Knights of the Old Republic EP7: Who Are You?

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Sep 9, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 154 comments


Link (YouTube)

What is the deal with BioWare and making stat-boosting items in the form of ludicrously ugly and ridiculous headware? Dragon Age had a bunch of floppy jester hats that looked like they were stolen from a sad clown, and this game has random household appliances you can strap to your face, “improving” your vision by poking you in the eye for hours on end.

“On one hand, I really want all these stat bonuses because the half the game is discovering and maximizing your combat advantages. On the other hand, it completely ruins the look of my character and makes every dialog into a farce, thus harming the roleplaying stuff that makes up the other half of the game.”

They toned it down quite a bit in Mass Effect. The headware is less comical, and the bonuses are so slight it makes most gear decisions a question of cosmetics.

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hat in a BioWare game that looked awesome or cool. They’re always somewhere between “tolerable” and “hobo doing Geordi La Forge cosplay using things they pulled out of the dumpster behind Best Buy.”

 


From The Archives:
 

154 thoughts on “Knights of the Old Republic EP7: Who Are You?

  1. djw says:

    First thing I do whenever I play any game is find the “hide hat” button.

    1. Dragmire says:

      Or mod it to do so if necessary/possible.

    2. Wide And Nerdy says:

      I think the hats thing is like drafts in Football. Because Bioware is so successful, they’re the last to get to pick hats.

      They have such terrible hats.

      1. Humanoid says:

        But Bethesda is even more successful and has no shortage of marvelous millinery. The great tragedy is that their readily moddable games already have some fantastic headpieces as modelled by that fabulously fashionable rogue Reginald Cuftbert, while Bioware’s generally non-moddable games’ sartorial sins can’t be readily repaired.

        1. Wide And Nerdy says:

          Now that I think of it, Bioware’s beards are even worse. Bethesda has them beat there too.

      2. Henson says:

        But Valve is pretty successful, and everyone seems to love their hats.

        Do we need a Bioware game with hats designed by Valve?

        1. Wide And Nerdy says:

          I will allow this. I’ll take Morrigan with a Fireman’s hat over the dunce caps she had to wear in Dragon Age.

          Or Lelianna in a Beret? Too on the nose?

          1. Henson says:

            From the TF2 wiki: “The Frenchman’s Beret is a community-created cosmetic item for the Spy.”

            This is so very appropriate for Leliana.

            P.S. But for some reason, I’m imagining her also wearing the face mask…

          2. James says:

            often times in bioware games i will forgo stat boosts or if possible turn hide helmet on.

            What i want however is a option to have some helmets on like plate helms, they look cool, but the dunce hats mages have i want them off. also i like when games have the option to turn off helmets in conversations, i like to imagine that once ive done fighting that i take me helmet off to talk to people.

    3. lurkey says:

      Bioware’s hat designer really went to town in SWTOR. :-)

      1. drlemaster says:

        Agreed. Playing that one as a free-to-play now. If I make an in-game purchase, it will be the hide hat button. One of the otherwise better hats had some sort of HUD thing hanging down over one eye. Not too bad, but that’s my cyber eye. Couldn’t I just use Bluetooth or something?

    4. Thomas says:

      Dragon Age: Inquisition even managed to screw that up by having Vivienne look stupid without a hat. Although maybe that was making up for a lot of DA:I’s hats being passable – at least if you were in full plate

      1. guy says:

        Inquisition let Tal-Vashoth fill their helmet slot with awesome warpaint. I liked it so much I refused to use the hide hat button no matter how stupid my companions looked.

  2. Grimwear says:

    I did like the Krogan helmets in Mass Effect. In fact I tended to just force the space helmets permanently, most weren’t the greatest but they made me not need to look at Male Shep’s stupid monkey face. But ya, those Krogan helmets were sweet.

    1. Chefsbrian says:

      Krogans did have a good armor design to them, I liked it. It made sense that they’d wear combat armors basically all the time, what with their culture.

      I played ALOT of KOTOR when I was younger, and… Well the only headpieces I could tolerate were the full face mask portion, and the verpine band that’s just a red band over the eyes. Practically everything else was pretty crazy

      1. SlothfulCobra says:

        What’s wrong with the cyborg earmuffs?

    2. Humanoid says:

      I’ve wondered a bit about the practicality of civilian Krogan clothing as shown a few times in the game. It’s like they all wear hoodies. I guess they never figured out how to draw the back of a Krogan’s head without their ubiquitous armour. Or perhaps the back of the neck is considered immodest or obscene in their culture. :P

      1. SlothfulCobra says:

        It’s not so much a hoodie as it is a hump like a camel’s.

        It is weird though, that other than the Asari, you never see any uncovered part of any alien species other than their head, and with the Quarians, not even that. The thing I wonder about is whether the Turians and the Quarians really do have weird spikes on the backs of their legs, or if that’s just armor decoration.

  3. Warclam says:

    The name “rakghoul” really needed some rethinking. Anytime someone says it, I hear “rat ghoul”. Which is an interesting mental image, but not what they were going for.

    1. Humanoid says:

      Trying to look up stuff like this is where I realise the Star Wars wiki is completely useless to non Star Wars fans, where it goes on and on for thousands of words about their in-universe origins, ecosystem, social structures and preferred brew of tea but says not a peep about when they were introduced into the setting.

      The information I was looking for was “Ratghouls were introduced into the Star Wars universe by the 2003 computer game Knights of the Old Republic“, but I had to find another source to find that out.

      1. Thomas says:

        If you down to the source list of the articles it’ll list “First appearance” there. It’s a lot of fun for inuniverse surfing

      2. Joe Informatico says:

        Yeah, not to start any Star Trek vs. Star Wars flame wars, but Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, is pretty good about giving most “in-universe” articles a “Behind the Scenes” section that gets into the creative history of the lore. Wookiepedia might provide a list of media appearances, but rarely seems to get into the development history, e.g., interviews with the creators of that particular bit of lore, or whatever.

  4. Ledel says:

    I think the bigger issue with having the NPCs interact in other games as they do here would be more about cost than it would camera control. With a game as big and winding as Mass Effect, a lot of dialogue would have to be recorded for each character in how they would talk to every single other character. Everyone would have something like 10x more lines to read, that then need to be animated, which have to be synched, then comes the camera positioning, and add in some lines the main character could throw in to each interaction.

    With this game, a lot of the wow factor was that it was fully voice acted. So they had to put the effort into giving the characters interesting things to say. Not to mention it was cheaper for all of the above listed factors back in the early two-thousands than it is today.

    1. Ambitious Sloth says:

      There are some conversations that are just between squad-mates in ME 1. They mainly happen in Citadel elevators as a different option from the radio broadcasts. I specifically remember bring Wrex and Tali along because they have a back and forth. Trying to outdo each other with insults about how the others race screwed themselves.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Yup.The only difference is that here you are pulled into their conversation and even have an input.

        1. Henson says:

          Except that input is meaningless. The people having the conversation don’t even acknowledge it.

          1. Sleeping Dragon says:

            Sooo… just like real life?

    2. SlothfulCobra says:

      It’s not that much more, really. Every character has one or two conversations with every other character, it only really piles up if you try to add in-depth long running developing relationships.

      Of course, this game cheated by having certain characters who never really talked, while Mass Effect cheated by essentially writing the bulk of the elevator conversations with only one character’s perspective in mind, so the character who is not the focus of the conversation can just share the lines of every other character. You only really notice it in a giant youtube compilation of the elevator conversations (especially since the bulk of the time in ME1, you don’t get any conversations, you just get an ad from the PA system).

      It takes a lot of the magic out of things when you notice things like both Garrus and Wrex have the same exact things to say about Kaiden’s L2 implants.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Them damn aliens,always ganging up on us humans!

      2. Humanoid says:

        They then took it a step farther in ME2 with the survivor’s respective entire conversation trees (I use the term loosely) on Horizon.

    3. Thomas says:

      Mass Effect 3 has your companions have scenes with each other, so it’s not infeasible.

      I hope having relearnt the lesson with ME3, Bioware continues with it. It really makes your companions feel more alive. One of the things that made KOTOR2 so great to me was that almost everytime you returned to the Ebon Hawk one of your companions would have a scene with another companion. Sometimes they’d be hilarious, sometimes they’d be ominous and they’d almost always be full of flavour. A couple of them actually subtly set up the end of the game

      1. Twisted_Ellipses says:

        Dragon Age: Inquisition has a sizable pool of inter-party conversations, buuuuuut they’re still the short punchy dialogue pieces from Mass Effect 1 that break up long travelling moments. You often bump into team-mates interacting in cut-scenes, when you go to visit them individually at your base like with the bar in Dragon Age 2.

      2. John says:

        I was not a fan of the KotOR 2 Ebon Hawk cutscenes. They give the player knowledge that he has no way of acting upon and those with Kreia and G0T0 tend to reinforce the idea that the Exile is an easily manipulated chump.

        Sometimes I think that the problem with KotOR 2 was that they didn’t cut enough content.

        1. Henson says:

          Well, showing the player things that his character wouldn’t know about happened all throughout that game, not just during those random ship interactions. I don’t think that’s a problem, either; not only does it keep things fresh by changing perspective and teasing that your companions have their own secrets, but it rarely tells you flat-out what those secrets are, rather building a story around them up until a final reveal.

          I personally loved this kind of storytelling, and it made me more interested in what was going on. I can see the risk of making the game less immersive, but I don’t really think that’s an issue in a Bioware-style game (they do this all the time, like showing Saren’s conversation with Benezia right after the events of Eden Prime, or Loghain’s speeches to the lords in Denerim). If this happened in, say, an Elder Scrolls game, I’d totally agree with you.

          1. John says:

            I guess that’s fair. I suppose that my problem is more the content of some of the cutscenes and less their existence.

        2. SlothfulCobra says:

          In retrospect, a LOT of KOTOR 2 was designed specifically to bait players with a ~complex mystery~ to which there is inevitably not much of an answer, partially due to cut content.

          1. Thomas says:

            Most of your party’s mystery gets resolved well even without cut content. G0T0’s secret is one of the best in all these games, as is T3’s and Atton’s. Visas and Handmaiden don’t really have mysteries, nor does Bao-Dur but they all get resolved as arcs fine enough. HK-47’s cut content is great but you don’t 100% need it to get satisfaction from him, his dialogue and stories are still a lot more interesting this game than KOTOR1. They never spell out Canderous’ but it works better that way.

            I’ve forgotten if Mira has a secret, and the wookie was a bit on the nose so I guess they kind of failed. I think all the mystery around Kreia is resolved in a fine anti-twist way, and the discovery of what was going on with the Exile genuinely shocked me the first time and I still think that’s a great character piece.

            So I don’t think KOTOR2’s problems is really resolving the mysteries it sets up, its just all the mysteries resolve before the endgame which doesn’t really leave any plot to keep the endgame interesting.

            If you disagree, I’d be interested in which mysteries you felt were unresolved in the base game?

  5. Ledel says:

    If you think about it, it makes sense for that survivor of the Endar Spire to die in one hit by a Rakghoul. He’s spent the last 2-3 days sitting by his crashed pod fending off Rakghouls, disreputable scavengers, and “shoot on sight” Sith patrols. It’s a surprise he’s not half crazy and just shooting at anything that comes near him at this point.

    Alternately, in my playthrough, when I reached him, he was infected and turned to a Rakghoul immediately attacking me.

    1. John says:

      That’s what happens if you don’t get the rakghoul serum before you talk to him. Unfortunately, even if you do manage to save his life, he has nothing useful to say or do.

  6. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Oh noes!Shamoose has spoiled the ending of the first part of the game!

    1. Henson says:

      Is it really canon that everyone on Taris dies? I feel like that Shamus may be overstating things. Surely, the planet-wide bombardment missed some people. I mean, we do know that Calo Nord manages to survive.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Yeah,there were a handful of survivors,but compared to the millions(billions?)that lived there its quite safe to say that everyone died.

      2. Thomas says:

        It’s canon that Taris was pretty much wasteland after the bombardment, so it would be odd if any of the people you talked to happened to survive.

      3. MichaelGC says:

        And Trask!! Trask is OK, right?! He’s now living on the farm? The farm up-state?…

  7. Daemian Lucifer says:

    I think all rpgs,and especially mmos,need two separate gear slots:One for the looks and other for the stats.Especially if you have a bunch of fancy clothes in the game that never gets used because it has no meaningful stats(like witcher 3,where you sell off the fancy clothes as soon as you do the party thing they are needed for).

    1. Zombie says:

      SWTOR Kinda does this now, where you can basically take gear that you like and looks cool, put it in the outfit slot, and you get to look like you would if you had that gear equipped, but you change out your gear that actually gives you stats without worrying if you’re messing up how you look (They also have gear that you can kinda level up with you with different modifications that).

      The Secret World just doesn’t care what you look like, because all your gear are talismans that don’t change your appearance at all. You can change your outfits as much or as little as you want with no penalties.

    2. Humanoid says:

      Ironically perhaps, this can often end up making everyone look the same as they all opt for the stereotypical “cool” looking set, which somewhat goes against the goal of implementing said personalisation system in an MMO in the first place. That said, it’s great when people embrace the silliness of it all and let their creativity run wild.

      1. Ivan says:

        Well the alternative is that everyone wears the gear with the best stats and ends up looking the same anyways. Really it’s more of an issue of “is there enough decent stuff to work with?”.

    3. Lachlan the Mad says:

      Guild Wars 2 isn’t awful at this, since you can basically fuse two items together to get a new item with the appearance of one and the stat value of the other. Still a bit annoying because it consumes an item, and because the transmutation stones which do it for you are limited (plentiful, but limited). Still, the armour in that game is well-designed enough, and the dye system is awesome enough, that I didn’t feel the urge to use the transmutation system.

      1. Ivan says:

        Yeah, I liked LotRO’s system the best, where you literally had a social slot and could freely swap out gear at any point. That said, the Guild Wars system is cumbersome because they want to monetize it which I don’t fault them for considering that there is no subscription. You do have a fairly large number of transmutation stones that you can get for free, but if you change your look often you’ll eventually run out and can buy more from the gem store (you can buy gems with both in-game and real money).

        1. drlemaster says:

          LotRO sounds like what that Conan MMO had. Each slot had an equipped item and a cosmetic item, and you got to pick which was displayed, per slot. Not much else good to say about the game, but they got that right.

          1. Ivan says:

            Yeah that’s pretty much how LotRO did it. Though I’m facepalming now because I forgot the best part of the GW2 system. It wasn’t there on release but now you have a “wardrobe” and can unlock skins (cosmetic armor) to fill it. Everything you salvage will unlock the skin that item used and you can go into a menu and mix, match, and dye all the armor that you have unlocked until you come up with something you like (then you transmute spending the appropriate number of stones). It saves a lot of bank space and allows you to experiment freely until you want to commit. There are ways to view every skin in the game but so far as I know there is no convenient in game resource for finding out where you need to go to unlock any given skin.

      2. Ringwraith says:

        Guild Wars 2 since simplified this a LOT, as mentioned.
        I’ve got two characters whose outfits don’t share a single armour set between any two pieces.

    4. Hal says:

      WoW really pleased a lot of people when it introduced Transmogrification, which let you put the cosmetic appearance of one item onto the stats of any other item. It’s lead to a lot of creative costume building in game and allowed people to enjoy armor sets that were meaningful to them well past actual utility.

      On the other hand, you see a lot of characters who all choose the exact same iconic armor set, so your mileage may vary.

    5. Thomas says:

      After checking out a few of these systems, I’m not a huge fan of most implementation. It was okay in DC Online I guess (if any of the armour had been great), where you can use any design you’ve discovered etc

      But I’m coming to the conclusion that if stats are completely unrelated to armour, then I’d prefer that armour doesn’t even give stats. Make it entirely cosmetic and have ‘enchantments’ or ‘tatoos’ or whatever give stats.

      Alternately, go the Dragon Age: Inquisition route where you can kind of redesign armour, but not altogether. Plate mail stats will always look like plate mail but you have some flexibility about what the plate mail looks like

  8. SlothfulCobra says:

    It’s weird how different this game looks from when I first played it with all textures at low quality. People look older, Mission goes from 15 to 20, the generic male Twi’leks go from 25 to 786. Canderous manifests all these nicks and scratches on his face.

    I’m a little split on which I really prefer, since either are far below the quality that modern games have made me used to.

  9. Wide And Nerdy says:

    This is the other thing that would happen to Canderous if he was KOTOR Worf.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edflm7Hh3hs

    (Worf gets denied over and over and over again 15 minutes)

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Lose the s(so only http)and the video will be embedded in the comment.Much easier to watch them that way.

      Anyway,what I find the funniest about that whole thing is that those situations were constructe to portray worf as this gung ho weapon crazed guy,when at least half the time he just advises reasonable caution,so the rest of the crew just comes off looking like a bunch of stupid hippies.The worst one is “I recommend we go to yellow alert”,and picard asks why.Contrast with the original series where kirk would sound the alert whenever they encountered some unidentified object or a ship,because its a reasonable thing to do.

      1. Shamus says:

        I hope it’s okay W&N, I edited your post as DL suggested to make the embed work. It’s such a great video and I don’t want people to miss it. :)

        RIMMER: Recommend we go to yellow alert!

        KRYTEN: Are you absolutely sure, sir? It does mean changing the bulb.

        1. Humanoid says:

          So with that embed in the comment, it comes up with the nice new HTML5 player, but with the actual Spoiler Warning episode embedded up top, it’s still using the old Flash player. Is that something controlled by the WordPress settings?

          1. Shamus says:

            The one in the comments is auto-generated by WordPress. The one in the post comes from some shortcode I wrote years ago, long before WordPress had such features, because I didn’t want to clutter my posts up with those ghastly old half-page embed codes they used back then. So I’m still using very old-style YouTube embed code.

            I’ve never seen a reason to change it. HTML5 is newer, but it’s still just a video player. And the super-old code I use has some quirky advantages that I can’t remember now. Somehow they get around some office filtering, or region-detection, or some other stupid annoyance that only impacts 1 in 50 people.

            And I’m always reluctant to mess with stuff that works unless there’s a clear advantage to it.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Not having to depend on the flash player is a clear advantage in my opinion.

            2. Humanoid says:

              Yeah it’s no problem at all since I wouldn’t use the embed either way (how would I comment while watching otherwise?), only noticed because on some of my machines – not the ones I watch video on – I don’t have Flash installed.

              1. Wide And Nerdy says:

                Same here. Got out of that habit after one too many times commenting on a Spoiler Warning or Diecast and forgetting to open a separate window.

        2. Wide And Nerdy says:

          Thank you Daemian for the tip, I’ll try to remember that in the future. And thank you Shamus for editing the post. Also, love that Red Dwarf quote. Hadn’t seen that before. I put that up there with Uncrop.

          :)

        3. Grudgeal says:

          RIMMER: Must I remind you of space corps directive 34124?

          KRYTEN: 34124… ‘No officer with false teeth should attempt oral sex in zero gravity’?

          Loved that episode.

      2. Wide And Nerdy says:

        There’s a moment at about the 14 minute mark with the young Bajoran where its a test on Worf’s part to get her to say no to him.

        1. Hermocrates says:

          Dammit, it’s happening again! I’ve never played KotOR before (for more than a half hour), and thought I’d never want to. Now I’m 7 episodes into this season, and I really, really want to . . . it’s totally the kind of RPG I want to play these days.

          It happened also with Skyrim, with Deus Ex: Human Revolution and briefly with Mass Effect (watching the season on ME3 is quickly dissuading me from that, however). At least I was smart enough to stop watching Tomb Raider after only 1 episode, because I might want to play that now as well.

          1. Hermocrates says:

            Oops, I didn’t mean to make that a reply, just a top-level post. I blame my tablet’s limited screen resolution.

      3. Wide And Nerdy says:

        It was terrible in Season One. So many times they put up with the stupidest BS from other cultures.

    2. Warclam says:

      It really puts into perspective the endless security woes of the Enterprise. I’ve heard people lay the blame at Worf’s feet, but he’s trying to fix things damnit! Nobody will let him!

  10. Zombie says:

    Yeah, but this is probably the worst part of Taris. The sewers, the base, and then swoop bikes fucking sucks. Especially that fucking biker gang base. Its just one, long slog of combat to a boss fight, with the option to do ANOTHER long slog of combat to do a different boss fight, which ends with you still having to do the Swoop Bike race anyway. The Sith base and Davik’s house isn’t much better, but at least it means we get to leave Taris.

    Taris is BY FAR and away the worst, mainly because the other planets have clear end goals. Taris just keeps going. “Oh, we did something? Great! Here’s three more things to do”. And it certainly doesn’t help that every side quest is meaningless because the planet just gets destroyed by the Sith anyway, and literally everyone but you and your group dies. Manaan is in second place just because of that stupid underwater section and the pressure puzzle, plus the fact that you can totally screw up so badly on the planet they you end up killing yourself or getting banished from ever coming back, which sucks (I’m not gonna count Yavin IV as a planet, because its basically a really shitty shop).

    The headgear is probably worse is SWTOR, because everyone is running around with cool looking helmets and headgear, except for Jedi Knights and Consulars, who run around with strips of leather (well, its probably space metal, but it looks like leather) on their heads.

    Taris is apparently in a new Star Wars book? That’s what I heard anyway. The whole EU isn’t canon thing is weird, because Disney kinda just said “Well, we don’t want to just get rid of everything, because we might like an old idea and run with it, but some stuff would be incompatible with the movie, so if it doesn’t contradict what we’re doing, its a ‘legend’ meaning it could have happened, but otherwise it didn’t happen”. It makes stuff like the whole KotOR series (and a bunch of other stuff) in sort of in this limbo of it isn’t canon, but it kinda is, because whats it going to hurt? Then you have stuff like Republic Commando, where the squad in the game was in an episode of The Clone Wars TV show, which is canon, but does that mean the game or books are canon? Just as a final thought on the whole thing, I appreciate that Disney didn’t want to have to deal with all the contradictions and constraints of working inside the framework of like 20 different books, but on the other hand they did destroy tons of good story lines and characters to the point where I think a bunch of people are going to be disappointed that people like Admiral Thrawn and Kyle Katarn don’t show up in any way, shape or form.

    I’ll say it, Phantom Menace was garbage, but I liked the ending of Attack of the Clones (everything from the Geonosis Arena fight onward is pretty darn good), and Revenge of the Sith was pretty darn good.

    RPGs, where the whole world/galaxy is in eminent danger, and we’re in a horrible place: Lets talk about our feelings and horrible family problems!

    At least Jenkins served kind of a purpose, even if that purpose was just to die in the first five seconds to show the Geth were deadly or something. This random Republic guy was here to say “Bastila isn’t here!” which we already knew.

    I forget, is this game stingy with health packs, like Dragon Age: Origins was?

    Does duel wielding also count towards double-bladed lightsabers? Or are those not even in this game?

    1. Thomas says:

      Oh man, I haven’t dared to try to get into how I don’t mind the prequels that much. There are big points* I don’t like and I can certainly 100% understand why people hate them and wouldn’t be justified to try and convince otherwise. But they’re pretty looking action films** and actually more than just dumb action films because they do do a great job of making the universe look huge and interesting. It’s easy to watch the Prequels and think that every alien race has their own backstory, each world has their own story.

      It’s just the prequels don’t directly tell their stories.

      Everyone feel free to mention how this isn’t enough to justify them sucking :P And especially not stomping on the stuff people fell in love with already

      *Characters
      **If not well directed. But as a viewer it’s not my job to be bothered by that if I’m not and I wasn’t.

      1. Ivan says:

        I mostly agree. They did feel like starwars movies and it wasn’t until I was a bit older that I realized just how bad the plot and some of the characters were written. Even now though I wouldn’t want them thrown out completely because as you said, they did at least manage to build an interesting star wars universe.

      2. SlothfulCobra says:

        The prequels as some kind of terrible, horrible thing is pretty much just a nerd meme at this point. The movies did fail at things, mainly the political intrigue, but they still had aspirations and good parts.

        But the stance of “these movies have some problems but fail to really be as good as they could be” isn’t as easy to promote as just rants about how horrible the movies were.

      3. I’m with you. Star Wars was this thing my mom watched while I wandered through as a small child (she also watched Dr Who and Next Generation). I’ve never had that sacred cow feeling attached to it (not dissing the sacred cow thing, we’ve all got ’em, Star Wars just isn’t one of mine). I saw the first movie all the way through when they rereleased them in theaters (on the night the second one came out for some reason).
        I think I’ve been forced to see all three at this point, but I’m not sure. I know what happens, I’ve seen the parodies, and I don’t feel the need to make sure.
        As far as the prequels go, the acting is eh most of the time, the effects are good, and the plot occasionally reminds me of Deathly Hallows or Frodo’s bits of lotr (fracking stop camping and DO SOMETHING OR CUT TO SOMEONE ELSE WHO IS) but did not reach Tess of the D’Urbervilles levels of annoyance (man, I hate that book). I watched em, they were entertaining enough to hold my attention most of the time, and they’re pretty. Are they as world-changing as the first trilogy was for a lot of people? Nope, but they’re decent.

        Personal Note: I understand what Tolkein and JKR were trying to do, I just don’t have much patience for it. Part of my brain’s been trying to kill me since I was 14, so internal struggles? Been there, done that, got almost 50 scars from the last time I failed. If I’m well, it reminds me of how it was/is when I’m not, and if I’m not (level 7 of 10 at the moment, life quality severely affected, no self-harm or suicidal thoughts, medical personnel aware and working on it), amazingly I don’t want to watch/read someone else deal with it. Do you want to watch or read about someone dealing with the flu while you’ve got it? Same sort of thing.

    2. Thomas says:

      I think their canon stuff makes sense. The stories are still there for you to enjoy, and KOTOR is basically it’s own riff on Star Wars anyway, but the films aren’t going to be constrained years of sometimes good sometimes awful backstory and will just do their own thing, using the good ideas as they want.

      I’m all for loose canon, to me it’s not a problem to enjoy two stories based on the same universe but with different ideas of what went on it that universe. It’d only suck if there were some incomplete book/game series that Lucas blocked from existing because of it. I think it would be foolish of them to do that.

      (I do realise I’ve completely invalidated my right to have an opinion ever by my reply to your other point :p)

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        I would point out that this is the way the “hierarchical” canon worked under Lucas anyway. What’s in the books is true unless a movie contradicts it, what’s in the vidyagames is true unless the movie and/or books contradict it and so on…

        So while Disney said that they’re going to make new movies (so the highest tier of canon) that are going to (probably) mess up a decent chunk of pre-existing canon they didn’t really do anything new, the option was always there, inherent in how the canon hierarchy was working anyway.

    3. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Taris is BY FAR and away the worst, mainly because the other planets have clear end goals. Taris just keeps going. “Oh, we did something? Great! Here's three more things to do”.

      It does have a clear goal:Rescue bastila.And to achieve that,you basically have to do the miniature version of the rest of the game(do A,in order to do B,in order to do C,and meanwhile get sidetracked by D,E and F).And the whole blowing up thing is a problem only if you know that in advance.Its pretty effective on your first go.

      (everything from the Geonosis Arena fight onward is pretty darn good)

      Even the stupid pinball fight?Or the dumb ventilator thing grievous pulls?

      and Revenge of the Sith was pretty darn good.

      Even the overly long snooze fest of the end fight?

      But they're pretty looking action films

      No,they arent.They are at best decent looking cartoons*.But films,no way.And action ones even less so.I mean just compare it to the heavy cgi movies of that general era:the matrix and lord of the rings trilogies,spiderman 1 and 2,pirates of the caribbean 1,x men 1 and 2,…..Heck,even the early harry potter movies had way better choreography,camera works and effects,and those were not that good.

      *And even then they get vastly overshadowed by actual cartoons of that era that are waaaay better looking,like shrek,or the incredibles.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Damn my failing memory!Half way through writing that wall of text I forgot one other thing that I wanted to mention.

        I watched the prequels at about the same time I played through kotor(I think I finished kotor first).So my impression of a jedi v sith fight was this amazing duel with a bunch of flashy force powers flying everywhere along with the lightsaber duel(and blaster fire from the support troops in the background as well).So going from that into the prequels where two masters use the force to fling a couple of rocks at each other and then decide to duke it out with lightsabers(by pinballing around no less)felt extremely lame.And the overuse of cgi did not help that at all.

    4. SlothfulCobra says:

      Technically, this approach to the EU is pretty much the same as Lucas’s. Everything was probably canon unless a higher tier of canon decided to contradict it, Disney just decided to be a jerk about it.

  11. Christopher says:

    I was pretty into the domino masks in Dragon Age Inquisition, but every one of them came with a stupid-looking wig. I should have played a man so I could get one with a turban and a golden nose.

  12. Spammy says:

    I actually came on an acquaintance in the college cafeteria/student lounge on the side where all the card/video gamers hung out playing a game on his laptop. I only looked at one character, and deduced only from their headgear that he was playing KOTOR. The hats were so bad.

  13. MichaelGC says:

    Do Hutts have teeth?

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Jabba doesnt,so its likely that they dont.

      1. John says:

        If there’s one thing that the Expanded Universe has taught me, it’s that all Hurts are Jabba, all Corellians are Han Solo, all Mandalorians are Boba Fett, and so on and so on without end. The Expanded Universe is kinda creatively sterile like that. The affection that some people have for it is utterly baffling.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Yeah,thats the reason I dont bother with fanfics.They rarely do anything new or interesting with the original work.

      2. Zaxares says:

        Could someone explain WHY all the Hutts seem to be gangsters and crime bosses? I’ve not seen a single Hutt who was a farmer, or a mechanic, or a space pilot. Yet before they actually achieved space flight and joined the galactic community, obviously there must have been Hutts who filled those roles.

        1. guy says:

          They managed to secure a slave race fairly early on. However, they do actually have a military tradition and are surprisingly fast and sturdy.

        2. John says:

          All Hutts are references to Jabba. Therefore, all Hutts are crime bosses. If you want some kind of rationalization, you’re going to have to supply your own.

          1. Thomas says:

            Oh man, you do not have enough faith in the Star Wars expanded universe. There’s is no detail, no matter how small or how obviously motivated by real life writing trends, that doesn’t have a canonical rationalisation somewhere. Most have ten. And then another rationalisation to explain how all the other rationalisations coexist.

            In the case of the Hutts, according to the wiki

            “Many traditional concepts that were deemed as criminal actions by other civilizations were seen as professions according to Hutt thinking. As such, the term “criminal” did not translate well into the Hutt language as it tended to describe all Hutts.[25] In fact, human crimes held no meaning to the Hutts which was why they were seen as criminals as there was no common grounds on morality”

            “Despite this being the case, many of the traits seen amongst crime lords were embodied by the Hutts as they were ambitious, ruthless, greedy and had a massive ego. This meant that many citizens throughout the galaxy believed that all Hutts were involved in a life of crime which stemmed largely from their reputation that most Hutts foster as well as appreciate.”

            “Their thinking was described as not being the same as humans. In fact, it was claimed that they felt threatened on a subliminal level. This fear they experienced meant that many Hutts tended to be paranoid, a trait some attempted to exploit.Their thinking was described as not being the same as humans. In fact, it was claimed that they felt threatened on a subliminal level. This fear they experienced meant that many Hutts tended to be paranoid, a trait some attempted to exploit.[11] Other typical traits among the Hutts were intelligence, selfishness, and manipulative behavior”

            “The concept of getting even with their enemies was an ingrained concept within their civilization. In fact, some claimed that if it were not for the thrill of getting vengeance, then every Hutt would simply die of boredom”

            “Notable for being a very egocentric species, Hutts on their homeworld believed themselves to be the center of the universe, akin to deities to some of their subject races. In fact, their survival after the destruction of their homeworld of Varl led them to believe that they were greater than the gods that they had once worshiped.[9] This belief in surviving the death of their gods meant that Hutts tended to think themselves as suitable replacement for those deities and that everyone and everything else was expendable.”

            There’s pages and pages of this stuff, all with sources and all to justify the fact that every writer chose to write the Hutt’s as yet more Jabba the Hutts :p The whole EU is like this, if Luke drinks blue milk one time in a film, then everyone on his homeworld drinks blue milk and there’s a long explanation of the economic advantages of blue milk and its cultural traditions.

            1. John says:

              I was afraid of something like that.

            2. MichaelGC says:

              Blimey. Campster innocently says “Oomdablada Colgate,” and now look where we are.

        3. SlothfulCobra says:

          I don’t think I’ve ever seen Hutts depicted in large numbers anywhere in the EU, even. They’ve always got to be crime lords, do if there’s a Hutt in the room, he’s the boss. The largest gathering of Hutts that I’ve seen was a meeting of Hutt clans, and it was like 12, all bosses of their respective clans.

          I think the implication might be that the bulk of all Hutts are doing their thing off on Nal Hutta, and only the bosses have reason to leave the planet to check on things, but it doesn’t really fit. It seems like you’d want lots of members of your species around to make sure that your species were the ones in control of things. Twi’leks and humans are the ones with that advantage.

  14. Heregoesnothing says:

    So that droid you passed on repairing in the sewer. I suddenly remembered while watchin that those particular droids don’t show up in KOTOR 2, which is a little strange I guess.

  15. Micamo says:

    Now I really wanna mod KOTOR so you can respond to every dialogue choice with “Who are you?”

  16. Thomas says:

    So generally not a huge fan of Canderous in KOTOR1 (or even KOTOR2 although I think he’s more interesting there), but I think his introduction is actually really good. I like the tension between you guys, and I like how he chooses not to pick a fight with you here because it would just lead to unnecessary death. He knows when to leave and kind of cares about his men but not really.

    At the start he feels like a practical merc. He does the job, he doesn’t like the job but he gets it done.

    Later on he’s more of just an evil jerk. His adoration for Revan and dislike of Malak is really most of what keeps him interesting

  17. Shamus: In your post text’s first line, is it supposed to be “stat boosting items?”

  18. Blovsk says:

    Canderous/Mandalorians an absolute dry run for the Krogan. Josh touches on the fact that this is the last Bioware game that really rewards *building* characters. The switch to their later systems was probably necessary but this one took the best of the 2nd/3rd ed Dual Class systems and lumped them together.

    And then you have all the little robots and gas terminals and so on adding a lot of playstyle diversity to the best bits of it, and the other skills adding a tiny bit of that Fallout knowledge-based conversation stuff. I think this made the game a lot more replayable than most of the later Bioware stuff and they’ve never really recaptured that depth of gameplay.

  19. Grudgeal says:

    I think the finale is my ‘most hated’ (I find most of the game rather mediocre so ‘hate’ is kind of strong word here), for the same reason Shamus does and the final boss. Telos comes next with the senselessness of the side quests, the boring Sith base and sewer section, and being forced to use Wonderbread for most of it until you can rescue Mission and big Z (even though Z is about as interesting a character as a walking ottoman with a sword — the only planet he has any involvement in is the one where he sits out most of the quest and then wants you to decide what he wants). Manaan has the underwater section, the huge city without fast travel and the stupid court cases that can kill or banish you. Dantooine is just a lot of unskippable dialogue and a field full of wolves and being forced to use annoying mcannoyingface. Kashyyk has the racist wookies, senseless main quest and trekking back and forth from the Shadowlands to do quests. Tatooine has the giant uninteresting desert and Korriban has… Actually, Korriban is probably my favourite planet, followed by Tatooine.

    And that makes me sort of sad.

  20. Tuskin says:

    Campster brought up the EU thing.

    It isn’t just concepts they’ve brought back.

    They’ve also brought back some minor/background characters. Some backstories/homeworlds for bigger characters and even ship classes.

    Basically all they did was wipe the stories.

    Anyone who has access to the Star Wars Licence is allowed to use what every they want from the old EU, as long as LucasFilm allows it.

  21. Ivan says:

    I could never resist stealing all the mines either though, infact my character always had (probably too many) points in demolitions because of it. I never considered selling them though, they were always my back-up plan for when I started having trouble. For instance, I would always save all my mines I got on Taris and use them to kill the Rancor. I don’t actually remember if it’s necessary to kill it but I could never let an enemy go un-killed. In-fact I’m 90% sure that you can run away from the Rancor and that you don’t even get loot (or at least not anything good) for killing it but that was never the point.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Same(though I did sell most of the mines).I mean how can you pass free xp and moneys?

      Also,why bother with demolition when you have a droid specifically for that?

      Also,the reason why in every rpg that gives xp for picking locks,I always pick them,even if I have the key.

      1. Ivan says:

        “Also,why bother with demolition when you have a droid specifically for that?”

        Cause I didn’t want to bring a droid with me all the time :P
        I would put so many points in demolitions that I was better at it than the droid.

    2. Thomas says:

      Was it this game or KOTOR2 where you could put the grenade in the corpse and the Rancour would eat it (and I think die?). I always liked that puzzle

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        This one I think.

        1. MichaelGC says:

          Yep – Regina is nearly at that point, I think.

          1. SlothfulCobra says:

            You can even see some of that bit in the credit sequence.

            Josh chose…poorly.

      2. John says:

        Definitely this one. I’ve never once tried to fight the rancor, even just to see what happens. Somehow, some people seem to have missed the severed arm sitting conveniently in front of the rancor’s chamber. It’s a hint guys! Or maybe they didn’t put any points into sneak and don’t realize that Mission can do it. Go figure.

        1. MichaelGC says:

          I don’t think you even need to sneak to the bonepile, as long as you don’t get too near Mr. Rancor – as I discovered whilst flailing around failing miserably to solve the really quite simple puzzle!

      3. Ivan says:

        I never knew this was a thing… I could have saved SO MANY mines…

  22. Ivan says:

    Poison really always sounds like a cool idea but mechanically it’s rarely anything but annoying. I mean it’s really super hard to balance without limiting it’s duration to just a few seconds. You can either give it a super long duration like it is supposed to have but then you just clear it with an antidote and it’s a non-issue, or it does so little damage that it’s just annoying and you don’t even bother using or even carrying antidotes. If the poison is actually strong enough to be dangerous then you’re going to have antidotes readily available and most players are going to make sure to keep some on hand, so poison ends up being more of a chore than it is an opportunity for interesting game-play.

    1. Zaxares says:

      It was more effective in games like Baldur’s Gate, where poison would kill you outright after a short period of time unless you used an antidote. (And death in those games was final. If you lost a party member to death, they stayed dead for the rest of the game unless you used very expensive resurrection magic.) Which is fairly true to real life too, I suppose.

      1. Thomas says:

        Yeah, resurrection prices have gone way up since the industrial revolution.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I hate poisons mostly because they are harmful only to you,and not the enemy.You get to kill them quickly enough,so investing in poison is useless.The only games where I found poison to be actually useful is turn based strategies.

      1. Ivan says:

        There’s that too. As a player you rarely get to use poisons as poison (it usually ends up being just another damage type during combat) and when you do it usually ends up trivializing the encounter and even then it usually ends up taking a long time. I’m not really sure it’s possible to include poison in a video game without designing the game from the ground up to allow for the specific circumstances where poison is actually useful.

        The only one I can think of is Hitman: Blood Money where you could pump a doughnut full of sedative and leave it out for some guards (among other usually scripted uses).

  23. Joe says:

    On the subject Lucas, he really does get a lot of hate. Many people say that he should have gotten other people to write and direct the prequels. But Star Wars is his thing. He created it. All those years when people talked up ESB as the best one, it must have stung. “Other people are better at your creation than you are.” I can understand why he did the prequels himself. Of course he wanted to prove to everyone that he was still the man. Who wouldn’t? He failed, but I don’t hate him for trying. I feel sad that he didn’t succeed, not angry.

    1. He created it.

      He really cobbled it together from other sources, like The Magnificent Seven and Dune. If you read earlier versions of his scripts, the influences are so bald-faced, the people who helped him get Star Wars made often told him not to do X or Y for fear of being sued. After seeing the prequels and looking at all the help he had on the original trilogy, it’s getting easier and easier to point out that Lucas had very little to do with the best parts of the franchise.

      Of course he wanted to prove to everyone that he was still the man.

      Except he doesn’t seem to ever have been the man.

      He failed, but I don't hate him for trying. I feel sad that he didn't succeed, not angry.

      I can be upset at his arrogance. Even after all these years of people analyzing Episodes IV-VI, he never got (or got over) the fact that he wasn’t the catalyst that made Star Wars great. Even after how poorly-received Episode I was, he couldn’t swallow his pride and do what he did on the other films: Let more talented people handle things.

      One other secret to his success that doesn’t get much mention is that he got 20th Century Fox to let him have the rights to everything in exchange for not taking his director’s fee. He got the rights to the toys, the music, the visuals, the whole sheebang, which allowed the film franchise to be its own thing and to have income to fuel it. This will never be allowed to happen again by any studio for any movie ever again. Once the original trilogy had become this cultural cornerstone, Lucas couldn’t be financially punished for doing bad work. Even if no one went to see the movies (fat chance of that), they’d make money, and he’d “succeed.”

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Dont forget all of the “improved” editions of earlier movies.

    2. John says:

      There’s so much hatred directed towards Lucas and it’s so often expressed in such nasty or over-the-top ways that it makes me want to say nice things about the prequels. (So it’s unfortunate that the prequels really aren’t very good.) The way Star Wars fans have turned on him has at times struck me as both funny and sad.

      1. I think it’s perfectly understandable. He really didn’t understand what made the original trilogy good, and even when he’d messed up the prequels, he still wanted to go back and make more mistakes in the already finished Episodes IV-VI.

        The Plinkett reviews are, as you say, very over-the-top, but they highlight a lot of decisions Lucas made that really show he didn’t even grasp how his own universe worked:

        – Midichlorians. He turned The Force into a virus.

        – “Size matters not.” But he wanted Yoda in a lightsaber fight, so he put Yoda in a lightsaber fight, undoing just about everything he said in ‘Empire.

        – Jedi robes. Obi-Wan was dressed how he was because that’s how most people on Tattoine dressed. Later, Lucas made this the standard uniform for a Jedi Knight for no apparent reason. It’s especially odd given that Obi-Wan was in hiding, so why would he keep on wearing the same distinctive outfit?

        – All of the dialog in episodes I-III. All of it. The scripts in IV-VI were edited by lots of people, including and especially the actors in the film who obviously knew better than Lucas how their characters (and real people) would speak and behave. Lucas doesn’t understand human interaction, and it shows.

        – “A-Camera and B-Camera.” Most of I-III was shot on a small green/blue-screen soundstage with two cameras. This meant few, if any, actual locations were filmed, the actors couldn’t see what they were responding to, and they only had about 20 feet to move around in, so even when things were supposedly tense and required haste, nobody could run anywhere. This also meant all conversations were done in shot-reverse-shot format, often sitting on couches or standing in front of CGI backdrops.

        These are just a few of the mistakes he made, and why those movies are so reviled given the craft and talent that went into the original trilogy. And if the reply is “they’re movies for kids,” I’d point you to the decapitations, dismemberments, threats of and implied rape, murder of children, etc.

        1. John says:

          Eh, that’s a nice list–I’ve been making a similar one about Obsidian and KotOR 2.

          What I’m really talking about is the way fans–and not just Star Wars fans–put content creators on a pedestal only to turn on them and rip them to shreds once they do something that the fans don’t like. Star Wars was wonderful and we all liked that nice man George Lucas. Then there were special editions and prequels and now Star Wars was never good and if it was good it was everyone but George Lucas who was responsible. Also, George Lucas betrayed each and every one us personally.

          I’ve seen the same thing happen in other contexts (if not to quite the same degree as with Star Wars). A lot of fans turned on Joss Whedon after the last couple of seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. If you listen to them, everything good on the show up to that point must have somehow been a complete accident, since Joss was obviously such a terrible person.

          1. I think you’re doing the same thing you’re decrying, here. I didn’t saying Star Wars was never good, and you’re doing your argument a disservice by trying to make the assertion.

            I can’t speak to Buffy, but with Star Wars, we had this pretty darn good trilogy with George Lucas’ name all over it. Then the prequels came along which were, arguably, bad movies. Naturally, fans (and even just film buffs) tried to figure out why they were so awful. Once you start noticing that the better parts of Star Wars had little to do with Lucas and that Lucas had total control over the prequels, it’s not hard to connect the dots. As more and more people who worked on the movies have their own stories told, we see who really contributed to what was at first hailed as Lucas’ genius.

            Again, I don’t know much about Buffy apart from the movie as I never watched the series (I keep meaning to), but Joss Whedon has gone on to make other films and shows that are genuinely good. How about Lucas’ “Red Tails?” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?” I think the evidence is pretty clear that as great as Star Wars was from IV-VI, Lucas (and the people who were too afraid to tell him “no, that’s not a good idea, we should do this instead”) bears most of the blame for where the prequels went wrong.

            1. John says:

              I’m sorry, let me be clear. Here is my position in its entirety: George Lucas made some good movies. Then he made some movies that were not so good. Some people–not including ps238prinicipal–said nasty things about him and the films. Some of the things that they said were really vicious and unwarranted and made me sympathize with George Lucas. Given that George Lucas is both the creator and the–forgive me–Force behind the Star Wars franchise, I find it difficult to believe that he had absolutely nothing to do with any of the good bits. The end.

            2. MichaelGC says:

              Aye – and not to defend/justify it, but rather just to note it as a psychological phenomenon:- when we find we dislike something we previously liked, we’ll often be more vehement than when we just dislike something, with no prior opinion. As Nietzsche put it:

              When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.

              1. John says:

                Yes, this. This is it exactly.

        2. SlothfulCobra says:

          -All the introduction of Midichlorians meant was that now there’s another garbage technobabble word to throw around in relation to the force. People make way too much of a fuss about it.

          -Yoda fighting doesn’t disprove anything he said in the original trilogy. If anything, it proves that size doesn’t matter. I’ll admit that his characterization outside of the original movies is pretty bland, but I guess Yoda only became an enigmatic jerk after he retired from being a warrior and became a hermit.

          -Jedi robes aren’t all that uniform, and the chief purpose for their design is to emulate samurai clothing. There’s no reason for Jedi to try to be flashy, so there’s no reason for their clothes to be. There’s a decent amount of variation of Jedi clothing in episode II, anyways.

          It bugs me when people try to nitpick little details as if they can objectively prove that something is bad because of some inconsistencies. I don’t think the original trilogy would’ve stood up to that sort of scrutiny anyways. People seem to get mired in the particulars instead of just trying to express what they really felt about the movies, which mainly adds up to the prequels not having evoked the same feelings that the original movies did, and that they fell short of the originals in quality. The rest of your complaints are perfectly valid, although I’ve never really had a mind for cinematography, so I can’t really judge on that.

          In a way, the prequels were kind of doomed from the start, because they had to set up the Empire, Darth Vader, and the demise of all the Jedi by the end, and it’d be hard to make that sort of downer ending feel satisfying. Unlike the original trilogy, where everyone’s an underdog beating out the odds, the prequels had to find a way for the heroes to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

          1. Fine, we can put inconsistencies aside. How about these gems?

            “I’ll try spinning, that’s a good trick!”

            “Master, I’ve heard Master Yoda talking about midi-chlorians and I was wondering… what are midi-chlorians?”

            “Ooh mooey mooey I love you!”

            I could probably post everything from the script, as the dialog is brain-melting, but this combo sticks out to me. In The Phantom Menace, we get this from Qui-Gon:

            “Remember, concentrate on the moment. Feel, don’t think. Trust your instincts.”

            And then in Attack of the Clones, we get this from Obi-Wan, the character who Qui-Gon trained and spoke the previous line to:

            “Patience. Use the Force. Think.”

            I thought thinking was bad, unless it’s not, because… Oh, wait, consistency doesn’t matter, does it?

            1. MichaelGC says:

              “Jar-Jar is really the key to all this … He’s a funnier character than we’ve ever had in the movies before.”

    3. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Oh boohoo,a billionaire is being hated because he used his money to make drek,what a shame.I dont feel ounce of sadness for the guy.

      1. John says:

        Well, when you put it like that . . .

        I wonder if Lucas felt a sense of relief when he sold the rights to Disney? Here, you guys deal with all this crap now. I’m going to go build a pyramid made of money.

        1. If he wanted someone else to “deal with all this crap,” he could have easily hired other people to direct/write the prequels.

          1. John says:

            When I say “crap”, I mean “fan reaction”.

            1. So did I, though you seemed to imply that he was being being forced to make three bad movies, which was the true burden.

  24. Zaxares says:

    Haha, you weren’t the only one who obsessively went around and recovered every single mine, Shamus! Like you, I kept all the mines to sell because they were worth a fair bit of money. I would also repeatedly bum stims from Canderous and splices from Mission on the Ebon Hawk just so I could turn around and sell them at merchants. For someone who was the Dark Lord of the Sith, I was more like Ebeneezer Scrooge. XD

  25. You say light points for getting that man to run away into the rakghoul doesn’t make sense. But you’re wrong, it makes sense: their mission is to find and rescue Bastila, not that guy, and they have stuck with their mission on that.
    Do you think jedis are LG? The equivalent of paladins? Wrong. Jedis are LN, it’s all about what their mission is and doing just that with no distraction or branching. And maybe rather than LN could be Jerk Evil.
    Look Qui-Gon Jin: he finds a slave and her son, but does he do something to rescue them? No, he says his mission is not to free slaves but to repair his cool ride so he won’t help them. In the end he only frees the kid because of the prophecy that sets freeing him as “look, this is another mission, after all”. And when he goes to a shop and he’s told the Republic credits are worthless there, his reply isn’t to negotiate some way in which he may get a deal (these things could be worth enough? What if I let something you know valuable for me in ransom and come back later with a payment? What if we give you Padme to be your slave? Too stupid? Okay, our R2 unit who’s great at repairs and would do a good job for you until we get back with payment?) his response is to try manipulate him with the force to get the piece for free (the Republic daktarians value here is 0, same as air, remember?), yes, he tries to swindle the merchant that he has yet no reason to consider dishonest. Ok, he has slaves, but that’s normal in Tatooine, what may not be so normal is to give them free evenings at random/slow days to have fun on his own. Races? He’s the one who loves racing and wants in. So, yeah, definitely not paladinish. For a paladin the needs don’t justify violating law, honour or good faith.

    1. Shamus says:

      OH MY GOSH SOMEONE IS WRONG ABOUT STAR WARS.

      Uh. Yeah. The Jedi are all over the place. Sometimes they’re paladins. Sometimes they’re pacifists. Sometimes they’re pragmatists. Making definitive statements about their nature requires some very selective sampling of the lore.

      There are lots of other points in this same mission where you get LS points for setting the main quest aside to help some locals.

      The Jedi are all over the place, and the BioWare Morality-O-Meter is also seemingly driven by randomness. The only unifying characteristic seems to be “nice” versus “mean”, so when the game breaks from that it feels odd.

      1. guy says:

        The Jedi do seem to be fairly consistent on violence: it’s bad but better than letting innocents get killed. They did avoid intervening in the Mandalorian wars, but that was because they sensed something ominous lurking in the shadows and were afraid it would end badly. And, well, they were totally correct.

        1. Joe Informatico says:

          No, I’m pretty sure the Jedi are fairly pro-violence. The first time we ever see Obi-Wan whip out a lightsaber, it’s to cut off the arm of a guy who was just intimidating Luke. He hadn’t even actually hurt Luke yet. Later in the trilogy, Obi-Wan and Yoda are pretty insistent that Luke has to kill Vader. It’s Luke who says, “to hell with your Jedi bullshit, if there’s still good in my father I can’t just kill him.” Showing Vader mercy ended up being the right choice.

          1. He’d threatened Luke’s life and his severed arm was holding a gun.

          2. Shamus says:

            Did he say “kill” Vader? My memory is telling me he said “face” Vader.

            Although it’s not like “facing” him implied they would arm-wrestle. Still, “kill” Vader sounds a little…. assassin-y.

            1. MichaelGC says:

              Who are you?

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                He is a paladin.

            2. Jabrwock says:

              Yoda said he wasn’t ready to face Vader, his training was incomplete. Prior to this point Luke was ready to face (kill) Vader. Later Obi-wan said Luke needed to face Vader. Luke responds that he doesn’t want to kill his father.

              At this point Luke decides he has a new goal, face (confront) his father, and save him.

              1. Corsair says:

                So what even if they were all about killing Vader? Luke never really gets an up-close look at what Vader’s been up to all this time, so of course he can look at Vader and see the good in him. But Obi-Wan and Yoda watched him slaughter a couple dozen kids. I cannot think of many characters in fiction who would seriously say you are wrong for wanting a guy dead who -murders kids-, and any GM who would give a Paladin trouble for the Paladin setting out to put a child murderer down deserves to be slapped.

      2. Grudgeal says:

        For example, bounty hunting. Killing criminals in Telos is moralistically neutral as long as they’re guilty and attack you first. Killing murderers, shape-changers and assassins in the Genoharaddan quests, even if they attack you first or you give them the chance to surrender in dialogue, always gives you Dark Side points. Finally, when you’re done killing your targets, provoking the Genoharaddan quest giver into fighting you and then killing him is neutral.

        Apparently it’s only evil if you call it ‘assassination’ rather than ‘bounty hunting’.

      3. That gets into meta-territory that might be interesting, but would really upset a lot of gamers: Is one’s morality determined by intent or by results, and would the results being how you were rewarded be more interesting?

        It’s like saving an NPC who later goes on to be a murderer. Normally, one would assume that a lawful good player would be rewarded (or at least, not penalized) for saving a life, no matter how odious, but this is a universe where a Good/Evil power source exists, one that apparently has the ability to be objectively good or evil and has a few midichlorians in the future. Ergo, if you saved that murderer, perhaps you’d be dinged by the Light Side because it “knew” what you were doing would eventually be negative. However, this would alert the player to what was going on, allowing them access to information their character couldn’t have. If the game gave you a chance later to “redeem” this action (perhaps for a larger reward or some outcome in the story the player liked), that could make it acceptable. If the reward/penalty were hidden from the player, I’m sure there would be complaints that you were being “punished just for playing my character.” Then again, you live in a Star Wars universe, so… I dunno. It’s an interesting mechanical conundrum.

        1. Corsair says:

          Being Good or Evil has never in any viewpoint been based on results, only on what action you take, and why you take that action. You can’t judge people morally based on the unforeseen consequences of their actions. Doing so would be completely bonkers.

  26. John says:

    This is not my first season of Spoiler Warning. I mean, I’ve seen the New Vegas episodes. I know how Josh plays games when he’s got an audience. But unlike all previous Spoiler Warning games, I’ve actually played Knights of the Old Republic, and–let me tell you–that makes this season a new and different experience for me.

    Josh, Josh! I don’t really expect you to listen or change your behavior in any way–like I said, this is not my first season of Spoiler Warning–but for the love of all that is good, put some armor on Mission! Please? It’s like watching my little brother play and he’s doing it wrong and I just want to snatch the controller out of his hands. Except you’re in another state instead of next to me in the living room. So frustrating!

  27. Ooh, I have a theory. There is one person responsible for hats in CRPGs. It’s all they do, and they have a massive passion for it. Sadly, they have the aesthetic sense of (insert most hated designer/artist here), but no one has the heart to tell them. Plus hats aren’t important and no one else wants to do it, and then the game makers are wondering why we’re all begging for a hide helm option.

    You can have my hide helm option when you pry it out of my cold dead hands, or when you manage to offer decent hat/helm options. Most MMOs manage to have a couple decent ones, but they might not be the right armor type/offer the right bonus/work with dwarf beards, space goat horns, ect.

    1. SlothfulCobra says:

      It’s canon that there’s only one good hat in Star Wars, and Cad Bane already has it.

  28. Joe Informatico says:

    Taris is canon in the new Star Wars continuity. (Scroll down to the heading “Beyond the Stars”.) This is more evidence for my theory that the Old Republic timeline is canonical, as the Lucasfilm Story Group, the new official gatekeepers of canon, show up in the credits for Galactic Starfighter, the expansion for The Old Republic MMO. Either that, or the TOR-timeline is so far in the past from the film trilogies it doesn’t really matter.

  29. Jabrwock says:

    On the one hand they don’t want to hide your face. On the other hand they want a variety of head-gear.

    You have few options. Open-faced helmet. Circlet. Dragonball style “Scouter”. LaForge visor. They all look goofy, but how do you convey “this adds accuracy” without it obviously interfacing with the eyes?

  30. Dan says:

    Dragon Age Inquisition had some badass cowboy hats you could get.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to SlothfulCobra Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.