KoToR 3: Ideas and Suggestions

[Jediphile]

I've been describing my own idea for a KotOR3 plot in this topic before, and I've finally written more. Last time I described how the group found the Exile and left the known galaxy for the unknown regions in part 3, so here is...

 

 

Part 4

 

After finding the Exile, the search for Revan should take us to several Sith worlds. I do think Korriban still has something to offer, but we've seen it twice in two games now, and in KotOR2 it was pretty disappointing IMHO, so maybe not.

 

The Exile tries to remember Revan's last location, but his/her memory is still fragmented while recovering from being Darth Nihilus, and so the knowledge that he/her can provide is limited for now. All the information currently available are the coordinates from which the Exile's Sith fleet came.

 

Since it will be an infiltration of the Sith if you're light side and a deception if you're dark side, it will not be prudent to simply get the coordinates for the Sith empire from the Exile and then plot them into the Ebon Hawk computer and be on your merry way, since you'd be shot down the second you arrive. Instead you''l have to fly Nihilus/Exile's command ship back (perhaps carrying the Ebon Hawk) claiming it was the only survivor of a confrontation with the Republic fleet (which is even true, after a fashion...).

 

So, the Sith command ship returns to the system in the Sith empire where it came from. This should be either Ch'hodos or Khar Delba (these are planets mentioned in the "Golden Age of the Sith" and "Fall of the Sith Empire" comic books, though we've never really seen them). Khar Delba might be the best choice for reasons that will soon be clear. Anyway, the "return" to the Sith empire doesn't exactly meet with a warm welcome - the civil war between the true Sith and Revan's followers has spread, and the Exile's command ship jumps straight into the middle of a huge battle (a bit like the arrival at Onderon in KotOR2). Since the command ship is already damaged, it is shot down, and the group only narrowly escape in a ship (Ebon Hawk?), but eventually crash on the planet itself.

 

Here comes a chance to see what a Sith world is like as the group looks for the gear to repair their ship and find out what has become of Revan. It should be a world of terrible oppression, but where you don't feel inclined to help the weakest, since they really aren't better people than the masters in charge - everybody just wants to grow powerful and replace whatever masters they have, so it would be a world, where everybody is looking out for himself, and where the group will be in constant danger of discovery, if they every "commit" a selfless act. The consequences of discovery might be minimal in some cases, though, since anyone finding out will try to kill or capture the infiltrators in order to gain favor with their Sith masters, and so nobody will sound the general alarm on the jedi, since that would only let cause their masters to claim discovery of the jedi themselves (the concepts of trust or cooperation are not traits of the dark side, which should become obvious here...).

 

Eventually the Exile will remember that Revan was interested in the Sith teachings of Naga Sadow and went to explore a hidden outpost on the moon of Khar Shian that Naga Sadow once built there. Khar Shian is a moon orbiting the world of Khar Delba (which is why I said that might be the best choice for the first Sith world). The group will have the repair their ship and then secretly make their way to that moon.

 

On Khar Shian they will find the ruins of the secret base that Naga Sadow once built there. It is not completely empty, however, as Revan has filled the place with several guards to protect Sadow's ancient Sith secrets from falling into the hands of his enemies (which includes the Exile - nobody is as dangerous to a Sith lord as his apprentice, a lesson that Revan knows quite well...). The group must fight the guards as they enter the deeper parts of the base. As they do, they will be able to access information about Revan's actions in the Sith empire and learn much about Naga Sadow's plots and powers. Eventually they also learn that Revan has completed his studies of the dark side and then used them to form a Sith resistance group to overthrow the current dark lord, Taras Hassek. He has worked at this for years and there are detailed records and holovids about the skirmishes and battles that Revan has caused as he fought to bring down the Sith rulers and build his own army, so that he could take their place. However, the records suddenly end about a month before the group arrived with comment about how Revan was about to stage a major assault on the true Sith on Ziost. In order to achieve this goal, Revan made an alliance with Saken Zlok, a lesser Sith lord hoping to gain favor with Revan and become his new apprentice betraying Taras Hassek. The group then use a Sith transport to secretly follow him there with the ID codes taken from the computer system on Khar Shian.

 

Ziost will be a challenge indeed. As the group nears the planet, it would be cool to have cutscenes of Revan fighting or sneaking his way to the showdown with Taras Hassek, though it should be uncertain when exactly those events took place. In truth, Revan eventually met with Saken Zlok, but unfortunately for Revan, he mistook Saken Zlok's motives. Saken Zlok had an opportunity here, but decided that he would never be powerful enough to challenge Revan for the title of dark lord himself, so it would be easier to gain favor with Taras and then grow in power until he could replace him. As powerful as Revan is, he faced several Sith Lords standing with Taras and only then realized that Saken Zlok had betrayed him, and only agreed to lead Revan into a trap in order to gain favor with Taras Hassek.

 

Therefore Revan's forces were decimated, and he was eventually alone in the fight, while Taras had several Sith lords, including his apprentice, Del Gor-Ulm, and the treacherous Saken Zlok (whom I suppose might be the Darth Traya of KotOR3...). Together they captured Revan. They don't kill him, however, because Taras has become aware that Revan's old friends are looking for him, and he wants to use Revan to lure them out... and destroy them!

 

The group doesn't know all this yet, but they now have to find and free Revan while staying undiscovered (or so they think). Meanwhile, however, Taras Hassek sets his final plan to move on the Republic into motion. Revan's resistance had caused trouble for him and halted his plans for galactic domination and conquest of the Republic for years, but with Revan captured and his "rebellion" destroyed, the time to strike at the Republic has come, so he launches his entire Sith fleet, personally leading a full assault directly on Coruscant in order to crush the few remaining jedi there (that would be the Exile's old companions, such as Visas, Handmaiden, Atton, etc.) and kill or capture and then convert the jedi children.

 

Of course, the group doesn't know any of this yet, but they will soon find out and realize that the departing forces moving on the Republic is their chance to go to Ziost and find Revan while the planetary security will be somewhat low. Of course, this is also part of Taras Hassek's plan to draw them out, but they still don't konw that. So it will still be a mission of stealth, as the group would quickly be overrun, if the alarm is sounded. Sneaking in, they must discover what happened to Revan and then free him from captivity.

 

However, their presence will be noticed by Saken Zlok, whom Taras Hassek has left behind to deal with Revan's friends. Rather than send forces to destroy them, he follows the plan to let Revan deal with the matter - he puts Revan in secure area, give him his lightsaber, then tells Revan that his old friends have come to either to kill him or to redeem him for the good of the Republic, possibly with an active holovid showing the progress of the group. Naturally evil Revan won't like either option...

 

Saken Zlok then allows the group to find Revan, so where the group expects to find a captive Revan they can reason with and then set free, they instead face an angry and armed Revan, who thinks the jedi have come to kill him. This will be nasty fight, since Revan is a powerful Sith with many secret powers, but since he is outnumbered, the group should eventually be able to defeat him.

 

Now, the main character makes his deciding light side vs. dark side choice when meeting Revan - if you're light side, then you try to bring Revan (and Bastila) back to the light so you can prevail together against the true Sith. If you're dark side, however, you want to learn from Revan and then kill him/her. I mean, if you decide to be dark side, then you can't let Revan stay around - Revan is more powerful than you are, and you want to end up being the dark lord yourself, so you can't have him/her around to threaten your power. Of course, if you kill Revan, then you also have to kill Bastila and the Exile eventually. Let the choice mean something - given that people have played these people in the past, it would make a good statement as to just what it means to side with the Sith. No generic "I'll kill this nameless Sith lord curently in power, whom I don't care about at all"-nonsense. Being Sith is all about power and betrayal against your master, and the point will be more powerful if the masters you betray are characters you have an attachment to, such as Revan, Bastila, and the Exile - if you want to see this characters live, then you need to choose the light side ending. This means that if you choose the dark side, then you need to arrange the deaths of both Revan, the Exile, and Bastila before you can continue the game.

 

Also, for the dark side, I'd really like the main character to play on romantic notions. If the main character is male, then he should try to seduce Bastila and her join him when he turns on Revan - there is no true love among the Sith, and evil Bastila should know that. It would also be cool to imply that there was something going on between Bastila and Carth while Revan was fighting the true Sith in the unknown regions... If the main character is female and Revan is male, however, then you should naturally try to seduce Revan himself and betray Bastila's love for him - you've now found Revan, which is all Bastila was good for, so no she no longer serves a purpose and needs to be cast aside - you want to be Revan's new apprentice... and lover. After all, it worked for pathetic little Bastila, so why shouldn't it work for you? To achieve that goal, you tell Revan that Bastila didn't really love him as much as his power, since why else has she taken so long to find him? It was only after you showed up that they found Revan, and Bastila actually tried to hold you back. Of course, all this needs to be played down a bit in a Star Wars game, but I dare say you can do that and still make the dark side mean something between the lines. And it'll let people see what the Sith are without going to far. Since jedi are not allowed to love, this leaves the notion that they sith do, but I don't think so. After all, love presupposes trust, and that is not a Sith trait. Sith may lust, but they can know no love in the real sense of the word, since they would never trust anyone else enough for that. Those who do probably don't live long... If Bastila, Revan, and the main character are all female, though, I'm not quite so sure... The main character could claim Bastila lusts for Carth, but on the dark side Carth could be dead, so the option is not so good. A love triangle between three woman is not impossible, but I don't much like the idea of insinuating that only in a dark side situation just because it's convenient. It would support the idea that such a situation is immoral by definition, and we really don't want the game to be that judgmental. In fact, we don't want Star Wars to go anywhere near that situation even at extreme blaster range.

 

For the light side option, you want Revan to turn back to the light side. You have several ways to achieve that. One is Bastila's bond with Revan, another is the Exile's ability to suppress the force, and the third is the main character's empathic ability to sense the motivations of others. You'll need to play all of these three (Bastila, Exile, and main character) right while fighting off Revan at the same time to turn him back to the light side. It will also be necessary to remind him that he erred by facing this threat alone - while it might be understandable for him not to want his friends threatened by this danger, the way of the jedi is not a solitary one, and that jedi only triumph when they stand together. Natually Revan's love for Bastila or Carth should also be relevant, especially if Revan is male. If Revan ended up as a dark sided male in KotOR1, it should be noted that he and Bastila did not gain love by their choice. Indeed, they sacrificed it for power, and have find that it did not fill the void that their love left behind. This should help both evil Revan and evil Bastila to turn away from the dark side.

 

Of course, Saken Zlok will not be impressed either way and immediately send Sith forces to destroy the group. Fighting off continuing patrols (a bit like on the Starforge in KotOR1), the group must now flee Ziost and go to Coruscant to stop the assault of the true Sith that Taras Hassek and Del Gor-Ulm is leading against the jedi and the Republic there. Along the way you may choose to hunt and kill Saken Zlok, either out of revenge over his treachery or to prevent him from setting himself up as the new dark lord once you go off to fight Taras Hassek and his assault on the Republic. The fight against Saken Zlok should be a twisted one - he is not very powerful, but he is deceptive and cautious, so he has filled his place with all sorts of traps and security devices and so on. The escape from Ziost (and hunt for Saken Zlok) will be the only part of the game where you can play a group with both Revan, the Exile and the new main character.

 

Next: Part 5 - Endgame

[Darth Nuke]

The chronicles are not a good source for correct continuity. Naga Sadow was finished off by Freedom Nadd. So he is dead for good.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I agree that the Chronicles are for the purposes of the KOTOR games, not official continuity (although that is getting increasingly hard to define).

 

But just as they introduced someone more awesome than Vader and Luke, they could bring back one of the ancient Sith guys too if they really wanted.

 

Guess we will have to wait and see.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I want someone new, with a Black Lightsaber, or some kind of really bad ass Sith Sword.

[PhantomJedi]

I am not sure about a tragic romance but a tragic story like thoughs from antiquite would be pretty cool idea to explore. Most will probably think its stupid idea but o'well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Anything that adds much-needed depth to the characters and narrative is a Good Thing in my book.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I 100% agree with you.

 

I've been describing my own idea for a KotOR3 plot in this topic before, and I've finally written more. Last time I described how the group found the Exile and left the known galaxy for the unknown regions in part 3, so here is...

 

 

Part 4

 

After finding the Exile, the search for Revan should take us to several Sith worlds. I do think Korriban still has something to offer, but we've seen it twice in two games now, and in KotOR2 it was pretty disappointing IMHO, so maybe not.

 

The Exile tries to remember Revan's last location, but his/her memory is still fragmented while recovering from being Darth Nihilus, and so the knowledge that he/her can provide is limited for now. All the information currently available are the coordinates from which the Exile's Sith fleet came.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

No offense but where I cut it is where I stopped reading. You sort of lost me becaused you mentioned Exile, Revan, search for Revan, Sith worlds, and memory fragmented.

[Cheesemonger]

In previous KOTOR games there was a way of "brandishing" your weapon (by hitting "x", i think). Being able to choose a "brandishing"-certain swing, twirl, flip, chop would be nice. Kinda like choosing your what your swing looks like in in Tiger Woods 2005 (ps2). I also think it would so rock if your PC could "strike a martial arts pose" like the jedi in the arena in episode 2.

 

Do we know for sure if obsidian is going to do this?

 

later

[metadigital]

In previous KOTOR games there was a way of "brandishing" your weapon (by hitting "x", i think).  Being able to choose a "brandishing"-certain swing, twirl, flip, chop would be nice.  Kinda like choosing your what your swing looks like in in Tiger Woods 2005 (ps2).  I also think it would so rock if your PC could "strike a martial arts pose" like the jedi in the arena in episode 2. 

 

Do we know for sure if obsidian is going to do this?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yes, but this could be handled by the Lightsaber Form one has currently selected (assuming this feature would be taken through to any future game).

 

No, there is no confirmation of any further work in the KotOR series at all.

[Cheesemonger]

right, when you attack you have different forms...but i am talking 'bout just standing there and pushing "x" (pc). Doing that gives a generic swashbuckling swing of a lightsaaber, sword, or strikinga pose witha pistol-like taking better aim.

 

I was talking about something separate.

 

oh, and there's a guy on the lucasarts forum saying he got an email from the powers that be asking what he would like to see on KOTOR 3. Screen nam eis something like bahnean006, or something. I think he's full f it, but if they are giveing surveys out, i hope those guys are giveing my ideas...... :D

[Darth Desann]

Although I like the turnbase/realtime mesh of the fighting system from KOTOR I and II...why not try a different approach...realtime like the fighting system of Episode III the game. That was very smooth, not too difficult to grasp and was probably the best translation of sword/saber play to a game yet.

[Joukahainen]

Although I like the turnbase/realtime mesh of the fighting system from KOTOR I and II...why not try a different approach...realtime like the fighting system of Episode III the game.  That was very smooth, not too difficult to grasp and was probably the best translation of sword/saber play to a game yet.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

This Jedi Knight games are twitch based like that. I like the d20 turn based combat in the KOTOR games. I especially like that you can decide whether or not the game pauses at all.

[Plano Skywalker]

this came up on another thread but I think it deserves mention here:

 

***Improvements to the Ebon Hawk***

 

Let's face it, the Ebon Hawk is a character with a big reputation. A ship with a big reputation is a good conversation device, etc. If there is a KOTOR III, I think it is safe to say that the PC will be riding around in the Ebon Hawk.

 

However, the Ebon Hawk could stand to use some upgrades. Some ideas that I have either thought of myself or gleaned from others are:

 

 

>>>THE GUN TURRET.

normally, when I play KOTOR II, I choose not to play the gun turret mini-game.

the other day I did and I remembered why I avoid it like the plague.

that thing is a pathetic pea-shooter and is clunky to operate...not enough "Z-axis" action, either.

 

first, I ask for a rapid-fire quad-laser canon (i.e. as in the M Falcon).

with a quad-laser, there is always one gun firing....not a second goes by that

you are not firing something into space. it looks better, feels better and is more effective.

 

second, I ask for, as I stated earlier, more of a "Z" action, not just left-to-right.

 

with these kinds of changes, I would probably play the turret mini-game most of the time it comes up. I like it being optional but it should probably surface more than it does in KOTOR II.

 

 

>>>MEDITATION CHAMBER.

IMO, the PC needs to take more ownership of his Force training and manipulation.

A meditation chamber on the Ebon Hawk would be a good first step to this end.

In the meditation chamber, the PC can:

 

* "center" himself....by centering, the PC gets some sense of what kind of dangers may be lurking on the planet....and some sense of whether he will encounter any other Force weilders on that mission.

 

* crystal focusing....in KOTOR II, the biggest, baddest Force user in Known Space has to have someone else focus his lightsaber crystals....in KOTOR III, the PC should be able to do this in the meditation chamber.

 

* channeling...the PC can attempt to send a message to another Force user or try to strike up a conversation with a known Force Ghost. It does not always work (depending on where the PC is in the story) but it would be cool if the PC initiates these kinds of triggers once in a while.

 

* holocrons...in the meditation chamber, the PC watches Jedi and Sith holocrons that he picked up in his travels and increases his knowledge of the Force by doing so.

 

* training the padawan....the PC sends out an empathic command for his padawan to appear for his next lesson. A dialogue ensues in which the PC can teach one lesson every 3 levels (or something to that effect). This device would not be active until the second half of the game.

[Eddo36]

I got a new idea for a new lightsaber color crystal: the Darksaber

 

The BEST Sith lightsaber idea yet:

 

Well what's better than a stealth lightsaber? You know how bright the blue, green, yellow, red, violet, etc colors glow so bright? A Jedi on a stealth mission at night in some dark place would be out of luck the moment he turns on his beacon-like lightsaber. Well earlier I suggested a CLEAR color crystal, but it seems that there were objections of its functionality.

 

Well what about a BLACK lightsaber crystal? Black light bulbs creates an area of darkness, or "black light" (we use that in Halloween decorations). Black blade would not only be truly be invisible in the night, it will create an area of darkness all around you as well (if you're not fighting a Jedi with a bright lightsaber, that is). It's probably as equally as effective as the clear blade when fighting in low light, or to remain stealthy in the darkness in the shadows or at night.

 

If my black lightbulb or ultraviolet blade theory don't hold up, then what about dark matter? I'm no expert in physics, but it is fitting. Always possibilities.

 

With a black lightsaber crystal, he can make kills with his lightsaber and still remain stealthy and undetected. Even better, when you're in a duel with another Jedi, they can't really see your lightsaber blade when you're fighting in the shadows, so you can fool him by pretending an upper strike with your arms by twisting your wrist downwards during the strike and you cut his belly. However, if the Jedi you're fighting has a really bright lightsaber, then your black blade won't be truly invisible due to the light up. Well, every single weapon has its advantages and disadvantages.

 

And how about implementing this technology into blasters? You shoot black light, not those bright green or red tracer rounds that gives away your position. You'll see a black colored bolts fly at you and suddenly shadows start forming all around you (due to the illumination of black light from the black bolts) and then you see one of those black bolts hit you and you're like AHHH!!!! MY SKIN IS BLACK!!!! Thoughts?