A Bounty Hunter’s Tale
The Bounty Hunter in Star Wars: The Old Republic offers a corner of the setting where credits, reputation and personal grudges matter more than ideology. It leans into the fantasy of being one of the galaxy’s hired guns: tracking marks, juggling contracts and building a name that sits somewhere between feared and respected, with plenty of room to decide how ruthless you want that rise to be.
In terms of mechanics, the class splits into Powertech and Mercenary. Powertechs fight up close in heavy armour with a single blaster and a lot of gadgets, able to specialise either as tanks through defensive tools and control or as mobile damage dealers with close-range bursts, jet charge and flamethrowers. Mercenaries stay at range with dual pistols and a more overt “walking arsenal” look, with disciplines that cover sustained damage, burst and a full healing kit built around missiles, kolto and strong defensive cooldowns.
The class story starts on Hutta, where the hunter signs on with veteran Braden and his small crew – Jory and slicer Mako – to secure a place in the Great Hunt, a Mandalorian-run competition for the galaxy’s top bounty killers. After proving their worth to Nem’ro the Hutt through a string of local jobs, the player’s path is cut across by Mandalorian rival Tarro Blood, who has Braden and Jory killed and tries to block entry into the Hunt. With Mako’s help, the hunter fights their way through the Grand Melee on Dromund Kaas, earns the Huntmaster’s approval and enters the Great Hunt anyway, setting up a personal score with Tarro that runs under the first chapter.
Chapter one follows the Hunt itself across a series of planets. Each world offers a single high-profile target – criminals, crime lords, rogue Jedi – with the hunter racing Tarro Blood’s proxies to reach them first. The rivalry escalates until the final contract on Jedi Master Kellian Jarro, whose past includes wiping out an entire Mandalorian clan; the confrontation that follows lets the player settle matters with both Jarro and Tarro in one sweep, and ends with the Bounty Hunter crowned Grand Champion of the Great Hunt.
The second chapter turns that fame into a liability. The Republic’s Strategic Information Service, backed by Jedi, launches a sting operation to capture or kill the Grand Champion in response to Jarro’s death and the damage done during the Hunt, branding the hunter a public enemy. Over the course of the chapter, Republic plots cost the hunter allies and safe harbours, forcing them to work with figures like Darth Tormen while trying to stay ahead of assassination attempts and traps laid in what used to be straightforward jobs.
In the final chapter, the story narrows onto questions of legacy and payback. With the Great Hunt won and the Republic threat still pressing, the hunter is drawn into Imperial schemes that use their reputation as a weapon, then into a more personal reckoning with those who orchestrated the campaign against them. By the time the credits roll on Corellia, the player has moved from freelance contender to a figure whose name carries weight on both sides of the war – as a tool of the Empire, a loose cannon or something in between, depending on the choices made along the way.
Companions do a lot to colour that journey. Mako, with her obsession with the Great Hunt and personal ties to Braden, brings a mix of technical support and emotional stakes right from Hutta, and often reads as the crew’s conscience or at least its voice of caution. Gault Rennow, a Devaronian con artist, adds opportunistic schemes and dry commentary, while Torian Cadera introduces a Mandalorian perspective on honour, clan and what the Great Hunt is supposed to mean. Blizz, the enthusiastic Jawa tinkerer, and Skadge, a violent Houk with more muscle than tact, round out the roster with very different takes on what working for a famous hunter should look like.
Visually and thematically, the Bounty Hunter leans into familiar cues without feeling like a direct copy of any one character. Heavy armour, jetpacks, helmeted silhouettes and a mix of dirty industrial backdrops – Hutta’s refineries, Balmorra’s factories, Nar Shaddaa’s neon alleys – keep the story grounded in the murkier ends of the galaxy rather than the front lines of the Jedi–Sith conflict. Within that space, the class offers enough flexibility in both playstyle and story choices that you can steer your hunter towards cold professionalism, mercenary pragmatism or something closer to Mandalorian idealism, all while chasing the next contract on the list.
