Mahf

Idiot... why even bring the negativity? does it make you feel good about yourself to call someone else's project that they've been working on for 2 years a waste of time? how bout next time you think of saying something like this, just say it inside your own head.

What in the world are you talking about? What is it costing you to "wait"? The 5 seconds it takes to check the forum once a week (or month)? "Life move onward????" WTF?!? What did the TSLRP guys say you can't download it unless you don't play any other games till its own? Is this like a relationship that's been put on hold? If you stop waiting, what are you going to do now? I don't get it. This just makes no sense. It'll come out, and then it might cost you some time. But if you think it'd be interesting or fun, why would you play it 5 months ago but not 5 months from now? Got big plans to give up games altogether? I'm just trying to imagine a situation that would make sense of your post, but it aint easy.

If you side with Vaklu the first time you go to Onderon, then the only way to get to the Palace is by killing Talia's guards. On the other hand, the light side path on Onderon is supposed to be supporting the queen rather than Vaklu. Then when you come back you have to do the same thing but backwards. You fight Vaklu's men instead of Talia's, and you talk to Kavar instead of kill him. You can similarly avoid killing the other Jedi Masters by siding against the Exchange, and against the mercenaries.

That's BS. The battle was clearly a draw in the pure fighting sense. But Yoda had to win the battle right then or go into exile, while Sidious had the luxury of simply stalling.

I like the Sentinel/Watchman class. The idea of Jedi having other adventuring skills just seems so much cooler than Jedi who either are only good at combat or using the force. I like for example, the idea that Anakin and Luke are skilled pilots, and that Obi Wan is a good all-around adventurer and negotiator. It seems to go with the concept of being a "knight" and with being guardians of peace. Of course I see the need for people to focus on the Force, and on combat, but it just seems like most situations don't require incredible light saber skills (Sith are pretty rare, and most Jedi can handle everyday bad guys) and most situations don't require incredibly deep knowledge of the Force (once again, only against Sith or really complicated situations). Those things are needed in some rare cases, but the Sentinel seems to me to be the backbone of the Jedi as they function throughout most of Star Wars history. They can handle themselves in the world, they can negotiate effectively, and they are streetsmart. They are grounded. And they are still badass enough to handle just about any situation So I like the Sentinel for those reasons. And as far as KOTOR2 goes, it just seems to present the most game options. By the end of the game as a Sentinel/Watchman or a Sentinel/Assassin, I had maxed out almost every skill, could construct the best weapons/enhancements for every party member almost from scratch, and could handle combat situations easily (on hard difficulty, but that doesn't mean much I guess).

The genius of the simpsons is that they never take a side. As soon as they seem to, they undercut it by making fun of it. If anything, they can be said to always come back to the significance of the family unit. To say that they "rarely had a hidden message" and that this makes it not as good as South Park seems to miss the point of either show. Anyone can make obvious allegories, and South Park has done that plenty of times (the messages are hardly hidden). But that's not particularly special. It is a funny show, but the writing and the messages they achieve are not nearly as clever as what the Simpsons does in subtly undercutting all sides of any given issue.

You're missing the point. He doesn't *have* to do anything evil to be neutral. He may well be good, but its a subtle distinction. I think the fact that he sits out in the forest by himself points towards his neutrality. He's not exactly hiding, like Obi Wan was, he could be helping in the war, but instead he's just living the life of a hermit, until fate thrusts a role upon him. Not to help then would be evil, not neutral. To stand aside when Revan turns evil would make him evil as well. You said he goes out of his way, but as I said, a neutral character might well go out of his way if not doing so means something as important as the Sith ruling the galaxy.

Ok, I'll agree that Jolee is a Gray Jedi who is Chaotic Good. But I never said Kreia was "neutral" just that she was gray, I agreed she was evil. I suppose a strong case could be made that she was always really dark the whole time, but I don't get the sense that that's what the devs were going for. Whether someone can actually be gray in the universe Lucas presents in the movies is certainly a question worth asking, and based on the movies, I'd lean towards saying no they can't. But I think the game seems to suggest that the light and the dark can be intentionally used. It also depends on what you take her motivation to be. To destroy the Force, or to prepare the Exile. I tend to think she was trying to prepare the Exile with everything she did. Thus the goal can even be seen as something that might even be morally desirable. But it does seem to me that that's the sense in which she is gray: she falls when she wants to to serve her purposes, rather than falling and losing all her original purposes in the pursuit of power, which is what happens to most people in the Star Wars universe who fall to the dark side.

Actually Jolee is neutral between the light and darkside, or between Good and Evil if you want to use typical alignment terms. Evil means actively seeking to harm or take advantage of others and good means you are selfless and do what is good no matter what. Neutral means you are basically a decent person but you're not going to go out of your way or risk too much unless its something really important. Which describes Jolee perfectly. Many people misunderstand this. Neutral does not mean your schizophrenic or lack a true philosophy, so sometimes you do good things and sometimes you do bad things depending on how you feel that day. It just means you're not evil, you'll help people if you're in a position to, or if its something really important, but you're not going around looking for people to help. Jolee is the quintessential Chaotic Neutral character: he does not like order, preferring to go by his own judgment and live outside of institutions and establishments, he keeps mostly to himself, but when something really important comes up he's willing to help. As far as the Force goes, Jolee is neutral because he believes there is value in things like passion and probably even anger as long as you face it and choose not to give yourself up to it completely. He finds the path of the Jedi too inhuman but he has not fallen to the Dark Side. So he's the perfect gray character. Kreia is gray in the sense that she uses the Dark and the Light merely as tools, truely giving herself to neither. When she falls, she does so purposefully, to give the Exile the strongest possible obstacle so he will be strong enough to help Revan/stop the True Sith or whatever.

But G0T0 tries to bring good about by first devoting himself to becoming powerful. For him the ends justify the means. Sure he would *rather* not kill people but at the end of the day he'd do it if it would bring about his ends. The obvious gaming clue is that if you take light side conversation options you lose influence with him. Everytime you show mercy to someone he chides you for it. He always wants you to take advantage.

In any relationship, people are going to see things like this differently and that's ok. The best thing to do is to accept the wallet and take it as her expressing, in a way that is meaningful to her, that she cares about you and wants you to be taken care of. In her eyes, wallets aren't just about function they're also about form. The way she sees it, it is valuable for you not just to be able to hold money, but also to have a nice looking, stylish wallet. It will hold your money, and also say to people, "This guy is taken care of." So take it that way, even if the actual thing doesn't make much difference to you. Learning to express love/concern in the way the other person wants it to be expressed is important, and accepting love/concern from someone in the way *they* know how to express it is just as important. At the end of the day, it isn't as much about a wallet as it is about her caring for you. Certainly she has to learn to express that care in ways that are meaningful to you, but it cases like this, it is best for you to take it for what it is and express gratitude to her. That's my advice.

You have to stop thinking about it in terms of good/evil. Light and dark are *related* to good and evil, but to understand good and evil as the Jedi portray it you must first understand what the light vs. dark philosophies are all about, rather than just reading *your* version of good and evil into the light and dark sides of the force. The Light side represents a philosophy of harmony and peace. You fight only in defense and you become strong by being completely at peace. You get strength as a secondary result rather than seekings strength directly. You seek the values of good, peace, compassion, etc. first, and strength follows. This makes things difficult, because you cannot simply enforce what you think is good. The ends do not justify the means in this philosophy. You must try to bring about good while staying within the bounds of actually being good yourself. The Dark side represents a philosophy of strength at whatever cost so that you can enforce your values with that strength. This is why Yoda says the dark side is quicker and easier. This is why the Emporer and Vader are not simply evil for evil's sake. They both want something at any cost: Palpatine wants stability for the Republic/Empire and Anakin wants to save Padme's life. They want the strength to bring about these good ends at any cost. Of course we find out that in the end, the Dark side never really brings about what the person originally wanted strength for, but simply consumes them in the pursuit of power. This is how the Sidious and Vader from Ep 3 become the Sidious and Vader from Ep. 4. So GOTO is clearly a darkside character. He seeks to enforce his version of good (which may be a pretty good version of good) at any cost. He seeks to gain the strength necessary to make his vision a reality, no matter what he has to do to gain that strength. So it really doesn't matter that what he's trying to do is good. This is what separates him from a stupid thug, but it does not make him neutral. The means he uses are what make him a dark sider.

I think its clear that to judge Vader as a Sith Lord, we should at least *consider* episodes 4-6, since by that time he had some experience, whereas in Episode 3 he just became a Sith Lord like 20 minutes ago... And in 4-6 Vader can hardly be characterized as "dumb"

I think the idea of Grey Jedi conflicts with what we see of the Dark Side in the movies. We never see someone who can go just a little bit into the dark side. It just doesn't work that way. Its too tempting and too powerful. If you try to use it, eventually it will consume you. This is why the Jedi are so cautious, too cautious, actually. But the point is, if you watch the movies, you get the sense that one cannot sit on the fence without either being pulled to the dark side or fleeing towards the light side.

Could you do, or have you already done, a post explaining some of these things? I'd love to see that.