science, just to be sure, and said she'd be watching.

Anyway! During the heist the weird androgynous voice of the Star Cabal's security system, Scorpio, taunts Labriar with how stupid and doomed she is. In the Vault, Labriar defeated Scorpio and she irritably joins the team. She's an AI designed to be self-improving, and over time decides to learn more about regular society, but she never stops being a smug asshole. I thought she was ok as a character, would have preferred a less Sexy Robot Lady design but do like that her character bio says she doesn't really care about gender.

And that's all the companions!

The Star Cabal were created hundreds of years ago after a war between sith and jedi to make sure force users don't get too powerful, but have basically just become a generic Evil Secret Society Motivated By Power, and want to wipe out the sith and jedi as competitors. Which is a mildly interesting premise but they're not very fleshed out.

(and then I ran out of steam for writing this post for ages until I suddenly felt inspired to finish it)

At some point Labriar and Vector kiss, it's a very gentle romance since they're both SUPER work focussed (to the extent of being...literally brainwashed into it...) but sweet in a weird sort of way. The plot of his arc is helping set up a partnership between the Empire and Kilik hive, which Labriar felt VERY WEIRD ABOUT but there aren't many options to be like...I love you honey but both of those groups are kinda evil and this will lead to the Empire giving dissidents to bugs to be brainwashed and/or eaten. At once point a space racist Imperial says the communalist bugs are a mockery of everything the Empire stands for and Vector hotly says he and the Hive absolutely share the Empire's ideals, and he is still a loyal member of the Empire. Yaaaaaay. Still, he does always gain approval when Labriar tries to be compassionate and non-violent and respectful of aliens.

Near the end of the game they have fade-to-black sex, and he turns out to have figured out a way to separate himself from the Hive temporarily so noone else is watching. Which has all sorts of fascinating implications! Sadly his natural eye colour is a gold I liked a lot less than the all-black. Anyway. I can totally see Labriar using sex as an excuse to have him be disconnected as much as possible and gain more autonomy without clueing in the Hive.

On with the plot! The trail of the Star Cabal leads to Voss, a planet whose isolationist alien inhabitants have their own unique version of force abilities they use for prophecy. They have a sort of Ancient China/Japan vibe, and cool swirly face designs. The Empire's contact on Voss is a human who got surgery to steal the identity of a Voss, and he switches between playing Polite Tea Shop Owner Who Loves His Family And Cultural Traditions in front of "his" wife and adult children, and spitting in a snotty English accent about the ignorant and disgusting aliens he's forced to pretend to care about.

The trail requires Labriar to do a whole... mystical spirit trial to be accepted as Worthy thing, which was mildly interesting with some chances for roleplaying but a bit exotifying.

The plot has the Agent marry the opposite sex child of the contact to become legally part of their society. The daughter didn't get much screen time in my playthrough, but the son is a sweet, earnest young man who came out of his compulsory military service a pacifist. Vector was endearingly pouty about his girlfriend marrying someone else, in an understated way, but accepted the necessity. The Voss don't seem to have divorce, Labriar was charmed by her husband's earnestness and felt some responsibility for having him stuck in a marriage with a stranger who was about the leave the planet (which he knew about) and a 'dad' who is a space racist who killed the actual father (which he didn't) and did not take the chance to have sex with him since he came across as like 19. After the wedding it is impossible to ever speak to him again directly, but he sends cute little updates about how things are going on the planet, addressed to "my wife".

So despite having been burned out on planet quests I decided to do the Voss one so Labriar had more of a sense of what was happening on her husband's home world. Voss is yet another planet with a Violent Indigenous Humanoid Species 'Just Smart Enough To Hold A Blaster' which...ugh (I have OPINIONS on the Jedi class quests, but we'll get to that in another post) At one point there's a quest to stop these Gormak from building an orbital bombing platform and there's sadly no option to go "I think anyone building SPACE SHIPS is probably SENTIENT".

Anyway, in the Voss planet quest it turns out the force-using Voss are an off-shoot of the Gormak, created by the Jedi in ancient times as part of a war with the Sith. That's why they have force powers. The Gormak are understandably pissy about this and the Voss leadership refuse to admit it. As with so many plots of this type, the "Omg natives are people too" message is undermined by them being written so much as thuggish villains you mostly just murder.

Moving on!

A war has started between the Republic and Empire, due to the Star Cabal setting up fake attacks to break the peace treaty.

The Dark Council of sith break up Imperial Intelligence and send everyone to work on the War Effort, which is obviously the Star Cabal manipulating things behind the scenes to get Intelligence off their trail. They also send a mind virus to put all the genetically engineered Watchers into a coma, and Kaliyo is arrested.

Labriar is sent to fight dumbass battles under the command of dumbass Sith being manipulated by the Star Cabal.

Watcher 2/Keeper manages to get out of the coma and contact Labriar, and sets her up to get captured by Hunter and reveal fake information under torture. ILU Watcher 2.

Kaliyo is freed off screen by unnamed parties which I think was a waste of an oppurtunity for a rescue mission.

Labriar is sent to the Star Cabal's secret base, to both destroy them, and discover their secret techniques, which will be passed on to the Sith. I think this is when you can have an interesting conversation with the Information Minister where he doesn't SAY "We both know the Sith having access to this data would be a disaster" but he heavily implies it, talking around what he really means no matter how much you press him.

There were TIMED LASER PUZZLES but once I figured out how they worked they were pretty easy and did create a sense of this being the Final Dungeon.

Labriar defeats the Star Cabal. A defeated Hunter says they would have been good partners if Labriar wasn't an Imperial and reveals...THAT HE WAS A WOMAN ALL ALONG!! This is a pretty unexciting reveal but does mean Bioware managed to slip in a whole bunch of a woman skeezing onto other women so, sure.

The Star Cabal trained her since childhood and gave her a new identity, and she didn't care as long as she was good.

According to the summary:
If the Imperial Agent is playing a male character, Hunter will go on to say that by the time the Agent came along, it was too late to change, and that the Agent understood that she liked them, and that she had tried to keep them alive, and keep it fun. The male Agent can then choose to take her prisoner, kill her, or kiss her.


Alas with a female agent Hunter just says she's jealous Labriar got to keep her real face (kinda funny when Labriar is a cyborg with face implants but anyway)

Labriar tried to take her in but Hunter killed herself.

And then comes a BIG CHOICE!!

Depending on choices made previously and in this scene, the Agent can:
-give the data to the sith
-destroy the data
-keep the data but NOT give it to the Sith
-give the data to the Republic, and (it turns out) possibly become a Republic spy within the Empire.

I chose keep the data but not give it to the Sith or Republic, since at this point Labriar didn't trust the Republic or Empire.

Back at headquarters, the Minister for Intelligence takes the data, and uses it to find any remaining Star Cabal conspirators...and to wipe Labriar from the Imperial records, before destroying the data. He says he always tried to make the Empire better from the inside, but failed. Now she can do so as a free agent, working to help others as she has been but without having to answer to their evil higher-ups.

Vector proposes, it's very cute, and now she has TWO alien husbands. Nice.

She flies off into space with her crew, finally (mostly) free.

THE END (of the Imperial Agent arc)

This was a perfect ending for Labriar, again pretty underwritten but otherwise very satisfying.

But the moment I tried starting the first expansion I realised she'd be back to answering to Imperials and I just didn't want to.

I had heard you could become a double agent, so looked up a guide, at which point I discovered I'd missed my chance. But I don't regret it, I like that ending for Labriar.

Looking it up now, the other possible endings are:

If the Sith have the data, the Minister for Intelligence sees dark days ahead, with the Sith gaining even more power.

If the Agent either actually destroyed the data or gave it to the republic and says it's destroyed, the Minister for Intelligence says there's no way to root out the remains of the Star Cabal now, and the Agent will have to go dark to avoid being hunted down. The Minister is unsure if he will survive the change in power, and warns the Agent not to share his fate.

My new Agent is a Chiss (meaning she experiences anti-alien prejudice and is also a cool blue colour) with a better haircut and a personality designed to have her end up joining the Republic in the end.

But that can be a story for another day!

Date: 2022-11-30 03:35 am (UTC)
anghraine: vader and luke dueling in esb (anakin and luke)
From: [personal profile] anghraine
While I'll likely never play, this was super interesting to follow along with!

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