I made a lot of progress yesterday (I played to much of this game) so I will have to skip out some of the awesomeness I got up to. Just know readers that I got up to a large amount of awesomeness! So without further ado we return to...

Stephenage's Story!

So mercenary bounty Stephenage is trying to make a name for himself by winning the great hunt. Now in order to do that I need a sponsorship and... Well my previous sponsors are indisposed so to speak. This meant I had to prove myself to a shadey Hutt, this meant I did a lot of fun missions. It entailed a lot of betrayal, and killing (the odd atrocity) and lots of 'kill x of x' and 'go to area x to collect x'. This sounds bad, but they are pretty well designed quests, and the writing and voice acting (and the choices) more than make sup for the MMO nature of the starter stuff. Now my role playing has come to an unexpected conclusion... I seem to be doing more good than bad. Which is shocking. It seems that people that hire bounty hunters are usually suspect characters who want evil work, surprise huh? It also seems that if you are sent to kill somebody that person will want to stay alive if possible, again, surprise huh? Now these people are pretty desperate to stay alive and will offer you money, now they are so desperate they will almost always offer you more money than you were originally offered to kill them. Now Stephenage only cares about the money, so he takes it, and this is making him good on a few occasions. He still does a lot of bad, but I'm surprised by the amount of good I have found myself doing. But hey, money is money right?

Now before I go on to talk about various exploits let me divulge why it's so cool to be in at the start of an MMO. One reason is everybody is in the same boat as you, the general chat is not creepy yet (like it becomes in MMOs) or overly invasive, in fact it's super helpful. People ask questions, people answer, and because people are similar levels there is a lot of people wanting to do the 'co-op' missions that you want to do. Another great feature is the names you see, now if anybody has ever signed up to any long running service on the internet they will realise that pretty much every name in the world has been taken. It's reminiscent of the joke in Futurama where there are only two non-patented names available to name a foodstuff that Fry and crew discovered, if memory serves me correctly they called them popplers. In later stages you see names like stephenage117 and names full of awful 'leet' terribleness and obviously unwanted kaveats. Right now though you see some awesome things. I genuinely ran into a dude named 'Shepard' on two occasions, and on the first occasion he was filling up the general chat with doting on Mass Effect. On top of this I ran past a dude named Garrus, who I complimented on his fine name, but in true Garrus nature he didn't care for my pointless flattery and carried on doing his damn job! On top of this I met an Inara, which I hope was a Firefly reference, and I was amused to see that the character was playing with a buddy named with the Inara acronym, Niara. Seemed fitting, what is the betting that they fought to be called Inara and the loser got the obvious acronym? On top of this, I also saw a Missingno, which was kinda cool, if very strange. The usual affair though is just people named with millions of apostrophes, you know because if sci-fi has taught us anything it's that aliens don't care for letters and are more than happy to replace them wherever possible. Maybe I should rename myself St'ph'n'g'. Seems pretty dumb, but fitting.

Now onto other awesome discoveries and the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS BLOG I think I spotted Nolan North. Yes, it is a game with audio so if we follow the laws of Descartes cogito then we have the game logic of 'I am a game with voice acting therefore I have Nolan North'. Now I'm a Nolan North fan, so take this not as criticism but adoration. I was wondering when I would first interact with him, and I'm pretty sure I met him twice! The first time was when a very Northie sounding kinda dude popped up and offered me money to not do what I was sent to do. That happens a lot, but such is the life of a bounty hunter. Now this character was a very Han Solo/ Malcolm Reynolds kinda smuggler/space cowboy guy. Seeing as North can sound a lot like Nathan Fillion he seemed like the perfect fit, and either it was a North imitator (a good one) or the true North himself. Now I cannot be wholly sure because I was listening to him through a holocrom, so his voice was a tad distorted. I did meet him in person later, but not for long. I'm pretty sure it was Nolan. On top of that, a quest dealer sounded like somebody doing an accent that had underlying bits of Nolan that a true North expert could notice. So that was awesome. If I ever rate this game, that's a plus .5 there, great and frequent use of North.

So now to things I have played. Wait, first of all I wanna talk about cool stuff my bounty hunter can do. I now have a flame thrower, an attack where I jet pack up and missile the hell out of an area, stun darts, explosive darts, missiles, fire damage blasters and a cool rail shot to just name a few of the fun things I've been doing this. But, as well as these, something I horrendously forgot to mention yesterday, I have a Shoryuken. I have an attack where, I guess I use my jet pack, to do a flying spinning upercut reminiscent of a heavy shoryuken. In fact, everytime I do it, I shout SHORYUUUUKEN. I totally like to finish quests demanding me to kill ferocious enemies by runnign up to them and shoryukenining them (I'm primarlily a ranged class so this looks kinda awesome, just imagine a badass bounty hunter raining down gadgeted awesomeness on you until you are about to die, then suddenly running straight at you crazily, whilst being shot to hell, just so he can punch you in the face).

Ok, actually on to things I have played this time, now I did some Star Warsey quests. Which was awesome. One of them involved stealing a Rancor egg and another highlight was fighting in an arena, reminiscent of the Rancor pit from RotJ (complete with a Hutt laughing over me from the top) where I had to defeat beasties. I then dispatched the beast master with a SHOOOOOORYUUUUUUKEN. It was rad. As well as this, the most star warsey thing I have done was rescuing a guy from carbonite, in which Stephenage legitimately said the line 'You have hibernation sickness. Your eyesight will return in time'. Very in your face with the fan service, but hey I'm a fan who likes being serviced.

Another stand out of yesterdays play was a foray into co-op. The first foray was cut short by me having to eat... So I abandoned my party members. Sorry dudes. I then went back later and completed these 'heroic quests' that advise you to do them 'co-op', by myself. And after I had finally got myself a sponsorship, I LEFT THE STARTING AREA :D, a mere level 11 making his way into the big world of the imperial fleet. Here I first jumped to my death in the middle of a social area, I wanted to see what would happen... I died is what happened. Then I did my first true co-op mission, what the game calls flashpoints, which are instanced storylined missions which are basically like set pieces. They are super cool and this one was really fun. I teamed up with some friendly people, who are now on my friends list, and we made our way through. Co-op is handled excellently, and rolling for dialogue choices works out surprisingly well. Luckily you are not subjected to the tyranny of the majority (to quote a famous philosopher) and if you pick the evil option when the highest roller actually picks good, even though you do the good you still get the prized evil points. It's a neat system.

So after that mission, which was great. I made my way to a new planet, where the real game begins... Oh and I almost forgot, I have my first NPC companion and she's called Mako. Classy Bioware... Classy. I will say though, she's a healer and more useful than the Mass Effect Mako for sure. She also called me disgusting in a cutscene because I totally smoked some woman who had helped us out because I remembered there was a bounty on her head. Hey, you know recession and all, I need money somehow.

Come back next time for my travels on Dromund Kaas!