Where is Agent Galen?

I have no idea. I can't remember. And it's wonderful.

One of the undeniably great things about Star Wars: The Old Republic is the gargantuan size of the story content. With eight original class stories, the unified story of 2015-2019 and the diverging Republic and Empire viewpoints since, there's hundreds of hours of content.

Despite playing SWTOR since 2012, I've only completed seven of the eight original stories. The trooper is still a work-in-progress for me, but nevertheless I've rolled new Jedi, Sith and other tech classes to experience the stories again.

I've been leisurely progressing through these over the last couple of years - increasingly recently now I've completed Galactic Seasons Season 1, allowing me to get back to more rewarding story content*. Having not played many of them since 2012-2013 (Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior in particular) they feel like brand new stories. I'd completely forgotten 99% of them.

* As an aside, I'd like to borrow a line from Shintar over at Going Commando: Galactic Seasons completely 'sucked the air out of the room' over the summer. While she made this reference in relation to her writing, I think it's an accurate description of what Seasons did to my play style... Now I'm at level 100, it's a breath of fresh air to be able to get back to a more relaxed style!

Take the titular Agent Galen from the Jedi Knight story, who aids you in a quest to stop the Empire unleashing a number of devastating superweapons. The name rang a bell, but I'd forgotten everything else about the story. I quickly become invested in Galen and the colourful cast of characters that surround you, as if seeing a great film for the first time. Galen's disappearance prior to the Nar Shaddaa arc had me worried: 'I don't remember any of this... Is he alright?!'

It was a fantastic reminder that replaying the class stories feels, for me, like a whole new experience. The sheer wealth of content for SWTOR means that it'll probably be the same for the all the classes once I get round to them - I will probably remember very little!

The more recent expansions have tended to blend together and encouraged me not to play them on multiple classes, as the stories become conflated: I forget which companions have survived on which alts; the 'choices that matter' become irrelevant unless I keep a log of what each character has, or has not, done. And that doesn't sound fun.

Not so the original stories. Diving back into them is a reminder of the depth of storytelling we were originally gifted all those years ago.

Replaying them as the opposite gender character is also a great move, as the alternate voice actor adds another layer of shiny 'newness' to the experience. There are voices for the main classes that I've never even heard, despite playing for almost a decade.

I hope Agent Galen's ok. I look forward to finding out. Even more than that I'm excited to see what else I don't remember!