Ivan the Terrible

Oy gott! You might not want to mention that Chris Avellone may possibly answer PMs; the poor guy might be inundated with them.

Danke, Herr Akari. When I die you may eat my brain, and it shall give you power.

Dark Side, baby. I'd rather be an Emperor of the Galaxy than some piss-ant SWAT team for a bunch of greasy senators.

Y'know, that Emperor just doesn't look right. I remember him being pale and veiny, but I don't remember him looking like some quasi-subhuman ghoul with horrible teeth.

You just encouraged his son to kill him and take his place by your side, and you do half-heartedly trust him? After being sold out like that, I'd have hurled the Emperor down that convenient shaft regardless of Luke's girly-man shrieking and begging.

Yes, but I would think that would be a reason to make explanations for why the Empire lost, not how they had yet another advantage (in addition to catching the Rebels in a trap, outnumbering them, having an entire legion of 'crack troops' facing off against care bears with sticks and rocks, and having a fully operational Death Star blasting ships to bits) and yet still managed to get spanked. Didn't the Admiral Thrawn series give an explanation for why the Empire lost at Endor? Something about force-draining creatures or whatever? I seem to recall something about it, but it's been too long.

Then why in god's name did the Empire get spanked so spectacularly?

About 50 years, that's right. A drop in the bucket if you take the EU timeframe....but frankly, the EU timeframe is very lame. In that 50 years, though, he did manage to virtually annihilate every trace of the Jedi such that the Jedi Order could never be the same again and had to start from scratch. He may not have ruled long, but he certainly had a major impact.

Same here. I'm hoping for a typical background: trained from childhood, stirred up by Revan to join the Mandalore Wars, did something or other to end up in disgrace and sent into exile before (s)he could be corrupted along with the rest of Revan's followers.

What's next? Darth Meanie? Darth Unpleasent? Darth Unfriendly? Darth Bully?

I don't think that's a very good way to handle it, though. The Dark Side is supposed to be seductive and powerful to even the greatest of the Jedi; if it simply destroyed all their advantages when they embraced it, then the only Dark Side users would be the people who started as Sith. Just as Anakin Skywalker could become Darth Vader and be powerful in both incarnations, so room must be left for players who want to start out Light and slide into the Dark, or vice versa.

Only technically, since they're the successor company to Black Isle Studios.

Getting from max Light to max Dark is hard. Getting from max Light to well into Dark isn't so hard, especially since the final decision on the Rakatan Temple knocks you well into the range of whichever side you pick. And really, all you need to be is very Dark for being a Jedi Master to make no sense.

Korriban, a major league Dark Side site. Onderon and Dxun, both major league Dark Side sites. Telos, destroyed by the Sith. Dantooine, destroyed by the Sith. Virtually every new Force Power revealed is a Dark Side power. An abundance of players in screenshots dressed in Sith robes with red lightsabers and veiny faces. You're the last remaining Jedi (well, outcast Jedi anyway), thus precluding any lame 'missions for the council' which make next to no sense if you're Dark Side. The game is even called, bluntly, 'The Sith Lords.' All of this is just circumstantial evidence. However, I can't help but feel like the disappointing Dark Side game of KOTOR is not going to be repeated here. Things are looking good for the future Sith Lords of KOTOR II. B)

Well....kinda. KOTOR II seems to present the scenario as the Republic verging on destruction, not quite dead yet, even if you went Dark Side in KOTOR. How much, if anything, Revan had to do with that we don't know....and most likely if the character we play in KOTOR II goes Light Side it won't matter anyway, since that character will have saved the Republic (or, possibly if we go Dark, become the only Sith Lord outside of Sidious to take on the Galaxy and win.)

Sidious, easily. Of them all, he alone actually managed to conquer the Galaxy rather than just threaten to do so....and did so using only his wits and intelligence. That he lost it in the subsequent Rebellion and that his best troops were overrun by Care Bears is beside the point.

Example: Joe Jedi spends the entire game saving cats from trees and saving babies in runaway strollers. He goes heavily into the Light, and when the time comes he chooses to become a Jedi Master. Then the player running Joe Jedi gets bored and decides to start throwing those same cats and babies into woodchippers. He kills his goody-good companions and wrecks terrible havoc across every world he visits; suddenly Joe Jedi becomes Sam Sith. And yet his presige class is Jedi Master. The alternative idea, of a Dark Side SOB killing and maiming his way through the entire game then turning to the Light Side after he's gained levels in the Sith Lord class, is equally problematic. Sooo.....does your prestige class switch to it's equivalent on the light/dark side when you start slipping from your current approach to the Force? Or do the prestige classes come at a point in the game where there's no turning back (hopefully not)?

This is changed again in the new SW Trilogy DVD, Han and Greedo both shoot at each other at the same time. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, I know, but that seems like a compromise that satisfies neither party and (if anything) makes even less sense. Not only does he shoot at point blank range and miss, but Han shoots at the same time, thus rendering the whole point of Greedo shooting first (to show that Han isn't a bad guy) rather meaningless. Another necessity of a good Star Wars product is for the present day George Lucas to keep his involvement to a minimum.

In the case of Star Wars, I think there's a very specific atmosphere that needs to be created. One cannot set a War and Peace style story in the Star Wars galaxy, or even a Planescape: Torment style story; it just doesn't work that way. Rather, you have to capture certain elements from the movies which grabbed the attention and fascination of people while removing those elements which....*cough*....didn't (or at best did so in a very negative way; witness the Ewok and Jar-Jar backlash.) So, in your opinion, what are the elements that are essential to conveying the whole Star Wars atmosphere? My thoughts: 1) Good and evil. For all my bitching about the 'Chaotic Stupid' behavior of the Sith in KOTOR, it remains pretty obvious that the Star Wars universe was not designed for a deep, philosophical examination of human morality. The Republic/Rebellion are good and fight for justice, freedom, and the Light Side; the Sith/Empire are evil and fight for tyranny, oppression, and the Dark Side. The few 'grey' characters still tend to lean heavily one way or the other; Han Solo is leaning towards the Light (especially now that Greedo shoots first), while Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett-style criminals are leaning towards the Dark. Even Jolee Bindo, despite his absolute grey status, was far more Light leaning than Dark. For all that, however, I believe the best Star Wars stuff acknowledges that 'evil' does not mean you have to write every Dark Jedi as Snidely Whiplash with a lightsaber. The Empire Strikes Back did a marvelous job of portraying the Empire as 'bad guys' without evil cackles and pointlessly sinister dialogue; the only Star Wars novel I've ever read, the first book in the Admiral Thrawn series, also seemed to do a great job, so much so I remember actively sympathizing with Imperial characters at times. Hopefully the writers of KOTOR II draw their inspiration more from those sources than the original KOTOR when making their villains. 2) Scale. The Star Wars galaxy is supposed to convey a sense of the epic; ships aren't just like a Earth battleship in space, they're practically floating cities, and there are dozens or hundreds of them often lead by an even more gigantic ship (think Vader's Executor Super Star Destroyer.) The new Imperial super weapon can't just be a powerful new ship or something wimpy like that; it has to be a base the size of a small moon that can annihilate an entire planet in an instant. Wars take place across an entire galaxy; cities and deserts cover entire planets. If you see a pit somewhere in the Star Wars universe, you can be sure it keeps going down and down and down. This one is kinda tough for KOTOR and KOTOR II to get much mileage out of, given that most planets consist of about five screens....but they tried, if only by having cool scenery extending into the distance, or by showing a cut scene which emphasizes countless Sith ships as far as the eye can see, or a factory big enough to be seen next to a sun. In one respect, I hope they deliberately don't emphasize scale; namely, I think we've seen enough Star Forge/Death Star/Sun Crusher-scale all-powerful Superweapons by now. Ok, I've offered two examples, and I'm tired of writing. Can anyone else think of any?

It's no problem, but the irony of your announcing news which has caused this forum to nearly rise up in bloody revolt against LA and generated several threads with hundreds of responses in the space of an hour or two, most of which had to be closed down, just had to be noted.

That's my approach, as well. With the Heart of the Guardian in the long one and the other unique crystal (forget it's name) in the short one, combined with the most damage-inducing crystals, a good strength, and Master Valor, a Guardian can typically kill anything short of Darth Malak in one round.

I no longer have a TV. Well....one that works, anyway.

No.

Make the Sentinel not suck as much. That is my recommendation.