If you’re not familiar with the newest character in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, that’s understandable: it’s a brand new character in the Star Wars universe, period.
The Old Republic droid 50R-T was just released as a marquee character, geared toward helping droid squads and signaling that Old Republic will be a renewed focus (accompanying the significant Darth Malgus reveal recently too, who is now in the game as a Conquest reward). At first I just assumed that I’d missed a character from one of the Old Republic stories, but the developers confirmed that this is a brand new character they’ve created for this game.
The developers wrote about that in their Developer Insights about the character:
We’ve been spending time with our friends at Star Wars™: The Old Republic! As we were working with them on bringing Darth Malgus into our game, we also started on the idea of creating a new droid after seeing one of their concepts for an upcoming character. The look of 50R-T was inspired by some of the humanoid chassis droids in the Old Republic, with a firm nod to the Gemini class.
So it sounds like this character (pronounced “Sortie”) might be inspired by some things that are coming from The Old Republic, but that the developers had some fun and created a brand new Star Wars character. There are some things about 50R-T that is really welcome, particularly giving some more viability to some droids that have gone underutilized for years. There are other things about the character that are a bit more puzzling, such as how much viability a Conquest Omicron will really provide.
But the thing that really puzzles me more than anything is why they’re now literally making up characters. This game has a massive collection of Star Wars characters, pulling from the films and shows and publishing and Legends, but there are tons more to choose from that are not yet in the game. This feels like the developers really just wanted a character to fit this exact mold, and so they decided to just make it up to work. Now I really don’t want to come across as overly negative here, because there’s part of me that thinks it’s cool to give these developers the chance to create something like this (and given that it’s Star Wars, I wouldn’t be surprised if 50R-T shows up in a story at some point down the road after being introduced here).
Overall, though, with the vast amount of notable Star Wars characters who have been featured significantly in storytelling and yet are not in this game, it just seems really weird. I may just be reaching here, but it’s not a great sign when a game that still has a vast roster of characters to pull from just starts creating their own. It looks like grasping at straws.
But hey, one more version of 50R-T and there will be as many versions of the droid as there are of Leia Organa in the game!
Star Wars Thoughts 