First impressions

I swear I didn't touch the graphics settings. Both of these screenshots were taken on max settings, minutes apart and in the same location.

I'm sure I'm not the only player of The Old Republic who has restarted immediately after the opening cutscene due to my newly rolled character not looking anything like they did on the character creation screen. That interface has been reworked several times over the years and to be fair the current version does have better lighting than prior iterations, but more than once I've looked at a character during their first scene in-game and thought... that's not what I was going for. It's usually the skin tone and/or complexion that's the problem.

This has been even more of an issue for this character, because the Bounty Hunter's first scene is extraordinarily badly done. I took three passes at this character and she still looked like a PS1 model of Al Jolson, and it doesn't help that she goes through the entirety of the intro sequence with a tough girl grimace that twists her mouth into a weird shape. It's inexplicably bad, and all the more so because all the later scenes that take place in the exact same locations look normal.

Once I was finally through with the minstrel show I got my first look at the UI, which has had some changes since I last played. I admit I like my UIs to be as minimalist as possible and I've never much liked SWTOR's default setup, but this latest version is the worst yet - not just busy but cluttered. Can I even call that a mini map when it's taking up something like 1/3 of the center of the screen?

Thankfully the UI is fully customizable. In fact once I've rearranged it I rather like SWTOR's UI. It's clean, neat, informative and easy to use, and it's just a shame the default version makes such an awful first impression.