Knights of the Old Republic EP26: Hugh Mann

By Shamus Posted Thursday Oct 29, 2015

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 107 comments


Link (YouTube)

Rutskarn is right: Glenn Close does indeed have a cameo in Hook. So do Gwyneth Paltrow and Phil Collins. I’m actually not a huge fan of Hook. It’s fun to see Hoffman and Williams do their thing, but I never thought it was a particularly fun or interesting movie. Then again, I was 20 when the movie came out, so I wasn’t actually part of the target demo. Maybe it’s just what 90’s kids wanted.

In this episode I commented that I didn’t remember the Wookiee noises being this unendurable. Looking back, I’m sure it’s because I was clicking through the dialog at reading speed instead of listening at talking speed.

I think Chris makes a good point: If they couldn’t engineer their own Wookiee talk, then perhaps cutting up the existing samples and piecing them back together at various speeds might have helped to give them greater variety.

 


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107 thoughts on “Knights of the Old Republic EP26: Hugh Mann

  1. Hector says:

    Kepona! Bona nach-eechu!

    Something which hasn’t really been mentioned: KotOR has wonky healing mechanics. Th heal amounts are in the not-sweet spot between noncombat and in-combat. For in-combat heals, you would probably want a more powerful magic spell. For out of combat, it’s somewhat slow and tedious. This becomes especially noticeable later on, or in KotOR 2, it’s a minor irritation.

    For my money, they should have let you recover more quickly out of combat. The healing effect should be quite expensive but give a heftier boost. You can often throw that sucker out four times in a row and barely make a dent in your health pool.

    I also don’t quite know why they didn’t just bring a few voice actors to make some sounds. You might to coach them a little, but you’d think they could have at least two or three people making Chewbacca noises.

    1. Ivan says:

      I don’t know, healing is frustrating for the reasons you mention, but it is an AOE heal. So while it feels like you’re wasting combat rounds making your hp stand still, your companions are presumably doing something useful. Also I think the force heal is affected by the first-aid skill which I don’t believe that Josh has put many points into. I remember lvling skill up and being content with its effectiveness later in the game.

    2. John says:

      In KotOR 2 you slowly heal automatically when not in combat. In KotOR proper, you have to either (i) use a medpack, (ii) use an ability like Force Heal or Life Drain, or (iii) return to the Ebon Hawk (or, on Taris, the apartment). It makes for a very different experience. Playing the first game when you’re used to the healing system in the second can be quite confusing.

      That said, the healing rules in KotOR don’t seem particularly odd or restrictive to me. Medpacks are really only a scarce resource early on, even when the game is set to Difficult. Unless you (i) don’t take Cure/Heal and (ii) don’t take Bastila, Juhani, or Jolee with you, you should never even need to use a medpack, barring the odd fight gone horribly wrong.

      1. Hector says:

        I may have been unclear. It’s not that it fails the player functionally, but that a better system would have made combat more tense and exciting. Having to carefully time and judge heals is a more interesting system.

        Also, the healing spell is tedious and pointless outside of combat. Once you get that spell (and it should realistically be your first Force power even for Dark Side players unless you’re using Drain Health & tanking) there’s effectively no real “dungeons” in the game, since you have infinite resources to use outside of an individual fight.

        1. John says:

          In my experience, there is one place in the game where the player is forced to heal strategically, namely Dantooine. On Dantooine, the PC is still fairly low-level and couldn’t spam Cure or Heal even if he wanted to; he just doesn’t have the Force points for that. Moreoever, there is a lot–and I mean a lot–of combat on Dantooine. The player does technically have the option of fast-traveling back to the Ebon Hawk to heal, but that causes some of the kath hounds to re-spawn. (I hate to contradict Shamus, but there are actually two places in Knights of the Old Republic with re-spawning enemies. Dantooine is one and the Undercity on Taris is the other. You could in theory grind for XP in these places, but I can’t imagine wanting to.)

          For the record, there are also a couple of regeneration implants that the PC can acquire. They’re both sold on Korriban, although one doesn’t become available until the PC has cleared three planets. Unfortunately, they are Level 3 implants, which require 3 feats to use. I generally don’t bother with them myself unless I’m playing Dark Side and haven’t got Cure/Heal. It is fun to run around with Canderous, fully-repaired HK-47 and a PC with a regeneration implant, though. Little green numbers keep appearing over everyone’s head after combat.

          1. GloatingSwine says:

            The regen implants are relatively weaksauce as well.

            Much better to have a dex implant.

          2. Atarlost says:

            The wraids on Tatoine respawn as well. Since pieces of wraid skull have value you can farm them for both XP and credits. This is useful if you want all the Yavin goodies and suck at both swoop racing and pazaaak.

  2. Nicholas Hayes says:

    I like how Campster is quiet until 15:15ish and then just launches into lecture mode :)

    1. Humanoid says:

      Well he did go look something up on IMDB. It’s a miracle he managed to get back to commentary before the end of the episode as is.

  3. Spammy says:

    The big fight at the end was pretty easy the first time I did it. I think I had the last level of Force Push, or whatever ability made a shockwave around you that knocked over enemies and stunned them. That went off and hit nearly every bad guy, so I ran around as quick as possible murdering them before their stun wore off.

    1. Ivan says:

      I loved this skill. I’m a sucker for any ability that affects the position of myself or my opponents, regardless of weather I can knock them off cliffs or not.

      Granted I never used this skill until I got the last level because pushing people off cliffs is not a thing you can do in this game, so it’s not super useful using a whole combat round to *maybe* stun a guy for one combat round. Not to mention that the guys you want to stunlock are the difficult/high damaging ones, but these guys also happen to be the most likely to save against it.

      That said, at the 3rd lvl, the ability to AOE stun is probably overpowered, and I loved it.

  4. Hector says:

    Sorry, one more comment from the peon-net gallery:

    It wasn’t commented on in the video much, but I’d like to point out that the game has running themes of revealing hidden truths via investigations. Further, the omnipresence of trials (in several flavors) was probably not a coincidence given some of the stuff going on. One might say this entire game is the story of a Trial of a the main character, after all.

    I’d actually go so far as to say that what Campster wants (lots of moral complexities and “modern” moral outlooks) might have crippled the game. It’s true that another game, with other characters and themes could do it. (Specifically, KotOR2, which is basically Post-Modernism: the Game). I’m not at all sure this one could have survived it, since that’s not what it’s about. Despite the nominal openness of main character in terms of class and physical features, it’s very much about a specific person and his or her choices aren’t necessarily the ones you or I might make. (KotOR2 is more obvious about it, but has the same thing going on.)

    1. Ivan says:

      Speaking of hidden truths, I can’t wait for them to get to Manaan. I found that trial quest to be really interesting and quite the moral conundrum. I hope they talk about that one rather than talking over it.

      1. lurkey says:

        Moral conundrum? Really?

        A murder is a murder regardless of victim’s level of assholiness. Especially if motive is just plain ol’ jealousy and rage.

        Although I honestly expected the game to go “Durrr the victim was a Sith and they are evil therefore murdering one isn’t a crime!!1!” and was quite pleasantly surprised when it didn’t go there.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          A murder is a murder regardless of victim's level of assholiness. Especially if motive is just plain ol' jealousy and rage.

          It can still be a justified or an unjustified one,both morally and legally.If the victim is a serial killer,for example,or a slaver,it will be morally justified.And depending on the laws of the land,it may even be legally justified as well in that case(after all,you are a jedi,and are recognized on many planets as an authority figure that can do a bunch of stuff just cauze).

          1. Grudgeal says:

            Er, no it won’t? Murder is murder, no matter how horrid the guy you murder is. Legally, concessions can be made for deaths by accident, as an unintended consequence of negligence or lesser criminal activities (manslaughter), or done as part of self-defence or the defence of others (though reasonable force becomes an issue), but the intentional killing of another human being with malice aforethought (‘malice’ in this case meaning ‘this person needs to die’) is murder. Doesn’t matter if the person is a healthy newborn baby Jesus or the baby-eating clone mixture of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and other horrible people.

            Morally, the difference between Baby Jesus and StalHitPolHorribleMixture inevitably becomes mired in a Deontology/Utilitarianism debacle, so let me just state that I fall more on the Deontology/Virtue scale of the side and see no advantage to adding another life to the body pile, when we by all rights shouldn’t have to. I don’t think it’s morally justifiable to take the life of another human as long as the option not to do it exists, and I don’t think the Star Wars example under the spoiler tag presents a “no other option exists” alternative sufficient for me to change that position.

            EDIT: Point taken. Flamebait removed.

            1. Shamus says:

              “this inevitably becomes mired”

              Heh. This goes back to the point that Ivan made that kicked off this argument: It’s a moral conundrum. Additionally, it’s one that’s really polarizing and where everyone seems to think the answer is obvious. This is a great topic for sci-fi: Take the difficult question and transplant it to another world so we can examine it at a safe distance.

              Also, if you didn’t want to take part in it, you shouldn’t have started it.

              Also, throwing Thatcher in there was a dick move. You basically dropped a double flame bait in the comments and then walked away. That’s not nice.

              1. Grudgeal says:

                Dilemma aside, I’m not sure just how ‘transported’ it is. I mean, apart from how this takes place A Long Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away there is pretty much no part of the dilemma that couldn’t have taken place on modern-day Earth. Maybe if they put, like, some sci-fi technology or an alien species in there as an allegory..

                1. Matt Downie says:

                  Well, it does shift the context of moral questions for some people if the character under question is a robot, or a superpowered jedi who has dedicated his life to evil.

                  Also, the fact that you kill hundreds and hundreds of people in the game may cause players to lose some sense of the value of human life.

              2. silver Harloe says:

                I think Grudgeal was mentioning Thatcher as part of a http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJaywalking joke, rather than an attempt to really talk politics. I could be wrong, of course, but I’m a frequent donor to the “benefit of the doubt” foundation

                1. Shamus says:

                  Ah. That’s possible! And if it’s the case it wasn’t so much a dick move as a reckless joke.

                  Just in case: Please don’t do that joke with controversial figures: It works for half the readers, and the other half will assume you mean it and I’ll have to moderate the resulting chaos. I saw a good bit of hyperbole along the same lines (except not as a joke) when her biopic came out a couple of years ago, so this sounded like more of the same.

                  1. Grudgeal says:

                    It *was* intended as an Arson Murder and Jaywalking joke, just to make it plain. I could perhaps have picked a less divisive figure, although with politics being the way they are there may not be *anyone* to fit that last slot in a completely safe manner, except possibly someone nobody had ever heard of.

            2. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Never said that murder isnt a bad thing.But bad things can still have a positive outcome.If you kill someone who attacked you,or who threatens multiple other people,though you did a bad thing,you did a good thing as well.You commited murder,but you were justified.

              Or are you saying that in halloween 1 doctor loomis was equally as bad as michael myers because he went there armed with a specific thought of killing him?

              1. Grudgeal says:

                I would argue that to allow one bad thing to happen on the odds that it could give a positive outcome, gives rise to one bad thing with a positive outcome and ten bad things that won’t*.

                In a situation like you describe, I’d say you were justified in defending yourself and others, and if there was *no* other way to do it but to kill (or, more likely, that the killing was an unintentional side effect in what could have just as well have come down as ‘subdued’), then that is an act of justifiable self-defence in the heat of the moment. Murder is the explicit killing of a human being with malice aforethought, i.e. a pre-planned killing not done by accident or to prevent immediate harm to yourself and others.

                In Halloween, Mike Myers is a (possibly supernatural) serial killer put down in a struggle during which he would have killed someone if not immediately subdued, and the only tool available to stop him from doing so is a handgun. So no, I don’t see that as murder at all. Now, if Mike had been knocked unconscious during the struggle and they shot him while he was down, that’d be murder.

                It might seem like semantics, but I think it’s a very important separation. Murder isn’t just any loss of human life, it’s the intended taking of human life with malice aforethought in a non-hostile, non-combat situation. I don’t consider, for example, war to be an act of mass murder, at least not on the part of the soldiers on the battlefield who are generally given the option of killing the other side or being (eventually) killed by it.

                So going back to the conundrum on Manaan: Shooting an unarmed, sleeping woman is murder. She may have been a horrible detestable human being, but her life was taken intentionally with malice aforethought in a situation where she presented no direct physical harm to anyone, and her death isn’t justifiable to me even if her next act upon waking up could have been to kick a puppy or indeed to try to murder Sunry herself.

                * = This is allegorical. I don’t mean literally that the ratio is one to ten, but rather that the harm that such assumptions cause will outweigh any good that might come out of it. Like I said, I favour Deontology.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  In halloween 1,mike was just a guy,no supernatural there.Loomis couldve shoot him in the legs,or in the arms.He had plenty of time to carefully aim.He chose multiple kill shots instead.

                  And what you are describing as killing of a being that is in no way able to harm someone can also be used to describe both death penalty and euthanasia.Both of which are big moral conundrums with no easy black-white answer.

                  1. Grudgeal says:

                    I seem to recall he was quite busy choking someone at the time… Anyway, saying ‘murder is bad’ is one thing but the Death Penalty and Euthanasia probably cross the line into ‘political ****storm’ so let’s just say I don’t think those things are at all the same and leave it at that.

                    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      Sure.As for the ending of halloween 1,shooting happened after the choking:

                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww1ZTVKTp8o

                    2. Wide And Nerdy says:

                      There’s an easy way to settle this. See if they can wear the “Light Side Only” Headband.

                      The headband, like the Sorting Hat, is wise and all knowing (and a lot less talkative.)

                    3. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      True,a sorting headband is a really helpful thing to have.

                  2. Wide And Nerdy says:

                    When you shoot, you don’t shoot to wound. You shoot to kill. Because even your wounding shot can be lethal to the target.

                    Its kind of like the reason you never point even an empty gun at someone unless you’re serious about it.

                    If you’re pulling that trigger, it had better be because you intend to kill. Which means you’d better not pull that trigger until you’re in a situation where killing is called for.

                    1. Wide And Nerdy says:

                      . . . in real life, where your average mook can’t take 10 bullets to the head before falling over.

                    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      In the real world,you may kill someone accidentally by yelling on them.A shot to the arm is not considered to be lethal because chances of actually killing them due to a lucky shot,infection or some other complications are orders of magnitude lower than shooting them in the chest or head.

                      The reason why you never point a gun at someone unless you mean to shoot them is because you never know if the bullet might be in the chamber(not even if you have just emptied it),and you can accidentally shoot them.And even if you dont kill them,a bullet wound can cause numerous other problems(shattered bones,damaged nerves,internal bleeding,infection,etc).

                      And while you should be prepared for a chance that you may kill someone if you point a gun at them,that doesnt mean you cannot subdue them in other ways before intentionally going for the kill shot.Firing a warning shot,for example,is a situation where you press the trigger without intentionally trying to kill someone.Aiming at their feet is another such situation.

                    3. Syal says:

                      A shot to the arm is also much, much harder to actually pull off than a shot to the chest. You aim for center mass because you’re likely to actually hit something, especially when your day job is child psychology or whatever Loomis did when he wasn’t killing his patients..

                      Warning shots land somewhere, sometimes miles away on unsuspecting civilians. Shots at the ground can still ricochet. You cannot trust a non-kill shot to ever be non-lethal.

                    4. Wide And Nerdy says:

                      But if you really need to stop someone by shooting them, you want to aim for their center of mass. This gives you the best chance of hitting something. And if you do actually hit the center of mass, there’s a good chance it will be fatal (a lot depends on how quickly you can get them to a hospital).

                      But, as you pointed out, even an arm wound can potentially be fatal.

                      So if you’re going to fire, you need to be prepared for the possibility that your target is going to die. And you need to be refraining from firing in situations where killing is not acceptable.

                      Maybe its different if you’re some kind of trained crackshot with combat experience and situation training. But if you’re a regular person, even one with some experience handling firearms, I stand by what i said.

                      Ninjaed by Syal

                    5. Syal says:

                      Finally found the use of force list I was looking for, so I’ll post it now. Basically, if you want to subdue someone instead of killing them, you need to do it before guns get involved.

                    6. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      Yes,your nonlethal shot can potentially be lethal.But thats not the point.The point is that you at least attempted to be nonlethal.Theres a world of difference in trying to subdue someone with a minimum of force and killing them,and immediately going for the full on lethal force(multiple times,I might add).

                      Basically, if you want to subdue someone instead of killing them, you need to do it before guns get involved.

                      True,but loomis was not a trained policeman,and all he had was a gun.He couldnt wrestle mike,he couldnt stun him with electricity or gas,he couldnt batter him with something.And even when a gun is drawn,there still is a difference between aiming at the chest and aiming at the legs.You can kill someone in both cases,but chances are greater when you aim at their chest.And again,multiple shots.Loomis clearly wanted to kill him,not just remove the threat.

        2. Majere says:

          They said a moral conundrum not a legal one and god knows that while legality tries to encompass morality in theory it frequently fails pretty horrifically and spectacularly. Morality is a massively subjective thing and it’s entirely arguable that allowing the murder of what amounts to a space Nazi to go unpunished is a lesser evil to punishing a respected Republic war hero and the consequences that could bring for the Republic presence on Manaan.

          1. Keeshhound says:

            The single biggest mistake Bioware makes every time it *does* try to do legitimate moral conundrums is to attach moral scores to the outcomes. All the deliberations you might make when confronted with the more interesting choices is cheapened when you make a decision that you’ve thought long and hard about and immediately the game judges your choice as “Light side,” or “Closed Fist,” or “Paragon.”

            Dragon Age: Origins’ dilemmas benefited significantly from not needing to conform to prebuilt moralities.

            1. Grudgeal says:

              …Or at least until you learned that whatever Morrigan approves of is probably Not The Right Thing (TM), and Wynne vice versa.

              1. Keeshhound says:

                Yeah, but you can just roll a mage yourself and not have to deal with either of their meddling.

            2. Majere says:

              I mean in the case of the trial getting him acquitted even when you know he’s guilty is an unequivocally dark side act. It’s a clear perversion of justice and a blatant effort to conceal the truth both of which are contrary to the claimed attributes of the light side. Honestly, I feel the dark side/light side dichotomies is one of the few instances in a Bioware game where the attempt to follow a binary alignment system could actually work because the whole point of the concept thematically is setting up background for the battle between good and evil set against a sci-fi backdrop that is the Star Wars series’ whole point.

          2. Ivan says:

            This was really what I was trying to get at. If you dig deep enough, and if I remember correctly it is revealed that the republic dude murdered the sith in an attempt to make it look like the sith were aggressors and untrustworthy in order to end their allegiance with Manaan who has thus far been neutral in order to sell the extremely valuable medicine Kolto that only Manaan produces to both sides.

            By doing what is moral and right, revealing the deception and letting Manaan judge the situation as it really is based on their laws; you jeopardize the entire republic war effort.

            I basically didn’t know what to do when I fully understood the situation and I was disappointed when I was unable to find an NPC that would discuss the situation in full (other than the judge).

            1. John says:

              Er, not quite. The murder was not politically motivated. It was a crime of passion. Sunry will confess everything to you if you confront him with the right piece of evidence. Everything after the murder, however, is politics, politics, politics. Both the Republic and the Sith tamper with evidence and try to spin things in order to make the other side look bad.

              1. Ivan says:

                Ah ok, but the political ramifications of your decision still stand. Also I want to add that you are still the dudes lawyer and I don’t believe there is a way to convince him to come clean. It might have been a persuade check that I failed, but when I did fail what was I supposed to do as his lawyer? My job was to defend him to the best of my ability right? In this case that does include lying.

                Basically this whole scenario is incredibly dense and you can reach one of the two answers in many different ways. But then approaching the problem a different way might give you the other answer. I don’t see an easy way to weigh the different answers against each other either.

    2. MrGuy says:

      I suppose.

      That said, discovering the corpse of a dead wookie with an article clearly marked “Slaver Contract” on him isn’t exactly CSI material.

      They could have played up the investigative aspect. You could have gotten a note about what kind of weapon he was shot with. Or had to look around for the marked ammo. Or had to actually read the diary to find out he was a slaver. They didn’t do any of that.

      The investigation is deliberately crippled as a mechanic because they don’t care about the investigation – they care about the trial. It’s critical that you know who killed the victim and why, so that they can present an “interesting choice” of whether and how to intervene.

      But they were afraid of ruining that choice by having you not know who the murder was, or that the victim was a slaver. So rather than have you investigate, they simply hand you those two facts in as hamfisted a way as possible. They don’t want you to actually investigate, because they’re worried you might be too dumb to find the clues.

      I contrast this with the questline involving Boone in Fallout: New Vegas, where he knows someone sold his wife into slavery, and he wants you to find out who. You can talk to a bunch of people, and there are some suspicions, but you never find out who did it. You can end the quest at any time by accusing anyone you want, even if you’re not sure. You only get the definitive answer by breaking into a locked safe to find incriminating documents. And even then, you have to actually READ the document to understand it’s the proof you were looking for. F:NV is OK if you never find the right answer, and even let you resolve this portion of the quest without doing so (I BELIEVE Boone will still follow you even if all you have are suspicions, as long as you don’t go LOL MURDER on someone at random).

      1. Gruhunchously says:

        When you send someone out for Boone to murderize, he’ll ask you how you knew who to send. You then have to either show him the proof, or pass a speech check- if can’t do either, he’ll either call you unflattering names and refuse to follow you, or straight up attack you, depending on what you say.

      2. Hector says:

        The point isn’t the truth of the event, however. It’s what you do with that knowledge and how your actions shape the perception of events. Do (as the team did in the video) you bring out the facts and force everyone to acknowledge painful events?

  5. wswordsmen says:

    Some people who played the game just wanted to be as evil as possible, and what is more evil than siding with the guy selling his people into slavery.

    I know I did that for a play through (actually the only play through I beat the game w/o cheats)

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      I can think of plenty of stuff more evil than that.The problem with video game evil is that its usually just dickish and pg.You dont get to do old boy things to someone just for lulz,for example.Though there are some nice exceptions(like the zaalbar thing in the full evil path).

      1. Grudgeal says:

        What, so you don’t mean that referring to someone’s dead son as a “chew toy” is the very DEPTHS of evil and depravity? What could possibly be more evil than that? Apart, of course, from SELLING a vaccine you found to the highest bidder?

        Next you’ll be saying calling someone a “Big Stupid Jellyfish” isn’t worth Dark Si-errrr, Renegade points. I mean, that can really hurt.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          I referenced old boy for a reason there.Watch it,its a good movie(though a disturbing one).

          Or,read the following spoiler if you dont like good movies/are too impatient:
          Keeping someone in prison for 20 years,while slowly brainwashing both him and his daughter(that was a baby last time he saw her),so that after being set free he is compelled to take his daughters virginity.Then decide to kill his daughter,while he pleads and even cuts his own tongue off in order to prevent that from happening.

          1. Grudgeal says:

            I’ve seen Old Boy. I was more talking about how SWKotOR (or Bioware in general) seems to think ‘evil = petty and rude’, as has already been pointed out a lot by the crew already.

            You’re not really given any good reasons to side with Chuundar beyond ‘he’s evil and I’m playing evil, so let’s support him’. Well, apart from ‘he’ll give you stuff’, but as any RPG player knows you’ll likely get that stuff from looting his corpse anyway.

            1. John says:

              Actually, you get more stuff from killing him. Chundarr’s bowcaster may be the best non-upgradeable blaster rifle in the game.

          2. Wide And Nerdy says:

            I’m glad I read that spoiler. I’d never want to see a movie like that.

          3. Keeshhound says:

            You left out the part where a devout Buddhist actor wound up eating a live octopus for one of the scenes.

            They had to do four takes.

  6. The Rocketeer says:

    As someone who was a kid during the ’90’s, I can at least testify that it was very much what I wanted, and it remains beloved of me and my brother.

    For me, at least, the movie is as quotable as any Monty Python, including the scene you mention above with Glenn Close and the Boo Box.

    1. James Bennett says:

      I remember enjoying this movie when it came out, although, like Rutskarn, I was also traumatized by the scene with the Boo Box. The whole movie is pretty dark for a kid’s film, but that scene definitely crossed a line for me. The scene where Hook shoots a man dead for no reason and the movie plays it for laughs? I’m fine. The scene where Hook stuffs a man into a small box and drop live scorpions on him as a form of torture? NOPE.

  7. SlothfulCobra says:

    It’s interesting how Rutskarn only ever copies the twilek soundbytes. Obviously the wookiee soundbytes are more trouble than they’re worth to copy, since they’re just a bunch of blended animal noises, but the rodians, ithorians, duro, and aqualish have their own different series of soundclips (I think the ithorians and the aqualish share for some reason) that get stuck in my head all the time as well, they just have a filter over them. The gamorreans have their own sound clips too, but spoiler warning hasn’t found the only talking gamorreans yet.

    I hope he expands his repertoire by the time they get to Manaan, the selkath are really easy to imitate.

    1. The Rocketeer says:

      Sometimes, a sound or phrase just happens to stick in your mind, like a fork getting jammed diagonally in the dishwasher’s silverware basket, so that it is recalled with perfect clarity even years later, with any or no provocation, regardless of how hard you wish against it.

      I’m pretty sure “CHEE-koo-dawe-DON-ga,” etc., is just one of those for Rutskarn.

      1. MichaelGC says:

        Aye – I don’t own a dishwasher, but it did bug me the way every Ithorian seems to think my character is called “Theedon Gill.”

  8. Henson says:

    You know, that thing Chris mentioned about Vader losing all his Dark Side points by apologizing to his son…that basically happens in this game. On the Rakatan planet, if you’re fully dark side and you choose the light side option in the big choice, your alignment changes to just shy of neutral on the light side (and vice versa).

    1. Supahewok says:

      The thing about Light Side and Dark Side points is that they scale with each other inversely based on your current alignment. Basically, the more LS you are, the less LS points move your alignment up, but DS points get a boost pulling you down. So, say that you’re at LS 80, a 10 point LS reward might move you up 2 points, but a 10 point DS reward moves you down 20.

      This system basically pidgeon-holes you into staying with one alignment, because you’re punished more severely from straying from it the farther you’re into it, and it’s harder to recover. I guess that that makes some thematic sense, but I don’t really like how it translates into gameplay.

    2. Syal says:

      There’s even a dark side option there that still knocks you all the way back up to neutral.

      And then you have enough time to drag your alignment back down to Full Dark but your character still talks about how he’s a paragon of virtue. It’s the dumbest thing the game offers and I hope they do it.

  9. Daemian Lucifer says:

    All I can say to Rutskarn is:
    Bou!Bou!U chenya!Alsta!Alsta!

    Wait…wrong alien gibberish.

  10. Ivan says:

    If you guys need some new Wookie sound effects then you should try this!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1X8jgrMhc4

  11. Ivan says:

    Holy shit Josh! That wookie just gave you his father’s sword as a reward! That’s like… a huge honor or something!

    You totally need to chuck that at the first vendor you bump into.

    1. MrGuy says:

      Have you seen Josh play videogames?

      If he didn’t have any points in sword use, he’d use it constantly as his primary weapon.

      But since he’s skilled in using it, he won’t. He’ll just lug it around, taking up pointless space in his inventory, even if he’s in a situation where it might be the single most appropriate tool for the job.

      Sell a valuable article he has no interest in using? Pfft.

      1. Ivan says:

        Yeah… but… um…

        Why must you destroy my dreams?

        1. Syal says:

          Don’t lose hope, Ivan, there’s always the chance he’ll shove it in a trashcan for no profit.

  12. Warclam says:

    Wow, I was three when Hook came out? That’s just bizarre. And sorry Rutskarn, I had to look up the Boo Box. No memory of it whatsoever.

    And somebody needs to make Ace Jedi Attorney a thing. I would play that game so hard.

    1. Syal says:

      For some reason, the paint arrows in Hook really freaked me out as a kid.

  13. MrGuy says:

    He gets knocked down. But he gets up again. You’re never gonna keep him down.

    Oh, wait. Nevermind.

  14. John says:

    I usually do Tatooine first, so I run into the Genoharadan datapad-dropper just outside the docking area. When we’re done chatting, he starts walking toward the docking area. I run ahead, leave the planet, and go do other stuff for a while. Later, when I come back for something like Canderous’ side quest the first thing I see in Anchorhead is that guy–and he’s still walking toward the docking area. Apparently, the game engine or scripting is such that time does not pass in an area unless the PC is there to see it passing.

    I’m guessing that Jolee would explain this in terms of “swirling Force.”

    P.S. Josh! Do Jolee’s conversations!

    1. Incunabulum says:

      Its like the exact opposite of the Weeping Angels – time only passes when there’s an observer.

    2. Supahewok says:

      Its not necessarily triggered by the first planet you go to. In my latest run, I couldn’t get the datapad dropper to show up until after I had finished the 4th planet and was running around doing the end-game shopping. I think its random. (Although, he USUALLY shows up for me at Kashyyyk, my standard first planet. So maybe he got bugged.)

      1. John says:

        I suppose that you could theoretically miss him if you somehow avoided walking through all event-trigger areas. If you fast-travelled back to the ship whenever possible, say. Of course, you can’t fast-travel back to the ship on Kashyyyk, so if you did that planet first then I’m not sure how you managed it.

  15. MrGuy says:

    I would just like to point out at 19:58, they decided to SUBTITLE a wookie roaring at an enemy. “Raargh!”

    1. Tohron says:

      Guess they just really wanted you to know that they weren’t actually saying something translate-able.

      1. Incunabulum says:

        They had to – Wookie . . . ese? is a tonal language and ‘Raargh!’ can mean things as divers as ‘inarticulate cry of rage and hate’ to ‘hey its getting dark, you kids come inside for supper’.

        1. Grudgeal says:

          I always thought it was underlined by a very expressive body language.

          Mostly eyebrow-waggling, which this game is too low-res to show properly.

  16. Gruhunchously says:

    But Rutskarn…Runode hadunga kunhunkbe…wannakunbes chingpala-mule donhendon runotek.

    I’m pretty sure that must of the aliens, from the Twileks, to the Duros, are speaking Huttese, the tongue of the Hutts and the most common language in the galaxy. Strangely enough, the Protheans…er Rakata speak it as well, despite being isolated from the rest of the galaxy for thousands of years. Maybe they picked it up from all the travelers crashing into their planet and thought it was so awesome that they replaced their old language with it.

    1. silver Harloe says:

      Video game, tv, movie, and comic scfi-fi always always completely miss out on how language changes over time. Nevermind that English a mere 600 years ago is only understandable by academics — 600 years from now, it’ll be practically the same as it is today!

      1. krellen says:

        English is a highly mutable language, a trait that is not shared with a lot of other languages. Medieval Polish is fully intelligible to modern Polish speakers, for instance.

        1. Grudgeal says:

          I think Icelandic is the go-to example — supposedly, documents from the 13th and 14th centuries are still readable today and the vocals have supposedly changed very little too. I think it may have something to do with both amounts of exposure and the maintaining of a cultural identity — by which token I would hazard a guess that Hebrew has remained (relatively) unchanged as well.

          1. James says:

            This is often why Icelandic is seen as really the only language left that could be similar to ancient norse.

            English is a language that changes so often and so frequently that the words and sayings of 100 years ago are defunct and obsolete i have no doubts in assuming that if we ever met aliens English would steal and absorb some of their words just like it did to the romance languages, greek, anglo saxon, latin and half a dozen more.

        2. djw says:

          That seems very surprising to me. I’m not saying you are wrong, I’m just saying that I am surprised. Do you happen to have a source on medieval Polish vs modern Polish?

          I wonder if it has anything to do with Poland’s history in Europe (in that it ceased to be a country for 120 years). Perhaps clinging to a past that the current Russian and German overlords were actively trying to stamp out made preserving old linguistic forms easier? (Note: that theory is completely off of the top of my head, so it would not be a shock for me to find out that it is wrong).

          Does anybody know if the same is true for Kurdish? (Which is in an analogous though not identical situation currently).

      2. djw says:

        I’m no academic (well, I suppose I am, but in a STEM field, not language) but I am able to *very slowly* and without complete comprehension, read Chaucer, which is about 700 years old. Beowulf (1200 years old) is out of the question.

  17. Dt3r says:

    Regarding the Jurassic Park roars, I know what you mean Chris. I’m the exact same with the Wilhelm Scream.

    1. Lachlan the Mad says:

      Yeah, but the Wilhelm Scream (and Godzilla’s roar) are basically in-jokes shared by the entire SFX industry, and a few higher-ups as well (like Lucas and Spielberg). Chris is talking more about how the sound teams for Star Wars/Jurassic Park games can’t be bothered making new Wookiee/Tyrannosaurus roars.

      1. Ivan says:

        I know right, how can you not love that scream?

        1. Supahewok says:

          Only time I’ve ever minded was when the Extended Edition of the second Hobbit movie used it twice. Once is fun. Twice is jarring.

        2. Falterfire says:

          I dislike it when it’s used incorrectly. It’s an inside joke, and a pretty well known one. When it shows up during an upbeat action scene it’s funny and helps to remind you that the main character is killing disposable minions with no personality instead of actual humans with families. When it happens during a dramatic scene, it has the same effect of reminding you that you’re watching a fictional scene, but in a dramatic scene that’s usually a bad thing.

      2. Grudgeal says:

        The Predator screams are similar.

        Which is kind of oddly fitting given that the Predator and the T. Rex share a voice actor (they’re distorted Elephant calls if memory serves).

        1. Vermander says:

          I recall hearing that the T-Rex roar is mostly a combination of an alligator and camel with a few other things thrown in.

          It’s actually quite an issue for FX teams that a lot of animals make different noises in real life than people expect them to, so they have to use sound mixes or human voice actors even for real world animals. For example tigers don’t roar the same way lions do, they make more of an “Ah-room” type sound.

  18. Incunabulum says:

    This is OT – I could have sworn there was something discussing it but couldn’t find it, might have been elsewhere – but it seems to me that the ‘sorry we screwed up’ gift by Warner of the back Batman game titles seem kind of shitty?

    I mean

    a) You just picked up AK because it was the currently hyped AAA title du jour – in which case you might have lost 3 months where the next hype du jour now has your attention.

    or

    b) You’ve been playing the series from the beginning and already have those games, pumped over $300 dollars to these guys, and they’ve basically said – ‘fuck you, you don’t matter, because your sale was in the bag anyway’.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      Aye, it does seem as though someone went: “we need to do something which looks generous, but isn’t,” and I think they knocked it out of the park as far as that goes.

      What I find worse is that they’ve decided to re-release without completely fixing it. It still has e.g. memory problems the official guidance on which is to do things like (a) restart the game, or (b) have more than 12 GB of RAM. I’m sure there are good reasons why sorting this out has been difficult, but I think in this instance it might have been wise to aim a little higher than ‘that’ll do’ when setting their re-release date.

  19. Ledel says:

    So, as far as the “you must gather your party” headache. I had what is possibly the worst bug happen. During the underwater sections of Manaan I had Jolee and HK in my party, when i finished up something broke for both of them. They wouldn’t follow me around at all, so I had to manually move each of them to near the gate, and neither of them would have any conversations with me. If I approached them on the Ebon Hawk I would get a silent closeup of their face and then it would back out to give me control.

    It got even worse when I reached the section where I was forced to have Jolee as a part of my party. I don’t know how it happened, but it sucked that I didn’t get to finish up the story lines of possibly the two most liked characters.

    1. djw says:

      I think this bug is related to vsynch. You either have to turn it on or turn it off (I forget which). I encountered it very early in my most recent play through (eg. while Trask was still in my party) and I had to either get it fixed or rage quit.

  20. Searly says:

    Chris/Shamus, you mean this guy?

    http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Hugh_Man

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Now thats a name I could trust.

  21. Wide And Nerdy says:

    I’m guessing that you want to give people time to watch Episode 27 before posting.

    Thats smart.

  22. djw says:

    You know, I think we have wookie speak (Shyriiwook) all wrong. I think they are communicating like 14.4 k modems . They actually pack a huge amount of information into those tiresome screams, and we just get the cliff notes version in the subtitles.

  23. So, the guys are obviously going to do Fallout 4 on Spoiler Warning. Must continue the saga of Reginald Cuftbert, after all.

    But am I the only one wanting another Telltale game from these guys? I’ve been rewatching Season 10, with the Walking Dead, and would like to see that style of game again. Maybe Tales from the Borderlands which finally finished, since i’ve heard good stuff. Thoughts?

    1. MrGuy says:

      SBCG4AP!!!!!

      I think it will break both Shamus and Mumbles, and possibly Rutskarn.

      1. Oh my god, that would be great. I do love that narrative adventure game style model that Telltale churns out, but I’m always amused how Strong Bad’s game just takes the piss out of that genre.

  24. zerotkatama says:

    Interestingly enough, Matt Damon’s character in Interstellar is named Hugh Mann.

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