Fixing the #1 Story Beef of KotFE/KotET with as few resources as possible - Separating Vitiate from Valkorion

So, there are many people who hate, dislike, or otherwise have some problem with KotFE and KotET, and the #1 (or at times, #2, behind "it doesn't feel like Star Wars") reason seems to always be some form of the following:

"Up until Shadow of Revan and Ziost, Emperor Vitiate was a Sith Emporer who at one point consumed a planet of life, including a mess of Sith Lords, to achieve immortality, and his long term goal, as seen in multiple storylines, is to consume all life in the galaxy, attain the power of a god, and use that power to create his own galaxy with him as god of it (fitting for the overall #1 bad guy of the series)."

"KotFE comes along, and now Vitiate has given up on being a god, and instead wastes all this time playing mind games in order to ultimately possess you. Oh, and he has been Valkorion all along, and is nothing like the Emperor you've been fighting against in the vanilla game, other than they both live forever and can body hop. There is no consistency between Vitiate and Valkorion, yet we are expected to suspend disbelief and pretend Vitiate was Valkorion all along."

That's the jist of it. Some people hint at it, while others come right out and say it.

And unfortunately, despite the complaints, Lead Writer Charles Boyd saw fit to defend it:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9340700#edit9340700

One last note about numbers: it's commonly asked how we balance feedback against data and metrics, so this is a great place to use as an example. Numerically speaking, KOTFE and KOTET were our most successful expansions by a very significant margin. We didn't change anything in the story based on numbers (the numbers would've said to keep doing exactly what we were doing), we changed them based on the passionate feedback we received from y'all.

Now, keep in mind that, aside from story, KotFE and KotET included some of the best Quality of Life improvements to date of any expansion pack, which could also explain the great numbers - it made SWTOR replayable and not boring, adding flash and convenience.

So, keeping that in mind, we have an uphill battle to climb to fix this, and if it ever is to get fixed with mental resistance already in place, the best shot we have is to suggest changes that give the biggest bang for the buck - in other words, that achieve fixing the Valkorion/Vitiate issue while costing the development team as little time and money as possible.

That is where this idea comes in.

My suggestion is this:

By changing some of the exposition dialogue in some cutscenes, we can dramatically change the story, while still keeping it in place as is otherwise, thus not directly changing much else of the story and its flow.

We do this by making Valkorion and Vitiate BROTHERS.

Its an overused contrivance for sure, but one that can actually be made to work here with as few changes as possible.

THE HISTORY:

So in this idea, here is the back story as to how this would work.

Valkorion and Vitiate were brothers of the Zakuul royal family, powerful in the force. Zakuul was a technologically advanced yet in an isolationist system (star wars use of system, meaning solar system) in the Unknown Regions. While both Valkorion and Vitiate were crown princes, Vitiate hated the isolationism and would oft run away to other planets, with the older brother Valkorion being sent to retrieve him.

Vitiate during one such attempt comes across a Sith who notices his power and invites him to Korriban. Valkorion pursues but given the unknown of the Sith Empire to one confined to his own system other than to chase his brother, he tracks Vitiate, but does not fully pursue, opting to return home while leaving methods to track Vitiate in place. He has to explain to his family the situation, and is severely punished for letting his brother get away to a non Zakuul planet (the start of a rift).

Over time, from the devices Valkorion left in place, he learns of his brother's ascent to Emperor, and his plans to become immortal. He leaves on an emergency to pursue his brother, and arrives at the site of the first ritual that made Vitiate immortal - all life, including the sith lords serving Vitiate, perish, but Valkorion is not only spared, but now is immortal as well - Vitiate knew his brother was listening to him after all, and granted Valkorion this power because he now wants him and his brother to rule the galaxy as gods. Disgusted, Valkorion rejects Vitiate, who then cast Valkorion back to his ship and tells his brother that one day, Vitiate will be back then to claim all life on Zakuul, and will rule the galaxy as its god. This is the main rift that drives Valkorion to hate his brother.

Valkorion returns to the planet, and when the Zakuul emperor tries to punish his son Valkorion for his failure again, Valkorion, with his newfound power, kills the Emperor and assumes the throne, declaring the start of the Eternal Empire of Zakuul, and preparing Zakuul for the day his brother returns. He spends his time now preparing to face off and kill Vitiate when given the chance.

However, Eons pass and because of Zakuul's isolationist nature, pinning down Vitiate is difficult, as he is always on the move, and uses his hands to communicate with those he chooses (the real reason for the hands of the emperor).

That is, until Ziost happened. When word got back to Valkorion that all life on Ziost was consumed by Vitiate, something snapped in Valkorion. He set his Zakuul army and fleet, which he has been building up this whole time, to scour the Republic and the Sith Empire to lay waste looking for the Emperor Vitiate, so Valkorion can confront him.

In the meantime, Valkorion has a family, but to his dismay, he has twin sons. Scarred from his own ongoing strife with his brother, he decides when they are old enough, to pit them against each other, and foster an environment where one will kill the other, and he will accept the survivor as his heir. This fits in perfectly with the KotFE trailer.

This history will be given out over the new voiceovers from Valkorion himself in the existing content, else inferred.

THE MOTIVATION:

So then, why is Valkorion interested in our character? Simple - (s)he was spared on Ziost. Valkorion deduces the Emperor must therefore have a connection to our character. The goal then for Valkorion is to take over our character's body and use our character to draw out Vitiate towards a final confrontation.

THE LEAD IN:

So lead in to where Marr is killed by Valkorion - this is the one cutscene I can think of where more than just a change in voice over would be needed, but just a minor cutscene work - Marr says he senses Vitiate's power in Valkorion, which pisses off Valkorion and is why he kills Darth Marr.

However, this is the time Arcann plans his own takeover, stabbing Valkorion. However, Valkorion already knew of this, allowed it to happen, and uses it as the perfect time to jump bodies to our character, leaving an unknowing Arcann in charge of the Zakuul Empire, and frees up Valkorion to hitch a ride on our character until he can take over completely and draw in his brother Vitiate.

The rest of the game plays as is, with the exception of references to Valkorion and Vitiate being the same - those lines are adapted for the new paradigm.

THE FALL OUT:

So we defeat Valkorion in the end. He never gets revenge on his brother. However, in a sense our character gets to go in his place by proxy, as due to Valkorion hanging about in our body, our body now is immune to Vitiate taking it over OR consuming it, Ziost style.

Therefore, this puts our player as the character who can stop the emperor as a result, and allows the Vitiate storyline to reach a proper conclusion in a future expansion.

So by making this change, which is just changing some cutscene dialogue voiceover for Valkorion and minor cutscene edits, the Developers can keep the KotFE story mostly intact, it now makes a LOT more sense in the greater context of the game, and it also points a way forward towards a grand conclusion vs a galaxy-devouring emperor.

My suggestion would be to reignite the Sith-Republic war for a bit, until Vitiate, sure of his brother's demise (and perhaps after he consumes Zakuul, leading to refugees coming into the Republic and Sith Empires), starts devouring the galaxy, and our player now has to stop him once and for all (I imagine a massive operation where a giant emperor is forming mini planets in his hands and smashing them down into the players, and opening his mouth to "consume" our players like the Mummy movies, with players needing certain buffs to resist it (I'd probably have the Voss help out in 4 corners of the arena, and needing to pick up a buff by walking in the radius of the Voss, each with a different one to resist one of the Emperor's otherwise 1 hit kill attacks).

Anyway, that seems like a lot, but really, its the quickest fix with the least work to get the story back on track.

Thoughts?