#which would ultimately lead to a overall weaker sith lord

[kakashihasibs]

I would apologize for the star wars posting but I've been a star wars bitch pretty much my entire life so it pops up from time to time

[warsofasoiaf]

What is your opinion of KOTOR 2? Favorite things about it, least favorite things about it, characters, etc.

Alright, it’s time for another video game review, so an early reminder, spoilers abound for both KOTOR1 and KOTOR2. There’s a cut of course. Overall, I thought it was a phenomenally well-written game and one of the greatest pieces of media to exist in the Stars Wars universe (although I haven’t read any of the Expanded Universe books so keep that in mind), and as is the usual case for Obsidian particularly in this era, developer constraints created a beautiful mess.

Before we can talk about KOTOR we need to talk a little bit about Star Wars and what it meant as a film. The original Star Wars isn’t a very creative story, it’s largely a conventional Hero’s Journey. It’s a pastiche of early adventure stories in a science fiction setting, but with the added benefit of video and sound effects to really make it come to life in a way that was only possible in the imagination of readers. This gave the series a wide deal of appeal. Folks who grew up on the 1950′s Flash Gordon serials or WW2 dogfight films could see a film with those things they loved from their childhood with a high budget to bring those things to life. Science fiction fans could visually see elements of their favorite books brought to life on the silver screen. Fans of movies can appreciate the cutting-edge (for the time, although I love me some practical effects in film) effects and the unfamiliar elements of science fiction with the familiar trappings of an adventure tale. 

KOTOR was something similar for the video game industry, particularly for the fans of Baldur’s Gate. The ability to create a Jedi character and go on a journey like the Bhaalspawn did in Baldur’s Gate was something that appealed to a significant number of RPG fans, and the critical success of the Baldur’s Gate series brought a lot of money and prestige to Bioware. Fans of RPGs and Star Wars got to see their medium and interact with it in a whole new light. Much like A New Hope, KOTOR1 was largely a traditional story where Darth Malak is an evil guy without much in the way of redemptive qualities. The two major wrinkles were that you could play as a Sith and have some moments of true player cruelty like ordering Zaalbar to kill Mission, but this makes sense for an RPG, having no player choice in a game really makes you lose the lightside/darkside dynamic. Of course, the bigger and more interesting drift from a traditional Star Wars story was the Revan twist. This took advantage of both the slower pace of games to spend time with your PC and form a connection, and the nature of Western RPG’s where the player envisions themselves partially as their avatar onscreen to make the reveal hit home. Ultimately though, the Star Wars morality was upheld. The Jedi were the unequivocal good guys, the Sith were the unequivocal bad guys. 

KOTOR2 decided to put the Force under the microscope. It had started in 2003, so Episode II had already come out, and this idea of the prophecy of Anakin bringing balance to the Force, and what we knew of the Jedi in the original Star Wars trilogy who were reduced to hermits hiding on the fringes of society, really gave the impetus to examine this idea of the balance of the Force as not necessarily benevolent. It’s not evil, per say, it’s just indifferent to the people that die to make it happen. So the game became a self-critical examination of the core structures of the Star Wars universe. The Sith are usually thought of as the bad guys, and a lot of that holds true, domination, subjugation, power, betrayal, all that nasty stuff aren’t really conducive to most conceptions of goodness, but are the Jedi good? Does their passivity lead to injustice and terror being wrought on others because the Jedi failed to act. That was the question behind the Jedi involvement in the Mandalorian Wars, was the Exile correct in going off to fight them or were the Jedi Council who forbade them correct? As befits the folks who wrote Planescape: Torment, the game has two journeys, one through the game world and the plot that unfolds and another more deeply introspective.

I’ll put the things I don’t like about KOTOR2 first because the list is small but it is worth noting. The game is very clearly a rushed product and it shows. The cut content shows a great deal of lost potential, and the bugs could make the game at times completely unplayable. The game suffered from the accelerated development, having barely half the development time, and you can see where the seams show. The UI is clunky and gets cluttered when you have to manage items. Level design is similarly a nuisance, as they are big sprawling expanses without a lot of content in them. Part of that is a necessity to the mechanics, smaller levels would have other encounter designs being agro’d into it, but the levels are still expansive, empty, and a slog to get through. The Peragus mining facility is too large by half, and there’s a lot of backtracking in these levels. Since side quests encourage finding a doodad or killing a few key figures scattered around a map, that means a lot of trekking through these big levels to find one particular item or enemy locked in a corner somewhere. That can be very tedious, particularly on repeat playthroughs. At times, it feels like legging your way through a swamp to get to the next piece of delicious content.

Which is a good segue into talking what I like about the game, because its writing and characters are superb. The character companions are twists of classic Star Wars archetypes. Atton is the scoundrel Han Solo non-Force user type, but ends up having a disturbingly dark backstory where he was a Sith interrogator and feared his own Force-sensitive nature. Bao-Dur is a man haunted by the weapon of mass destruction he created, a tech-head who ends up hating his most momentous creation but feels the need to use it yet again. Canderous has become the new Mandalore and is desperately trying to revitalize his dying culture because he’s been so broken by Revan’s departure. The Wookie life-debt is so toxic that it breaks Hanharr and Mira in their own ways. Visas is a Sith whose will is shattered. Each of these characters are fundamentally broken (save for the droids, unless you count the physical need to reassemble HK-47 as broken), and the Exile draws them to him or her. Through discovering more about them and resolving it, the Exile awakens the characters’ connection to the Force, oddly ironic since the Exile is cut off from the Force and is only rediscovering it. Like most Bioware RPG’s, you the player through your character guide the growth of these characters and form a relationship with them, or use them for your own ends.

Kreia, of course, deserves her own paragraph. Kreia is the Star Wars Ravel Puzzlewell, an embittered woman who wants to destroy the cosmic chains of the universe and loves the player character in a deeply obsessive way, one that’s played completely straight in how it makes the player uncomfortable. She is deeply resentful of the Force and wants to destroy it, and through the Exile, who managed to cut themselves off so utterly completely in a unique way, she sees the path. Of course, the reason why the Exile cut themselves off was the mass death at Malachor V was so overwhelming that he or she would have otherwise died. Of course, her obsession and overriding mission cares little for the Exile’s own pain, and so the manipulations begin, using you to lure out and destroy the Jedi and the Sith, and in the end, you disappoint her, either because you don’t learn her lessons or she discovers that the only reason you were the way you were was because you were afraid. She still is obsessed over you, though, and so when you finally confront her, she obliges that affection to explain everything, unusually honest for a woman whose Sith name is evocative of the word betrayal. And fortunately, she allows something that most monologue villains don’t allow, a means by which to tell her she’s full of shit. Certainly, it’s a little weaker coming from her as an option to you rather than the player character saying it themselves, but I think it’s stronger, since so much of the ending had to be cut anyway it reinforces the ambiguity of it, that the ending is what you believe. Personal belief has always been important for the Exile and Kreia/Traya, and letting that transfer to the player is, while perhaps not the most ideal, completely valid given how rushed the development was. 

The other Sith Lords are fascinating concepts of evil and personal belief as well as well, and really show the Dark Side of the force in a parasitic, corrupt sense and the horrible ends of taking belief to its extreme. Darth Sion is the Lord of Pain. He cannot die but he feels pain constantly, making eternal life not a blessing but a torture, though in it he found a twisted source of enlightenment. His pain fuels his anger and hatred (key ingredients of the Dark Side) and so he persists solely through the Dark Side. Darth Nihilus, on the other hand, had his body obliterated by the Mass Shadow Generator, and so persisted as a wound in the Force, consuming Force energy to feed his relentless hunger. He is not a human anymore but a force of endless consumption that cannot be satiated, this hunger pain pushes him past his own mortal existence but which can only consume, not live. This perfectly illustrates the Dark Side concept of pursuit of power even past the point of sustainability, for Nihilus will continue consuming until all existence has been eaten.

The game is dark and moody, as you explore a shattered galaxy. In the original game, the search led to the Star Forge and the revelation that you the player was Revan. The sequel shows that there was no grand conspiracy; the act of Malachor built Nihilus and Sion and the player themselves was something that you did. It was not a conspiracy of Jedi but rather the after-effects of a particular action, much the way Lonesome Road had the Courier’s delivery of the package to Hopeville to be something that destroyed Ulysses even though you never met him. The Mass Shadow Generator was meant to save the galaxy from the Mandalorians but birthed a new, more powerful tragedy. Bao-Dur even wonders if the subjugation of the people under the Mandalorians was better than the power of the Mass Shadow Generator, a powerful moment ordered by just a mere single Jedi, built by a mere tech specialist. In true Planescape fashion, a personal apocalypse is a galactic apocalypse and vice-versa. Torment lingers over this game, in the broken characters, in a parallel journey both outward and inward. In many ways KOTOR2 was Planescape: Torment in the Star Wars universe, albeit with its own personal flair.

Alright, that’s a good review. I can do character analyses of some of the major characters if you want.

Thanks for the question, Messanger.

[legendsofthegffa]

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction Review

The two very first Star Wars books that I ever owned were Darth Bane: Path of Destruction and Republic Commando: Hard Contact. While I consider Republic Commando to be the best series in the Legends novels, the Darth Bane Trilogy is an excellent and highly recommendable series to anyone looking to learn more about the history of the Sith. Not only is it a rich tale of Star Wars lore, it is also an enjoyable read in and of itself.

Written by Drew Karpyshyn (former lead writer for BioWare, and responsible for the incredible Mass Effect series), the series is actually the culmination of Lucas’ work on Episode I. During the writing of the novalization of the film, Lucas had a long conversation with the author (Terry Brooks) about the history of the Sith; basically, a thousand years before the events of Episode I, there was a massive war between the Jedi and the Sith that ended with the supposed extinction of the Sith (for about the fifth or sixth time), but in actuality, one Sith Lord survived, and he rebuilt the order in secret, slowly infiltrating the galactic power structure until they could claim the galaxy as their own. It is to this Order of the Sith Lords that the Sith we see in the films (Sidious, Maul, Tyranus, and Vader) belong to.

Bane’s rise and fall (and yes, fall he must, for that is the way of the Sith), is chronicled over a trilogy, which begins with Path of Destruction. A miner, named Des, lives on a blighted world only good for mining. He lives a miserable life, having been raised by a monster of a father and treated as an outsider by the rest of the work crew, with only his dead father’s old cronies interacting with him to pick on him, despite his enormous size and unconscious connection to the Force. On top of this, Des is employed by the Outer Rim Oreworks Company, who has its workers caught in a never-ending cycle of debt, low wages and high interest. Des is expected to pay for not only his debt, but his father’s as well. This basically makes Des a slave, with seemingly no hope for escape unless a fortune falls in his lap.

While off duty, Des has a card game against the crew of a Republic freighter that is there to pick up the valuable ore the miners extract. There is currently a war on, as the Sith-led Brotherhood of Darkness is marching across the galaxy, conquering world after world. The visiting troops are also looking for new recruits, but even then, Des’ wages would be garnished to pay off his debt to ORO. Des tears into the soldiers, asking how a Republic that claims to fight for freedom and equality can claim that they are any better than the Sith when they engage in what basically amounts to slave labor? Des’ bad mouthing of the Republic and his winning the big pot on sabaac (thanks to his Force powers), causes him to get jumped outside the bar, and Des kills a soldier in self defense. Knowing his options are prison, enlistment or death, Des sneaks off world and enlists with the Sith.

From the very beginning we are given a sympathetic spin on Des. Yes, he is a Sith Lord to be, and responsible for countless deaths to come, but his situation was a cauldron that created the perfect host for the dark side: an environment where the strong are on top, and the weak are in the dust. This is the basis for everything Bane strives for in his new order. This does not absolve Bane of his actions, but it does explain them.

Bane’s origin also mirrors Anakin’s in a number of ways: both are born as slaves (Des in everyway but name), raised by a single parent (though Bane’s was an abusive monster of a father), and finally escaped their old lives after an encounter with Republic forces (though, again, Bane’s ended with him fleeing after committing manslaughter). Obviously, Anakin’s upbringing also proved to be a an experience that led to his fall to the dark side, but once again, Anakin’s redemption comes in the form of love, something Bane is almost completely alien too.

Des is quickly taken to be trained in the ways of the dark side, and it is here that he takes his new name; Bane, after the insult laid upon him by his father. Bane is a capable student, but after an incident with another student where he loses (badly), Bane’s confidence is shaken and he almost completely loses his connection to the dark side. Deciding to take up his own studying, Bane plums the depths of the knowledge of the pre-Brotherhood Sith, something the Sith’s leader, Lord Kaan, has forbidden.

Bane’s research leads him to conclude that the Brotherhood itself is an affront to the true Sith way. The Brotherhood believes that all are equal within, and while Kaan may be the leader, all Dark Lords of the Sith are equal. Bane believes that the dark side has been stretched too thin, and this has made the Sith weaker overall. Additionally, treachery is the lifeblood of the Sith, and Sith in large numbers always turn on each other eventually. Bane believes that if there is to be any triumph over the Republic and the Jedi, the Sith must begin again, after the destruction of the Brotherhood of Darkness.

It’s interesting to point out that the Sith who inspires Bane to begin his new system of Sith is Darth Revan, the character from Knight’s of the Old Republic, another series Karpyshyn led, thus tying his works together in an terrific manner (and giving him the opportunity to include one of the most famous Sith Lords in the EU).

Bane takes up the forbidden and abandoned title of Darth joins Kaan on the frontlines against the Jedi/Republic forces. Bane offers Kaan an ultimate weapon: the thought bomb, a dark side technique that can wipe out countless Force users. What Bane fails to mention is that the blast will also consume Kaan and his followers. Following the final battle of the war (in which countless Jedi and Sith are killed), Bane inspects the ruins of the battlefield and comes across a young girl named Rain. Sensing the dark side within the child, Bane takes the girl in as his apprentice, thus beginning the Rule of Two.

Path of Destruction shows us a Bane that is both myth and human. Yes, we see him as the dark messiah of the Sith (and that is indeed what he is: his actions making him the Sith’ari, the Sith version of Anakin Skywalker’s Chosen One), causing the deaths of tens of thousands and coldly manipulating people to get his ends. But we also see him as a man stuck in a nightmarish life, who finally finds friends and compassion amongst the forces of darkness, only to reject and kill the very people who had once helped and supported him. Darth Bane could have very easily been a monster from beginning to end, but Karpyshyn crafted a character that succumbs to impossible situations and “choose[s] the quick and easy path”. Next time, we’ll continue our look at the formation of the Order of the Sith Lords in Darth Bane: Rule of Two.

Connections to the GFFA

Where to start with this one? As Korriban is the former homeworld of the Sith, and Bane himself deeply investigates the history of the Sith in quest to reinvent them, nearly every major Sith Lord and conflict with the Jedi is given a mention or brief summary.

As I said, Bane’s inspiration for the Rule of Two comes from the Holocron of Darth Revan, the main character Knight’s of the Old Republic, and one of the most popular Sith Lords outside the films.

Exar Kun, creator of the double-bladed lightsaber and one of the Dark Lords of the Sith is mentioned.

Marka Ragnos and Naga Sadow, both pure-blood Sith and Dark Lords are also mentioned.

Fast forwarding ahead to New Republic era, during the events of the Dark Forces games, novellas and comics, Jedi-in-training Kyle Katarn stops a plot by the dark Jedi Jerec from using the power of the souls of the Force users killed by the thought bomb and trapped within it.

Final Score: 9/10