Of Monsters And Meatbags: SWTOR's HK-51 Update
Disney owns Star Wars now, so what better way to celebrate than with the most un-Disney character in the entire Star Wars universe? In fairness, Hk-51 isn't HK-47 (who has already appeared elsewhere in Star Wars: The Old Republic), but they're quite obviously cut from the same organic-life-loathing cloth. They probably also both loathe cloth, for that matter. Point is, don't go into a frothy mouthed state of paralytic shock if your new companion combines the words "meat" and "bag" to form a phrase of a far more sinister nature. But the galaxy-spanning quest to secure an adorable HK-51 of your very own is only a small part of SWTOR's upcoming update 1.5. The rest appears in a hyper-advanced eyeball stimulating holocron after the break.
It actually sounds like there's quite a lot going into this one - both on the story and mechanics sides of the coin. The HK quest ought to provide some pretty serious mileage - at least literally, even if not in terms of time it takes to actually complete. Knowing BioWare, I imagine HK-51 won't be a simple carbon copy of HK-47 either. I'm actually quite curious as to whether or not the RPG behemoth will opt to pull some crazy twist with this one. I mean, right now, it all seems a bit too predictable.
Operation: Explosive Combat nightmare mode sounds pretty appealing too, given that it's adding whole new boss mechanics instead of simply cranking up health and damage stats. Section X may, however, take the cake seeing as a) it experiments with dungeon mechanics and b) features a world boss named DREADTOOTH. I wonder if the rest of him is actually fairly pleasant, and it's only the one tooth that's not particularly likable? Regardless, he apparently grows stronger every time he gets defeated, which should be interesting, to say the least.
The free-to-play update, meanwhile, is apparently also "approaching quickly," though it sounds a bit rubbish to me - at least, in terms of how it stands to segregate the community. But I suppose we'll see once it's actually out in the wild. For now, though, are you interested in returning to BioWare's galaxy far, far away once all these shiny new toys enter the picture? Actually, do any of you still play right now?