Augusta Corvina

I recall playing the original Divine Divinity many years ago. I enjoyed the game quite a lot as I recall. Particularly one of the later moments struck me as rather funny and not something I'd expected to see in a game at that time. Minor though it was.

You know with him ALL the characters from the trailers will be in the game now, so you could say that the circle is now complete. Satele, Malgus, Shae Vizla, Jace Malcom, hell even T7 was on the trailers. The ones we'll probably never see are the ones that died in the trailers or before the game came out like Vindican, Ven Zallow, Eleena Daru, etc. Why wasn't the dude on the game before? I hear the actor that played in on the trailers is actually very high profile for them to give him a role, I wonder who will be voicing him now, the someone else. That could explain it. We'll probably find out sometime around when he's put into the game.

Ok, with all the being said I think the discussion on these topics has run its course, I guess we can discuss the upcoming expansion, Knight of the Fallen Empire. I'm surprised it took them this long to put in that smuggler guy given he was in one of the promo trailers way back. Aside from him I wonder what other companions we'll be getting and hopefully they'll give me a chance to 'accidentally' shove Lord Scourge out the nearest airlock... That and I still don't get how we end up frozen in carbonite.

Good thing I didn't say combat was unimportant then. Videogames rely on more factors that books and movies to do. If one suffers then it'll drag the whole thing down, but sometimes one aspect can manage to carry a game through to the end for some. Not sure I entirely agree, but now we're going in circles as far as I can tell. We'll just agree to disagree. Fair enough.

They only work well with a very good writer onboard. The genre they're in may make it harder or easier perhaps, but it can't escape that. I wouldn't call Mephy and Shady forces of nature either given they are established as perfectly sentient with their own goals and motivces. All of which they follow through on. Even Nihilus is still a person albeit one thats being consumed by his own hunger. Fighting monsters is fun, but they're just animals in the end. If thats all the opposition I have then thats a tad boring in the long run. Lets leave the DA2 debacle out of this thread. It won't go anywhere good. Lifting wreckage and tossing it away isn't really much of a feat either to be honest. Can't really compare something set thousands of years apart either when I don't know what the technological disparity is so I'll assume you're not wrong with the durasteel door. I still wouldn't put it next to Yoda for the simple reason that I've never been given the impression that telekinetics was his big thing(while the consulars offensive capabilities revolve around it). Though its a different story at the point she's at her last chapters end. Btw didn't the old EU say something about force users in the past being overall stronger or some such? So basically they went with Rule Of Cool. Pretty much the impression I got from the game. The stronger than most comments is probably meant to be the excuse for all the crazy stuff the players can get up to.

The Darkspawn are necessary, in a movie maybe having a villain like Loghain is enough, but in a game you need someone you can fight constantly, and you cant fight Loghain himself every 5 minutes, right? Also some of the things that made Loghain good was that he was against the Darkspawn just like you, he just wanted to deal with them his own way and had no faith in the king or the wardens. I made the reference to Yoda because while playing the Jedi Consular, she doing some very advanced Telekinetics since chapter 1 and she was doing it in cutscenes, even some Sith when they witness what she can do are like "What the F***!?" As I said before, the Force of Nature antagonist is necessary, or maybe necessary is the wrong word, what I mean is that they work great with the Fantasy adventure formula, does it mean they're mandatory? Nope, but looking at Bioware's trackrecord it has worked well for them. In a more realistic setting the Force of Nature antagonist could something as simple as bad weather, an economic crisis or even a plague, in fact, in Neverwinter Nights you do have to stop a plague. In the story as presented in DAO? Sure they had a purpouse there because they were written to do so even if they weren't particularly interesting themselves. However speaking in generalized terms then no they were not needed. One can make do with a villain such as Loghain as he'll have those serving him as obstacles between the player and himself. One don't even need to have combat if one so wanted, but at that point you'd be going into a different genre of games. This however is, as I said, me speaking purely in generalized terms rather than soley about DAO. Advanced telekinetics? The only outstanding things I can remember is lifting rocks(or other objects) and tossing them or force pushing objects/people. Now its been a while since I played through the entirety of chapter 1 of the consular story, but thats about what I can remember of it. If thats advanced then telekinetic users in star wars are -really- bad. Plus Sith have the criminally insane habit of underestimating their foes. Force of nature antagonists aren't necessary and never will be. Nothing wrong with including one however, but the risks of them being boring and just plain annoying are fairly high in my experience. Off the top of my head I can't really remember a whole lot of them as a result. Not sure I can bring myself to refer to bad weather, economic crisis and plagues as antagonists given none of them have wills of their own and are just unfortunate circumstances. Even in neverwinter nights the plague isn't an antagonist, its a weapon used by the antagonist of the game.

Well maybe you're right about Nihilus, it's just that when I interacted with The Empeor in Ziost, well I saw a lot of potential since an actor can give more personality than a soundboard, there are soundboard characters in SWTOR and they get old REAL FAST. In an Sci Fantasy Epic you kinda need both kind of villains, you need the down to earth human villains and the looming threat, force of nature villains, take Dragon Age: Origins, one of the best RPGs done by bioware, the human villain is Loghain, he betrays you and the king, and he sends assassins after you all the time, but he has his reasons, his motivation, and if you spare him and recruit him you can learn alot about him, even develop some sort of mutual respect. The force of nature villains are the Darkwspawn and the Archdemon they have no personality, and their motivation is to kill everything I guess, maybe they are better explained in a book or whatever but as far as the game is concerned they're just mindless monsters, they don't even talk until the expansion. In an MMO where there are Darths and Jedi Masters everywhere and even your own characters are already larger-than-life to begin with (The Jedi Consular is pulling Telekinesis on a Yoda level pretty much from the get go) you need a force of nature villain that is even bigger and strongerer than your larger-than-life character and all the other NPCs, So it makes sense is The Emperor is kinda of super powerful, as long as there are smaller villains with more relatable and understandable motivations. The actor is fine, but try as he might, he can't save a villain that bores me whenever he doesn't annoy me. The Darkspawn are also the most boring part of the dragon age games. They're pretty much just animals on two legs a lot of the time and it makes me feel more like I'm playing glorified pest control than anything else. Loghain and that stuff was the best part of DAO in my opinion. Perhaps its because I don't put that much stock in what characters do in gameplay as it very often doesn't sync up with what they are displayed as capable of doing in cutscenes and what not, but I never got the impression that any of them were doing anything on par with Yoda at the start of their respective stories. That said you don't need a force of nature villain to oppose any of that. Whats needed is a well written antagonist and thats it.

I agree that The Emperor comes off as "Muahaha I am the Evhulz" villain, although better characterized than Nihilus since he was interpreted by an actor with experience in horror films, that gave him a bit more personality and flavor, the problem is that we never get to know his character. From my point of view as a Sith Inquisitor the first time I get to "meet" The Emperor and talk to him was when I got to lvl 60, in an expansion that was released 3 years after the game came out! And it's the same case for pretty much every other class except the Knight and the Warrior, pretty disappointed considering they were hyping up The Emperor since before the game came out. I think it would have been better if The Emperor was involved in most of the class stories as an influence, some stories worked great without him, like the Agent, but other stories really had lackluster villains. It's not necessarily bad if a game wants to have a larger-than-life, force of nature kind of villain, in fact in those cases it's usually better for that villain to remain mostly mysterious, but the problem is that he had zero presence in the game except for a few classes, he was not really a villain at all. I thought Nihilus came across better if only because he didn't go on and on about how powerful he was(or any other variation of how so and so was X and Y). If proxies count then he was kind of active in the consular story, but yes fairly absent outside of the SW and JK stories. Even then its only the SW he specifically calls out in SoR at the end(albeit only with one sentence, but the JK didn't even get that). All in all I honestly just don't see how they would've pulled him off in a way that would've worked well. Eh personally I'm not really a fan of "force of nature" villains as a whole. They just don't work as an antagonist for me since it cuts down on interactions and the like. Plus the whole they're just there doing that thing because reasons doesn't work for me. I prefer villains capable of conversing, one that has actual motives and is engaging in some fashion.

I don't think anyone in the empire knew the true nature of the Emperor, except maybe those that were closer to him. As far as they know he was the one that saved them from annihilation and lead them on rebuilding their empire pretty much from scratch. Considering the guy so far hasn't really done anything that another Sith hasn't already done, I doubt they would've cared if he hadn't made it blatantly clear what he intended to do during the SoR climax. The only outstanding thing in his portfolio is his plan for the galaxy after all. Everything else about him reminds me of what one usually get from a bunch of "Nuh uh mah villain is stronger than -yours-!" arguments. Sadly neither Revan nor The Emperor are a huge focus on vanilla SWTOR. Each Class has kind of their own set of villains or antagonists... usually it's one main antagonist per chapter, and the great majority of these characters have pretty much nothing to do with The Emperor, in most class stories you barely hear about him in passing. That's the reason why the character of The Emperor is very underdeveloped in this game, in my opinion his character should have been involved in all 8 class stories IN SOME WAY, not just 2 or 3. From what I understand halfway through development of SWTOR they realized they have to tie SWTOR to KOTOR somehow and they brought in Drew Karpyshyn to sprinkle in some Revan/Emperor Storylines on some of the class stories and in some flashpoints. If you ask me, to go around calling themselves KOTOR 3, they should have connected their story to their previous games much better than what they did, all characters should have explored AT LEAST IN SOME WAY previous events of KOTOR and KOTOR 2. Like finding a Holocron of Darth Nihilus (and have him teach you something), or finding Clan Ordo who are honoring the promise Canderous made to Revan, The Exile could have appeared as a Force Ghost and mentor the Jedi Consular, things like that. Instead what we have are very minor references, very small cameos, and a story that 99% deals with new characters and doesn't deal with the past, it just feels disconnected from the rest of the franchise. Revan barely showing up in swtor was for the best. Though it was pretty cathartic to shove a lightsaber down his throat after certain things(specifically the revan novel and that all I'll say about -that- subject). I doubt the emperor being more involved would've improved anything. He's pretty much just a dry "moahahahaha i am teh evhulz" villain who's goal is galactic scale genocide Nihilus style. I'm not sure how they could've managed to salvage -that-. At least not going by how he's been presented so far in the game. Trolling the guy and doing the darkside option at the end of the JK questchain was pretty much the only times I enjoyed his presence. 'course this is all just my thoughts and feelings on the guy. I simply didn't like him all that much at all.

I don't think anyone in the empire knew the true nature of the Emperor, except maybe those that were closer to him. As far as they know he was the one that saved them from annihilation and lead them on rebuilding their empire pretty much from scratch. Considering the guy so far hasn't really done anything that another Sith hasn't already done, I doubt they would've cared if he hadn't made it blatantly clear what he intended to do during the SoR climax. The only outstanding thing in his portfolio is his plan for the galaxy after all. Everything else about him reminds me of what one usually get from a bunch of "Nuh uh mah villain is stronger than -yours-!" arguments.

I dunno, the Sith society they created seemed pretty damn implausible to me. The sheer amount of scheming, backstabbing and evil laughing betrayals in the MMO was baffling, I dunno how the Sith could get anything done at all. The stories do take place over a long period so it probably doesn't happen quite as often as it looks. Probably more in line with how often it happened in real life regimes.

*eye roll* HA! Good Fun! Keep in mind I'm referring to Sion and Nihilus, I know for a fact that most Sith from the Sith Empire would react with disgust to such inhuman monstrosities and also I say they are a mockery of Siths because Avellone implied that was the intent when these characters were created, Sion and Nihilus are how he sees Force Users who are devoted to the force (Dark Side in this Case) stripped of humanity and individuality. Now that I think about it, I don't remember any likable Force User NPC from Kotor 2, they are well written, and memorable, but they all are kind of jerks, I guess Chris didn't see neither The Jedi nor the Sith in a positive light, nor the Force Itself. Considering the kind of people that the Sith produce on a regular basis, I've got my doubts. They even followed a Nihilus wannabe until they learned he wanted to eat the -entire- galaxy. Well, one thing I gotta give to Bioware is that they created a SIth Empire with great diversity, and no I don't mean race and sex, I mean that in a civilization where the Sith are integrated into society (as rulers) we get to see a lot of different kind of Sith. Sure, you have Siths as Generals and Warriors, but you also have Diplomats and Scientists. My basis in saying the Sith would reject monsters like Sion or Nihilus lies on the Dread War, one of the Sith Lords sent to stop the Dread Masters, Lord Hargrev, was a well known sadist and torturer, however when he witnessed the things the Dread Masters do he decided that "they've gone too far", that they're inhuman, even for him who was a bad guy. The Dread Masters are similar to the vision Avellone had for Sion and Nihulus, what happens when you take a force user, that commits to the force (dark side in this case) all the way? Sion was all about Pain, Nihulus about hunger, the Dread Masters were all about Fear, they could drive people insane just for being on the same planet as them and their powers were on a Cthulu-esque/Cosmic Horror level. I don't recall either Sion or Nihilus getting up to the kinds of things the Dread Masters were doing and once again the Sith Empire had no problems following a Nihilus wannabe. They only turned on him because they found out he was gonna kill all of them too.

*eye roll* HA! Good Fun! Keep in mind I'm referring to Sion and Nihilus, I know for a fact that most Sith from the Sith Empire would react with disgust to such inhuman monstrosities and also I say they are a mockery of Siths because Avellone implied that was the intent when these characters were created, Sion and Nihilus are how he sees Force Users who are devoted to the force (Dark Side in this Case) stripped of humanity and individuality. Now that I think about it, I don't remember any likable Force User NPC from Kotor 2, they are well written, and memorable, but they all are kind of jerks, I guess Chris didn't see neither The Jedi nor the Sith in a positive light, nor the Force Itself. Considering the kind of people that the Sith produce on a regular basis, I've got my doubts. They even followed a Nihilus wannabe until they learned he wanted to eat the -entire- galaxy.

He can go <Censored!> himself for all I care. He should be happy we dropped the death penalty like a hot potato and be satisfied he's not put in a spot where he'll be killed by other prisoners the moment they get an opportunity.

She looks too scrawny to pull off the Wonder Woman look in my opinion. As for her acting I can't say. I've never seen a movie where she showed up(at least that I know of).