This is the final part of our canon-destroying playthrough of Star Wars Conquest, a mod for sandbox RPG Mount & Blade.
Last week s series of successful battles against the Empire was met by the realization that Star Wars Conquest seemingly has no end. In 20-some hours of play, I ve learned that almost no amount of slaughtered Stormtroopers will significantly impact the universe. Named characters can t die, captured planets rarely stay captured, prisoners always eventually escape, and climbing the political ranks of the Rebel Alliance mainly involves playing tax collector for Mon Mothma and Obi-Wan.
Frustrated that I ve not yet been named Space King, I set out to simply cause as much chaos as possible. I chase down a huge swarm of Hutt forces. Jumbled in the pack of misshapen ships are the ships of Boba Fett (not Slave I, sadly) and Jabba himself. As I meet them on Tattooine in open combat, I gain new, instant appreciation for the face- and torso-covering properties of Stormtrooper armor.
For the first time in awhile, I ve bitten off more than I can chew. The blob of Hutt forces adds up to about a thousand, almost nine times my army. I regret my armor s trade-off in durability for sex appeal; jesus, there are a lot of dudes.
Neither tasteful nor protective.
I get captured and lose a bunch of items. But again, we ve already covered Conquest s impermanence I escape after being carted around the Hutt Cartel for a few days, presumably after serving as Jabba s personal froyo machine.
Back in my ship, I buy a new army at a cantina, and I m off and running again. I catch Boba Fett s ship isolated from any escorts, and take the opportunity to engage him without the aid of his hundreds of Hutt comrades.
Well, that felt nice. Let s see what other irresponsibly outmatched battles I can get into.
Yes, this ll do.
Yawn. I ask Luke Skywalker for a mission, hoping that some sort of unique questline is coded into his character that distinguishes him from the mod s other figures.
Nope; he wants me to do more money collection. Man, for an underground, anti-government organization, the rebellion sure are a bunch of capitalists.
I do a bad thing, and take out my ennui on some mostly-defenseless Jawas.
Still bored, I remember that there s a feature of Conquest I haven t tried before: arena combat. Maybe this ll prove more interesting or challenging than the game s mundane, open-area warfare. I chat up the Arena Master on Endor and arrange a fight against other lightsaber wielders.
The first few minutes of arena combat are, I ll admit, mildly entertaining. Lightsaber attacks do a fair amount of damage, and new combatants are constantly respawning, fighting each other, then ganging up on me when I get close. I have to be wary of new enemies silently approaching me from behind.
Unfortunately, the incentive for fighting here is tiny: my health takes awhile to replete, and the money reward for clearing out the arena is just a few hundred credits. I take my boredom out on Vader.
I dig through Conquest s menus for any signs that I might ve missed. Then, in the Take actions menu I find a glimmering rectangle of hope: an option to retire from adventuring. Could this be a way out of this interminable, Star Wars-colored, DirectX 7 hell? I click.
The decision is made, and you resolve to give up your adventurer s life and settle down. You sell off your weapons and armor, gather up all your credits, and depart into the sunset
A score screen appears.
Good lord. Not only is retirement the only way to end a game, but apparently I've come nowhere close to winning. A weird difficulty penalty (for what, I m not sure I had every in-game setting cranked up) drains my accumulated points, which earns me a sad, depressing prologue: It doesn t take long to fritter away what little you bothered to save, and you end up a penniless drifter, going from cantina to cantina blagging drinks form indulgent patrons by regaling them with war stories that no one ever believes.
Remember me not as the Droid Hobo I am, but as the brave, unscrupulous Droid Jedi I was.
Read the rest of our Diary of a Droid Jedi series.