BioWare Blog: Creating the Smuggler

Not nothing or a fan Friday today, but something with some nice substance. Today BioWare gives us a Developer Blog focusing on the Smuggler class. And the opening paragraph immediately sets the tone for what one can expect from the class:

Try this hypothetical scenario… you’re relaxing at the local cantina when three trigger-happy Rodian mercenaries pick a fight with the most attractive Jedi Knight you’ve ever seen. After the smoke clears, the Rodians are carried outside and the Jedi apologizes to everyone for making a scene. Do you:

1. Crack a joke to relieve the tension;
2. Demand the Jedi buy you a drink to replace the one that got spilled during the fight;
3. Smoothly invite your new friend back to a private booth to get better acquainted.

The answer, of course, is (d) All of the above. What’s that, you say? “All of the above” wasn’t among your options? Consider that your first taste of the Smuggler lifestyle. It’s time to make your own options and never limit yourself to just one. Strict adherence to rules and regulations is something other people do. Smugglers make things up as they go.

The article goes on to talk about how the Smuggler is a class of humor and romance. And I get the strong impression that the Smuggler is the jester of the classes, more there for comic relief than anything. But there is nothing wrong with that.

I can't help but wonder about those 'romances' though. Particularly how it will deal with gender. I strongly suspect that male Smugglers get to romance the girls and female Smugglers get to romance the guys, or something along those lines. But I would hope that it wouldn't make those kind of decisions for the player; if one can flirt with a character as a male Smuggler then one should be able to flirt with the same character as a female Smuggler (and vice versa). I have no interest in a class whose main draw is romance if all I can do is flirt with guys. To me romance includes both genders.

But let's not turn this into too much of a rant.

Another line that the class theorizer in me finds very interesting is the following: "You’ll be flirting with or laughing at the most exciting personalities in the galaxy: crime lords, gamblers, Bounty Hunters, senators, nobles, spies, Jedi and even Sith." Three of those are confirmed classes. With the exception of gamblers (which could be seen as Smugglers perhaps) the rest are all among the list of rumored classes. Noble and Senator are both theorized as the fourth Republic class, Spy is theorized to be the next Empire class (although possibly with another name), and some argue that Crime Lords will be another Empire class (though personally I don't think so).

However, at this point I sooner think that BioWare put those in purposely just to mess with us. And it's getting quite tiresome to theorize without any additional data; though this list drops a number of names there's nothing that we can do with it. Still, wouldn't surprise me if they unveiled, or at least mentioned, the next class in a few weeks during GamesCom. We'll see.

For the rest the class sounds like it might be nice to play and I must admit that my interest in it has gone from "pretty much not interested" to "I might want to create an alt somewhere down the line".