Knights of the Old Republic EP15: I Love Your Goggles!

By Shamus Posted Friday Oct 2, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 126 comments


Link (YouTube)

I realize it’s a running joke on this show for Josh to play unconventionally and for the rest of us to rage about it, but let me drop the shtick just long enough to point out what a mess this boss fight is.

So apparently this fight is scripted to end when Calo “dies”. But the game doesn’t tell you that, and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to want to deal with Davik first. But then Davik is almost immune to damage and your squad mates obsessively cancel orders to go back to beating on Calo. This becomes all the more befuddling later when Calo shows up for another boss fight on another planet.

As if being defeated by the player isn’t enough of a death sentence, Calo then blows himself up with a detonator. And is then hit by an orbital beam. And then some scenery falls on his head. Why inflict all this damage on him when the plot mandates he needs to show up later? And of course, once you fly away, Calo has no way to escape the planet, which is currently being bombed into gravel. Which means the encounter should kill Calo five times over: Once from the fight, once from setting off a grenade in his own face, once from the death-beam, once from the falling scenery, and finally from being left behind on a planet where everyone is doomed to die.

(It actually doesn’t show the detonator go off. I can’t tell if this means the orbits death-beam hit him before he could set it off, or if this is just a byproduct of 2003 animations and cutscenes.)

Why compel the player to attack the person that needs to survive this fight? Why subject him to so much overkill if he needs to show up later? Why portray Davik as the guy who is immune to damage, when he’s the one who dies? Why make a boss fight with two foes, only one of which you’re supposed to fight, without explaining the goal to the player? I guess the player is supposed to do this fight several times and then intuit how to beat it through heavy meta-gaming?

What a mess.

 


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126 thoughts on “Knights of the Old Republic EP15: I Love Your Goggles!

  1. Benjamin Hilton says:

    I always took it that Calo Was going to blow himself up but the bombardment brought the roof down before he could, after which he was stuck under rubble. And the fact that he made it off the planet just shows he’s resourceful. After all the planet isn’t destroyed Death Star style, it’s just carpet bombed. I’m sure others survived as well.

    1. venatus says:

      yeah I always figured that the scenery falling on him prevented him from detonating the grenade which would have killed everyone in the room.

      as for being able to survive the bombardment, I don’t buy it. if I remember right then the mining station among asteroids they open the second game in was actually suppose to be the remains of this planet. so he would have had to find a way off the planet while it was still being bombarded, and he’s far away from any other hangers and in a situation were anyone with a space faring ship is probably trying to run the blockade themselves.

      I just don’t buy that he could survive on a planet that’s probably lost it’s atmosphere or that he could get to another ship in time.

      1. Alexander The 1st says:

        I always understood it as Calo Nord surviving the initial bombardment, but eventually got found by some Sith and gave away *the* spoiler that later on buys him a way off the planet on the Dusky Owl, the fastest ship in the sector *after* you leave it.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          I always felt as if Bioware really wanted to sell Calo Nord as this super badass that I should care about. I didn’t.

          1. Ledel says:

            And now we’ve found the proto-Kai Leng.

            1. The Rocketeer says:

              I’m imagining Calo Nord and Kai Leng meeting, and Calo Nord just looks him over and says, “Wow, you look like a fucking dork.

              1. Zombie says:

                Nord doesn’t look like any less of a dork with his stupid hat and goggles.

                1. Bryan says:

                  …Are we going swimming later?

                  (SCNR)

                2. The Rocketeer says:

                  thatsthejoke.jpg

              2. Wide And Nerdy says:

                At least Nord wasn’t a petulant dickhead who was inexplicably built up as your opposite number reducing your character in the process. He was just some random too cool badass who didn’t overstayed his welcome nearly so badly.

                I’m kind of offended that we would degrade Calo by comparing him to Kai Leng. Nobody deserves that.

                1. GloatingSwine says:

                  That’s because Calo only has three scenes and doesn’t arbitrarily win with cutscene powers in any of them, and you kill him relatively early in the game and get loot.

            2. Sleeping Dragon says:

              I think you’re half-joking but you know what? When I think about it this doesn’t feel too far off the mark…

      2. Benjamin Hilton says:

        Oh no the mining station was around another planet (Peragus II). The ship didn’t actually have the power to destroy the planet. Carth even says “there wasn’t a building over two stories standing.” Allot of destruction yes, but no where near total annihilation.

        1. venatus says:

          ah ok, it’s been a long time since I played either game, so him surviving isn’t has far fetched as I thought.

          still on the far end of plausibility though

          1. djw says:

            The mining facility was supplying fuel to an orbital station around Telos, so it is easy to see how you could mix that up with Taris.

            1. Thomas says:

              I make that mistake, realise the mistake and forget it all just to make the mistake all over again. I could have done with a name that sounded different to Taris.

              Especially since Telos’ whole thing was that it’s surface had been destroyed by Darth Malak bombing it in the Jedi Civil War with the assistance of the specific officer who was with Malak in the cutscene of this episode.

              EDIT: Stupid expanded universe canon of the KOTOR games tidbit of the day – Carth’s nickname is ‘Fleet’

              1. Gruhunchously says:

                Given that Admiral Saul was directly involved in the bombing of Telos, his reservations about doing the same to Taris come off as a little odd. Maybe he gained a little bit of conscience in the intervening time.

                1. Benjamin Hilton says:

                  Well Bombing Telos was a tactical strike. This is just slaughter to get to one person. Plus in the cut-scene his issue isn’t bombing the planet but the fact that they were doing it with their own people still on the ground.

                  1. Gruhunchously says:

                    But he makes a direct mention of the innocent casualties the bombing will inflict. Given the kind of cackling maniac Malak is, it seems on odd thing to risk your life over an objection like that.

                    1. Benjamin Hilton says:

                      oh good call. Well yeah I don’t know then other than the aforementioned tactical-ness of the Telos strike, which could be argued ended a battle before it began thus saving lives over all. (But now were nearing headcanon which is a murky realm).

                    2. djw says:

                      Saul’s duty in this case was to give his master an opportunity to twirl his mustache and cackle. As head minion he had to ask the question, regardless of how he felt about bombing Taris.

                    3. Thomas says:

                      With Telos, Revan just wanted a tactical strike, but Malak ordered Saul to wipe out all life on Telos but leave any escape pods. Given when you see it in KOTOR2, they have to build huge force field networks just to get grass to grow, I think it’s fair to say Telos went well beyond a tactical strike.

          2. Benjamin Hilton says:

            Also in the Old Republic MMO Taris is a planet you can visit and learn about what the survivors did after the bombing. (I didn’t bring this up initially because it was written in so long after that it’s kind of unfair to use that as evidence in the self contained story in this game.)

          3. Metal C0Mmander says:

            I would accept Calo Nord’s survival a lot more if he dropped the badass facade and admitted he got lucky.

  2. Daemian Lucifer says:

    The obsidian raven.

    1. Destrustor says:

      The Onyx Pelican

      1. djw says:

        The Alabaster Albatross.

        1. djw says:

          The Fuchsia Finch.

          1. Henson says:

            The Puce Pelican.

            1. Florian the Mediocre says:

              The Green Gull.

            2. Ledel says:

              The Charred Cockatiel

              1. Radio Silence says:

                The Plaid Penguin

                1. Majere says:

                  The Black Bird

                  1. Henson says:

                    The Khaki Kiwi.

                    1. Syal says:

                      The Turqoise Turkey.

                    2. Florian the Mediocre says:

                      The Orange Ostrich.

                    3. djw says:

                      The speckled spoonbill.

                    4. djw says:

                      The alliterative auk.

                    5. Ivan says:

                      The Magenta Macaw.

                    6. Joe Informatico says:

                      The Vermillion Ptarmigan

                    7. Shamus says:

                      I forgot to mention in the episode, but Space Quest 2 has you flying the Aluminium Mallard.

                    8. Wide And Nerdy says:

                      The Centennial Chicken.

                    9. Henson says:

                      The Bistre Booby.

                    10. Nidokoenig says:

                      The Indigo Ibis.

                    11. djw says:

                      The weekly wren

                    12. Felblood says:

                      The Epic Raptor

                      –or Epoch if you want to make the pun a little easier.

      2. Florian the Mediocre says:

        The Glass Cliffracer?

        1. Benjamin Hilton says:

          Oh man, I’d have to shoot that down just on principle.

    2. Gruhunchously says:

      Kyle Katarn’s first ship in the Dark Forces series was the Moldy Crow. You couldn’t do much worse than that.

    3. Wide And Nerdy says:

      The Pyrite Puffin

  3. Thomas says:

    This game! They design it so that you’re encouraged to either be nice or laughably villainous and then they dump a load of NPCs on you who won’t actually let you do anything evil.

    I don’t know how I never noticed this on my evil runs (although like most people, I mainly did lightside runs)

    1. Thomas says:

      As much as I complain, KOTOR1 is great at making your companions feel more real and ‘breaking the rules’ of what a game’s companion should do. It’s the thing I like most about it probably, and it’s advantage over the (unrestored) KOTOR2 in my eyes.

      Having your party members just stop and talk to each over, without including you, is brilliant. And midgame they do even more stuff with Bastila and then endgame there are things companions can do that I’d never seen before when I first played KOTOR1

      1. GloatingSwine says:

        Companion banter was something that happened in Baldur’s Gate 2 (up to the point that certain characters would either kill each other or simply leave the party if others were around). Having people like Jan around to make fun of him was all that made Anomen tolerable.

        They largely stop doing it in later games because it’s actually pace breaking and annoying (In Dragon Age Origins they have banter but it just happens ambiently you don’t have to stop to watch it), especially on Taris where you’re going to be getting the “Carth looks like he wants to have a whine” prompt regularly so they shipped all that stuff back to the camp where the player could do it if they wanted it.

        1. Thomas says:

          I think they should have kept on frustrating players. The ambient banter on DA:I is fun and all, but it feels like it doesn’t matter. I guess they could have gone down the KOTOR2 route and had it happen as a cutscene when you walked back to base but still. It makes your journeys outside the ship feel more lifeless and gamey without it.

          Similarly it’s “Don’t frustrate the players” which stop developers from doing more interesting and unusual things through the game. Villains don’t permanently take or break your stuff, companions don’t disappear, your airship doesn’t get destroyed… etc

          1. GloatingSwine says:

            Player goodwill is a resource, and you need to consider how you spend it. If you’re spending it on serious dramatic consequences then you’re doing a much better job than if you spend it on an NPC unloading their unrelated personal drama at the least dramatically appropriate moment (like just before a boss door).

            Even in Baldur’s Gate 2 a lot of the key party banter would happen at appropriate times (eg. they wouldn’t happen in dungeons, so they happened just as you left, or when you rested, or just after a fight, so they don’t break the player’s flow of going somewhere to do something, they occur at natural breaks in the action).

    2. Benjamin Hilton says:

      Well at least being laughably villainous makes more sense in terms of light side / dark side than it does in the Mass Effect system.

      And in that vein, even though carpet bombing a planet to kill one person does seem a bit overkill, it’s really no worse than blowing up a planet as an interrogation technique.

  4. Rick says:

    My least favorite segment in the game, worse than the underwater parts of Manaan. Why?

    If you die during the space battle, the last possible save point is before the Davik/Calo fight. That’s a ridiculous amount of cutscenes to sit through again… and again… and again… Grrr.

    1. You can save before boarding the Ebon Hawk. Still cutscenes, but you are back after you beat the failed runaway bride and groom. :P

      1. Wide And Nerdy says:

        And all this is if you remember to save that soon. You could have to fight your way through the last three or four rooms again as well. Its infuriating.

        And no, they didn’t do anything to help fix this part of the game when they ported it to smartphone. The turret controls are even worse there.

    2. Stuart Hacking says:

      Im playing through the iPad port at the minute, and that space battle is terrrrrible!

  5. 4th Dimension says:

    So you guys trying to disappoint Mumbles by trying to shack her boyfriend with some whiny princess or what.

    1. Majere says:

      Obviously this means Mumbles has to fight Bastilla in a no holds barred steel cage match.

      1. Gruhunchously says:

        Mumbles really needs to up her sneering British accent game if she hopes to have a chance.

      2. 4th Dimension says:

        Knowing how much a pushover Bastilla is without a light saber Mumbles got no worries there.

        1. Thomas says:

          She was literally failing to damage an unarmed aristocrat with her lightsaber in this episode.

          1. 4th Dimension says:

            A noble which she disturbed from his resting so he probably was in his pijama on top of that.

  6. Henson says:

    Huh. And I had always remembered having to kill Davik in that fight. Even in my most recent playthrough. I must be missing something.

    Josh seems to be forgetting some basics on how this game’s systems work, too: in order to make your party members do an action immediately (say, turn on energy shields), you must first cancel all previous actions. This includes the auto-attack that occurs in the beginning of battle. This game doesn’t separate the movement and attack components of an attack action, so the auto-attack for melee fighters doesn’t complete until they’ve run up next to their target and attacked once.

    1. John says:

      I made the same mistake in my current playthrough. I remembered that I had to focus my attacks on one of the enemies to trigger Calo’s little cutscenes, but I chose Davik rather than Calo. Things did not go well for me.

      Davik really seems like he ought to be the weaker of the two, given the way that the game has tried to build up Calo’s reputation.

      1. Zombie says:

        Even the Prima Offical game guide says, and I quote, “[Calo] Nord is a hardy individual, well-known to Canderous, and battling him is foolhardy. Instead train your fire onto Davik“.

        1. Thomas says:

          Looking at random forum threads, there’s active disagreement even amongst players who you’re meant to focus down.

          There’s a suggestion that the cutscene triggers when you get either guys health bar down to a certain point? It’d make sense

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Also,could it be that the one you should fight is picked at random,and you have to let your characters pick the vulnerable one.

            1. Supahewok says:

              No. I finally succumbed to temptation, and booted up the game for another run-through. Powered through Taris. You need to knock down Calo to around half; if Davik’s still alive, there’s a split second where you can see him getting hit by one of the orbital lasers and going down.

              I remember my very first playthrough. I targeted Davik first, since he seemed to be the weaker of the two. It made things close, but I didn’t realize that I could have just focused on Calo until a second playthrough. It still wasn’t too terrible.

              This latest playthrough I decided to do what Josh is doing and kept my character at level 2 for the entirety of Taris (you do have to take a level as part of the tutorial). The fight was actually pretty easy; if you just have everybody throw grenades at Calo he’s knocked down to half health within 2 rounds. Much easier than the other boss fights I had to muddle through with a gimped character.

              1. Felblood says:

                Plus you can still loot Davik if the laser kills him, so there’s no loss in focusing down Calo.

  7. I’m really becoming curious about how the final call on the game is going to go while the end credits are rolling. Everyone went into it pretty positive, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that if any of the SW crew played this today, they wouldn’t give it a second look.

    This SW is kind of a unique one for me. Many years ago, but years after SW:KotOR was new, I picked it up in a garage sale. I got to the about halfway to the Undertunnels or whatever that underground area is called when I encountered a fatal bug with my Intel graphics chipset. (Polygons went crazy, followed by crashdeath.) So moreso than usual I really am watching this SW in lieu of playing the game myself… and, uh… I’m currently pretty comfortable with that decision. In 2015, I wouldn’t care to play this. I’ve got a huge backlog of games that are likely to be better.

    1. John says:

      The game’s engine doesn’t like Intel graphics much. I get horrible, horibble glitching when I have grass turned on in the Undercity on Taris. The game flat out refuses to let me turn on some of the fancier visual effects, like the Predator-style stealth or the motion blur for Jedi speed.

      To perhaps no one’s surprise, the glitching is even worse in the sequel, where many textures are inappropriately semi-transparent. I should not be able to see through that alien’s face!

    2. djw says:

      The game has its flaws, but it scratches the Star Wars itch in a way that very few other games manage. I’m getting a big kick out of this seasons SW, but I think that the “star wars itch scratching” doesn’t come through very well in this format, so it makes the game look less fun than it actually is.

      1. Could be part of the problem for me too, because I have a lot less Star Wars itch to scratch now than I did in 2003. In 2003, my Star Wars experiences were the first three movies and the Timothy Zahn novel series. I’d seen Phantom Menace but that still wasn’t necessarily terrible. (I wouldn’t see Attack of the Clones until later, even though that’s 2002; I could tell I wasn’t in a hurry.) More Star Wars sounds awesome!

        In 2015, my Star Wars experiences are the most recent three movies and a pile of expanded universe stuff I can tell I have little interest in. More Star Wars sounds like, well, more Hollywood that seems incapable of having a new idea.

        (And my impression of the most recent three movies is more positive than it otherwise could be. I’ve saw Phantom Menace in the theaters, but I’ve only seen Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in contexts where I had easy access to the “advance 30 seconds” button, and I knew to skip any scene where Anakin was trying to have… dialog. It makes the movies much better. Shorter, but better. Or perhaps rather, shorter and better.)

        1. djw says:

          I saw the first movie in 1977 at the age of 7, so that pretty much set the scale for awesome for the rest of my life (so far, at least). The prequels didn’t measure up very well to that, but Kotor did (in 2003 at least). I still play them once in a while even now.

    3. Ant says:

      I got and completed it two or three years ago. I thought it was still a good game worth playing but it’s clearly not at the level of any of the more recent Bioware game. Its stronger point is it twist, which like Jade Empire is beautifully executed.

  8. Majere says:

    I never had trouble with this fight because I always beelined my entire party for Calo because by that point I wanted his smug ass dead way more than I did Davik. Which may be why they made him so damn annoying.

  9. Ledel says:

    So I after my fifth failed attempt at trying to figure this fight out (and even seeing if taking those 4 levels I had stored up for my main made any difference [no]). I decided to just start trolling around and ran in circles around Calo and Davik. Apparently, that is the ideal way to beat this fight because I barely made it one lap before the cutscene started with the planet exploding. So the problem was that Josh just wasn’t trolling hard enough.

  10. Ledel says:

    Josh, pro-strats incoming. If refusing to level up on Taris gives you a big power boost later on, think of the power boost you would get if you waited until near the very end of the game to cash in on any of those levels you have! Just save them all up until you reach the doorway to Malik, and then take all your levels. Who cares if it would take an entire episode of navigating menus to finish? I think it would be worth it.

    1. Metal C0Mmander says:

      Oh good lord no! First, the reason why he waits to get more levels is because when he’ll get them they’ll be the same improved levels he would get end-game. Second, Josh incompetence has already stopped being funny for me and now I just want to see him get on with it.

      1. Josh says:

        THAT’S PRECISELY WHY THIS IS THE BEST IDEA.

        1. 4th Dimension says:

          And if you play your cards right the cast probably won’t notice you haven’t leveled until you leave Tantoine and hit your first fight on Kasyyyk.

          1. Metal C0Mmander says:

            And then they will rightfully come to his house and murder him. But it will have been worth it… At least for that damn weirdo.

            1. Thomas says:

              You forget that levelling up is an auto-heal, so if Josh had 18 level ups/autoheals left by Malak, well he’d be invincible wouldn’t he?

              Think how much time that would save fighting Malak

              1. Metal C0Mmander says:

                Ok I’m starting to think that people are starting to believe this as a truly viable strategy and it absolutely isn’t. First, even if a level up gives you a full heal you don’t need that many for Malak only 2/3 max. Seconds there are parts of the game you are forced to play alone so Josh is gonna need a half decent character long before the final fight.

                1. Ivan says:

                  3rd, Josh is getting one shot in almost every fight. I don’t believe that you can level (and heal) if you’re dead.

            2. 4th Dimension says:

              If they haven’t murdered him in Fallout: NV when he deviously confused Shamus into allowing him to start Honest Hearts despite all of the agreeing not to do the DLC, and lugging the Incinerator all the way, they won’t touch him now.
              So this season’s incinerator will be always keeping 2-3 levels “in reserve”.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Actually,if he wants to really troll everyone,he will level up now,just before becoming a jedi.

      1. Henson says:

        Okay, now I’m scared.

  11. Flailmorpho says:

    Does anyone else here look at a lightsaber and just think it looks super uncomfortable and awkward to wield with the anti-ergonomic handle?

    1. djw says:

      Yes, but then I glance at Carth’s assless chaps and remember that things could be worse.

  12. Viktor says:

    1:30 Did Josh just get outsmarted by a glitchy droid running AI from 2003?

  13. Tapkoh says:

    Dantooine is not in swtor (so far). As far as planets also in KotOR go, there’s Taris, Tatooine, Manaan, and Korriban. You also go to the Yavin system, but land on an actual moon instead of a Rodian-run space station.

  14. Warclam says:

    Ohhhhh, I was wondering why Carth wasn’t shooting people. It was actually Vanilla Ice! Thanks for clearing that up, Josh and Rutskarn.

  15. Zombie says:

    I’m pretty sure Dantooine isn’t in SWTOR, and the Jedi starter planet is Tython. It might be part of the new expac, but I don’t think so.

    AND WE’RE FINALLY OFF TARIS! Woooo! Now exciting shit that actually advances the overarching plot can happen! And Jedi powers to, I guess. Plus, we get like, the three most interesting characters in the game in the next few planets, assuming Josh doesn’t Kill Juhani here; that would suck.

    1. Ledel says:

      That is, after spending the next two weeks here with Josh attempting all of the side quests that have you trapped on this planet.

      1. Henson says:

        Yes, but at least he’ll do them while fully leveled.

  16. SlothfulCobra says:

    I don’t think Canderous is meant for dual-weilding. As I recall, he starts out fully upgraded through the single-weapon feat tree.

    1. djw says:

      His feats say ranged, his stat array says melee. Fortunately, soldiers get a feat every level, so you can bring feat and stat into alignment fairly quickly. In my play through’s he generously donates his ordo repeater to HK-47, who cannot use anything but heavy guns.

      Also, I could be wrong, but I think it is Mission and Jolee who start out with single weapon feats. Canderous has a bunch of ranged feats that do him no good.

      1. Supahewok says:

        I prefer to keep him on ranged. He’s the only character that starts the game with Heavy Weapon feats (as opposed to Rifles, which HK-47 is specced in and yeah, there’s a difference. HK is not getting his bonuses with Canderous’ heavy repeater), and there isn’t a huge disparity between his Dex and Str. The disparity between Zaalbar’s Dex and Str is a lot bigger, so I give 2 of the best 3 vibroswords to him. Mission gets the Sword of Bacca, because she gets sneak attack damage and there’s no pistol in the game worth a damn by itself, they need to be dual-wielded.

        Unfortunately, even the best rifles and heavy weapons get outshone by the best vibroswords or any lightsaber whatsoever. By there’s only so many swords to go around.

        Juhani starts with very little feat spread, so you could make her either a duelist or a dual wielder. I don’t see much point in restricting a Guardian to a single weapon, though.

        1. Bubble181 says:

          Luckily, the difference between Heavy Weapons and Blaster Rifles gets eliminated for KOTOR 2. It really wasn’t useful.

    2. Syal says:

      Everyone is meant for dual-wielding.

  17. Metal C0Mmander says:

    I just got through the Mr. “Jump up my butt” bit. Please Chris, promise me you’ll never change.

  18. Zaxares says:

    I don’t recall having any trouble with the Calo/Davik boss fight, but that’s because I’ve always had this habit of killing the mooks and lieutenants first, before taking on the bosses. I must have just gone for Calo first and did “the right thing” without even knowing about it.

  19. John says:

    After the last episode, there was some discussion of difficulty levels. I said then that the difference seemed to be that enemies had more health and were more likely to use medkits on the harder difficulty levels. I have since done a little investigating to determine if enemies have better stats on the harder difficulty levels. My research suggests that they do not, at least not for the stats I’ve checked so far. For example, Dia, the waitress with a bounty on her head, has the same defense rating on both Easy and Hard difficulty. The same was true for Sith troopers on the Endar Spire. The Sith troopers also had the same reflex saving throws in both difficulty levels. (I threw those grenades in the name of science!)

    But! One thing that I did notice is that on Hard difficulty, I had to use a medkit when I fought Dia. She actually almost killed me. On Easy difficulty, however, she never landed a single hit. So it’s possible that enemies have better attack bonuses on the harder difficulty levels. I wasn’t taking notes on enemy attack rolls at the time, so I can’t say for certain. I will have to do further testing when I murder some more people for money. And science.

  20. Taellosse says:

    To be fair, canonically Taris isn’t literally destroyed – the Sith fleet doesn’t have that much firepower. They’re just slagging the surface. Which is fine for their purposes – everyone still dies, and in a few years there’s a fresh planet for settling with lots of raw materials right near the surface!

    And actually, I think it wasn’t even that bad, since I believe Taris is back to being a bustling world-city within a few centuries, which probably wouldn’t happen if the ENTIRE planetary infrastructure were wrecked.

    But still, yeah, Calo should totally be dead. I can only assume the intention here was to show just how scary-dangerous he is? By making him absurdly hard to kill (if not rather simple to defeat)?

    1. 4th Dimension says:

      Actually we see Tarsis in KOTOR2 and it’s taking the resources of half the Republic to rebuild it’s ecology since it was basically incinerated to the point of being inhabitable, and all survivors and those assisting in rebuild lived in a large station above Tarsis.

      1. djw says:

        That’s Telos they are rebuilding in Kotor 2.

        Taris is one of the planets you visit in Swotor (which is a few hundred years later). Control see-saws back and forth between the sith and the republic, but the surface is still completely trashed.

  21. Michael says:

    It’s interesting to note that, despite only seeing one Sith ship in the cutscenes, the skybox for the turret minigame shows the silhouettes of multiple ships. I wonder why they didn’t put multiple ships in the cutscenes? Could the technology not handle it?

  22. Phantos says:

    Why does the outro music for the Hitman playthrough play at the halfway point of the vid?

    1. Nidokoenig says:

      Because the deja vu all over again bit with the boss fight can drag a little, the music keeps it lively.

  23. Steve C says:

    Why don’t you use spikes to activate security against the mooks? It would go a lot faster if you just gassed them all. That’s the purpose of spikes. They are easily replaced. You can even get stacks of them for free off the Ebon Hawk like all consumables.

  24. I feel Josh’s pain regarding those damn BINK videos.

    I’ve had issues with them as well especially with KoTOR. I recall two issues.

    Originally (the first few times I played it on a more modern PC) the game crashed whenever the BINK videos played.

    Later (possibly due to a game patch or even a fix by MicroSoft for BINK compatibility) it no longer crashed, however the game would seem to switch screens/windows and freeze the video.
    The solution was to Alt-Tab out of the game and back again.

    Add to that the tiny size the BINK video is played at.

    Last time I played it I had to do something really weird if I wanted to see the BINK videos “fullscreen”.
    When I knew a cutscene was about to trigger I switched to windowed mode (I think I had to enable it in the config file someplace) from fullscreen/maximized to a window. This allowed the BINK video to scale up properly and avoided the video locking up/pausing/stopping for some reason.

    I can recall having issues with BINK videos in may games over the years, many times crashing when they start playing. Or just playing the sound while showing a black screen.

    It’s thanks to BINK that I became a fan and supporter of in-engine cutscenes, because if the game runs fine the those cutscenes do as well.

    I’ve seen a few games use Ogg Theora video instead of BINK and I can’t recall ever having issues with those.

    Another benefit of in-engine cutscenes is that usually the graphical settings/tweaks you do will also be used.
    And not to forget that any custom player character look you have will be shown in the cutscene (unless the script guys screwed up and forced a default look).
    With pre-rendered you are stuck with whatever resolution the video is and no custom player character look in cutscenes.

    These days game engines (like Unreal 4) is powerful enough to not need re-rendered cutscenes, so BINK is now only used for those annoying unskippable logos shown at the start of games every damn time you start it.
    Although technically most of those logos are just simple vector art/animation and could easily be rendered by the game engine too.

    1. If video is really needed in a game today I’d recommend Ogg container and VP9 video + Opus audio. And they are open source and royalty free. (Youtube uses VP9 video for example)
      VP10 video codec is also out there now (august 2015) and might be worth a look.

      Also the video codec Daala is in the works (by some of the guys behind Opus).
      So in the future Daala video + Opus audio in a Ogg container might be nice choice for in-game video. And all open source and royalty free obviously.

    2. Ringwraith says:

      Almost all of Metal Gear Solid V’s cutscenes are all in-engine, real time.
      The only pre-rendered ones seem to be flashbacks to cutscenes in previous games. Probably as they didn’t want to include the assets to something that only has one use and already exists anyway.

  25. General Karthos says:

    By the way, they successfully rebuild Telos, and it is well-loved for its natural beauty by at least 50 years before the battle of Yavin. Then it is destroyed by corporate America Republic corporations.

  26. As a kid, “Dantooine” annoyed the heck out of me because I thought it was “Tatooine” the Death Star blew up. As an adult, it annoys me that two such similar-sounding planet names would be allowed in the same movie script.

    1. Otters34 says:

      George Lucas’ names are never, ever, any good. They’re only memorable or acceptable because of the rest of the movie around them.

      1. Chauzuvoy says:

        Consider this the inevitable episode 2 reference.

        The guy who tries to sell Obi-wan death sticks was originally canonically called “Elan Sleazebaggano.” This was later retconned to “Elan Sel’Baggano.” Because they can retcon out the English, but not the awful.

        1. I have to say it: Kit Fisto. “Jizz” music.

          Lucas had next to nothing to do with Star Wars’ success.

  27. Jarenth says:

    Going through these things a little belatedly, I just want to say: Chris’ comments about Josh getting angry at uncooperative videogames are 100% accurate. There’s a reason we swore an oath to never do SWTOR Flashpoints anymore.

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