#the search for the maps was what corrupted revan and malak in the first place???

[hiddenbeks]

so many thoughts abt how schewpid the jedi council is in kotor but also not sure if i should write abt any of them before i finish the game because it's entirely possible that i'm still missing some critical information,

[cliocodex]

Remembering

A snippet I wrote a while back .....Revan after the Leviathan.... for insight into what's up with the sisters, read this ;)

How does one begin to remember? Revan. That was true, he knew, but what was his memory and what was the legend?

The ship was quiet; the others sleeping. Through the Force he felt them, most still radiating a lingering distrust. It came easier now the reaching out, like somehow knowing who he was had flipped a switch and the things he’d once done with ease came back to him in a rush. Aoibhinn was the loudest, felt like cold steel and chaos even as she slept. His sister. Somehow that felt the most logical of all of it, yet also the hardest, a reminder of the other sister he could not yet remember but once had known so well. The one he knew he’d somehow failed.

You called him Alek, Aoibhinn had said. That must mean something, but perhaps only what he didn’t need his memories to know - that Revan and Malak had been friends before they’d been master and apprentice, so he’d of course called the man Alek before the war. Just some residual knowledge seeping through.

His eyes searched the black against his eyelids, looking for that calm quiet center. He needed to remember.

Alek. His voice, younger as was the face close above him. Grass tickled at his ear, a rock poked at the small of his back, but he couldn’t move despite the discomfort of that, or rather didn’t want to, not wanting the other face to leave. For a moment he closed his eyes in the vision, felt the sun across his skin and the heat of something else. Then the face spoke, called him another name, the one from before Revan. His eyes opened to see that face smiling but radiating something else, too, a hunger he wanted to answer.

In the dark of the cargo hold, he raised his hand to touch the face in the dream, saw his past self mirror the motion, Alek. It was just one finger, the barest graze across his cheek and jaw, but enough that it made the other’s eyes blaze. Their bodies were already touching; they’d been wrestling, he thought. The rock in his back stung; his hips shifted almost involuntarily to relieve the pressure of it and….

His eyes flew open in the present, his breath coming in pants. Fuck. He saw now where this was going, the implication of the vision that was really a memory. It hurt. But he needed to know. He forced his breath even, closed his eyes lightly.

It was Dantooine, in the past, some place out in the plains. In the present he knew this memory wasn’t the first time they’d been to this place, but it was the first time they’d come this close to naming the wanting thing between them. Alek. He’d had a head full of hair then and a face that was whole; the ghost of his past self ran his hands through that hair and across that face, emboldened by the pounding of his heart and the hardness against his thigh.

He’d been ashamed at first for being clumsy, all teeth and tongue, but Alek was not. I have to be better at something, he’d laughed. And then it didn’t matter anymore. In the present he ached, remembering that wanting, forced his eyes to open, tried to find a focus on the faint shapes in the dark. Too much.

But the memories chased him anyway; he’d opened the box and couldn’t close it back. Alek’s hair was gone now, but he still had his face, could still smile in that way if he wanted, but never did. They’d ended the war. I’ll follow you, wherever this leads. Alek took his mask and kissed him roughly, the thing between them so heavy. The memories were jumbled, incomplete, but whiffs of true things he knew.

He’s a weakness. What voice was that? His own? Alek’s eyes burned now with something different, their wanting corrupted and jealous. Do not test me. His own voice, so cold, none of the warmth of the time on Dantooine.

Is that what you think this is, Revan, a test? Worried I might best you? The mouth that said those things was twisted and cruel. He’d kissed that mouth, had moaned as that mouth had mapped all of his flesh, still wanted the man who’d been. I’ll follow you….that mouth had promised. And the problem was that he had, followed him right into the abyss and had drowned in it.

Gods no. He knew in his gut what he’d see before the memory came, maybe he’d known as soon as he’d seen Malak on the Leviathan, why he’d wanted him to be Alek despite the impossibility of that. I did this, he said to the dark of the cargo hold. Alek. They’d sparred so many times over the years, Alek one of the few who could best him, maybe the only one now if he fought fair. Weakness. Blades and eyes blazed, Malak’s one to his two. I loved you. Who had said that or had they both? And then it was over; he’d walked away leaving Malak writhing on the floor, his face broken.

I did this, his voice in the present a hoarse whisper. And they were still trying to kill each other, weren’t they? He scrubbed his face, wondered if the masters had known when they sent him to find the maps with false memories in his head. Bile rose in his throat. He could do it now, kill Malak. He’d have to. Malek would be waiting for him on the Star Forge, drinking from the darkness there.

I’ll follow you…

Revan had broken so many things; what was one more?

[dgcatanisiri]

So... Let’s see how this works. We’ll adjust the format as needed if this doesn’t work, but hey, here we go.

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway. 

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway.

Our first installment takes a look at Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic. Obviously, as this game predates the modern DLC model (there was the Yavin market, but that was maybe a grand total of ten minutes tops of content, if we’re generous), so there are some awkwardnesses involved in making DLC for this - if nothing else, when the game ends, it ends, to keep playing, you have to start a new character. On another, there’s the level cap, stopping our leveling up after hitting Level 20. As the game presently exists, that should happen after being locked into the endgame combo of the Unknown World/Star Forge, but adding more content means that cap gets hit sooner. 

So understand that we’re assuming that there is the ability to play post-game and a higher level cap, as well as other quality of life style additions (in this case, probably among them are various additions from KOTOR 2, but that’s a subject for another day). I’m also willing to assume that there is content for characters (even if the respective voice actors have passed, retired, or just wouldn’t return), in the same style as modern games. The assumption here is that these DLC ideas would have been written, produced, and published during the active production cycle of the respective games.

As this is the inaugural edition, let me explain the format. There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable (unless it’s part of a hardwired point, like the above mentioned point of no return of travelling to the Unknown World, as an example), and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

And a further note - I reserve the right to come up with more ideas for any given game that I have already written up, naturally. I haven’t decided how I’ll handle that yet, but it’s entirely possible there will later be more ideas.

Okay, housekeeping matters out of the way, let’s get down to business!

The Yavin Excursion

Yavin 4 was the site of Sith Lord Exar Kun’s power base. In understanding more about him and his fall, the Jedi Council believe it may be able to shed light on the fall of Revan and Malak. But the secrets of the Massassi temples hold more than just the ghosts of the past, but a threat for the present...

(Available after Dantooine)

Tack this on to the existing content of the market in orbit of Yavin, I suppose. But the connection to the Tales of the Jedi comic seems like a good starting point here – investigate one Sith Lord to examine the motivations of another, find out why the first guy fell to the dark side, which will hopefully explain why the other guys did.

I see this as both a lore exercise – to offer the players more exploration of this era, considering that the Tales of the Jedi comics have been harder to come by as time as gone on, so allowing some more in depth portrayals of the time – and a chance to kind of approach the question of what drives someone to the dark side. Exar Kun fell by an overwhelming curiosity, Ulic Qel-Droma, his apprentice, fell by a desire for revenge, and later lost his connection to the Force (put a pin in that fact – we’ll be back to that come the DLC for KOTOR 2). Millennia later, Anakin Skywalker falls because of his fear of the loss of those he loves. Two of these people were redeemed, one refused to give up his power.

If anything, this would be a good chance for some foreshadowing of Bastila’s eventual fall (so perhaps this would be locked to before the Leviathan catches the Ebon Hawk), on top of asking the question that later drives KOTOR 2 – what were Revan’s motivations in turning to the dark side? Obviously, this is up in the air from a character perspective (and, honestly, so far as I care, from the player’s too, because I despise the whole “the Sith Emperor warped their minds” BS, and I’m ready and willing to disregard it, even in acknowledging The Old Republic). The first KOTOR never really focuses on the why of Revan’s fall, since Malak is the game’s big bad, and the Revan reveal is a plot twist – since this is DLC, the player would probably be expected to know it going in, so why not explore that, right?

As for what this threat is... I’m a little shakier on this. I’m thinking a Massassi warrior/beast of some kind, the same kind of Sith alchemical abomination we see in the terantatek or hssiss, only a much more powerful end boss kind of thing, a living relic of Exar Kun’s evil (given that, canonically, Exar Kun’s spirit survived to the Jedi Academy novel trilogy, he certainly can’t be the final boss), perhaps fed and kept alive by the powers of the remaining Massassi who worshipped Exar Kun as a god – in this case, looking to take advantage of the Ebon Hawk’s arrival to spread their master’s will across the galaxy and speed his return. Sith alchemy played a part in a lot of the Sith portrayals from this timeframe, and it’s kind of disappointing that KOTOR never really utilized these mutants, just had them as mindless high level bosses.

Vector

The rakghoul plague infested the lower levels of the planet of Taris. When the planet was bombed by the Sith, it managed to escape among the many refugees as well. With their experiences on Taris, facing the rakghouls, the Jedi Council sends the crew of the Ebon Hawk to investigate its spread to the planet Ralltiir – and stop the Sith from obtaining it as a weapon!

(Available after Dantooine)

The rakghouls were just kind of dropped into KOTOR with no explanation – they were a threat as a creature and as a plague in the Undercity of Taris, but no one ever spoke about what the plague’s origins were or where the rakghouls came from. And then along came the Vector mini-series of comics (hence the name for this) that put the creation of the rakghouls down to a Sith Lord, Karness Murr. Sith alchemy, the gift that keeps on giving.

But either way, considering that the rakghoul plague is something that even the Upper City of Taris was concerned about, that clearly says that it could easily have gotten off planet, especially in the panic of the evacuation. And really, with the added knowledge that this was originally Sith alchemy, it’s almost certain that some aspiring Sith would discover this and try to twist it to their advantage.

I pretty much pulled Ralltiir’s name out of a hat, primarily because it’s a fairly common named planet, but with little actually associated with it. It also makes a great place where the Republic would demand an immediate concern, because it’s a Core World and an economic hub. It’s a great place to have a plague that Republic heads would say would draw in the Ebon Hawk, whose crew had familiarity with the rakghoul plague, despite the threat of Malak and the search for the Star Maps.

I also see this as a way to give Mission and Juhani more content – Mission is a hard character for me to really justify remaining with the crew after Taris, given that she’s a teenager, I feel VERY uncomfortable taking her around on what is effectively a commando mission, while Juhani was very nearly hacked out of the game. Both of them grew up on Taris, in the lower levels of the planetary city, where the rakghouls aren’t just a distant threat. So give them this additional portrayal and focus because they’re familiar with the plague, maybe even knew some people who were infected and transformed by it.

The villain would be a Jedi-turned-Sith, someone who had turned to the Sith at some point after being a Jedi historian. A part of me wants to draw on one of the Jedi who would later show up in the Exile’s vision on Korriban, mostly because those were the Jedi we see recruited by Malak, and so less aware of Revan’s face, though that seems a touch much. Regardless, they’d previously acted as a historian, and is driven by the potential power of the rakghoul plague – Muur’s talisman is lost by this point (again, see the comics), but the rakghouls themselves remain, and, while I’m ignoring the whole “the Sith Emperor did it” thing with Revan, I also like the concept of the rakghouls evolving into the nekghouls, gaining sentience.

This is also a way to add a little bit more of a question to the results – do these evolved rakghouls deserve the consideration of being considered more than mindless beasts? Are they at all a continuation of the person they once were? Or are they just violent creatures that need to be put down? Is the guy trying to control them being corrupted by the dark side, or was he always evil?

So the central question here would be asking “what makes a monster?” Is it the mindless savagery of beasts, or the knowing cruelty of intelligent beings, and where is that line?

Sleheyron

The volcanic world of Sleheyron holds a Star Map. The Ebon Hawk and her crew set out to discover the secrets hidden there, but must be cautious, for the planet also holds a group of Darth Malak’s most powerful apprentices, who have, in their isolation from their leader, created their own plan for the fall of the Republic...

(Available after Dantooine)

Sleheyron was planned to be part of the hunt for the Star Maps – six environments are described in the Rakatan ruin on Dantooine, the life-giving worlds (oceanic – Manaan, grassland – Dantooine, arboreal – Kashyyyk) and death-giving worlds (desert – Tatooine, volcanic, barren – Korriban). Sleheyron was the volcanic world, but got cut for time, early enough that there really wasn’t a lot of material that made it out, with the planet just becoming part of Yuthura Ban’s back story. So, hey, free reign to develop something here.

Honestly, one of my big questions is, if Malak was with Revan as they travelled the worlds to find the Star Maps, why doesn’t he do something about the fact that these locations led to the big secret weapon that gives the Sith Empire its power and forces? Wouldn’t he have thought that maybe some form of guard or another would be a good idea? Sure, the Korriban one was guarded by virtue of being in the tomb of Naga Sadow, but the others? Here, we get a chance to have a group of Sith having taken control of this planet where there is a Star Map that can add to what our heroes have assembled (but, being DLC, this isn’t required to take on). They’re specifically there to guard the Map.

This becomes a bit of a game of cat and mouse – how to act before the Sith apprentices (probably former Jedi themselves) can find them, capture or kill them, hand them off to Malak. (Probably also means that this should be a later stage planet to visit, but hey, player choice of direction, right?) How do these Jedi move around a planet while the people in charge are out to get them? Draw on the mechanic from KOTOR 2, where the people on Dantooine recognize if the Exile goes there while a lightsaber is equipped, maybe.

Actually, I’d like to see some mechanic that tracks how much the player uses the Force while wandering around – the more they use the Force, or the more powerful the Force effects they use, the more likely they are to summon Sith execution squads or something. Sort of like KOTOR 2 and Nar Shaddaa, where the Exile’s actions drew the attention of the Exchange and Visquis, only in reverse – the player and company need to avoid catching the attention of the Sith until they’ve raised a rebellion against the Sith overlords, or at least gained enough public goodwill that the Sith can’t just openly take them away and execute them, something like that.

I like this idea because it allows an opportunity to play more with non-violent approaches, alternatives that aren’t “murder everyone because combat gives more experience!” Here, the idea is that you WANT to fly under the radar, avoid combat. And, if combat happens, you also have incentive to not use the lightsaber for a stretch – gives players a reason to put points into blasters or non-lightsaber melee combat, because I don’t know about anyone else, but the second I get a lightsaber in these games, I don’t ever use a different weapon. Here, the player is in the position of HAVING to switch up their play style, or, if they don’t, have to be that much more cautious in their actions here. This is a story piece that hinges on what you do with your words.

The ultimate confrontation with the Sith and the Star Map, in my mind, takes place in a cavern of an active volcano (or maybe one that has been dormant, but, because what’s the Sith without random acts of evilly evil, they’re managing to coax back to life). Here’s where there’s a pretty big question in the construction of this DLC – are we working in the confines of the game engine of the time or with newer, more modern systems? Cuz I’d kinda like something that took place within the volcanic areas of the planet, given that’s what the planet is described as. But I don’t think that KOTOR’s original engine would really be able to explore that to its fullest, given the limitations on it. My big idea would be to have the climax of the planet’s arc have the threat of a volcanic eruption, potentially with the base of operations for these Sith being flooded by lava.

If that is an engine limit... I really have no idea what the alternative would be, but, hey, since this is pie in the sky as it is, why not call for the engine advancement that lets it be a thing, where we have to outrun a lava flow or something.

Echoes of the Past

The strike team that fought Revan is being targeted by Malak’s assassins. The crew of the Ebon Hawk take a journey to the graveyard of the attack on Revan’s ship, the battle that led to the defeat of the dark lord. But the dead don’t rest easy, especially amongst the ruins of the Sith Lord’s vessel...

(Available after the Leviathan)

The strike team that captured Revan is kinda the forgotten element of the game as is. This is a team, and yet we only hear about Bastila’s involvement. Which, sure, she is the member on our squad, she does have the Force Bond with Revan, but... Who were the others? Where have they been during the war?

And it seems like Malak would think of them as a threat period – they were the Jedi who were there to face off against Revan, the Jedi thought they’d have a chance against this great Sith Lord, the leader of the Sith forces of the time. But Bastila is the only one the game ever concerns itself with, and doesn’t even mention if the others lived, who they were, why they were chosen... None of that.

So here we get to explore them. The added bonus is that I see this as a post-Leviathan mission, one that we play with full awareness of our player character’s identity. How much of that awareness we pass on is one thing, and it really allows us to explore the idea “who was Revan before, who is Revan now?” Because that’s going to come into play when dealing with the people who were at one point sent in to kill Revan – sent to kill us, the player character.

I also like the set piece idea of a graveyard of ships, where the characters are walking through the husks of dead vessels – the Harbinger sequence in KOTOR 2 is still a favorite of mine. Granted, this would probably be a bit of a conceptual retread of that part of that game, but hey, why not get some variation of the same old gameplay, right? Plus, it’s different here for the fact that this will have some personal connection to Revan – this was their ship. Did they consider it a home? Just a place?

That leads to the bigger plot element, though. These Jedi know Revan as a threat. They’re going to be suspicious of Revan the whole way through – “are you the Jedi the Council thought you to have become, or are you the Sith we were once sent to kill?” Like I’m sorta thinking this is a case where we’d get these teammates as companions proper now that I’m considering this in detail, and this all builds to the main confrontation. Like we wouldn’t take our Ebon Hawk buddies on this one, but two of these guys.

That confrontation would involve the assassins being revealed to be loyalists to Darth Revan, with their mission having begun with attempting to avenge their fallen Lord, but now, with Revan returned to them, having tested their skill over the course of their luring Revan back to them, they are willing to take up their banner once more, leading to the choice – be Revan, the Sith Lord, or Revan, the Prodigal Knight.

And yes, I know, this is the same thing we see with Bastila later. In some ways, that’s the point. Choosing the light or the dark is not one you make once and are one that path forever. It is a constant, repeated choice, one that must be made, again and again. It’s something that has to been affirmed and reaffirmed, because it will always come up again. Here, it’s just “we offer you power and loyal servants,” while Bastila has the offer of their Force bond – hell, if this were real DLC, I’d say patch in some element to the endgame of Bastila trying to use their bond to lure Revan over to her side on top of things.

What Remains

Darth Malak’s assault on Dantooine was meant to destroy the Jedi. The Ebon Hawk is the one ship that might be able to break the Sith blockade and rescue the people trapped behind their lines, as well as recover irreplaceable Jedi artifacts hidden away at the enclave. And Revan has a need to confront the Jedi Council...

(Available after Leviathan)

This one has always been in my mind as something that, in many ways, we needed to see happen. I look at this as being the necessary confrontation with the Jedi Masters that we need, because they’re using Revan. Revan was reprogrammed to be their weapon against the Sith, and what exactly were they going to do if and when the war was over and they’d no longer had need of Revan?

A mission to Dantooine, done by the ship that could escape the blockade of Taris, to attempt to rescue and recover the Jedi, break the people there out of the iron grip of the Sith, at first does seem somewhat at odds with the portrayal of Dantooine in KOTOR 2, but it still makes sense if you think of the first priority being to evacuate the Jedi and the relics they were saving – the Jedi become the reason that any rescue comes, not the people stuck there. The Jedi and their artifacts are prioritized over the people now under the thumb of the Sith.

Especially if the only real encounter we have is with the Jedi themselves, seeing them in the midst of their exodus, dealing with the Sith occupiers and executioners, all of whom would have once had friends here – I see this also including a Republic military outpost to Dantooine prior to the attack there, because there honestly should have been one anyway (this I chalk up as much to the more limited engine of the game as anything else), and that providing some extra characters to events, which makes it all the more devastating having their former comrades in arms now there to kill them.

As much as this is about confronting the Jedi for the way that they intended to use Revan, this is also an exploration of the divide of Republic and Sith, that those now calling themselves Sith were once the best and brightest of the Republic. Yes, the Jedi failed to come to the aid of the Republic in the midst of the war, but that doesn’t explain the violence these former soldiers engage in against their own people. What made the rank and file Sith soldier agree to this?

That examination of motivation would, I feel, be a part of why the resulting confrontation with the Jedi would matter so much – what drove Revan? What drove the Sith? What drove the Jedi? Because they mindwiped Revan and implanted them with a personality to use them as a weapon. They didn’t “turn an enemy to their cause.” They violated Revan in an effort to use them. When the war was over, what did they really think would happen?

Specifically, we need to confront Zhar, who, given Kreia’s utter disdain for him in KOTOR 2, I get the impression that he was the major proponent of this idea. His actions may have been justified as “for the greater good,” but it always seems like the greatest of morally questionable actions are justified with those words. Do we confront him with rage, forgiveness, or... something else? Because this is a case where I can see both condemning him to death and condemning him to live as a punishment. I could even see this being a case of him bowing to Revan’s judgment, and no option having a light side/dark side shift, because this isn’t about the Force. This is about justice.

Whether or not the Jedi admit it, a life was taken the day they implanted a personality into Revan’s body. The Jedi need to be called out and recognize that they do not have clean hands after what they’ve done.

Revan’s Shadow

Although Revan’s legacy, the Star Forge and the Sith army, have been defeated, there are still questions of Revan’s journey. There was more to it than Star Maps. The crew of the Ebon Hawk reunite on the planet Belkadan to find out more of the Rakatan Empire, and its ties to the dark side of the Force. And along the way, Revan will find more of their lost past...

(Post-Game)

The fact is, we get very little of Revan in the game proper, little about who they were as a person before the fall. This is conceptually to hide the fact that the player IS Revan, of course, but... It creates a lot of little issues for me – I mean, like half of these prospective DLCs are about expanding something of Revan’s motives and past. Obviously, this is a blank slate for the player, because they wanted to leave this open for us to decide, but they DID make a few definitions of who Revan was with the existing content, with the case of the Star Map on Kashyyyk.

And for me, personal identity is a big lingering question for this character – again, I’m choosing to ignore the handling of Revan as a character in The Old Republic, and I’m gonna include the tie-in novel in that, so no one is allowed to say “the novel said [x]!”

This is someone whose entire concept of who they are is in question once they learn that they are a constructed self, created by the Jedi Council as a weapon. Who ARE they? Who have they chosen to be, and, if they could reclaim the parts of themselves that they lost with the Jedi’s mind wipe, would they? Obviously, there’s no time in the main plot to focus on these questions, but I feel like this would eat at them afterwards, leading them to having to find answers. And what kind of friends would the others be if they let Revan do this alone?

I picked Belkadan pretty much because it’s an out of the way planet that has been identified as part of the Rakata’s Infinite Empire, so it made as much sense as any planet to be the site of this. I mean, the involvement of the Infinite Empire is certainly a good option for a place that questions who Revan is.

This would be a place where Revan had gone, after the Mandalorian Wars, a place where they were trying to connect to the Force, to understand the questions – why did the Jedi Council believe they shouldn’t be involved in an existential threat? Why is Revan drawn to these Star Maps and the destination they point to? What awaits them if they go, and what will change about them? What answers are to be found in asking an energy field that can offer no direct response?

Obviously, I’m thinking in terms of finding recordings of Revan, so requiring a voice for Revan – Rino Romano did the little soundbites when male Revan interacts with things, while I don’t know who did the voice bites for female Revan, so they’d be options, or new VA’s altogether. While part of me does want to go forward and make Revan a fully voiced protagonist (because I’m just used to that nowadays), I could accept this as being something only for old!Revan, not present!Revan.

The idea is simply to explore the driving motivations of Revan and decide plainly who Revan wants to be now. I kinda see the ending reach a point of ‘hey, you can reclaim your old memories, you can decide what personality is dominant, what do you want?’ and Revan being able to choose who they will be from here on out.

This is also a good place to require at least Bastila and Carth. Obviously I’m kinda leaning more into the light side ending for this, but... Well, the dark side endings tend to be untenable for future content anyway – Revan as the reclaimed Sith Lord, leading the army against the Republic was never really a viable future, because the Republic had to survive. So yeah, we’re gonna take the easy route and assume light side here. So Bastila and Carth, as Revan romances, would also have a contribution to make, building on the questions of “I’m in love with the person who was Darth Revan, can I accept this?” Like I said, a lot of questions that the game sidestepped, and this one matters for the sake of the relationship being able to continue after the ending of the game.

The Rakatan Prize

The Unknown World – Rakata Prime, Lehon – has become a subject of a great many conversations. Now that the Star Forge is gone, the planet is accessible, and many are eager to investigate its mysteries and forgotten technology. Having had firsthand experience, the Republic has asked the crew of the Ebon Hawk to return...

(Post-Game)

And then, there’s the Rakata. Not that Star Wars isn’t full of ancient empires that rose and fell millennia ago, but this was KOTOR’s contribution. And really, they’re almost superfluous – hell, if the Unknown World were rewritten so that the Rakata had gone extinct, the only thing that really would be necessary would be finding a way into the temple. I kinda think that would even tighten things up a little, especially given how often I’ve hit the level cap before meeting the Council of Elders.

The Rakata are a mystery, and the idea here is to investigate that. Build up the whole element of the Rakata having lost their connection to the Force, and the fact that they’re trying to explore this (because we’re assuming light side against here and that the Elders survived, including the scientists investigating this).

Because this is one of those things that stands out in Star Wars lore, when beings are stripped of their Force connections. Ulic Qel-Droma, the Exile, this is something that is traditionally a case of an individual, not a species.

We also have the remains of a galactic empire to examine here. If a species once ruled the galaxy, it’s inevitable that there are those who would see that empire be reborn. The threat of this DLC becomes this group who aspire to reconquer the galaxy using the mind transfer technology that puts the Rakatan prisoner in that white space box that would allow them to trap the minds of Jedi and other Force users to take their bodies and use them to go forth and conquer the galaxy.

Ultimately, the question’s going to be whether or not to restore their connection to the Force – do the Rakata, a race of dominators of the galaxy, whose humbling by the forces of nature has not managed to truly change them, deserve a second chance, or should they have their attempt to restore their own connections to the Force wiped out, leaving them vulnerable to an inevitable extinction?

Because this is one of the big things with Revan, the idea of redemption, change, second chances. Does Revan extend this chance to these people, people who clearly have more than a few members who have no interest in peaceful coexistence? But if not, do they deserve to be condemned to extinction?

And, as a bonus...

Romance Content – Bisexual Carth, Bisexual Bastila, Gay Canderous, extended Juhani romance

Because Carth and Bastila should be bisexual, and Juhani’s romance deserves to be more proper. Meanwhile, Canderous should totally be an option as well, and yeah, I’m gonna be selfish here and say that he should be gay, rather than bi (because, again, I’m ignoring the novel, there is no wife). Because this means that there’s a favoring for same-sex romances, and that never happens. My list, my way. Star Wars is gay culture.