Knights of the Fallen Empire ultimately made some good moves and some bad ones. I think it could have gone either way with how it’s remembered, but the followup expansion seemed like nothing but bad decisions and cemented the single-player story era as a low point in the game’s history.

• To start with, Knights of the Eternal Throne was not how the story was originally planned to continue from Fallen Empire. There were to be two more expansions, and while the format has never been confirmed, I’m guessing they would have followed Fallen Empire‘s format: the first set of chapters being dumped at once with the first part of the story, then monthly chapters connecting with old friends and building to a new conclusion. But the developers, sensing disappointment with the Fallen Empire story, decided to wrap it up in nine chapters.
• The biggest problem the Eternal Throne story had is that BioWare decided that the player was going to take command of the Eternal Fleet, what they thought their character would think of that be damned. This ties back to the awful Visions in the Dark chapter of Fallen Empire and makes it clear the idea all along was for the player character to become Emperor of Zakuul. Now, you do ultimately have the choice: “Yes, I’m the emperor!” / “No, I’m just in charge of this invincible fleet (and the one weapon that can vince it).” But it feels hollow; either way, you’re still the leader of the most powerful faction in the galaxy. Fun.
• Arcann’s possible redemption is a mess. Your only options are to insist that he dies, forcing you to kill Senya in the process, or to allow him to face absolutely no consequences for everything he’s done. There’s no middle ground here, no turning him over to the Republic or Empire to face war crime charges, no throwing him in a cell somewhere on Odessen like you can do with Saresh, nothing. Even him dying heroically would have been better – it was the right ending for Darth Vader, it was how it had to be with Ben Solo, and it’s what should have happened if you chose to spare Arcann on Voss. There’s even a good place in the story for it…
• In Mass Effect, Virmire was an effective gut punch: you have to choose which of your human crewmates you’re not going to be able to rescue in time. It’s a hard decision, it’s meant to be a hard decision, and apologizing to the one you’re not going to save hurts. Having to choose between Torian and Vette doesn’t work. Unlike Virmire, this is your base. You’ve got tons of resources at your disposal. You should be able to send people to try to help the person you don’t choose to bail out. Hell, even in the game you’re allowed to think there might be a chance you can rally and go after the other after you rescue the first until oops, you can’t. There’s also the fact that Vette is a favorite companion and even on my hunter I don’t give a womp rat’s ass about Torian; I can’t see any reason to save Torian over Vette.
• Good things about the story… Iokath provided a much-needed backstory for SCORPIO and the Eternal Fleet, and was a satisfying end to SCORPIO’s story. Crashing Vaylin’s coronation party was fun. Nathema was a sufficiently harrowing experience. And Tenebrae/Vitiate/Valkorion dies in the end, seemingly for real, for good this time.
• Uprisings are boring. Presented as fast-paced flashpoints, they were just… there. And not very well calibrated for groups without a healer; this is where the “kick the worst player out, summon a healer companion” strategy really came to life.
• Beyond the story, the game made a royal mess out of gearing. Discarding the commendation/data crystal system that had worked for so long, the game moved to giving crates of gear as you level up. It was a long climb up the ladder to the higher levels of gear, meaning with the 4.X change to how levels work, it was a long grind to get back to being as powerful as they had been before the expansion and level cap increase. Worse yet, the gear was random, so if you have bad luck you may be stuck waiting a few rounds to get a good mainhand weapon or earpiece or that one piece of armor you need for the six-piece set bonus. Expertise was gone, which… I think the wall needed to remain, but I don’t PVP so I don’t really care. The good news: everybody could get set gear, and no more super-high-endurance low-good-stat gear. I think, had the story simply been a disappointment, the game would have carried on as in 4.X until the next update. But gearing became a crisis, one that took a while to fix.

I think the path the story would have followed over two full expansions goes something like this: First expansion base story is Eternal Throne through Iokath. We reconnect with the governments of the Republic and Empire, try to work out a true Alliance, probably deal with Saresh’s takeover attempt. Then SCORPIO lures us into the trap on Iokath; we eventually escape and take stock of everything that’s happened. The episodic chapters would have built toward crashing Vaylin’s party and ending with her effectively deposed. The second expansion would have two focuses: finding and permanently defeating Vaylin, and learning about Valkorion and preparing to deal with him when the time comes. The episode chapters would build to the Echoes of Oblivion story that eventually came out in Onslaught.

Next: Next week I take on the X-Men and Spider-Man movies that brought superhero movies back from the brink that Batman & Robin drove them to. Then the next week I’m back to deal with Fractured Alliances, the next part of the Star Wars: The Old Republic story.