metadigital

Awww. How boring. =( <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah, it kinda opposes the entire theme of KotOR2, don't you think? Exploring the true nature of goodness, how ethical dilemmas play out, when to trust a liar and when not to follow a friend ... It's also a wee bit too simplistic. The Roman Empire, for example, committed horrendous acts of genocide and war crimes. But, in the end, the long term benefits of a central point of reference for social, political, religious and human growth has been a boon to our civilization. Was the Roman Empire Good or Bad? It's a bit like Tom Baker's Doctor Who in The Genesis of The Daleks, when he ponders whether he has the right to destroy the evil race, because "Out of [the Daleks'] great evil must come some great good." :cool:

And what, pray tell, have you got aginst Santa Claus?

I played KotOR(s) on my old 32mb GeForce4 440, so I won't (pretty sure) be able to play a new engine KotOR III . Nevertheless I fully accept (and make no opposition) to a new engine, even though I'll be resigning myself to not being able to play K3. The hope is that when K3 comes out in a few years I'll have money for new computer by then . <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Um, what spoilage are you preventing by keeping your video card and work status from us?

they are doing a good job .. but let's not raise them to something they are not! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But we've ot to build them up to bring them crashing down ... what would we do instead? Live in harmony with all the peoples of the world? Solve poverty and hunger? Do something useful? Nah, let's continue with the mindless Cult of the Famous, stoking the fires of civilization with the minor dieties of people famous for being famous ... ... Did I say that out loud?

Midichlorians are like mitochondria, you can't simply clone them, it wouldn't work. It's all about the concentration. It isn't really possible to double or triple the concentration of a whole body. The concept of midichlorians isn't stupid at all and doesn't change the force in the slightest... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Long distance athletes have more "slow twitch" muscle fibre than, say sprinters who have more "fast twitch" muscle fibres. Athletes tend to have athletic offspring. That in itself is a form of selective breeding, like with race horses. If you can "selectively breed" a genetic component, like muscle fibres, then you can surely selectively breed a denser mitochondrial volume in the cells. And if you can selectively breed it, you can clone it. (Just because we can't do it at the end of the twentieth century doesn't mean we won't ever be able to do it. Look at how fast illicit doping technology for performance enhancement is advancing in world sports.) Mitochondria are still predetermined by your genetic code, too. Okay, maybe I was being a tad facetious (moi?) comparing them to hormones. But the dumbed-down dialogue in Ep.1 suggested it in the first place. Actually, one thought from dear old FarimirK was that these midichlorians were actually beings. (Or at least our dimensional manifestation of multi-dimensional beings.) That is an interesting concept, with lots of scope for exploration; although it does throw the cat amongst the pigeons and spill that can of worms all over the shoe store floor. "

We-eeeeeeeeeeeell, I'm not insisting on crow-barring The Force into an existing philosophy-slash-theology, I'm just trying to understand it. ('Cos that's the kinda guy I am. :D ) In science, if a new experimental result doesn't fit your model, you revise the model (e.g. "traditional electric current" went from negative to positive). (Religion, on the other hand, tends to call the new information heretical, and burns it and everyone involved. " ) So, with the new "The Force seems to have a will...", I try and fit that into the existing (small "f" force) model. **** I've been thinking a bit more (yes, it hurt, boom boom, and yes it is a dangerous thing) about what "Goodness" is. The whole incorporation -- i.e. manifesting into some "quintessence" or being -- is, rather obviously, where the issue lies. I guess the problem is the only way to explain the phenomena is to directly observe it and then buid the model. Except the phenomena is fictional. So I am left with "sanity-checking" the model that is presented as "science-fantasy-fact"; I have no choice in this, I simply am compelled to do so. (It's part of my quiditity: what makes me the fun loving relentlessly obsessive psychopath that I am.) It's a pickle. *** You're not Dutch, are you? I have a friend who is Dutch. He has a big head. Therefore you must be Dutch.

What "modern" logic am I using? I thought logic was logic was logic! I thought we were talking about good and evil, and some "all-powerful force that controls my destiny", (Han Solo, Star Wars), and their relationship(s).

I thought there was no genetic component at all. Totally random. Force Sensitive -- hey, I can levitate! Perhaps there might be a ripple effect, such that offspring of a Jedi might be close enough to be "infected" with the Force Sensitivity, too. (What about those adopted out? Then again, caging all the promising young ones together in a geogpraphically contained place might help them concentrate The Force.) And I knew Mission shouldn't have bought all those shoes -- Dustil and his big shoe empire idea. Sheesh. "

These musings are all well and good, but I fear we are no closer to explaining what The Force is (assuming it is possible, of course). I like the "music of the spheres" analogy, although the DS I still think isn't clear. (This could be a function of my limited knowledge of music theory, however.) :D Life / Nature is cruel, not evil. It is honest. There are no hidden agendas, just plain, naked survival. A lion kills an antelope because it must, so too a Polar Bear must kill baby seals or starve. That cannot be evil, otherwise we have a deep paradox (maybe Saint Augustine was right about original sin? ). Evil is also a moral choice, not simply a mental retardation. Equally, sentient beings are capable of wanton cruelty -- foxes kill for fun as well as food, for example. A short philospohical walk later and we enter our neighbourhood: humans being evil for their own purposes. But, yet, this is still classifiable as "survival": whomever is the most successful at removing rivals will be fruitful and multiply. It is the struggle against these baser drives that begets "goodness". "Don't do to others what you would not want them to do to you." as Confucius said nearly a hundred years before Christ. So we can perhaps say that Goodness (LS) is a struggle against the banal, selfish survival-at-all-costs mentality. Only LS would sacrifice for the greater good -- a higher purpose. (Although this does not preclude a mother spider giving her newly-hatched babies their first meal, herself!) Higher Purpose? Where self-awareness and the pursuit of knowledge to the betterment all all who subscribe to the worldview is put ahead of individuals. survival of the Society is more important that the individual; but -- and this is crucial -- the individual is more important that the society, otherwise we simply replace a single being with a conglomerate of beings that act as one (like a hive or nest of termintes). Now that's a paradox. I think this illuminates some of the complexities of the nature of goodness. Evil is just a choice to further the self ahead of all else, at any cost, which is ultimately simpler and easier. Where does The Force come in? If such a thing existed, then it could be just Life. The Light Side would be akin to Goodness, where it strives to make all life better, without sacrificing individual members (which, individually, are more important than the collective). But, self-scrifice is a virtue; it is only when some external agent determines that a being needs to be "sacrificed" that we see the malevolent will aspect come into play. It is a very complex concept, then. Life would be like the Senate, when everyone is trying to be nice but still keep their own life advancing. And the Senate is not reknown for expediency, efficiency nor efficacy. So how can The Force exist in this passive state? Therefore let's examine if it exists in a more active state. This brings us to the deification of The Force, with a Will and therefore an agenda (probably self-actualisation), and the ability to mold / influence events and beings to this agenda. Or, I could be totally wrong. :D

Epic ep

Yep, but they did something to it -- the movies. I never had a problem with NwN, yet KotOR crashed with memory errors after a few minutes with movies on (anywhere in the game) and KotOR2 is much worse ... I get memory crashes with the movies off, now. So they have definitely added some sloppy coding -- probably a few routines don't empty their registers and this becomes a huge problem after the game has been running for a while. Boring stats: I have an ATI DirectX 9 compatible card (and 9.0c drivers) and meet the required settings. I don't have the recommended settings, however, but that's because there doesn't exist a laptop graphics card better than wotIgot.

Damn,I hope not <{POST_SNAPBACK}> *Aurora makes note to have mod check ip address and if it matches certain known offensive posters on the boards then the game will start "plan B", whcih includes poisoning the PC ... * Mod Initial Screen: Gender: Male, Female, modified by: Straight, Homosexual, Bi-sexual, Eunuch, Asexual, Gender-Challenged, Transvestite. " *No feelings were hurt in the making of this post.

Fixing it must be almost as fun -- or even more fun -- than playing KotOR2 in the first place!

If he didn't then he should. Still, it's a little late in the day: it was a pretty major plot device in the first episode. Yep, with some sort of physical component that facilitates the Force Sensitivity -- just not a blinking hormone / neurotransmitter / blood component. I guess you might be able to exaplin it having an effect that can be measured by some blood-by product, but I think that's reaching ... Come to think of it, there seems to be quite a theme existient in the OT. Of course, this could be explained differently, if we remove the stupid midichlorians -- did some say Thetans

Saberist, you certainly have some very sound ideas for plot, characters, leit-motifs and thematic foundations in your post; I commend your vision. I wonder what the LucasArts committee would do with it: a camel for your thoroughbred, I'd wager. I think the main debate of this thread is moot. Both the existing plot (with Kreia as the finale on your PCs journey of self-awareness) and the alternative with Nihilus as the monster-at-the-end-of-the-book have merit. The warring factions just place different emphasis on the size of the problem that Nihilus has become. Either way works, as long as you flesh your story out and give the audience something to empathise with. (And have the Exile face him without Force powers, too.) The problem, as has been espoused ad nauseum here and elsewhere, is the total lack of production value to the end of the game. It is quite breathtaking just how spectacularly poorly it has been done. ESB analogy? How about story board stills flashed up from Luke's landing on the Cloud City until he falls into the air conditioning. Omitted content; orphaned, seemingly random sub-plot segways (including one with a totally new character: the blinking remote, fercrissakes!) with meaningless interactions (why, exactly, did Kreia want Hanharr to kill Mira? Couldn't the gimp manage it with her 1000+ vitality points and managerie of dancing sabers? After instantly killing three Jedi Masters?). But wait: there's more! Literally a deus ex machina climax (the shadow generator) first made popular when special effects consisted of a guy in a beard making onomatopoetic noises backstage and Alexander The Great was in nappies. And an ending of where-are-they-now (set in the just-too-distant future-to-evoke-empathy), told with pages of dialogue? I like that Kreia is an unknown quamtity; a slippery concept that you can't take at face value: very insidious, very Lord of Lies. 10 out of 10 for making a villain that wasn't cookie-cut, less several thousand for the appallingly clumsy handling of the denouement. Even though I could tell Kreia was the final boss from before I bought the game, if it had been handled correctly that would have built tension. Like watching a scene from your favourite thriller that never fails to make your popcorn explode from your box. The end was too linear and too contrived; regardless of the narrative, your alignment and any further actions taken. Here's an idea: have some consequences! Friends die, worlds collide, something -- like the half-baked good idea at Nar Shadarr where the beggar gets rolled because you gave him some cash. What would I like to have seen? How about real ramifications of in-game choices. Like the choices in the cave on Korriban: how you chose to handle that encounter should have affected choices later in the game, so it was not just a shallow plot device used to set-up a single battle, but a deeply resonating, fateful turning point. I would like to have seen some real choice in the Dantooine face-off, too. E.g. one option would let the Jedi Masters cut you off from the force (and then the game ends with "oops, the universe has been eaten by Nihilus, try again") and have some dissention between the Jedi Masters, depending on your choices. Perhaps even the choices made regarding your past (the "what happened for you to be exiled from the order" dialogue tree after Peragus) determining who Traya is: Atris being the other possibility. Bottom line: a squandered opportunity; there is not a lot worse than the disapointment of something that promises much and delivers little.

Naw, the stupid thing is they ain't different to any other Jedi robes. What's the point in 'em? D0on't forget to delete the duplicate thread.

Not necessarily hereditary, I agree. The most powerful force user could suddenly spring from a family with no history of force-sensitivity. That doesn't preclude the possibility that strong force-users tend to have strong force-user children. Since so few Jedi have children, there's little evidence either way. But I thought I remembered Kreia saying something along these lines... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, if we forget those pesky midichlorines you are correct. But With the little buggers, then there must be a genetic link. Mendel's Laws tell us even if the genetic condition is caused by a recessive gene, like blue eyes, it would still be carried by the offspring. (And it would follow Mendel's Laws to plot the genetic distribution of recessive character traits, so that if two parents both had the recessive gene they would, on average, have two of their four children Force Sensitve.) Ditto for the Rakasha and their breeding out of FSness. Unless it is a random mutation in the gene sequence that produces the Force Sensitivity. Which would indicate that there is perhaps an extra genetic base element (otherwise we would all be a lot more personally familiar with it). Which in turn tells me that there might even be other consequences (different combinations of this extra base with the other bases) that might even prove toxic. Stupid midichlorines. Just clone the dumb things and inject them into your Sith Lord and make him more doped up than a Tour de France competitor. Kick any Jedi's ambitions.

B3-bomber: Eddie the Shipboard Astromech

Okay, more info on that, then. LS: Dance to the beat. Got it. How does that help a LS FS? Use the eddies in the "music" like a yacht in the breeze, perhaps? DS: Change the music. Okay, this bit needs fleshing out. What are you saying here: "getting out their bongos and adding a new backbeat", perhaps doing some "scratching" with the universal track? Manipulating the wind into making the sea change, so the yacht can catch the wave as well as sail the breeze? Got the medical analogy.

Yoda played pretty fast and loose with the truth, too. He might just be covering up for sleeping on the job ... all those times he was "meditating" he may have been off down the pub, or visiting that House of the Three-Tentacled-Twi'lek ... But, yeah. I was just making sure that the hypothesis ws rigorous to withstand an uncertain future. In case we're in a dream and we're going to wake up and Bobby's still in the shower. What was the "Vergence Prophecy" ?

-sigged (w00t)thepixiesrock-band of mutated sith lords who believe they're pixies <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ThePixiesRock: Sith Assassin level 20 /Illusionist level 12 Baley: Sith Apprentice / Brass Ensemble

After all the alluding they did in KOTOR II, they'd better. Although they sure as hell shouldn't be "godly beings of pure evil and chaos" or some other annoying cliche like that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I wonder what they'll be wearing? Like, is it a formal occassion: full dress robes, or just a hunting trip and they can use their "away kit" (that probably won't fly across the pond so, so if that is the case replace phrase with "civvies". Thankyou for you attention.)

... where the warping effect will cause the Force Sensitive to "see around the corner" of our Space-Time continuum into the/a future world ... I can expand on that a bit, too. If we assume the future is not set, and therefore "There is no fate but what we make", then these warping events might cause tears in the fabric of the universe, such that other universes (close to ours) where everything is identical space-time-wise up until this event, but different events follow on from the event, all are accessible through the common, conjoined rift in the continuum.

I've always wondered why American English spells Grey that way ... I guess we see the Freudian logic at work ...