FSS 2011: The Black Talon Flashpoint Impressions

Way back at PAX 2009, when fans got their first look at a gameplay video from Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, we soon became all too familiar with the “kill the captain/save the captain” meme that served as a monument to how choices would matter in the game.

Then, back in January of this year, SWTOR.com got an official Game Systems page for Flashpoints and we learned that the actual name of the “captain” Flashpoint was The Black Talon, an early Empire-only scenario. According to the Flashpoints Game Systems Page:

The captain of an Imperial transport refuses official orders to intercept a Republic transport, and your team must seize control of the transport and carry out the mission. Will you kill or spare the captain?

Earlier this week at the Fan Site Summit in Austin, we finally got a chance to get our hands on this awesome Flashpoint ourselves… and here’s how it went down!

As we were getting ready to play, there was a bit of a debate as to wether we should go in with 4 real players (myself, Sentinel, and Zach and Evan from Mos Eisley Radio,) or 2 players with their companions. Stephen Reid thought it would be fairly hard for just 2 players with companions, but after some contemplation, that’s the way we decided to run it! Sentinel would play the Bounty Hunter, and I (Lethality) would play the Imperial Agent.

This is the hangar where you must defeat a boss to board the shuttle.

Note: There are probably some spoilers here, so tread carefully!

The Black Talon is actually a ship, so to begin the Flashpoint you have to head off to a hangar in the spaceport on Hutta. There, you speak to an NPC (Bith, if I recall) and he gives you your marching orders.

Entering the actual Flashpoint involved running down a corridor and passing through one of the now familiar green “phase walls”, and as is the case throughout the rest of the game, there is no loading screen or load time when you do.

Once inside, we talked to yet another NPC to get things going. After speaking to him and turning the first corner, we were met with our first challenge – a group of 4 soldiers, one of them being a squad leader (slightly stronger than the others.)

Is this the droid we're looking for?

After a couple of pulls gone bad of this first group, which we thought would be fairly straightforward, we realized what was going wrong. Our companions would not enter the room we were in due to an invisible crack in the floor (thanks to Georg Zoeller for pointing that out!) So once we realized we needed to dismiss and summon them in the room, everything went as expected. We took out the relatively weak soldiers first, then concentrated on their superior.

Our companions did what they were set to do, and we didn’t micromanage them at all. Sentinel’s companion Mako was out “healer” and from what I could tell, concentrated on healing him the most but I also noticed the occasional heal-over-time on me going off for 36 health per tick. My companion, Kaliyo, just stuck around the perimeter and pumped whoever I was attacking full of blaster bolts. Occasionally, I would use her grenade ability, but it didn’t seem too effective.

As we marched on through the Flashpoint, we occasionally ran into the companion pathing issue, but since we knew how to deal with it, it didn’t present too much of a problem. Georg Zoeller had mentioned that of course is something that would be fixed.

Along the way, the groups we pulled consisted of a mix of solders and sentient droids… many times what would appear to be a group of 2 would end up being a group of 3 or 4 once we pulled, as the adds came in via jetpack or from behind a nearby closed door. It provided a little variety to the otherwise monotonous task of “pulling trash”. Sometimes the pulls would surprise us because the lighting would be awkward and hide 1 or 2 of the mobs in the shadows… I am sure this is probably something still being iterated on.

The first boss we came to, whom we needed to pass in order to take a boarding shuttle over to the Republic ship, started out tough but bugged out before we could identify a strategy. Luckily, Georg Zoeller was once again nearby and gave us the secret key combo to kill him automatically. Yes, I asked and no, that ability won’t be in the shipping game ;)

Black Talon Away!

After that fight, we took the boarding shuttle over to the Republic ship and took down a few packs before our time ran out. So we didn’t get to finish the instance, but we got a great feel for the pacing and the general idea BioWare is going for. Here are a few other observations:

• Size – It’s huge! We didn’t finish the Flashpoint, but I would say we spent a good 30 minutes getting to where we were. I don’t know how far we were from the end, but it definitely felt like we were accomplishing something meaningful.
• Design – It’s Star Warsy! Seriously though, traipsing through the large hangars really made me feel like I was dropped in the middle of a Star Wars movie.
• Bonus Quests – All along the way, there are bonus objectives that your team can get (much as in the open world.) These objectives provide an absolute ton of rewards and experience, and according to Georg Zoeller, can even unlock different bosses to fight.

After playing Taral V at PAX East, and now The Black Talon at the Fan Site Summit, I feel confident in saying that fans of this kind of group content have all the reasons in the world to believe that BioWare is going to deliver in this area.