Jediphile

It will be restored-it has yet to be assigned to anyone however since we're all working on other stuff at the moment. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Thanks for the answer. It had been a while and since it is not mentioned in the progress report, I thought it might have been dropped. Glad to hear I was wrong.

Funny thing about that. Take a look at Smith in the first movie, and you'll notice that he is already pretty far gone. The way he removes his earpiece when torturing Morpheus and so being unaware of the attack by Neo and Trinity says a lot. The other programs looked shocked at what he is doing (and even ask him about it). And just how can he not know about the attack? Removing the ear-piece is not a clue in itself, since he is really a program and should be able to disconnect from the system. No, there is something wrong with him even in the first movie...

The problem with that is that Smith *IS* Neo. When he supposedly destroyed him at the end of the first movie, he accidentally gave him powers instead of deleting him. Or as Smith puts it, "something imprinted or copied". In any event, he made Smith aware and severed his connection to the system, thinking that would delete him. It did not have that effect, however.

A while ago I mentioned some soundfiles where the Handmaiden talks about how to combat people unarmed so that you don't kill them, and somebody from the team looked at it and said that it was to be used for the showdown with the Handmaiden sisters and that it might be restorable. Has any decision been reached on this?

I'd rather do my own plot

I played many sessions of Shadowrun and yet I never got around to feeling that way...

Bounty Hunter: "Finally we have found you - surrender or die, Jedi!" Evil Exile: "The next one who calls me a jedi is going to feel my lightsaber where the sun never shines!!"

Actually, a warrior has a d10 for each level, always the maximum 10 at level 1, and gets to add his con bonus every time. That's 10+bonus + d10+bonus/level. The wizard's fireball does only d6/level, so chances are he will never reach the warrior's hit points, even if the warrior missed his save. And since fireballs cap at 10d6 while characters never stop accumulating hp, the chances of dying are even smaller beyond level 10.

Or how about an armor... " Hehe - don't give me any ideas. I am a GM, after all, and I might let it slip to my players where I got my ideas

We are <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The problem lies in the multi/dual class systems, which are completely different in 2e and 3e, and in the way monster-races are fit into the rules in each incarnation. In 2e, a 1st level warrior is a 1st level character, no matter which race he belongs to, while in 3e, the race, if powerful, is considered to be worth a number of experience levels. I checked this, and IIRC a minotaur is considered to be an 8th-level character as a base, so a 3rd-level minotaur fighter would be considered 11th-level (8+3) and have to earn xp according to that. This means that I cannot fairly convert a 16th-level 2e minotaur fighter (who would drop eight levels to be a mere 8th level fighter) or a 12/12-level 2e dwarven fighter/cleric, since his classes would add up to 24 levels, which is far too much in 3e. The Karameikan school of magecraft did not exist in the original OD&D system, and even after it was invented, it has had next to no effect on the campaign world. Even the last pusblished PWAs give it next to no significance, and what magic is taught there was never touched upon in OD&D - it wasn't until the 2e box you got those hated kits to sort out the karameikan mages. The Atruaghin Clans don't depend on magic at all. They have shamans, but they their effect on their society is built entirely on their social functions and not on power levels or D&D class structures. The shaman class is described, but it's not essential to the setting and can easily be replaced by something similar in another game. Only Glantri and Alphatia can be said to be based heavily on D&D-specific magic, but then even the Radiance falls outside standard D&D rules and is described only in Gaz3 for OD&D and G:KoM for 2e. Otherwise both Glantri and Alphatia is founded heavily on magic, and so this is the one area where you would have to present a good substitute if you switch to another system. Taking those over to, for instance, GURPS rules will need some conversion, since the nations are tied closely to some specific D&D spells in certain cases. Well, Glantri is a problem for my campaign, since one PC is a dwarven fighter/cleric... and you know how much they just love clerics and dwarves there, and vice versa As for magical component, I don't agree. Yes, they have magic in most of those nations, but just how much does it matter in those societies, and how much is it tied to D&D magic that you cannot alter? We know there are guilds for wizards in both Minrothad and Darokin, but they have next to no detectable influence on society beyond being accepted as beneficial in some circumstances. The same is true in Thyatis, which has some truly powerful wizards, but who just don't matter much to the general life in their society.

GURPS? Dumbed down? It is quite the contrary! It ain't dumbed down enough! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I agree.. that it's not dumbed down. Not that it isn't dumbed down enough, though If a simple car chase scene takes over an hour to run and you need to consult the rulebook over and over again then the rules are too complicated. Netrunning and magic rules are also too complex. I have never been a big fan of rolling a whole bunch of die at once and counting successes..etc <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, I feel the same way, pretty much as I do with Vampire, Exalted and the other WoD games... But then I don't like the Shadowrun setting either, too much of a confusing mess of odd races thrown in with cyberpunk future stuff. Always seemed half-cooked to me...

Personal taste is always important, but if we're going argue our tastes, then the discussion becomes as pointless as a cleric's weapon (unless you use Player Option rules...), since it will just be descriptions of what each of us tend to like. I'd rather we argued from a more objective base, since that can serve to lead us to useful conclusions about what a good RPG is or not. So far I've heard people argue that it depends on personal preference or GM inginuity. All good and true, but such comments don't add anything useful to the discussion, I think. I don't mind (as people probably know by now) writing pages of why I like this or that, but it's not helpful unless looked at as examples of why something is good or bad in a game. True enough. Canon Mystara is OD&D and doesn't have multi/dual classes at all. That means it's even more restrictive to play than later editions. However, you won't see that on the surface, since all of the NPCs fall into the categories set up for them, and because entirely new classes are invented as needed in the various gazetteers. Alphatia's council of 1000 archmages grew out of the rules, for example, as did the gladiators and other warriors of Thyatis. That doesn't make them impossible in a broader game structure, however, and they would instead serve to emphasize the value of focusing on a particular area of expertise (wizardry/magic in the first and combat/fighting skill in the second). Indeed, it would be harder to separate Mystara from D&D magic, since it is essential to some lands. Alphatia is founded on the exploitation of magic, for example, while Glantri is impossible without the Radiance. Actually, nostalgia is only secondary to me. It's much more significant that some of the characters in my campaign were made with 2e multi-class options or other rules that would make them impossible to convert fairly to another system. One character is a 16th-level ex-minotaur fighter, for example ("ex" because he lifted his minotaur curse and is now a really large human). In 3e a minotaur is actually counted as an 8th-level character (IIRC), which means he would only get 8 levels of warrior skill in the conversion, which is blantantly unfair on the player - he created the character on the basis that he would be able to take levels in the same manner as anyone else, so suddenly removing is to betray his character. I would do that if I switched to 3e. The same is true for the level 12/12 dwarven fighter/cleric - in 3e he would have about 15 levels to distribute among his fighter and cleric classes, and that is just unfair to the basis he created the character on. So I'm stuck in 2e until those characters leave the campaign whether I like it or not. But even if they were, I still wouldn't see much reason to switch to 3e - it's simply not enough of an improvement for that. As I see it, only the magic system ties Mystara closely to D&D. The campaign is tied directly to some of the spells of the game in some cases, and you have to come up with something similar if you change the system. But beyond that there is no reason why you couldn't switch the system. Mystara is certainly rich enough to allow for the diversity (unlike some D&D campaign worlds). Indeed, there are characters in Mystara, that fit so well into the D&D structure. Empress Eriadna or King Stefan both fit their archetypes well, but Chancellor Corwyn Mauntea of Darokin doesn't strike you much as a thief, when you read his description, and he seems rather to have been made into one simply because the other classes were even more improbable for him. This is an example of a character that was made to fit the setting, but which the fixed and rigid class structure of the game couldn't provide a fitting archetype for. I couldn't possibly disagree more - of all of the D&D campaign worlds, Mystara is the one that would best accept a broad system for customizable characters, since several of the nations are founded on a historic basis rather than a rules-heavy one. Alphatia and Glantri are clearly tied to D&D magic, yes, but nations like Ethengar, Darokin, Karameikos, Ylaruam, Sind, Atruaghin Clans, Ostland, Vestland, Soderfjord and even Thyatis are based far more historic reference than on D&D rules systems. It's quite the opposite in FR, where the nationalities are based first on alignment considerations and historic inspiration second or in DL, where everything is centered on the neverending war between good dragons and evil dragons. The inspiration for Mystara was not based on D&D classes but on history. Sure, it may seem so if you look at lands like Glantri, Alfheim, Rockhome, or the Five Shires, but that is more because those are based on magic, elves, dwarves, and halflings respectively, and as long as those are kept in focus for those nations, it really won't matter which rules you use - the dwarves of Rockhome will be just as effective and compelling under GURPS rules as their are in D&D, which underlines that Rockhome was written with the dwarven race as a focus and not the dwarven OD&D class. No, the problem is that I fairly convert the main PCs to another system. I could switch Mystara to GURPS rules tomorrow or even today without much trouble, if I were to begin a new campaign. In fact, only the heavy focus on magic in Glantri and Alphatia (and Thyatis to a lesser extent) would be problematic. But since we rarely adventure in any of those nations, it would not be a major obstacle.

Sorry, but to me that sounds like a contradiction. You say that you don't mind hit points in level-based systems, and then you cite their use in a game that is not level based as an example... FYI, GURPS too can be said to have hit points in the sense that there are points assigned to the various parts of the body, but the number of points they have is based on your stats and not accumulated automatically as you progress through the game. If a commoner has, say, about 8 hp on average, while a hard warrior can have up to 12 or 13, but also has tons of skill to avoid being hit at all, then that's fine by me - it's realistic since the PC doesn't automatically become a god next to the common man, he just knows how to defend himself. But if he's in a situation that doesn't involve combat, like drinking poison or caught in an avalance, then he's just as likely to die as anyone else because his combat skill is not going to be relevant. In 3e, however, your experience is a universal shield against any sort of threat, and that is completely silly. It's slightly better than 2e since poisons and such tend to cause ability loss, which can kill if reduced to zero, but then the PCs do tend to have higher stats anyway, and they even improve them automatically as the progress through the game, so it's still not very convincing. I don't mind that the heroes have a better chance of survival in these situations, that's okay, but they shouldn't be impervious to things that would be fatal to ordinary people. A fireball would be a terrible and horrible thing in a realistic setting, but in D&D it won't matter much to experienced characters - they just note down the damage and then continue as if nothing had happened, when they should have severe burns and be caught in the middle of a fire. A 10th level warrior surrounded by 15 orcs can easily let his wizard friend cast a fireball at him, because he will hardly take a scratch, while all the orcs are guaranteed to die even if they make their saves (which the warrior is all but certain to make). Again, silly.

While I think this works well on the level of options for the PC, it has the big problem of next to no plot. And what's more troubling is that if you're going to allow that much diversity for player choices so early in the game, then the overall plot of the game will inevitably suffer as a result. KotOR games tend to quite linear and give very little genuine choice to the player. Usually the light/dark choices are limited to very few and isolated quests and not the overall plot. The final LS/DS choice comes very late and usually has little influence on how things will play out - in KotOR2 it almost didn't matter at all. And when we consider that the game will have only a certain amount of man-hours devoted to it among programmers/writers/whomever, it becomes very clear that you can have either rich plot or many options, but not both, since doing a lot of one would reduce the amount of work that can be done on the other. KotOR games have so far prioritized plot over options, and personally I don't want that to change. If anything, I'd prefer richer and more interesting plot even over the loss of options. I play KotOR to see what happens in the story, not to have a gazillion options open to me. This is where they erred in the X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter game - they cut the missions, but you could play however you wanted. X-Wing Alliance had very linear plot in the next game because felt no progress or connection to a character in X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter. This might isn't the same, but the plot will still suffer as a result. This is also why I don't voice support of more color for lightsabers, robes with hood, or better graphics. I don't mind, but I don't want to see the devs sacrifice plot focus as a result.

Like Lancer I do play 2e, but unlike him I won't defend it as a good RPG system, since it's not - it's just what I've gotten used to, and if I stick with it, it'll be out of familiarity and nostalgia. Indeed, I would have dropped it already if 3e was that much better, but now I'm stuck with it for a while until my current campaign ends. But once that happens, chances are that I'll quit 2e too, for good. GURPS also has a simple mechanic - you roll 3d6 and try to roll below your skill. But if you don't like rolling below something, then there really is no reason why you couldn't add the skill value to the roll and try to get it as high as possible just as d20 does. Oh, and GURPS have all the rules you want in two books instead of three, and that is actually one book more than most RPGs. Combat might be more complicated, but it really didn't have to be - there is no reason why combat need more complex and slow in one game than in the other. In GURPS they just decided to have advanced and realistic representation of combat, and in d20 they focused on quick and simple even if that came at the expense of believability. But it's a choice, and there is no reason why GURPS couldn't have been much simpler in this regard. I would say d20 3e is more polished than previous editions, but saying it's an improvement might be going to far. For a game that is supposedly built on more than a decade of 2e experience, it certainly makes a lot of the same mistakes. The fact that players no longer stop rolling for hit points at high levels means that a 17th level warrior can certainly have in the vicinity of 200 hp, while a command still has one 5 or 6. That's just completely ridiculous when you consider that a thief could kill the common man with just about any sword, and yet the warrior would hardly notice it even if the thief hit him with a backstab (or sneak attack, if you prefer...). And I'm going to invoke the Boromir-argrument here again - the fact that four arrows fired by orcs cannot possibly kill a high level warrior in 3e is just plain dumb. You could argue the same for 2e, of course, but at least the accumulated hp had a cap somewhere around level 10 there, and they did introduce Critical Hits in Player Option: Combat & Tactics, yet those are strangely absent from 3e, even though they would make even more sense here what with the increased hp totals...

Kreia: "It travels with you, like an echo through the force..." Exile: "WILL YOU SHUT UP ABOUT THOSE STUPID ECHOES, YOU ANNOYING CRONE!!!"

Thank you. And yes, it's highly speculative, but I like it because I think it carries lots of interesting potential with for a KotOR3. Glad you liked it. Well, to take this back to the subject, I think the above is tied to the reason why an evil exile is standing next to an evil Revan in the tomb vision on Korriban. If my speculation is accurate, then it could be a hint of things to come. But that's even more speculative.

Well, I'm sort of glad the topic hasn't been closed, but at the same time, I'm wondering if the reason we're no longer posting on topic is that it has run its course. I began it because I felt that d20 is a very mediocre system that hurt games like KotOR that are based it. Seems that most people actually agree with me, though it is naturally true that a good GM can make any system work, no matter how flawed and hopeless it is. Heck, I could probably make a d20/3e campaign work myself, if I had an inclination to - I made 2e work, after all, in spite of my players having all tried much better systems, and I take the fact that they stick around in spite of marriage, children, job, and other role-playing-interrupting annoyances as a pretty pad on my shoulder. Few people, if any, have argued that d20 is a good system. Those who have defended it has mostly done it on the basis that it's good enough for what it does or that its simplicity and fixed archetypes and game mechanics are valuable because they can be picked up by anyone in an instant. Where I have disagreed most with the defenders of d20 is with the inferred idea that skill-based systems without fixed classes and experience levels cannot be easily accessible and enjoyable to new players. I find the opposite to be the case. If the GM asks a new player, "What sort of character do you want to play?", then isn't it better if the player can immediately sit down and build the character right from his imagination than hitting against rigid rules that dictate which archetypes he may choose between?

Where? I've played through the game several times, and I've never noticed anything like that. In fact, Neo hardly ever appears in the game - I think we see him three times in all (standing behind Morpheus during the Captains' meeting, when he flies in to save Morpheus and the keymaker in the freeway chase scene, and when the crews of the Nebuchanezzar, Logos, and Hammer meet to discuss their plan of attack to give Neo his window to open the door). He doesn't ever even speak in the game (unless you count the sampled voice in the hacking sequence). Yes, but I thought the spoon had far more significance than that. Otherwise there seems to be little point in having the scene in there at all. The Neo-Smith fight seem was pretty disappoiting. We'd already seen Neo against a single Smith in the first movie, and Neo against multiple Smiths in the second, so returning to Neo against a single Smith was a letdown, particularly with all those other Smiths just standing around peeking - it defeating Neo was really so important, you'd have thought they'd do something besides watching with their fingers up their nose or eating popcorn or whatever... I wanted to see Neo and Smith throw buildings at each other and tear cities to shreds, since putting it on that scale would be the only way to properly reflect the significance of their battle. But...

My problem with Revolutions was that it spent most of its time denying or ignoring the aspects that were revealed at the end of Reloaded. For instance, how can Neo disable the sentinels in the real world? The oracle gives a very cryptic answer - because his power stretches all the way back from "this world" to the machine world. Now note that "this world" would seem to be mean the Matrix, since that is where she exists. So Neo would have power than reaches from the Matrix to the machine world, yet he uses it in the real world? How can he do that? And why did usage of that power bring him to the train station? There is a lot of mystery going on, and he never explains any of it to his friends. That doesn't preclude an explanation, but while I can accept his reasons for not telling his friends, the movie suffers because it is not revealed to us. There are several clues scattered over Reloaded, that are more siginificant that it might seem. For example: The Architect tells him that Trinity will die, and that he can't stop it. She does indeed die, just not in Reloaded as we might have thought. The Architect reveals that Neo is not the first incarnation of "the One" and that Zion has been destroyed several times before. Neo accepts that, and yet how that all adds up is never dealt with Revolutions. As Neo leaves Zion in Reloaded, a boy has left him a horribly bent spoon with the comment that he knows what it means. This is an obvious reference back to the first film, where a boy (the same boy?) tells Neo that he just needs to realize the truth in order to bend the spoon, because then he will realize that it is not the spoon that bends, but rather himself. And the truth is "there is no spoon!" What's the significance of that scene in Revolutions? The elders of Zion show a lot of faith in Neo and Morpheus over the objections of Commander Locke and let them make decisions that seem strategically unsound, if Zion is to be saved from the burrowing machines. Why? Councilmember Hamann (sp?) comes to Neo and they talk. This leads to a scene, where the councilmember concludes that "we need machines, the machines need us". What does that scene try to tell us? All of this was very interesting, and there are answers to them. I speculated like Hell over them, after I saw Reloaded, and I went to see Revolutions to see if I had guessed right. Only Revolutions refused to give answers, and that is rather disappointing. Doesn't make it a bad film per se - as EnderWiggin says, the battle for Zion is incredible, as is the Hammer's flight back there, but plotwise the whole thing is a confusing mess that refuses to unveil its secrets. Therefore Revolutions could function only as an acition-flick, where Reloaded had depth, mystery and philosophical conundrums.

Well, do I win the "most wierd" prize if I say that I thought Reloaded was the best Matrix movie? All the action and effects aside, it opened entirely new potential perspectives in the Matrix universe and really made me think about what was going on - it was filled with clues that pointed in all different directions, and it played with possibilities of the mind far more than the original movie. And it functioned on several levels as well, which is more than can be said for the two other movies. It lifted the veil for some truly mind-boggling possibilities towards the end, yet Revolutions sadly refused to build on that and instead used most of its time on avoiding them. A shame...

Sorry, I meant the movies. Though "Matrix Revolutions" makes the trilogy hated, I still think there is lots and lots of RPG potential in there. I've been toying with the idea for a campaign, since I already have the plot ready. I would begin before the first movie and eventually move beyond the last movie, explaining all the nonsense and ties up the loose ends. That could be fun. At least, it is my experience that when I have the idea for a campaign or adventure, then it usually turns out pretty well. I did a Star Trek TNG/DS9 plot I had thought up a few years ago as an adventure, and despite their initial skeptism, the players ended up loving how it all turned out, so I have a good deal of confidence in my plots...

Well, the only thing I mentioned from the EU was Luke's fate in "Dark Empire" and Ulic's in the Tales of the Jedi comic books. Ulic's fate is mentioned as a warning in "Dark Empire", so the connection is obvious. Even if you don't like those, it is difficult to separate them from KotOR, since Ulic was Exar Kun's apprentice and so a major power during the Sith War that lies on some 40-50 years before KotOR1, and which is frequently referred to in both games. I'll be content to ignore "Dark Empire", since it's set so far in the future (compared to KotOR). Ulic is more difficult to ignore, however, because his history is still so recent and fresh in KotOR... But they didn't repress their choice. Repression is, according to dictionary.com, "The unconscious exclusion of painful impulses, desires, or fears from the conscious mind." That is not the case here, since the council made the choice consciously. They may have felt guilt, remorse and regret about it, but even so, they knew full well what the cost would be. But they feared the alternative more, and so they chose the way they did. We could argue that they were wrong about their choice, but not that they were in denial about their choice. Seeing as how things turned, their fears were confirmed, as the jedi that fought did indeed fall the dark side as they had predicted. I don't think you can sit the position the council did and care about the suffering of every innocent person there is. I imagine it would be akin to doctors, who avoid emotional attachments to patients, because it otherwise becomes too painful when they suffer. The same would be true for strategists, who must often sacrifice soldiers to win battles. History has several examples of wars, where some people were sacrificed, so that more could live. It is no doubt a hard choice, but it is also naive to think that you can save everybody. There are times when trying to do so costs too much, because you will only lose people in addition to those that are already lost. The council felt that this was the case here. Whether they were right or not is a different matter. Well, now you bring me to reveal the conclusion or rather speculation that my observations and assumptions have brought me to. As I see it, there are many lose ends in the story, that have not been tied up yet. And no, I'm not talking about the cut content (unless some of it touches on this subject, but I have not heard anything to that effect). My point is that the Exile's story is not quite over yet. As others have said, KotOR2 has an open "to be continued" sort of ending, and even with all the stuff that was cut, it seems that it was always meant to be so. They built toward the mystery of Revan for an entire game, but didn't reach a conclusion? And the Exile ends up also going to the unknown regions alone, as Revan did? And the Exile's obvious connection to Nihilus is never fully revealed? We could go on and on about loose ends and unanswered questions, but the point is that KotOR2 was written with the intent of a sequel, at least as far as I can tell. So yes, there is stuff we don't know yet, and what really happened between Nihilus and the Exile is one of them. I speculate that Nihilus was indeed 'reconnected' with the Exile when he vaporized in that red haze (or whatever it was), but the Exile (and so the player) still remained unaware of this. He was, after all, completely unaware of the force wound and it's effects, so it is not a big stretch IMHO that he would not realize all the consequences of it, Nihilus being one. The Exile does seem to know subconsciously. It really struck me as odd that Visas, not the Exile, took Nihilus' mask, but the Exile then asked for it, but never looked at Nihilius with his own eyes. Perhaps he subconsciously knew that there was something there, that he would not like seeing. He lets Visas look at Nihilus and then asks her what she saw, but then she is blind in the common sense, and what she sees is therefore a metaphor subject to interpretation. Her answer is interesting: "A man, nothing more. Malachor V. I saw a graveyard world, surrounded by a fleet of dead ships. I felt it through him... as I feel it through you". She doesn't know his face, but she can see his past all the way back to Malachor V, and yet the Exile doesn't see for himself? Perhaps it was someone that he knew, when they were both there, and he can't be bothered to check? Odd... Maybe the Exile knew subconsciously what he would see and chose to flee from it. He did the same on Malachor V during the Mandalorian Wars, after all. And to face Nihilus would therefore be to face the dark side of himself that he rejected so long ago. He was not prepared to do that. But I don't think he can escape that fate. Unknowingly, he carried Nihilus with him, and that is why Nihilus dissolved. Note also how the Exile's connection with Kreia has conveniently vanished, once he reaches Malachor V. I assume that is because reconnecting with Nihilus has not only healed the force wound, but also cut the bond with Kreia. But either way, the Exile remains blissfully oblivious to all this, and therefore so does the player. I suspect it was to be a basis for revelation in KotOR3, and perhaps it still is.

Continued from my last post above... Yes, except the examples you cite all indicate conscience and morality. Repression is what happens when we deny or ignore our choices or experiences. An evil person wouldn't care how many were killed or that he let die so that he could live, though. So either way, this does not suggest a repression of the dark side to me. The council may have felt guilt and regret at what happened, but they didn't just refuse to get involved. Bastila mentions in KotOR1 that they would eventually have gotten involved and that Revan and Malak wouldn't give them the time they needed to prepare, since people were dying on the outer rim. In some way you could say this is like Luke rushing off to confront Vader before he is ready to fight the battle. Obi-Wan and Yoda wanted Luke to wait, but his friends were dying. Obi-Wan says, "Patience!" and Luke, "And sacrifice Han and Leia?". Yoda replies, "If you honour what they fought for, yes!" Note the significance that are not telling Luke that he shouldn't fight Vader at all - they want and *need* him to fight Vader - they just don't want him to fight that battle so soon, because they know he's not ready for it yet. The situation here is similar (less personal, but involving more people). The council's choice was the same as that of Obi-Wan and Yoda. Revan and Malak made the same choice as Luke. As as we learned, Luke's choice can scarcely have been called the right one, though it might seem so at the first glance - Luke nearly fell to the dark side because of his choice, and consequences of that would have been far worse for the galaxy than the loss of his friends. The council of Revan's age realized that fighting the Mandalorians so soon would have cost the same, if not more, and so they adviced patience. Revan and Malak would not accept that and so split the jedi on the issue. Revan may have done so because he realized the same greater threat that the council did (the true Sith), but he also knew that his strategic plan to fight the true Sith through sacrifice of jedi would never have been approved by the council. Guilt, yes. Doubt, probably. Repression, I don't think so, since it was a conscious choice. You sure you haven't been reading my KotOR3 suggestion? Seriously, I suggested something along those lines during my KotOR3 plot some time ago. It should still be in one of the earlier parts of that topic on the Obsidian General board somwhere. I do not see the Exile and Nihilus as equal. Nihilus is just a small part. He's is like an arm or leg infected with gangrene, which the Exile cuts off to save himself. This leaves a terrible wound (force wound), but the Exile can live on just fine, though he remains wounded by having lost the use of his limb, which in this case means being cut off from the force. It isn't a physical thing like an arm, however, but an emotional part of himself that he has thrown away, or rather his own dark side. That dark side is strong enough to survive if only for a time, but it continues to exist by animating a body as a host for it and then draining the lifeforce of jedi, since it has none of its own, as it's just a shell with nothing real underneath. Hence Nihilus ("Nihil" - latin for "nothingness"). And he must continue to consume jedi or die, which is the "hunger" than Kreia talks about. He cannot 'suck' the Exile, however, because that is his true self, and attempts to "suck" the Exile therefore has the opposite effect - it reconnects them (draining him into the Exile instead), but destroys the phantom that is Nihilus in the process. He stopped in time to cease his existence, but was then cut down by lightsabers instead. And instead of just dying, he was mysteriously vaporized, which is not common for a Sith. Why? Reconnection to his true self. Yeah, until the devs tell us what they really planned, it's anyone's guess, I suppose...