Chains in the Dark is coming to Star Wars The Old Republic in the next major update

Electronic Arts and new developer Broadsword have revealed that Star Wars The Old Republic, update 7.4 will arrive on December 5th and bring with it a new storyline, Chains in the Dark, a continuation of Lane Vizla’s story, overhauled lighting and much more. Check out the story teaser for the game below.

Here is all the content coming with the update:

“Chains in the Dark” storyline

Kessan’s Landing is a new Daily Area on Ord Mantell. Players will find that they can complete repeatable missions, and obtain new Achievements and Reputation rewards. There will also be a chain of side missions that will take players all over the galaxy, allowing them to assemble a piece of tech that will be very useful on Kessan’s Landing.

Lane Vizla’s storyline continues on!

Lane Vizla’s story continues in Game Update 7.4 in a series of missions that follows the events of Showdown on Ruhnuk (Game Update 7.2). Throughout these missions, players will be meeting up Lane Vizla herself, an expert in droid history called The Curator, and an assassin droid HK-24 unit.

New World Boss

Players are encouraged to mind their feet and keep an eye out for burning patches of plasma that FR3-D0M tends to leave on the ground during combat. There is a chance that FR3-D0M will drop a unique mount called the Mantellian Separatist Hover Turret.

Galactic Trade Network Overhaul

The GTN is completely rebuilt, making it more accessible but also familiar to players. Players will see a new advanced search section, and a more streamlined flow for claiming and selling items. More information can be found here.

Cinematic Lighting updates

We are activating a new character lighting tool for all cinematic content. Any cinematic content in the game currently - from class stories to world arcs to more recent expansions - will employ this new character lighting system. Some of the highlights of this system include using environment lighting for more accurate shadows, detailed self shadowing on characters, and more custom lighting control in cinematics.

A much richer explanation of all the content and updates coming to the game, can be found in the VOD for the developer live stream from back in November, which is below.