I’m out of town this week, so let’s shift gears a bit and instead take a break to check out how my friends and I celebrate the spooky season in Star Wars: The Old Republic and share my top five Halloween costumes that I’ve created over my years playing the game.
Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year and I have many fond memories celebrating with friends and family. Some years ago, the officers of my wonderful guild New Outriders began dressing up and it has become a tradition in the guild to celebrate the season with a costume party and some trick or treating, with the emphasis on tricks!
I also enjoy using the costumes as an excuse to tear a hole or two in the time-space-continuum while recreating some iconic scenes featuring the characters as whom I’ve dressed up.
If We Can’t Protect the Galaxy…
Our very first Halloween theme was super-heroes and we ended up with a nicely appropriate group of avenging heroes and I commemorated the event with a faux comic book cover. Truthfully, my Iron Man suit is just a yellow and red dye slapped on some goggles and the Powered Exoguard armor, but in the future, I tried to get a bit more accurate in my costumes, and I hope I made up for it in this presentation, which, do to an errant “Save as” error, sadly now only exists in this low resolution version.
Go Go Power Rangers
The following year, we went with a somewhat similar theme, and it pleased me that after divvying up the colors ahead of time, we found unique ways to create outfits for each of the classic Power Rangers, and special props to good ol’ T7 for filling the gap in the roster! To be honest, the Power Rangers phenomenon missed me, and I gather the other Rangers are more iconic, but I am happy with my efforts for the Yellow Ranger and these days she uses a vibrosword, which is more accurate to the character.
We Don’t Need Their Scum
Not surprisingly every piece of the gear needed to cosplay as the infamous background bounty hunter Dengar can be found in game as a quest reward or loot from heroic crates, but it took a little mixing and matching to get as close as possible. It wasn’t until Legacy of the Sith‘s combat styles that he was able to finally equip a rifle like the original character. And even though a very similar arrangement of bounty hunters can be found in game on the bridge of the Ziost Shadow, I decided to also have a go at duplicating the tableau of bounty hunters from The Empire Strikes Back.
More recently I created another character based on a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it the bounty hunter: Aurra Sing from The Phantom Menace. Aurra Sing was a last minute addition to the movie, and her costume is not especially elaborate so Canderous Ordo’s vest does most of the heavy lifting here, but even though Rattataki lack Sing’s top-knot, antenna and creepily long fingers, I am very happy with how close I got.
To Boldly Go
Finally let’s smash all barriers of time, space, continuity, and opposed fandoms with pop culture’s most famous starship captain. The remarkably versatile Czerka Corporate Shirt gets a second (or even a third if you count the communications officer) appearance on this list, but its use here feels entirely “logical.” My only regret with this costume is that despite the myriad number of blasters in SWTOR, none of them quite feel enough like a phaser to me. I suppose that might be intentional!
Honestly this is only the tip of my cosplaying iceberg. I fully and proudly engage with SWTOR‘s Space-Barbie endgame. I’ve created characters and outfits inspired by seasons of the year, other holidays and even a favorite anime character or two.
SWTOR has events for Life Day at the end of the year, the Thanksgiving adjacent Feast of Prosperity and the summertime Nightlife event, and while there is a gap in the calendar where a springtime event could easily fit it, I confess the event I’d most like to see added to the game is a spooky Halloween celebration. Aside from the Rakghoul Resurgence, SWTOR’s events tend to be lighthearted, and I think a horror-tinger, Sith-themed event with masks, candy and hauntings by angry Force ghosts could be a fun addition to the game. Who doesn’t love a tasty treat and a scary trick?
I’m not much into dress-up myself but these are all great! ⭐