Jediphile

Ah, but she did. Remember how the masters respond when she joins your meeting with them on Dantooine. Kavar: "I thought you had died in the Mandalorian Wars..." Kreia: "Die? No - became stronger, yes." Vrook: "Is this your new Master, exile? If so, then you follow Revan's path. Her teachings will cause you to fall as surely as he did.We sought to lure the Sith out... and now they have come to us." If you want to doubt what SSgtSniper says above, then you're better off questioning the comment that sources in the game claim that Kae was Revan's first master, as I don't think it actually ever says - it just says that Revan was her padawan and never discounts the possibility that she may have been his/her first master. But there is no doubt Kreia fought in the war - the masters know she did, and she doesn't deny it - she even confirms it.

"No need to wonder what it was she did to your eyes any more". Sweet! I haven't played KotOR2 in a while now, but I'm really looking forward to revisiting it once the mod is done. Good job.

What does R2-D2 stand for? Or C-3PO?

The thing with Bao-Dur is that he responds only to what you do and not what you say, so you can't talk to him just to gain influence. You lose influence with him if you do DS acts and can gain it if you behave LS. But knowing that, it isn't so difficult to build influence with him, especially you use an influence guide, so you know which situations he responds to. But of course, this makes building influence with him a pain if you're aiming for being the next dark lord...

It is very peculiar that I have played this game countless, upon countless, times and I have yet to ever see this bit of dialogue from Mical. Where did you find this? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The above is cut and pasted directly from dialog.tlk file, but I do believe I've heard it in-game as well. But like several other characters (Mira, for example), Disciple has a few comments that are associated with bugs and which you therefore get to hear only if certain things happen at just the right time during the game. If memory serves correctly, this comment is heard only if you pass the very first influence check with him when you ask about his past. I could be mistaken, though. Can anyone confirm or deny?

Agreed. I still think they should have had the HK-50 unit greet a female Exile with the question, "Query: Are you Sarah Connor?" :D

Never did like expansion packs much, since they always seemed like an attempt to do only "half a game" or so. Up until a few years ago, they were mostly there to let the developers write a quick continued plot using the same engine, but these days this is less relevant since everything has to be in 3D and all dialogue has to spoken, thus making any 'continued plot' release, whether Expansion pack or otherwise, a major undertaking. So that makes them even less relevant, since it's almost as easy (or difficult) as writing a new game, especially now that 'recycled' graphics engines have been acceptable. And then you run into the problem of whether the audience will accept it as part of the evolving plot. Could you imagine Monkey Island 3.5 or so? Does sound problematic for as plot-driven a game series as KotOR, I think. After all, what can you do plotwise in an Expansion that follows up on K2, yet is not plot-heavy enough to be K3? For example, we can count the entire Clone Wars animated series as Episode 2.5, but how many of us see it as canon Star Wars and how many do not? A lot of people still refuse to accept the comics and books of the Expanded Universe as canon even though they are approved by the company and the creator himself. So in the interest of not alienated such people, the developers will always choose a "light" enough plot for an Expansion pack in order to make the "real" sequel relevant to all the potential customers, and therefore limit the amount of potential plot development in the Expansion pack. Taking all that into consideration, I'd much rather move right onto K3 than some expansion pack.

Yes Yes No. What Mical says is this: Disciple: "Revan sought out many other teachers to learn certain techniques. I do not recall who Revan's master was... strange. As a Padawan, Revan was trained by Master Kae, before she was exiled. Strange, I do not recall who Revan's master was after that.And it is said that he went to his first - and final - master to learn how to leave the order entirely, as she had.And such teachings and their teachers is why I harbor doubts, why I wonder if something is missing from the Jedi code." He just says that he doesn't remember who Revan's master was after Kae, and obviously that does not discount the possibility that she might have been the first. I'm fairly certain that we are never conclusively told who Revan's first master was, though it is certainly implied that it was Kreia. But again, this does not say that Kreia cannot be Kae.

*he <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Quiet you. She in my little game world. The great Revan would sense such deception like Yoda did and deal with the lowly clone accordingly. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Besides, being level 20, Revan has way too much vitality to be killed by the measely damage a laser blast could do even on a sniper shot

I just don't see that any RPG really falls into that category. Sure, there are loads of RPG systems that are infinitely better than D&D - I'd even go as far as to say that most of them are, but all still do incorporate the combat side, so... Besides, where strategy and tactics are concerned, D&D is one of the worst games you could play - the basic principles are still those of a game more than three decades old, and it really is showing these days. It's fast-paced action, sure, but suspending disbelief (for anyone over the age of 10) is a challenge indeed, when the rules are as unbelievably simplistic as they are in D&D. Yes, White Wolf's storyteller system has some focus on the actual role-playing, but it certainly involves lots and lots of combat rules as well, as do most other systems we could mention. Besides, skills aren't good in and off themselves. I like GURPS, but it really does have so many skills that it's doubtful you'll ever use them all...

A nice one is always to frame the PCs for some crime. Murder is the most obvious, but less will do as well. This forces intelligent play, because it's the only way to identify your enemy - you can be as angry as you want to and be as much of a bad-ass warrior as you like, it won't help you one bit if you don't know where to direct your abilities. Of course, this is just a pretext for the later fight once the enemy has been identified, but it's not a bad place to begin, methinks. Another way is for the real enemy to manipulate the PCs into thinking that his enemies are the PCs' enemies (think Palpatine). The PCs will learn to think before they pull out their swords that way. The problem with that is that the PCs can into more trouble than they can get out of again in many situations. After all, saying you were deceived is not really going to matter much once you've mistakenly chopped up an entire family you thought was out to get you... It might be better to let the PCs identify the real villian, and then once they come to confront him, they discover that he has manipulated some other people into thinking the PCs are guilty of something, and while the PCs try to explain it all, he makes sure to slip away quietly. Once he has manipulated people like that against the PCs a few times, they tend to catch on - why fight myself if I can trick others to do it for me?

It's probably safe to assume that this was a reference to material that was cut from the game. Originally several of your crewmembers were supposed to seek out and confront Kreia on their own (I suppose the Exile was momentarily injured when the Ebon Hawk crashed - we may know when the Restoration Project is finished), but they would all be captured. On entering the Trayus Academy, the Exile would then have to choose whether to spend time saving his friends and so face harder opposition in the endgame or whether to sacrifice them, so he could seek out Kreia immediately. I think...

Leia is 16 in ANH?!? How do you figure that? I think you're wrong. In fact, I know you are. According to the official Star Wars site Episode III takes place 19 years before A New Hope (Episode IV). Since we saw Leia being born in Episode III, this suggests something else. Yes, I know that time passes during that episode (Anakin only learns of Padme's pregnancy in the beginning, suggesting it's still fairly early on), but a full year did not pass, so Leia could have been no younger than 18 in Hope. Personally I still think that she and Luke were both 19 at the time.

But why does it need a specific Epic ruleset? How does that ensure balance? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, if it wasn't because the two first KotOR games used the d20 system, I'd rather have them use WEG's Star Wars RPG system, which was way better than d20 IMHO. For me d20 was actually a reason against playing KotOR, but I like Star Wars and found the plot interesting, so I played it anyway and liked it. But that was in spite of it being d20. Those are not good rules in my book.

Yes, but so what? I mean, what RPG system isn't designed to handle combat? They all are, so in a game without battles there will always be a large proportion of the rules that you will not be using. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. I actually run an AD&D 2e campaign myself, which is definitely geared more toward investigation, politics and plotting than straight combat, so I know it can be done. I haven't removed combat, because the players deserve to see their characters grow and gain new powers, but I've certainly scaled it down a fair bit. They're all level 13+, so I'm really not going to bother playing a random encounter with 13 orcs (since it would just be a pointless dice-rolling exercise...). The encounters do happen, I just tell the players that they did, that the orcs were defeated or chased off, and then I move on... No problem.

Hmm, there seems to be some uncertainty about when exactly the traditions were implemented by the Sith. I had the impression that the 'only one dark lord' rule was set up by Darth Bane in the 'Jedi vs. Sith' comic book set a millennia before the movies, but the information at both Wikipedia and answers.com both seem to use the phrase: "To guard against the Sith again engaging in fratricidal internecine war or losing sight of their "ideals" again, Bane took only one apprentice, starting a "one master, one apprentice" tradition to prevent the Sith from destroying themselves again." This, of course, suggests that you might be right in the 'only one dark lord' principle having been in place for a long time before that, though not that of only one apprentice that Darth Bane apparently implemented. Even so, I still don't think this tells that the 'only one dark lord' principle was in use during the KotOR era. In fact, I continue to see the Ludo Kressh vs. Naga Sadow confrontations as suggesting otherwise (they only postponed war from the beginning of the 'Golden Age of the Sith' comic books because the spirit of departed Marka Ragnos forbids it). We might yet see the principle being established in the KotOR era.

It's a bit of a misnomer. It doesn't that they're not Sith, just that they are descendants of the ancient Sith and never served Exar Kun or Ulic Qel-Droma or even Darth Revan or Malak. But we need a term to identify them as such, and since they are what remains of the old Sith empire, "true Sith" is not so bad... Doesn't mean they're significantly different from Exar and the others, though.

I suppose we could argue that this was a early stage in a plan for the true Sith to weaken the Republic enough to later invade it. The next stage was then the Mandalorian Wars, which led to dissent in the jedi order that become the Jedi Civil War, and so on and so forth... EDIT: Mea culpa - I forgot that we're in the KotOR era, which means that the "only one Dark Lord" doesn't apply since it wasn't established until several millennia later. In fact, the Sith empire fell exactly because both Marka Ragnos and Naga Sadow were the Dark Lord and the same time, didn't it?

My idea was to play someone else up until the area where you would be around that level so when the Exile does join the party, she's not the unbalanced individual <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, I was thinking along similar lines, which is why I prefer a new jedi character whose quest it eventually becomes to find the Exile and Revan.

Although I agree with most of your points, this one cannot be correct. The Mandalorian Wars took place only about a decade before KotOR2, and Handmaiden is clearly older than that. Kae did leave to fight in the war, but she must have given birth to Brianna almost a decade before that.

Naturally this depends entirely on your game style. My advice is either to embrace Persuade completely or else drop it entirely - adding a few points now and then won't bring you great results, because the difficulty of using it raises as you rise in level yourself. Personally I always max out Persuade as much as possible, because only the main character may build the skill. I find it to be a useful skill, but don't bother if you're not going to be dedicated to building it.

I liked the idea of influence, but not its execution. A major problem is that most of the characters are described strongly as either good (Bao-Dur, Handmaiden) or evil (HK-47, Mandalore) and won't change their perspectives no matter how much influence them toward the opposite. If influence is going to have meaning in the game, then you cannot have Bao-Dur criticize your evil ways after you've him into the dark jedi forefather of Darth Maul, nor can you have evil Atton be concerned about the female Exile's corruption, or have "goth" Handmaiden be appalled that you exploit the weak and treat them like dirt. To do these things is to make a mockery of the idea of an influence system. Of course, if you're going to write changing behavior/personality for the relevant characters, then it's a lot more work for the programmers, but it is a must if you're going to put an influence system in there - anything else ruins characterization and so is an insult to the gamers. My jedi master pushed HK-47 to reach LS mastery for crying out loud! That should not be possible, and even then, he still had the same winning and charismatic personality and concern for meatb... organic life that we all know and love. Urgh! I do agree that there should have been an influence-meter of some sort to give some indication of how much a companion liked and respected you. No, you don't have those in real-life, but without opening that Pandora's box, let me just say that lots of things are assumed in RPGs without anyone ever seeing them. I have yet to see any Star Wars character go to the toilet, let alone seen a toilet in any movie, book, comic, game, or whatever. Yet this does not bring me to the conclusion that Star Wars characters do not have bladders or digestive systems that produces... well, you get the picture. The relevance of such assumptions is that in real life you would get some indication of what people think of you from all sorts of things. Do they choose to sit next to you, do they greet you in the morning, etc. You don't get those in RPGs, because they're generally uninteresting and presumed to take place.

Yes, but the choice is not between dying or giving up the force. The point to remember here is why Revan chose to let the final battle take place on Malachor V (and yet not be there himself). Pay close attention to what Kreia tells the LS Exile after she kills the last masters on Dantooine. Kreia: "There is a place in the galaxy where the dark side of the Force runs strong. It is something of the Sith, but it was fueled by war. It corrupts all that walks on its surface, drowns them in the power of the dark side - it corrupts all life. And it feeds on death. Revan knew the power of such places... and the power in making them. They can be used to break the will of others... of Jedi, promising them power, and turning them to the dark side.Did you never wonder how Revan corrupted so many of the Jedi, so much of the Republic, so quickly?The Mandalorian Wars were a series of massacres that masked another war, a war of conversion.Culminating a final atrocity that no Jedi could walk away from... save one.And that is what I sought to understand. How one could turn away from such power, give up the Force... and still live. But I see what happened now. It is because you had no choice.It is because you were afraid." Revan used the corrupting effect of Malachor to turn the jedi under his command to the dark side - he used it as a conversion tool and saw to it that those that did not turn were killed. Note how this ties in with what HK-47 later tells the Exile. HK-47: "Observation: Master, that was the lesson of Malachor. Any Jedi involved in the systematic slaughter on such a scale cannot help but doubt and question themselves.Observation: Master, I do not believe that the Mandalorians were the true target at Malachor - I believe that the intention was to destroy the Jedi, break their will, and make them loyal to Revan.I do not know if you examined the records of the deaths on Malachor, but you cannot escape that many of the Jedi and Republic soldiers who died were not Revan's strongest supporters. Observation: I believe that Revan was "cleaning house" at Malachor V. What ones did not die became Revan's allies against the Republic." What Kreia and HK-47 describe here applies to any and all jedi... save one - the Exile. He alone turned away and resisted the corruption of Malachor that made all other jedi fall to the dark side. He did this by cutting himself off from the force as he would cut off an arm infected by gangrene or similar, except on a mental level. He did not do so consciously, however. Note how the Exile repeatedly asks the masters why they cut him off from the force and the masters continue to protest that they never did such a thing (not that they couldn't - they just didn't). The Exile cut his own connection to the force to resist the corruption, but he did so intuitively and subconsciously. And it was a violently powerful act that left a wound in the force. This wound is at the very heart of the plot in KotOR2, since it has massive consequences, one of which was the birth of Nihilus, as the masters point out - somehow the Exile is connected to Nihilus and they share a similar power to feed on the force through others. This is what the masters fear and why they want to cut the Exile off from the force - to end the inherent threat that he represents to the force, whether he knows it himself or not.

1. You can kill Atris even if you're LS (though it does count as a evil act), and I don't think we'll see her again for that reason. Besides, if you choose to spare her, the conclusion is that she must abandon the force, since her association with it is what led her astray in the first place, so she seems to be out the picture either way. 2. Bastila will definitely still be around, though she still has some way to go before becoming a master. No doubt she will return. And I don't think she "miraculously" survived - she is just the only jedi still around that we hear about (if LS). I dare say there are probably more in hiding out there. I'm fairly certain Nomi Sunrider is one of them. Her daughter is probably another, though we likely won't see them in the KotOR games. 3. I think the implication in the LS ending is that the companions will make up the majority of the new jedi council, since Kreia does say that, "They were the Lost Jedi, you know. The true Jedi, upon which the future will be built." Then again, that presumes the LS ending of KotOR2. 4. I think the Exile still has a shadow of himself/herself to overcome before being redeemed. But I do think he/she will be among the new jedi after that. 5. Mical is definitely a future jedi, especially if you already trained him as one. In fact, I think he'll be a jedi even if he didn't join the male Exile. 6. Revan's future is still uncertain, and more so than the Exile's, I think. I doubt they can do KotOR3 without resolving Revan's fate. What will become of Revan after that is a pretty good question... 7. Kreia does suggest in the LS ending that they will become jedi in what I quote above for Brianna. So if the LS ending is "official" that does tell us something about the other companions. Except perhaps Bao-Dur, since she doesn't mention him, and I'm still uncertain about whether he died at the end of KotOR2 (when the Ebon Hawk crashed on Malachor). The academy on Telos is just a building and little else. Apart from the holocrons, there is little to tie it to the jedi, and those were Sith holocrons anyway. Besides, Atris never even got around to training even a single jedi there, and I'm not actually sure that she planned to... The enclave on Dantooine has not been a place of fortune for the jedi, so I'm content to let it remain a ruin for now. Besides, how many jedi treasures can be left after the place has been looted over and over for years? It's a graveyard and should remain so. Coruscant is where the jedi should gather and focus on rebuilding their failing order. The reference to the place being empty is probably mostly to the jedi being in hiding after Nihilus tried to hunt them down. Besides, the jedi probably wouldn't be so welcome on the central world of the Old Republic after what happened when they gathered on Katarr... Then again, the reference to Coruscant being abandoned comes from Kreia, and if she says that water is wet, I would check to see if she's right...

She also speaks of the companions in general during the LS ending... Kreia: "You travel with them for so long, yet you do not know them still. Feel them through the Force, feel what they feel, hear their thoughts and know them, as I fought to know you.They were the Lost Jedi, you know. The true Jedi, upon which the future will be built. They simply needed a leader, and a teacher." This bit can also be heard in the streamvoice/904/904kreia folder if you choose the 904904KREIA101.wav, 904904KREIA102.wav and 904904KREIA103.wav audio files.