This week I want to look more closely at the Taral V walk through from Pax East. The video posted to the site starts with an introduction from Bioware’s director of production, Dallas Dickinson, the narrator of this update. A Jedi Master from the same unknown species as Yoda, named Master Oteg, is talking to four Republic players, one of each class.

Master Oteg starts with asking the heroes to keep an open mind as he enables all of them (even the non-force sensitives) to see a Force ghost, the Force ghost proceeds to tell the heroes of a great evil threatening the galaxy. Oteg tells the group that there is a prisoner in the maelstrom nebula that is key to the Republic’s war effort, but the only way to free him is with a navi-computer located on Taral V. The four Heroes accept this mission and leave for their captured Sith shuttle to sneak past the Sith’s warships guarding Taral V. When the team boards the shuttle the game jumps to a cut scene of the ship flying out of the hangar and into space, then the cinematic cuts to the ship landing on Taral V and the players exiting the stolen craft.

As soon as the players exit the shuttle they all cast their buffs and set out down a dirt path. At this point in the video we get to see some of the reactive environment effects, a lightning bolt strikes the ground in front of the group and sets the ground on fire, shortly after a small skirmish that takes place there, lightning strikes an imperial ship and it crashes into a not so distant guard tower that crumbles and falls to the ground.

The video also shows a “Bonus Mission” inside of the Taral V flashpoint where the group of Heroes must destroy a small Imperial research station. This side mission looks like it wasn’t much of a challenge, a small ambush then some free XP for blowing up the research station.

After completing the bonus mission the team faces constant action on its way to the next objective on Taral V, a mini-boss fight against two trained vine cats and their handler. The smuggler neutralizes one of the vine cats with a stun dart while the Consular puts the other in a stasis field, leaving the mini-boss handler alone to face the four heroes. The team make pretty quick work out of the handler but amidst the fighting the Trooper throws a sticky grenade on the handler that breaks one of the Vine cats out of its stun, but the Trooper does a great job of keeping aggro of both the mini-boss and the vine cat. After a short trek, destroying another research station, and an elite droid the team finds itself in its first real boss fight against Captain Shivanek and his pet ripper. The Trooper and smuggler team up against the Ripper which has much more health and is much more deadly than the Captain the two Jedi are engaging. The two Jedi kill the Captain, but this gives his already powerful pet Ripper a buff called enraged making it even more powerful.

This boss fight is much longer than the previous one, and the teams health actually gets noticeable chunks taken out. After defeating the Ripper the party is contacted by Master Oteg who tells them that before they can enter the compound they must disable it security systems. The video then cuts back to Dallas Dickinson telling us that the only way to experience Taral V and all the other flashpoints is to play the game, imagine that.

All together it’s  a great video full of combat and exciting action well worth the 16 minutes it take to watch.