J'ohhn

I really like the concept of the agent. James Bond in space, as he's often called, is a great idea. I don't know that the SWTOR concept is really very James Bondish, but I think people think that because he has a British accent and tells a spy-thriller story. Because I love spy-thriller stories when they're well told, and many of my favorite movies and books qualify as such, I think its a great idea to adapt them to space opera. I'm hardly the first; Poul Anderson write James Bond in space, in the form of Dominic Flandry, in a short story in 1951—two years before the publication of the first James Bond story, actually. He then went on to star in a series of novels and collections in the 60s and 70s, and no doubt took inspiration from 007 by this point.

I can imagine all kinds of ways in which spies in space would feature in my own Space Opera X series; like Star Wars itself does, I'd probably just adopt spy or noir or other types of thriller stories directly and put them in another setting. The first issue of Galaxy may have thrown shade on the concept of the space opera because it wasn't "sciency" enough, but screw 'em. I'm tired of the ideas of a bunch of nebbish betas defining what science fiction is. Science fiction in the early part of the 20th century had mainstream appeal because it was just good storytelling, and characters like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were (and honestly still are) household names. Part of this is because they didn't devolve into a nerdy purity spiral, the likes of which Joseph Campbell, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp advocated. Their baleful influence has poisoned the field even to this day, many decades and much more than my lifetime later (and I'm not exactly young. I have two grandkids, fer cryin' out loud.)

In any case, I played a sniper first. I've since started an Operative, and while I like the idea of sneaking around and popping out of stealth to murder a trash mob, I otherwise find normal combat to be less appealing than the sniper. However, I think the sniper rifles are too exaggerated to be cool. When the tip of the barrel is banging against the heels of the character while he runs around, and the gun is literally longer than he is tall, something is wrong. To the rescue comes cosmetic weapons. Although it was never advisable to do so, because your stats weren't as good, for some reason snipers could also equip regular blaster rifles. This means that you can now equip regular blaster rifles cosmetically while still having a sniper rifle equipped for your actual stats. Most of my weapons, now, are no longer sniper rifles, honestly.  Anyway, on to the outfits! I've done a lot of things outfit wise over time, as with all of my old characters, but this is what I've settled in on now. About half of them date back to halfway through my playthrough of the game, and the other half are ones that I've designed since. John has become in some ways my main character now, although he's not as far into the expansion stuff as Mark or even Matthew. He does the most work on grinding through Seasons, or events, or what-have-you, and he does the most crafting. He's also my banker and broker; he does almost all of the buying and selling, and holds almost all of the money, other than a million or two credits that everyone holds for stuff that they may need. He was also my main grinder for tauntauns, although now I just buy them straight out and don't blink at the cost. When I was poorer in game, it was nice to be able to get them for time instead of credits, though.

Anyway, although I know that Nar Shaddaa isn't really the best place to take these screenshots, because the lighting is dim and neon, the Star Cluster Casino Royale really seemed like the most iconic place to take pictures of him. 

In some ways, I actually like my current, newer "powertech" agent's outfits even better; he has more of a classic SWAT team or black ops fatigues kind of look for more outfits. But John was the prototype for much of it, paving the way first, and he still is a little more avant-garde in what he chooses to wear.

This first one is one of the few "real" sniper rifles that I have in my rotation right now. I do think that this would have looked even better with a black/black dye in it, but those are too expensive for me to normally think it's worth it to buy them, and yes... you have to pay real money for them most of the time. The cost in credits on the GTN is insane.

This is another new one, but I've been doing trench coat variations for this guy since forever. I have one further down that's quite old, in fact, although it technically uses a different trench coat, it looks pretty similar. 

This one is more of an outdoors outfit; when he's out in the deserts or the jungles sniping at enemies. 

This is another real sniper rifle that I still use, but it's not an insanely exaggerated one, and it is one of the earliest GTN snipers I got. When I played John through, I actually only used crafted guns until I leveled out past them. Each time I hit a new level threshold and could get a new rifle, I'd retire and sell the old one, or drop it on a companion or something.

Another old one, although I've tweaked a few things about it over time. For instance, I gave him this bulky cartel market blaster rifle that I bought long before I even had a character who could use blaster rifles normally. I just knew I'd want to use this one someday. However, I don't like it as much as I thought it would, because it has a weird pink tinge on it a lot. I don't know why, because in the outfit designer, it doesn't look like that. But when on an actual character, it usually does. Weird.

OK, this obviously isn't an agent outfit. I created this one for the bounty event just this week, and I consider it a pretty iconic yet unique take on the Mandalorian idea. That said, I don't have any bounty hunters who are in need of a new outfit right now, so I'll probably leave it on John for a while.

I actually started this off as a robot agent; by using cybernetic parts and a robotic-like helmet, the entire character was meant to be a robot. However, I ended up swapping enough of his pieces out that he just looks like a guy with a weird helmet and gun now. 

Here's a better view of him without his gun in the way. He does have a kind of official uniform kind of look to him, which I like. Curious, because I think when I created this outfit, to make room for it, I got rid of an actual military dress uniform outfit that I had. That's OK; while the idea was cool, I found I wasn't ever wanting to actually use it, so it didn't serve much of a purpose anymore.

My original trench coat outfit, with the awesome world drop goggles that you get on the first planet, fer cryin' out loud. That is probably my single favorite item of world-drop clothing in the entire game. In the older versions of the game, it only dropped on agents, but my Vanguard playing as a bounty hunter got it too, so you'll see it make an appearance in a number of his outfits too.

My most iconic and most-used black ops outfit for this character. That's actually not the sniper version of that rifle, it's the blaster rifle version, even though its long enough to be a sniper. I like it better also because of the strap. The sniper isn't that much longer and still looks pretty good too.

These last two images are of an experiment with some odd elements. I don't actually like this outfit much, although I've used many of its elements in better contexts on other characters, but I haven't gotten around to changing it yet either, so here it still is, I guess.

Like I said, John was always a bit more experimental and avant-garde in his outfit choices, and not every one of them worked. My newer agent, Vash Galaide, has benefited from John's pioneering experimentation, and tends to look better. But he's a powertech, so he only has a single blaster pistol rather than a sniper rifle. With his bevy of wrist gadgets and stuff, as well as the pistol, he actually feels more like James Bond than the sniper does. The sniper almost makes me think more of space Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell than James Bond. Which... is a cool idea too, of course.