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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

You know, having played D&D, watching you take a skill feat and then toughness in quick succession is a very painful experience.

E: It's been like ten years since I played KOTOR. I can't remember, do you get Feats more often than in D&D?

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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Also you're the only one in the game who can use Persuade, and Scoundrels are good at it. Plus, Sneak Attack and their innate AC bonus are actually quite good.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I remember when lightsaber fights were mostly just movie swordfights with a few cool magic powers and Jedi were just lucky, perceptive, and had some telekinesis and tricks.

Vader didn't need to be exploding Star Destroyers with his mind to seem like the scariest dude in the galaxy.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Xander77 posted:

I've always wanted a Bioware / Obsidian PRG based around a W40k Inquisition party. But you know... 2013 Bioware/Obsidian.

They basically made their version of a Hams Fantasy game with Dragon Age Origins already. Could have done with more hats. But if you want to see what a Bioware WHF game would be, it's Origins.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I was actually surprised to find that healing someone with the universal energy generated by all life was considered an amazing feat, or odd in the slightest. It seems like it would be one of the more natural uses for the Force.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Basically, the ability to kill someone faster or get hit less is more valuable than the very marginal HP improvement you get from one rank of Toughness and will prevent you going down more consistently.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

And therein is the single biggest reason I hate Taris.

It's a pile of busywork and boring adventures, it's too long for what it is (a simple intro), and at the end it's 'lol nothing matters, whole planet explodes'.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's literally just the Millennium Falcon with a few superficial differences to pretend it's a 4000 year older design.

Like almost everything in the 'ancient' time in Star Wars.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Yeah, Taris being a doomed peasant village would be fine if you were there for an hour. Not eight.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I don't think the Jedi ever once say what they think should have happened to stop the Mandalorians. They just kinda go 'Well see, Revan and Malak happened! So we were right to do nothing!' without a hint of thinking about it further.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Comrade Koba posted:

Does it ever get properly explained in this game or the sequel why the Mandalorians decided to attack the Republic or is it all handwavey space-mongol bullshit?

They were pretty sure they could win and acquire vast resources and power was always the sense I got from 1. The Republic has a lot of stuff for a conqueror to take, after all.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The thing I always took away from Star Wars is that the Jedi philosophy makes people insanely emotionally brittle. They seem to fall and redeem at the drop of a hat outside of the original trilogy.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

To be honest, 'The Jedi order as an institution is insanely hosed up and kind of awful' has been an (accidental) staple of Star Wars ever since they moved beyond the Original Trilogy. KOTOR 1 and the prequels are basically a long series of 'no wonder these fuckers eventually screwed everything up and got annihilated'.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

FoolyCharged posted:

Hmmm... this army of VERY convenient soldiers was discovered by tailing an assassin and placed by a dead man on a planet hidden from us because someone deleted all mentions of it from our massive archive.

Oh well, let's use it and drop all suspicions after making this call!

Also never once do they ask 'hey, is it right to force these people to fight? People bred and conditioned to kill people and robbed of their childhoods and everything? Are we making a good call using what is effectively slave soldiers?'

Nope, right to 'around the survivors, a perimeter create'.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

KOTOR 2 is basically an entire game of 'you know, gently caress the Jedi Order' for a reason.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The prequel trilogy is mostly to blame for the Jedi being stupid and crazy; in the original, Luke and Obiwan are decent guys. And the whole 'Obiwan lied about Vader' thing is primarily because Vader being Luke's dad wasn't even planned until Empire Strikes Back was written.

Why I make the distinction of The Jedi Order and not so much the Jedi; as an institution it seems to be hosed up and very bad for Jedi.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Dual saber or saber and short saber also have the advantage of being way cooler than the double bladed saber.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

ItsDisposable posted:

I've never really thought HK and Wrex have much in common? If anyone's a Proto-Wrex here it's Canderous, the Proud Warrior Race Guy aimlessly mercing around after his culture got owned because he doesn't know what else to do.

On the other hand I also have unconventional ideas about who the Carth is in the Mass Effect series, so maybe I'm a bad judge of... character :v:

I'm guessing you think it's Garrus?

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The Sith just being a type of space devil seems pretty stupid.

It fits much better as just an opposite term for a different philosophy of force user.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I think HK works partly because of his VA and his being actual comic relief, but partly because he's a droid. He's not some creepy psycho, he was literally built to be this way. And he still kind of needs to be let off the leash to actually do his bit; half of why he's always begging the PC to let him shoot someone is because he can't without permission.

The crazy happy go lucky psycho not really being a moral agent because someone else designed him to be a killbot helps.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I am glad to finally see Jolee Bindo, probably my favorite of the party in this game.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Considering how much Jedi love 'a certain point of view' and mind tricks, deception is extremely Light Side.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Sometimes a million to one chance that saves a whole sector doesn't really go quite how you expected it to. :allears:

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I'm guessing good old Darth Brandon there didn't spare a memo to the others: "BTW that's someone who's been in our way, Bastilla's on their ship, get 'em."

Him showing up on Korriban is probably the silliest place he could.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's kind of telling that 'stop wanting to help your fellow slaves, ex slave' is a banana peel the Jedi slip on repeatedly.

And eventually it helps kill their entire Order.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I also appreciate stuff like 'oh god, this is what I've been doing to people? I don't think I can be Sith'.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Not a lot of true Sith in these tombs then, huh.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

So much for all that careful infiltration and intrigue.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It makes sense. The Sith are all about feeling powerful. They want the emotional high of being insanely angry, etc rather than thinking about empathy or compassion. Note what they always talk about: They're always on about how the Dark Side is forbidden because it's powerful, etc. And it's always the Dark Side in the end, not the passions or emotions or feelings themselves, because what they want is the power, not the feelings. Hence why they trend towards anger and hatred and try to get love or compassion out of their pupils like Yuthara.

They're as blinkered as the Jedi, and even more destructive, because they love the feeling you get when you throw a tantrum.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

"There are too many powerful Jedi for them to ever dare attack Dantooine!"

Orbital bombardment doesn't give a poo poo how many people with lightsabers are running around the surface.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It kind of reminds me of a funny detail in Return of the Jedi. Vader's redemption is one of the single most important (and satisfying) moments in the trilogy, killing the Emperor to save the life of his son. It was also completely irrelevant because Lando and company were about to blow the Death Star either way. The Emperor lost at Endor because of his showboating with the exposed core of the 'fully operational' battle station and desire to show it off even before he got hucked down a shaft.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Oh, I'm not saying it's irrelevant to the story at all; The Emperor losing to Luke and Vader and the power of love is critical. It's just you stop and think about it and on a wider scale, Luke was really correct when he said 'your overconfidence is your weakness' because it kicked Sheev's butt in more ways than his date with a reactor shaft. He basically pissed away a sure win at Endor showboating, because that's the kind of hammy rear end in a top hat he was (and it was great).

And yes, it's pretty neat that ROTJ ends with the pessimism and dogmatism of the Jedi being proven completely wrong.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

What's Canderous's again? "Pretend to be dead, get up from my implants, heavy machine gun every fucker in my way?" or something?

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Canderous might be a generic proud warrior race guy from a lovely bunch of space warriors, but he pulls it off through sheer 80s action star-ness.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I honestly like that one of the points of this game is 'whatever the macguffin is, it's so powerful that it's giving even a total dipshit like Malak the ability to menace the galaxy'. This game actually leans into Malak being a furious dumbass to show off what an advantage his side has, since even an idiot like him is a threat with all that raw power.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

To be honest, if you don't know about the twist you're not that likely to guess it. Rather than the foreshadowing being 'unsubtle', it's actually proper foreshadowing in that it seems extremely obvious after you figure it out. This whole twist is one of the genuinely good parts of KOTOR, I just wish they did more with the implications of it.

I mean, 'Jedi don't kill their prisoners' rings a little hollow when they destroy someone's mind and reprogram them to help them. Jedi love technicalities.

E: The other thing is you don't really have much cause to think of those oddities they point out as 'I'm Revan' earlier in the story your first time through. The PC happening to be a very skilled and cunning Republic soldier with a generic background who is strong in the force and the Jedi make an exception to train you would be perfectly in keeping with normal Star Wars plots. There are a lot of hints, but there isn't a lot of reason to suspect their endpoint until it's obvious in retrospect.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Feb 3, 2020

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

My sense was always Malak was Revan's dumb friend from school that she gave too many chances.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

No, you see. That guy's a slaver. Means he's safe from Jedi.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's one of those things where originally I was like 'well I guess that was a unique situation where they weren't in a position to rescue everyone during Episode 1' to 'Wait this is a loving pattern with these guys' the more I paid attention to it.

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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It always kind of bothers me when fiction is like 'No, if you kill the guy glorying in genocide and slavery, you'll be as bad as him'.

Especially when your PCs already have a body count in the hundreds and are partially defined by their cool laser swords and ability to wield them. At a certain point, it's just kinda weird; why the exception for this one guy? And if he's dying anyway, isn't it kinder to make it a quick and painless process instead of sitting there watching him bleed out while he spits venom?

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