Ivan the Terrible

Ok, time for my attempt to fill the gaping plot hole: The Endar Spire was travelling alone so as not to attract Sith attention. Revan was not yet intended to wake up and begin his new identity; Bastila and company were bringing him to Dantooine, where he would be woken and reinstructed in the Jedi way to prevent another fall to the Dark Side (explaining why they didn't simply program him directly as a Jedi; they wanted to take a direct hand in preventing a repeat of history), and thus setting him up to work with Bastila in finding the Star Maps. Along the way, the Sith learned somehow (perhaps through a spy?) about Bastila being onboard and set a trap in a system (Taris) they were passing through to reach Dantooine. Therefore, Taris only came under Sith occupation a few days before the arrival of the Endar Spire, preventing the Republic ship from knowing they were headed into a trap, and thus when the Endar Spire emerged in the system the Sith took them completely off-guard, pounced on them with their fighters, and voila, you've got your KOTOR set-up. Another thought: instead of just being a disposable tutorial character (*cough*), Trask Ulgo was one of the few people on board to know Revan's real identity, and was assigned to watch him in case he started to wake up. This explains why he sacrificed himself so you could get away, as well as why he was so patient with your idiotic questions about who Bastila was, what the Endar Spire was, etc. There's my attempt to explain it. Any faults with my makeshift patch-up of this problem?

If there were other ships, they were neither mentioned nor do they make even the slightest appearance. It's possible, but more likely we'd have to conceive of it as the Endar Spire travelling alone so as to allay suspicion about it's crew. They must have been. Even if they didn't know the Sith were occupying Taris, I can hardly see a reason to bring Revan and Bastila to an obscure Outer Rim world with no Star Maps. The question is thus: where were they going?

And, just like a lot of other things throughout K1's plot, in order to pass the time, we of the Bored Fan Community are going to overanalyze it until we reach some deep-rooted, profound conclusion which the designers never intended and which makes about as much sense as the people who claim Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is an allegory for Christianity. In other words, let's make up stuff so we don't have to talk about how painful the wait is.

That would make sense if it were an actual 'Jedi battle fleet' like the scrolling text says. In this case, though, it was just one Republic frigate getting the crap knocked out of it by the Sith. The Outer Rim in a single frigate would seem to be a bad place to put your two 'aces in the hole.'

KOTOR begins, as I'm guessing everyone here knows by now, with the Endar Spire getting shot down over Taris and Bastila/Revan/Carth making it out at the last minute in escape pods. So, the question of the day (to pass the time until release): why were they there in the first place? Why would the Republic send a single frigate with the two keys to it's entire war effort through an area which (apparently) was occupied and controlled by the Sith? Where were they going before the Sith ambushed them, and how would they have set Revan up for training and put him on his 'quest' without the apparent justification of his successful actions on Taris? Discuss.

He says he thinks he may need more than 'fighting and killing' in his life. That's not a good recipe for joining the Sith. By the sounds of things, if Canderous involves himself in any war effort after KOTOR, he'll probably do so half-heartedly at best.

Heh. What did you expect a dev to say? You think they're going to divulge some new information in the midst of a congratulatory thread? Most likely, if a developer posts, it won't go much beyond 'Thanks.'

Correction: someone using Akari's account is alive. Akari is stored away in that person's cellar.

Yeah, I don't plan on buying any EU stuff outside of the KOTOR games. For the most part, I'm not that much of a Star Wars enthusiast; it's only this series of games that got me reading anything at all about Exar Kun, Ulic Qel-Droma, etc. etc.

To play all those games and not Planescape: Torment would be a crime, to haunt you until the day you die. Errr....unless you don't like to read. Or don't like pixelated boobs.

Thanks for that; I've neither read the Tales of the Jedi series nor do I possess the money to buy them, so all I really know about what happens comes from 'summaries' like this.

I'm pondering either leaving....or wussing out and finding some way to get my hands on an X-Box.

I somehow couldn't picture 'effusive, gushing praise' when I saw your name italicized at the bottom of the screen. Well, for me, it's just the opposite; I'll start heaping abuse when I play the game and not a moment sooner. For now, they're innocent until proven guilty.

The game finished and on it's way to the greedy hands of the unwashed consumer herd. Nothing remaining but to polish and release the PC version, and the KOTOR II development cycle may be officially drawn to a close.....err, barring a patch or two. To all my fellow posters, I suggest we use this time to let up on criticism and abuse for a second and heap the most effusive, gushing praise upon the folks whose efforts shall soon bear us many hours of entertainment. Leave your cynicism at the door and let our dear benefactors know how much their efforts are appreciated. Well done, chaps! Well done!

The Galactic Empire? Yes. The Sith Empire? Nah. Just Bioware's warped version of it, which unfortunately tends to render it as 'The poor man's Galactic Empire' rather than a unique and interesting entity of its own.

Then why was there a common Twi'lek Sith soldier on Manaan (check one of the landing terminals)? No, I think the whole idea of the Sith being anti-alien is pointless. Nothing was done with it, and there was really no reason for it. It's just another attempt to make the Sith look as evil as possible without regard for common sense.....like Malak killing his own troops on Taris or common Sith soldiers all being as rude and obnoxious as possible for no apparent reason.

Bingo. Give the man a cigar. If the Sith in KOTOR were anti-alien, they might've informed Yuthura Ban of that before she became second-in-command of the Sith academy. It's just another example of KOTOR contradicting itself at various times.

The scenario would have worked better if Bastila's intervention had been prompted by you being beaten to the point of death instead of him; they should have made him virtually impossible to beat for someone of your level, but as it stood after that fight you felt both cheated out of a victory by Bastila's idiotic meddling and felt nothing but contempt for the threat posed by Malak. If I've already effortlessly crushed the end boss well before the climax of the game, why, precisely, am I worried about facing him later on? As I recall, the exact same thing happened with Bodhi in Baldur's Gate 2. She kept trying to be threatening, but after effortlessly spanking her in the graveyard catacombs beneath Athkatla, I could never again take her seriously as an enemy.

That's good, but probably best moved to the Way Off Topic forum.

Why, in the era of Gamefaqs.com, would anyone bother buying an 'official' strategy guide? A fool and his money are soon parted. EDIT: And is the often highly-flawed take of a few people uninvolved in the development on planets and characters in the game really worth buying a whole freaking strategy guide?

It's a cultural thing. Whatever the rest of the world wants us to do, we tend to do the opposite just to piss them all off.

Probably Consular/Master, Light Side. Next game, Guardian/Marauder, Dark Side.

Probably Mira. I may change my mind when I play, but for now the peacenik bounty hunter just seems at odds with my desire to kill everything.

Simple enough. Confront the character with abundant, personal evidence of what his past self has done to the Galaxy at large, as well as individuals. Think Planescape: Torment. You're facing the results of your past incarnation's actions all around you.....not just on a grand scale of opening a sort of Pandora's Box for everyone else's wickedness (like Revan starting a campaign to conquer the Galaxy, but most of the really gruesome stuff being attributed to Malak), but in the very personal appearance of people whose lives your past incarnations have destroyed. If, by the time we had received the revelation, we conceived of Revan as a total and complete monster rather than a sort of vaguely understood dead Sith Lord, pursuing redemption might have been more interesting.

Eh. Bastila, Carth, and Revan are all tortured as well....and Carth even loses his family and home planet. Bastila then sacrifices herself so you can get away (even if, technically, you were smacking Malak around like a cheap Thai whore and her 'help' only interferes with bringing the game to a much swifter conclusion), unaware that she'll be rescued. If we're speaking of sacrifice in theory (as in, they willingly face their fate but that fate doesn't come), then the same thing applies to Bastila; she doesn't know she'll end up being rescued after the Leviathan, but she certainly must know she'll either die or be relentlessly tortured by Malak in the interim. For that matter, why bring up Leia? Unless there's something the movies don't say about Leia's insidiously evil past, she doesn't need to be redeemed anymore than Yoda. Really, I think we're both going in circles here. The bottom line is: outside of the prequels, I think the 'redemption' storyline is a secondary one in the Star Wars movies. It's a plotline, but not the plotline (unless you accept Lucas's apparently ex post facto idea that the whole series revolves around Anakin/Vader rather than Luke), and if the series had focused mostly on that instead of the story of Luke Skywalker and company saving the Galaxy, it would have been drug out of the whole Flash Gordon action/adventure genre and into something darker.....which, again, I wouldn't mind, but I can see why Bioware chose to avoid. You disagree. Precisely what more is there to say?