Jediphile

Agreed. In fact, I kind of like Kavar as well. He was a strategist and understood the need to sacrifice in war, but he didn't do it without regret. At least that's my take on him. It's too bad that the ending with the masters is so forced, since both Zez-Kai Ell and Kavar seem to have suddenly lost all the traits that humanized them and made them likable. Vrook, of course, remains the same old grumpy, lovable fool that he always was :D

That would be based on the choices the character has made in the game up to that point, I guess. We could argue that Revan's choice is not final in the game at that point, but that would be dodging the issue, since the masters would have had to base their choice of what they knew of the "new" Revan at that point. And I still find what Zez-Kai Ell says on Nar Shaddaa in K2 to be very revealing of the masters... Zez-Kai Ell: "I, too, lost a Padawan on Malachor. Not to the battle, but to the alternative - to the teachings that Revan brought from the Unknown Regions. {Quiet}And I was not the only Jedi Master to watch a student turn on them. No, no - they were not to blame, but many of the Order did so - it was a difficult time, a time of strong emotion.Perhaps the Council, perhaps the Order itself had grown arrogant in their teachings. It is easy to cast blame, but it is perhaps time the Order accepted responsibility for their teachings, and their arrogance, and come to recognize that perhaps we are flawed.Not once did I hear one of the Council claim responsibility for Revan, for Exar Kun, for Ulic, for Malak... or for you. Yet... you were the only one who came back from the wars to face our judgment. And rather than attempting to understand why you did what you did, we punished you instead.{Frustrated}Our one chance to see where we had gone wrong, and we cast it aside. And now, that decision has come back to us, and may carry with it, our destruction. Perhaps there is something wrong in us, in our teachings. And though I tried, I could not cause that thought to leave me - so I left the Council. And I was not the only one. That is why many scattered... and why many in the Republic do not trust us. And why we do not trust ourselves. Make no mistake - I am no Jedi. This is the end you see. After this, there will be nothing.{Quietly}And I think it will be for the best. Do you wish to do battle now? I have nothing more to say. It provides no comfort at all, for reasons on which I still must keep secret.Suffice to say redemption was not Revan's choice, and I have never believed those of the Council who attempt to console themselves otherwise for the crime they committed."

I wasn't talking about when they did the mind wipe, but when Revan came to Dantooine from Taris and began his retraining. I thought that was more than obvious from context - what companions did Revan have when Bastila's strike team brought him back to the jedi? None. So those can't be the companions I talked about. Only it's not their choice to make. Again, how many people is it okay to sacrifice for the greater good? The answer is none. The only one who could morally have made that choice was the individual himself - Revan. He was a different person from his experiences on Taris, and if you had played him as LS, he might even have gone along with the sacrifice they put him through. But they didn't. They didn't ask Bastila whether he had changed - or if they did they, it certainly had little or no influence on their use of him - and they didn't ask his companions. That doesn't paint a very nice picture of their motives. They had turned Revan into a weapon they could use and manipulate, and they never hesitated to do so... Where were all those moral and ethical standards they claimed to protect then? They got casually tossed out the window when they became inconvenient. Now, as I've said before, I can accept the necessity for using Revan under the circumstances to a point - that's not the problem. The problem is that the masters won't accept the moral responsibility and confess their sins after the fact. That makes them immoral and no better than the Sith, because it's exactly what the Sith would have done in their position. Yes, but you can't really blame Revan for that choice. As a jedi, it's his nature to wish to protect the innocent. It's only what they have themselves been teaching him to do his entire life... They may not have been happy about his disobedience, but looking at it only as that is exceedinly narrow-minded - they also have to examine his motives and reasons for choosing to defy them in the first place. There might have been good reasons. After all, if the masters are not willing to re-examine their own position, then how will they ever discover if they made a mistake themselves? Or put differently, it's the ancient question of "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" - who watches the watchers? Apparently nobody does, and that's a problem. Zez-Kai Ell even muses on this himself, when the Exile meets him on Nar Shaddaa in K2 - the Exile was a mystery, yet the masters were unwilling to examine it or to examine their own motives. They created a new personality to be totally loyal to their own goals, and yet at the same time they refuse to show trust because of past crimes from before the new pwersonality that themselves created... I guess double standards are better than none... "

I found it stupid that helping a clearly DS Kreia is LS. In the end I went nobody and "Apathy is Death" (part of the freak-out too). I didn't "learn" anything from their either. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It's probably because Atton, Bao-Dur and T3 are determined to kill Kreia simply because she is DS, and though her alignment might prompt them to be suspicious of her and her motives, it is no excuse to simply murder her. I might have killed Hitler for his crimes, but I would still be a murderer if I did, and murder is never a good act. In fact, harming other people is never a good act, unless done to prevent them from causing direct harms to others (which would apply to soldiers in a war). It's not just a question of LS vs. DS - it's a question of motive. Standing up to evil Kreia is fine, but if you just kill her outright for being DS, then you really aren't being any better yourself than she is.

No need to wait for that - here's the recorded conversation from the dialog.tlk file (though I've identified who says what, but that's pretty obvious...): Droid: "My apologies, Jedi.You are on the register as one of the Jedi who left the Enclave to fight in the Mandolorian Wars. My memory has no record of your return before now.You had no direct interaction with this droid. However, I have one instance of a conversation between Masters Vrook and Vandar regarding you.Beginning playback... Error, recording partially corrupted. Resolving..." Vrook: "{static, 1 sec}...{annoyed}today I caught him in a heated argument with my Padawan! His Master refuses to properly discipline{static, 1 sec}. I want to know what action you intend! Vandar: "Vrook, I respect your wisdom, but it is not your concern." Vrook: "{upset} But... {static, 1 sec} uncontrolled! {static 1 sec}...whatever the other Padawans see him do, they are quick to do the same... {static}other students dislike him intensely!{patient} Vandar: "True, an average student of the Force... {static}but with a unique strength...{static} is a natural leader...{static}" Vrook: "{upset}I strongly disagree...{static, 2 sec} mediocre Jedi...{static 1 sec} lust for power! {static, 1 sec}...will lead to the dark side! Furthermore it... {static, 2 sec}" Droid: "Recording degraded. End playback..." Hmm, is it just me or is Vrook - again - in danger of falling to the dark side - jedi masters shouldn't be this upset over students, methinks. I mean, if he's that easy to upset, what will happen when he faces a true test to his temper? Anyway, I've quoted the conversation since it's come under the discussion here. An interesting thing is that Vrook actually mentions the Exile's master, though that still gives us no clue as to who that master was. A shame, but they I guess it goes without saying - expecting Vrook to be helpful would be too much to hope for... "

That's actually not so difficult to answer - because (if the Exile is DS) he embraces the dark side during the game (player choice). He did not, however, do so a decade before on Malachor V. Or you could argue that it's not mere rejection of the DS, but rather rejection of the fate the will of the force seeks to impose on him. Whether that fate is LS or DS doesn't matter - it's the fact that something else tries to force the choice for him that he is defiant against, and so the Exile becomes a Prometheus figure or sort of satanic hero as described in the works of Byron or Milton's "Paradise Lost". Agreed, but now that you mention it, this begs one very important question. If these are the dark moments of the Exile's past, then why don't we see him reliving the scene, where he gives the order to activate the mass shadow generator? I think that would also be the scene, where he rejects the will of the force, thereby wounding it. That is his defining moment, and yet it's just not there. Why? It could be because the Exile is still in denial about his choice...

Agreed. To augment the Republic's forces against the true Sith, Revan calls upon his own "army" of Mandalorians, Wookiees, etc...

It's a good question. I expect it should receive an answer if we ever see Revan or Zaalbar again, but I can't call it a flaw in K2, since we don't meet any of them, and so we simply don't know what happened. And there are several possibilities. As have been said, Zaalbar could be dead. A DS Revan could have killed him, but he could also have died for a LS Revan for some reason. And don't forget that in the LS ending for Kashyyyk, Zaalbar vows to come back and be chieftain for his tribe. A LS Revan might have used that to persuade Zaalbar that he had more than just the lifedebt to Revan - he had one to his people as well. Revan might also have charged Zaalbar with a mission before leaving. Note how Han instructs Chewbacca to protect Leia at the end of ESB. I could see Revan do something similar, especially an LS Revan. And, of course, Zaalbar could still be with Revan. We just don't know.

I think I began that by saying we're in "a bit of a dark age", since I don't feel the cRPGs that are being put out today are as good as some of those we've seen in the past (Fallout, Torment, Ultima...). I may have given others the impression that this *is* a dark age, though, or that I think it definitely so. My point was more than I think quality and depth (and plot) is suffering at the expense of graphics and visual combat in RPGs, and therefore many of the alleged cRPGs today are, to my eyes, really just "semi-cRPGs" - glorified hack-fests with few roleplaying choices. KotOR has a genuine choices (DS or LS) toward the end, but there are only two, and that's about the only genuine one. At all other times, it's a question of whether you want to back the lock open or pick the lock with Security - disrupt/detonate or collect the mines, etc... Your choices are few and have next to no lasting effect on the game. Yes, it may seem so at first glance, but there are several factors that we should take into consideration before we simply accuse the devs of wanting to make more money, though they will go where the money is - they're companies, after all, and those exist to make money, and preferably more than before... I mean, examine a classic cRPG like Fallout 2. How long was the production schedule for that, how many people worked on it, and how muc did it cost to make? I don't know, but it wasn't anywhere near to what it costs to make a game like K2, even though that was rushed and unfinished. Metadigitial has accused me in the past of thinking that voiceacting is far more expensive than it really is. Fine, let's say he's right. Even if he is, it will still cost more to produce K2 on the voiceacting front alone, since there is lots of voiceacting in it. Indeed, all text is spoken in K2 except for item descriptions or datapads and the optional conversation paths for the main character. In Fallout 2, voiceacting of any kind was rare, and you only saw it on occasion (those infamous talking heads). So clearly is was less costly to produce on this basis alone. In fact, Fallout 2 uses text only to tell the majority of its plot and background to the player with only the occasional "talking head" and short movie. In K2 you expect *everyone* to talk (and they do) and you expect to see movies almost constantly (and you do). This means more programming, more graphics to produce, and more voiceacting. Or look at graphics. Fallout 2 was simple 2D maps and graphics. That won't be tolerated today - everything *must* be in a 3D representation today, or it will have no chance to sell. Today writing a computer game is a major undertaking - we're usually talking about 25+ people working full time throughout the production schedule, and as others have said, giving a schedule of a "mere" year will raise eyebrows and meet skepticism, since the team doing the work knows that it is an exceedingly tight timetable. In short, the cost for making computer games today has soared to the skies because the standard for what must be in those games is so much higher now - telling the story to the player through text is no longer an option. It's ancient and the market simply won't tolerate it.

linky

Just to clarify one thing: The jedi masters did *not* attempt to kill the Exile. They merely tried to cut all of the Exiles ties to the force entirely, so that he would no longer represent a threat to it. He had wounded the force, and they feared how else he might hurt it. They would not have killed him, if Kreia had not stopped them, though. They would simply have done to him what Nomi Sunrider did to Ulic Qel-Droma - prevent him from ever using the force again by severing any and all ties to it. In essence, they would have taken away the Exile's force-sensitivity. But it was not a death sentense. Note that they say their verdict is still the same as before - exile.

GAH!!!!

While I haven't actually played Morrowind, I find that most RPGs these days are mostly glorified hackfests and little else. People call games like Dungeon Siege or the Diablo games RPGs, and in my book they just aren't, because there's no role-playing in them. KotOR games aren't even what I'd call real CRPGs, since the stories are exceedingly linear... But they at least have deep and interesting plots, and that helps a lot. For real CRPGs, I play Fallout or similar...

Well, the dialogue files are actually two very different things. The first is the dialog.tlk file, which is just one big file with pretty much all text in the game. The easiest way to access it is to open Notepad (or whatever texteditor or word-processing program you prefer) and then indicate that you wish to open a file. Now find the KotOR2 folder in your system, then set the program to list "all files". The dialog.tlk file will appear in your root KotOR2 folder, so open it and read through. Don't worry if it takes a while to react - it's a very large file. WARNING: Don't change and save anything in that file, since it will affect the actual game. If I accidentially push a wrong key, I usually quit immediately and say "no" when asked whether I wish to save the changes. Second are the actual sound files, which contains all speech in the game. Again open the KotOR2 folder on your harddrive and then open the StreamVoice folder. You'll find a large number of directories with numbers from 001 to 950 and a few others. All the soundfiles are in these directories. They're in WAV-format, however, which Windows Media Player doesn't seem to like. Instead you can get Miles Sound Tools and play them with that - I find that to be easier. You'll have to search through the various folders yourself - I fear there is little help as to which files are found where, but you can always ask around if others have found them. For example, in the \StreamVoice\907\904KREIA\ folder, you can find the cut content where the Exile's companions confront Darth Traya, who may be Kreia or Atris...

Just had a crazy idea... What if in K3, you play the force-sensitive son or daughter of Saul Karath? You're hated by everybody - Carth will certainly be skeptical - because of what your father did and must fight the resentment over the sins of the father as you train as a jedi, which means you're never quite certain whether you're held back because the anger inside over being condemned for your father's sins is what holds you back or whether its the teachers and everyone else who just don't like you. And then you must decide the fate of the galaxy - will you save the Republic in spite of its scorn for you or will you embrace the Sith ways and take revenge on the Republic for how it has treated you? Hmm...

Clowns are scary looking, to some people at least. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Like myself... I've never found clowns amusing so much as frightening. I always think of the Joker from Batman (in the more dark, "Killing Joke" sort of mood) or Pennywise from Stephen King's "It". Bleh....

Your stats are exactly as my starting stats, except that I leave Strength at 14 (still +2) and raise Wisdom to 14 for more force points. With Int 14 you still get plenty of skill points. I usually raise Int to 15 at level 4 and 16 at level 8, but it's usually more for the Intelligence-based conversation-options than for the extra skill point. That extra point is nice, though... Decide which skills you want to build from the beginning. I usually want all of them, and since you'll be alone for a while, you really can make use of most. But Demolitions and Repair are not class skills for the Sentinel, so I usually use my first feat on taking Demotions as a class skill, and then second on Repair. For skills I place priority on Persuade first, since only the Exile may build it. I build both Demolitions and Security early on, because otherwise there are too many containers I can't open or mines I cannot retrieve (all worth wonderful xp). I also build Computer Use and Repair, though, because that will give you some options with T3 later. Awareness is next after those, since you'll want to be able to detect mines, and at times it also allows some conversation paths. Stealth and Treat Injury are right at the bottom of the priorities for me. I do build them, but only after raising the others to 15+ ranks, and I hardly ever use them. Treat Injury is good for building stuff on the workbench, though you don't really need to. Tip: You really don't need skills (except persuade) above 20 ranks in general, but if you decide to build Demolitions, let it go to 22-23. I find that tol be helpful later on Nar Shaddaa... Also, I've played the Sentinel/WeaponMaster combo to the end of the game, and it is good, but I actually found the Sentinel/Sith Lord or Sentinel/Jedi Master combo to be far more powerful. YMMV...

That doesn't quite add up, though - Kreia was herself exiled from the order at the beginning of the Mandalorian Wars... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm not following how what you wrote correlates to what I said about Atris and the Exile.....what does Kreia have to do with whether or not Atris was Exile's master...? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Sorry, I misunderstood you. Please disregard. These aren't the droids you're looking for - move along

I really can't help myself - it's a curse I tell you!

Well, RPGs are probably about the worst sort of games to write - you have allow players genuine choice in the game, or else it wouldn't be an RPG, which means actually writing the outcome of all of those possibilities. It's not particularly attractive to a programmer, because few players will ever see all those outcomes you had to write. Writing a totally linear game is much more attractive, because there is no doubt people will always see all of your work. For that reason I think perhaps many of the best programmers aren't attracted to the CRPG industry, and so it falls to either those with the ideals to write good RPGs or to just plain bad programmers... Not that I wish to speak ill of any programmers in the CRPG industry, but it would fit with what you say, and we do see lots of half-baked RPGs coming out... And, of course, there are the consoles. There are limits to how you can set a game up, if it's to work on a console, and since the companies won't be writing separate versions for each platform, the games just get ported across. The PC would allow more flexibility than a console simply by virtue of its harddrive, but obviously the games will be written on the basis of the lowest common denominator... And it's easier to program from the consoles, since you don't have to take about a gazillion different PC setups into account (different CPU, Radeon or GeForce graphics, etc...). But I don't think the CPRG is dying. For me it's like when Magic: The Gathering came out, and everybody said it would be the doom of tabletop RPG, because now you had something new and original to replace it. I played Magic in those days, and I enjoyed it, but I never thought that it would be the end of the RPG market, and it wasn't. Magic did "steal" the RPG customers, but only for a while - after the novelty of Magic had passed, the role-players went back to the tables and played on, and they still do. I see the same thing happening with the CRPGs - they're in a bit of a dark age now, because they are bloody expensive to produce, and you have to market them for both PC and consoles to earn any money, but it will change. The PC evolution "rush" will slow down in a few years, and the market will become broader again. By then CRPGs will be making better use than it does now of bringing players together over the internet, and the CRPG market will flourish a bit more again.

That doesn't quite add up, though - Kreia was herself exiled from the order at the beginning of the Mandalorian Wars...

Before this turns into a topic completely devoted to ethics and moral principles, let me just say one thing about how I see the difference between jedi and sith. Yes, the sith are, for lack of a better word, evil. They are selfish and ambitious and care only for themselves and their own power. They continually fight among themselves, because just as they hate the jedi, they also wish to gain more power by killing their masters. Trust, cooperation, friendship - these are lies and weaknesses to a sith. But it's too black and white in my opinion to say that jedi are good and sith are evil. I find it more appropriate to say that jedi *try* to be good, while sith strive for power without moral considerations. That may seem to be the same, especially for the sith, but there is a subtle and important difference for the jedi. The jedi aren't "good" simply by virtue of being jedi - it doesn't nessarily mean that they are or that they cannot do evil things. In KotOR, I think that female jedi you meet in the enclave in K1 said it best: "You should be proud of your accomplishment... but never forget that you still have much to learn.As your power grows you will constantly face temptations to slip to the dark side. This is the eternal struggle of the Jedi." And it *is* an eternal struggle for any jedi, including the masters. The fact that they are the masters does not put them above doing evil things or falling to the dark side. Kreia was a master, and she "fell" to the dark side. The masters may be more powerful and wiser, but that does not make them infallible, and since they are more powerful, they actually have to fight harder than all other jedi in that eternal struggle against the temptation of the dark side. That is why we can see the masters do things that are morally questionable and strategically unsound things in both KotOR games.

Actually I'll have to revise my argumentation on the subject of the Darth Traya bit a little because of something Sikon said, and which I didn't pick up on at first... My point that Atris couldn't know about Darth Traya becomes void, as Sikon said, because Atris' comments about it to the Exile comes after the meeting between Atris and Kreia, where Kreia explains about Darth Traya to Atris. So of course Atris knows about Traya after that. I'll have to skip that as an argument. I do maintain, however, that Darth Traya is a title and not a name proper. For one thing, note the quote I made above: Kreia: "'Sith' is a title, yes, but like you, the title is not who I am. It is not what I believe.For you... it is different. Know that there was once a Darth Traya. And that she cast aside that role, was exiled, and found a new purpose. But there must always be a Darth Traya, one that holds the knowledge of betrayal. Who has been betrayed in their heart, and will betray in turn." The latter bit in no way suggests that Darth Traya is a unique individual. On the contrary, it says right out that Traya must always be there, no matter who holds the position. So it cannot be a real name. It falls into the same category as many other "Darths". For example, "Darth Sidious" was really Palpatine, "Darth Vader" was really Anakin Skywalker, and "Darth Tyranus" was really Count Dooku. Many of the "Darths" of the KotOR age seems to fall outside this principle of assigning a new name, including Revan and Malak, though that might just be because Bioware couldn't be bothered to think up cool "Darth" names for them. Strangely, Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma weren't "Darths" at all... Darth Maul is uncertain, since we just don't know if that was ever his real name. Similarly we don't know about Darth Sion and Darth Nihilus either (though I naturally have my suspicions on Nihilus). But I do take the fact that Kreia says there must always be a Darth Traya to mean that Traya is closer to Vader, Sidious, and Tyranus. If nothing else, I believe that because the names seem to carry meaning. Darth Sidious seems close to "insidious", which is appropriate for Palpatine. Darth Vader might come from "invader", since Anakin did destroy the jedi. Darth Tyranus probably comes from "tyrant", which is consistent with a Sith. Darth Traya, however, is clearly based on "betrayal", which is even mentioned as a condition for the title. So I doubt Traya was Kreia's real name.

I find what is annoying about that is that in the OT, there was no other colours of lightsaber apart from red, green and blue?? So really it was Sam Jackson that basically made all the other different colours happen. *shrugs* <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, if you look back at the action figures they produced for Star Wars after the original film, the Luke figure had a yellow lightsaber... Don't ask me why, but at least the phenomenon isn't quite that new - there was actually a yellow lightsaber before a green one...

You're missing the point. It's the fact that the title of Darth Traya was even considered to be optional (either Kreia or Atris) that tells us that it's not Kreia's real name, and so that cannot be the real name of Kreia that Atris refers to. I don't count Atris as Traya as a legitimate option, I merely use the fact that it was contemplated by the devs to draw a conclusion. But even if we discount the possibility that Atris might have been Traya, I still do not believe that her comment about Kreia not being Kreia's real name is a reference to Kreia's name being Kreia because Kreia would still have become Traya after Atris knew her, and so Atris would have no knowledge of her title as Darth Traya. Therefore "Traya" cannot be the real name of Kreia that Atris refers to.