Knights of the Old Republic EP46: Open the Blast Door!

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Feb 3, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 72 comments


Link (YouTube)

Revan built HK-47, but Darth Vader built C-3P0. The player is Revan, but Vader is Luke’s father.

Which story has the better plot twists?

 


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72 thoughts on “Knights of the Old Republic EP46: Open the Blast Door!

  1. Flailmorpho says:

    Darth Revan was lukes vader!

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      But who was luuukes baker?

  2. MichaelGC says:

    And there was me thinking that Campster had played ALL the Star Wars:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omfP303IL7w

    To answer the post question, I’d say Empire first, then KotOR, and then I’m not sure what this whole ‘Vader built Threepio’ thing is all about. Sounds daft does that. Some obscure fanfic nonsense?

    1. Benjamin Hilton says:

      Not having been alive when Empire came out, I grew up knowing before I ever saw it that Vader was Luke’s father. It’s prevalence in pop culture was so extreme that I honestly forgot that it was a twist to the audience, and not just the characters.

      This may be part of the reason the Revan reveal caught me so off guard. In my mind Star Wars wasn’t the kind of series that had twists, so I wasn’t looking for one.

      1. Hitch says:

        I am old compared to Shamus. I was 20 when Empire came out. There were years of denial after that revelation. Some of us were convinced that the bad guy was lying — that the next movie would reveal that Vader was just messing with Luke’s head, trying to fill him with doubt. Only after Revenge (no wait, strike that, Return — those posters that said Revenge never existed… really) came out did we begin to learn that Jedi’s are pathological liars.

      2. manofsteles says:

        Bill and Ted spoiled it for me as a kid.

        “I’m Darth Ted!”

        “Oh yeah? Well I’m Luke Bill! And you’re not my father!!”

      3. gyfrmabrd says:

        To be fair, I think the twist was even in the official trailer at the time…

        1. Taellosse says:

          I was too young to remember myself, but that seems really unlikely to me. Lucas worked REALLY hard to keep that twist under wraps before the movie released, to the point of giving David Prowse (the actor who played Darth Vader in the OT – James Earl Jones just did his voice) fake lines during filming, so neither he nor Mark Hamill knew what the real lines were going to be.

          Also, spoiling key plot points in the trailer wasn’t nearly as common 35 years ago as it is now.

        2. I very much doubt it.

          As curiosity, they say that since Vader was voiced over by James Earl Jones in post production and the scenes it was David Prowse who spoke, they fed David Prowse with something completely different that was believable as the final product and cause for Luke’s reaction. Then they recorded James Earl Jones with the real phrase and kept it secret, then in the opening Mark Hamill went “WHAT?!”

      4. Daemian Lucifer says:

        I grew up in a pretty non nerd environment,so the first time Ive seen it(when I was 10?I think…),it was a surprise to me.It didnt really amaze me though,because I wasnt that invested in the movies anyway.

        I was pretty invested in kotor though,so this twist amazed me.

      5. Matt Downie says:

        I saw Empire back in the 80s as a young child. Not only did I not see the twist coming, I didn’t even really believe it. It seemed highly implausible to me, and why would you trust Vader over Kenobi when it came to Luke’s parentage? A few years later I would have understood that Vader being Luke’s father was a more interesting story, and therefore would definitely be true.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          So what you are saying is that you literally went “No…No…Thats not true!Thats impossible!”

    2. Veylon says:

      Obscure fanfic? No, movie canon. Just another gift from Episode I to enhance your enjoyment of the Star Wars franchise.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Episode 1 is a bad fanfic though,even if its not that obscure.The whole prequel trilogy in fact is bad fanfic.

  3. The Specktre says:

    I think both the Revan and the Vader twists are equally fantastic. The only thing I don’t really care for is Anakin building C3P0.

    As for Campster’s remark on HK-47, yeah… yeah, TOR pretty much ruined everything related to Revan. In TOR, HK helps Revan run a new, not-Star Forge, and the Empire player kills him. So TOR and Galaxies contradict each other. It’s a crime to HK, but what ultimately happens to Revan by the events of the MMO (yes, he’s still alive after 200 years) is infinitely worse.

    1. Benjamin Hilton says:

      Yeah I just headcannon TOR right out of existence.

    2. Gruhunchously says:

      Revan deserved better, The Exile REALLY deserved better, HK-47 deserved better, everyone deserved better.

      KOTOR deserved better than TOR.

      1. lurkey says:

        I headcannon the Exile out because everything about her in that stupid book and TOR is so stupid. But at Revan’s misfortune I gloat out of pure dazzling schadenfreude. Serves you right for making me RP an idiot, asshole. >:-)

    3. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Since that revan is a man,while the real revan is female,I say that the dude in the old republic is just some wannabe fanboy who managed to get some power.Thats why you get to fight him long after the real revan died.

    4. That’s already true without getting to the expansion, which just milks his corpse even more. I hate it.

      What I didn’t know is the Exile features in it as I read from others. And to that I say a long string of asterisks. I thought at least she had been left alone. That sets TOR story as worse than ME3 finale.

      1. The Specktre says:

        Prior to TOR, Revan was in my top favorite for Dark Jedi/Sith: a brilliant strategist who was willing to do anything to protect and reform the Republic from external threats. But then BioWare introduced the Sith Emperor (a poor man’s Nihilus), and everything–EVERYTHING–wrong with Revan, everything that flies in the face of who Revan was in KotOR 1 and 2, is tied directly to the Sith Emperor. Heck, the whole of KotOR (including TOR) bends around the Sith Emperor. Does ANYONE at BioWare realize how cheap, how lazy, how unfulfilling it is to find out that all this time, Revan was being mind controlled by the Emperor. But by the time Revan got back to known space (and found the Star Forge), the influence weakened and he misinterpreted the Emperor’s instructions as “seize the Republic for yourself”? To say nothing of the Revan novel or anything in the MMO. The Emperor is a black hole of stupidity.

  4. Ilseroth says:

    I personally like KotoRs twist more… but to be fair I have always been more into video games then movies, and this game gets hours and hours to set up it’s reveal, while the movie gets 4 (well like 3 and change, don’t feel like looking it up.)

    I, similar to Chris, stopped at Dantooine, I think I rented the game and never got around to finishing it. I did finish KotoR 2 which I think was also a rental.

    That being said, my favorite Star Wars game is probably Jedi Academy. The story was a bit meh, but being able to make your own jedi was great; and the combat system allowing you to fling people around, super jump and swing around a lightsaber like a maniac was just plain fun.

    Every other game felt like the it abstracts the process of swinging a lightsaber too much, like force Unleashed where it just feels like a jedi flavored devil may cry or god of war game. Academy had it’s own feel to it (which I didn’t know till later was from an entire series of games) but it just felt good to play… I wonder if the PC port was any good…

    1. Benjamin Hilton says:

      Dark Forces 2 was the first PC game I owned, and I’ve loved the series ever since. About once a year I play through Outcast and Academy back to back.

      1. djw says:

        I played that game so much that I managed to find all the secrets years before I knew google even existed.

  5. Benjamin Hilton says:

    The moment where the team decides to stick with you is my favorite part of this game. I just love how every one has their own really interesting reasons to stay. The standouts being Canderous, HK, and best of all Jolee. It’s just a really nice team affirmation moment that I think allot of rpg’s forget.

    1. MichaelGC says:

      Aye, although I would like to understand T3’s reasoning a little more fully.

    2. Wide And Nerdy says:

      Again I love how SFDebris put it [Regarding Canderous] “This is like learning who his buddy Bruce Wayne really is after all the times he talked about how awesome Batman is.”

    3. Viktor says:

      Jolee actually pissed me off. “It wasn’t your place to tell me”? Well it was damn sure my right to be told who I was. The Jedi Council are assholes, I get that, but you left. You should be better than them and do what’s right for people rather than what’s right for some stupid secretive plan.

      1. GloatingSwine says:

        To be fair, Jolee didn’t pretend he wasn’t an asshole.

        1. Matt Downie says:

          “I decided not to tell you the truth because I thought it would be more dramatic for you to learn it from Darth Malak later.”

          1. djw says:

            Is what Tarquin would say to Elan.

    4. Wide And Nerdy says:

      Everything about the revelation is rewarding from seeing the build up you missed, realizing how they masked it behind player character tropes, to the reveal itself, to the party’s reactions, particularly learning that HK-47 was made by Revan and thus, by the transitive property, you.

      HK’s character suddenly becomes a part of your characterization. You’ve heard about the hero Revan was, you’ve seen the hero you are. You’ve noted perhaps a streak of impish humor in your personality (either doing dickish things to people as a dark sider or teasing people as a light sider) and this comes together in HK who is. His purpose as an assassin, his disguise as a protocol droid and the sort of absurd pride he takes in being what he is with his warped value system.

      We learn in KOTOR 2 that it pissed Malak off whenever HK called him a ‘meatbag’ which amused Revan so he never bothered to change the behavior.

      1. John says:

        No, that’s in the the first game. HK-47 will tell you that (and other things) if you talk to him after the reveal. HK-47 in the second game is a much darker and–strange as this is to say about an enthusiastic assassin droid–crueler character.

        1. Gruhunchously says:

          HK-47 in KOTOR 2 is interesting because you’re *not* his master, and therefore he has no particular loyalty to you to begin with. In order to gain his trust, you have to actually start doing things that he would approve of: mindless violence, petty cruelty and other general nastiness. That alone shifts his from the comedic psychopath of the team to a genuinely worrying presence, even if his personality doesn’t change that much. Also by nature of his relationship with the Exile, he goes from enthusiastic but obedient to openly smarmy and antagonistic much of the time. But then again, he’s also put up side-to-side with the HK-50s, who put him to shame as far as mindless rampaging (and smarmy condescension) go.

          1. djw says:

            IMO the HK’s (all of them) were the best part of Kotor 2.

  6. wheals says:

    It’s too bad you didn’t have any tools or weapons that might be useful for cutting through blast doors. You’d almost think they’d give Jedi something for a situation like this.

    (Then again, maybe all the doors have cortosis-weave curtain hangings?)

  7. Catamaran says:

    I think someone asked for a GIF?

    http://i.imgur.com/c5djH3n.gif

    1. Chris says:

      You officially win this week of Spoiler Warning

      1. Gruhunchously says:

        Deal with it…oh god I can’t see….

    2. Metal C0Mmander says:

      It’s the stupid face that really makes that GIF a winner.

    3. The Rocketeer says:

      If only I’d had the skills, I’d have made basically this exact same thing… except with the headgear floating down more slowly, to build anticipation, and then instead of saying “Deal With It,” it says CHEEKOO, HEDAWEDONGA, WANTAWA MALLEMOOLERA.

      1. Cuthalion says:

        It’s never too late to learn. That would be an awesome gif.

    4. Cuthalion says:

      +1. This is what I scrolled through the comments hoping to find.

  8. SlothfulCobra says:

    Anakin building C-3PO was less a twist, and more of just a contrivance to bring in one of the only two characters who would be the same 40 years in the past. It really has no narrative importance, although it is kind of a nice gag for C-3PO to never have any idea what’s going on because everybody respects the little droid that can’t talk more than him.

    Now, Revan having built HK-47 seems like a cool thing, and sure, you get to hear a couple stories about him dicking around with Malak, but you miss out on the stories in between when you were deposed and when you found him again, and that’s really the best part about him (I think you also miss out on the bonuses you get from the quest, but that’s just more meaningless number salad). It’s like if on Noveria, Wrex finds the Turian who took his family armor, and after that point only ever tells you about what a dick he was, locking you out of hearing about his run-in with Saren, his merc jobs, or how he had to kill his father. It’s disappointing.

    Juhani I never cared for because all she ever had to offer was angst, and I get that “I had an awful childhood on a terrible planet and as a slave, and I fucked up being a jedi back on Dantooine” is a valid excuse to be a downer all the time, but it doesn’t make her any more fun to be around, you know? She’s a lot like Zaalbar, but with more dialogue.

  9. Pyrrhic Gades says:

    Darth Vader was C3P0’s father? Who says the prequels didn’t have great twists

  10. Gruhunchously says:

    Yeah…I don’t think that you’re going to be able to do Carth’s quest. You have to have talked to Carth to the point where he mentions his son, which I’m pretty sure you haven’t done, and then go to a spaceport to trigger the quest. Until then, sonny doesn’t exist in the gameworld.

  11. Korriban is kinda interesting.
    If anyone is playing (replaying) KoTOR make sure to grab a mod for it that let you take Bastilla with you (it should also fix a few of her dialogs).

    It looks like BioWare at some point wanted to let you take Bastilla with you as she does have extra but unused voiced dialog for Korriban.

    This is why I try to do Korriban as early as possible, sadly that means you can’t do the “I am Revan” thing on Korriban to other siths there.

    Why BioWare chose not to let you bring Bastilla with you to Korriban (instead forcing you to leave her behind on the ship) I have no idea.
    Sure there is the risk of her being recognized/detect, but to me it makes good sense to bring a jedi with you if you plan to enter into pretty much the heart of the sith.

  12. Alexander The 1st says:

    I felt the HK-47 twist works better – there’s a *lot* more foreshadowing to that effect, as opposed to Vader building C-3P0.

    If for no other reason than the reveal of HK-47’s owner actually had payoff with extra dialogue about what that meant about Revan’s character – that they enjoyed annoying Malak, and thus made HK-47 use “Meatbag” instead of “Organic”, “Human”, or Alien” – it indicates that if Revan had any particular past before the Jedi, they were a good mechanic, but that they also enjoyed good and/or evil nature ribbing of their comrades.

    C-3P0’s constant worrying wasn’t something Anakin thought was helpful – it was the Factory Reset default for *all* Protocol Droids in Episode 1.

    It would be a stretch at best to say that C-3P0’s constant worrying was Anakin trying to program a robot that worries as much as him and wanted to help out a lot…so much that Anakin decided he should help clear out the Jedi Temple…because he caused the death of Mace Windu.

  13. Korriban is probably my most favourite planet, it feels like you are on a treassure hunt there for old sith/jedi/force artifacts.
    And it’s for some reason the only planet I don’t get annoyed at for having to walk around.

    Kashyyyk, Manan, Tatooine, Dantooine, Taris, Unnamed Planet all got so much damn boring walking.

    I understand wanting to let players discover stuff but if you have already been someplace then allow fastravel there. In Star Wars it would make sense to be able to use a speeder to travel between known locations. (The Old Republic has this, and Mass Effect 3 has this though to some extent)

    I mean, don’t the player have a speeder in the cargo room of the Ebony Hawk that is used for those speeder races? Why isn’t that used for fast travel?

    I could also easily see a complete Star Wars game (a mix between a Telltale game and a BioWare game) where you are a force sensitive and depending on early choices you get discovered by either the Jedi or the Sith and trained (Dantooine or Korriban) and then sent as a spy to infiltrate the other side, at which point you can try to resist the change or allow the change to the other side. (playing with the struggle between light and dark and temptation and serenity etc.)
    Add some Obsidian style KoTOR2 Kreia gray side of the force into the mix and it would make a great moral adventure game.

    The game could end with becoming either the leader of the jedi on Dantoonine or leader of the sith on Korriban (as a head master jedi/sith).
    And if doing it Obsidian style then you could potentially go “grey” and either destroy both schools and start teaching from anew, or secretly be the leader of both schools (the sith’s affinity for masks and such would allow the use of a disguise when among the sith) and merge the two schools into a gray school or pure force school. (how it was way back originally, before the sith and the jedi split in two schools).

    1. McNutcase says:

      Something like that could potentially make me reconsider my resolution to never buy another Telltale game (that went in place after The Walking Dead failed at saving so badly that I argued Steam into giving me a refund, before refunds were easy).

    2. John says:

      Dude, Kreia is in no way a “Grey Jedi”. She’s a Sith, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

      1. Matt Downie says:

        She’s just not practicing.

      2. Sure she is, just like Jolee is also a grey jedi.
        While Jolee leans towards the light side, Kreia leans towards the dark side.
        But both are definitely grey and do not see themselves as Jedi nor Sith.
        If the player choose to kill or not kill someone then both Jolee and Kreia will accept the choices you do (to a certain point).

        If the player go full light side or full darkside then they will both react to that.
        Jolee is more light side than Kreia is darkside, Jolee might seem amoral but Obsidian dared make Kreia actually amoral.
        Both Jolee and Kreia have very pragmatic views on things.

        Anyone who is either a fully light side Jedi or fully dark side Sith are basically the same as lawful good (stupid) or chaotic evil (stupid), two extremes.
        Revan (as portrayed in KoTOR and described in KoTOR 2) was almost as grey as you could get, Revan could be placed between Jolee and Kreia in the grey spectrum.

        Example: Sacrificing a whole planet would be evil in the eyes of a light side jedi and entertaining in the eyes of a dark side sith. But to a truly grey side jedi that sacrifice would be justified if it saved several systems.

        One thing that seems to be a common thread among “grey jedi” is they wish to see a balance or status quo being maintained. For good to exist evil must exist for without the other one can no longer distinguish what is good nor evil.

        1. John says:

          That does not sound like Kreia at all. Indeed, when you ask her why she hates the Force, Kreia will tell you that she hates the very idea of “balance”.

          Kreia is every inch a Sith. She just hates the other Sith because she thinks that they’re shortsighted psychopaths. Listen to her descriptions of the ancient Sith Lords of Korriban sometime. She absolutely loves those guys.

      3. Gruhunchously says:

        She embodies much of the Sith philosophy, but has no loyalty to anyone else who identifies as ‘Sith’. She certainly has no loyalty to the Jedi either. By the end of the game, The Exile is the only person she still cares about. She wants to break her, but not in the name of the Sith, but for the sake of her own particular version of their teachings-relinquishing the Force itself and everyone who swears themselves to it’s will.

  14. McNutcase says:

    Wow. Chris came out with at least 5 good credits gags in this episode alone (the trucker hat suggestion would have killed my monitor were I unwise enough to have drinks available while watching Spoiler Warning), and none of them got used. This is shaping up to be a really good week.

    I tried to love KOTOR, I really did, but it’s just way too Bioware. Combat system that’s not all that and a bag of chips, shoved into my face FAR too much, and somehow I couldn’t like any of the characters. KOTOR 2 has been far more enjoyable, not least because combat is far less prevalent, and the characters more interesting.

    I can at least thank Josh for showing me how totally broken Force Wave is. I rushed it in KOTOR 2, and it’s still broken.

    I seem to remember the “random” alt-tabbing happening mostly when the game tries to go from one Bink movie to another with nothing in between. Transitions between Bink and engine seem to work OK, as do engine-engine transitions, but Bink-Bink seems to go sour.

  15. Killbuzz says:

    Darth Vader turning out to be Luke’s father is the better twist (at least prior to the prequel trilogy). It adds a new dimension to the then still mysterious Force by implying it can corrupt someone, it presents our hero with a moral dilemma and adds a lot of other interesting dimensions to the story. And most importantly, it makes sense, which isn’t the case with Kotor’s twist, which is one of those M. Night Shyamalan twists where the story and character motivations retroactively don’t hold up once the twist is revealed.

  16. Daemian Lucifer says:

    @20:50
    Oooh,so thats why you didnt allow Rutskarn to be here this week.

    EDIT:Josh,you are no Rutskarn.

  17. Alex says:

    Is anyone else unable to get this video to load? I just get the spinning loading icon in the middle.

    This is not the only video where this has happened (for some reason, it mainly seems to be videos uploaded on February 1st and not before or after), but I can’t ask the question on Youtube, so…

  18. MrGuy says:

    Revan built HK-47, but Darth Vader built C-3P0. The player is Revan, but Vader is Luke's father.

    You put this above the fold with no strike tags? Dude, spoiler warning!

    1. Matt Downie says:

      Yeah, you just ruined Phantom Menace for everyone who hasn’t seen it!

      1. Alex says:

        That’s okay, The Phantom Menace already ruined The Phantom Menace for everyone who had seen it.

  19. John says:

    Juhani does not appear in the post-Leviathan “I’m Darth Revan” conversation because the player can choose to kill her on Dantooine. Also, I fear that Chris will be disappointed because Belaya only appears on Korriban if Juhani is dead. For the record, Belaya is the Jedi on Dantooine who hassles the player character for not “wearing the customary robes” of the Jedi. The game only reveals that Belaya and Juhani were lovers if you talk to Belaya after killing Juhani. But fear not! There is another character on Korriban with a connection to Juhani and Juhani needs to be alive (and in the party when you meet him) for that information to come to light.

    1. MrGuy says:

      Juhani does not appear in the post-Leviathan “I'm Darth Revan” conversation because the player can choose to kill her on Dantooine.

      If that’s the reason, then the reason is really dumb.

  20. Spammy says:

    So on the anthropocentrism thing, the Getter Robo manga series actually tackled that in the later stories. Humanity is explicitly defined as the chosen species by this strange power that somehow also has a will, and in the far-off future the Getter Emperor is leading humanity in a war to annihilate every alien race. But this is played as objectionable as it sounds, the Emperor is not really accepted as being the big good by any of the present day characters who visit that future.

    1. Alex says:

      Huh, Getter Robo’s dystopian future is Warhammer 40,000’s good old days.

  21. I think there are yodas in Kotor2, if just in form of flashbacks? I am still finishing KotOR, took a pause with some other games and stuff.

    Kotor 1 became a little too long towards the end, in the next planet to the one SW is visiting now; but Kotor 2 felt like the right length and it never got long. I even finished it wishing it had lasted a little longer. Still the twist and storytelling of kotor 1 was still the clear winner. I say that about the first play through, the next play throughs didn’t felt too long.

    The start of this is the only point of kotor (beside the end’s length, I think more than by faults of the game itself by thwarted expectation, “oh, I got all the map bits and final location so the end is near… oh wait, still a way to go”) that I didn’t like and the only I still am not liking: you are beating Malak then he slips away in a cutscene. Not only it’s taking your win away but that feeling when you are forced to run away because “Malak is too strong” that you say “But I was just wiping the floor with him!”. I understand that story mandates Malak shall survive the fight and get away and that they want he to capture Bastila, but I think they should have looked for some other way. Two options occur to me:

    – Malak flees and it’s a combat race, in which he may be weakened in some parts so you may be beating him but strengthened in others so he reaches the goal before you can kill him. The goal being his ship, in which Bastila who would be made to fight ahead of you enters and he closes the door and takes off before you or Malak can follow. I think this would be hard to pull and too easy for glitches, plus even without glitches end looking stupid.

    – This is the one I like more: why does the trigger for the custcene have to be Malak’s health level? Couldn’t he be made as strong as in the final showdown so he’ll beat you and when you’re about to get the killing blow the custcene fires in which Bastila pushes you out of the room and Malak’s attack and the door closes and then Carth says his lines and then it completely checks with what has gone on, making it a real moment of awesome of Bastila and make her sacrifice more resounding?

    That second idea always strikes me whenever a cutscene triggers when the NPC I’m fighting reaches X HP, specially when it’s to be a cutscene of that NPC escaping or turning to be stronger even when during gameplay has showed the opposite to be true. Is there some programming problem with a concrete fight looking at your HP to trigger a cutscene like that? Has to be the Malak in the Leviathan a different Malak than we’ll meet in the final showdown? Why can’t have the area or something in it that when spawning activates a flag saying “cutHP = check_PC_HP(); if cutHP <=30 then cutscene();"? or whatever having a variable "PC_is_in_cutscene_fight" that activates it when it's sure that will be the next fight?

    1. John says:

      Master Vandar–er, the Yoda–appears once in KotOR 2. If you repair a certain droid on Dantooine, you can watch a corrupted recording of a conversation between him and Master Hates the Player. Wait! No, I mean Master Ed Asner. Er, Master Vrook. I mean Master Vrook. Otherwise there are no Yodas in KotOR 2 at all.

    2. Loonyyy says:

      Yeah, it’s a really good point of design.

      I know players want to win, but if your story requires a defeat, just make it that hard. You can control your antagonist, if you want them to stay their hand, you can make them. Don’t take control from the player to make them do something stupid.

      And don’t expect that people are going to accept that after beating an opponent senseless, that that opponent is going to slip away, holding his spleen inside his rectum as he crawls for his escape. If you want to ape a standard dramatic arc, nothing is stopping you. Yeah, it’s railroading, but it’s minor and less frustrating.

  22. Exetera says:

    It makes me sad that you can’t say “You know too much!” and kill Carth before boarding the Ebon Hawk. That seems like the right way for a Sith Lord to handle this problem.

    There are still rodent-frogs on the Ebon Hawk… but now there are rodent-frogs on that Star Destroyer, too. Darth Malak is so pleased.

  23. Loonyyy says:

    That’s kind of the thing though. Revan tried to start a new Sith Empire. He used the star forge to pump out weapons, built up an army of non Force-Sensitive troops, and began training sith apprentices.

    This happens a bunch of times in the history of Star Wars, and what always happens is that the Sith are destroyed by infighting. Always. Even in KOTOR, Malak takes down Revan, the brains and the power of the operation, and then himself is taken down again by Revan.

    It takes Bane coming along later to realise this, and he essentially does exactly what you describe. He’s trained in one of these temples, and he realises it’s just the weak teaming up to take down the strong, it’s nepotism and greed, and doesn’t reflect their philosophy of surivival of the strongest.

    So he DOES exactly what you describe. He embarks on a quest to exterminate the entire Brotherhood and destroy Lord Kaan’s Sith Empire, so that he may start over with his “Rule of Two”, one to embody the power, and one to crave it. That an apprentice, as in the old ways, would eventually kill and succeed their master, rather than training in groups. That the Sith don’t win through martial strength, they’re Sith, not soldiers. They use the power of the Force, and hide in secrecy. So he wipes the Sith out, and as the last, battle-weary survivor, begins training an apprentice and manipulating galactic events at large.

    What Revan’s doing is dumb, but it’s kind of what the Sith keep doing at that point in time. Nobody knows better, and Revan isn’t as much a Force user as a militant. Defying the Jedi Council, he decided to take a leading role in the fight against the Mandalorians, and engage in more mundane affairs. He condones the use of superweapons, and things which are basically war crimes, friendly fire, and does a lot of messed up stuff. His conversion to the Sith (Explained in Revan, but it’s terrible, seriously, it’s Karpyshn doing his best Lucas impression in revision) is just him doing the same, because Revan has decided to be a soldier, not a mystic, not a wizard, just someone who leads people into battle and kills. Even before he fell to the Dark Side, he was getting pretty Dark, hence KOTOR II and “Meetra Surik”. So while the Academy is dumb, I can’t really fault it that much. It’s the product of a philosophy that Star Wars knows is broken, and for Revan and Malak, large numbers of force sensitive troops aren’t really what they’re after. But yeah, dumb.

    The book is really good actually, Drew Karpyshyn, one of people’s favourite Bioware writers wrote “Darth Bane: Path of Destruction” and I highly recommend it. The first sequel is ok, even if it is a bit of a retread, and I haven’t read the conclusion. Don’t read “The Old Republic: Revan” by him, it is absolute trash.

  24. Atarlost says:

    The thing about the turret sequences is that they never happen the first time you go to a planet and get the starmap vision; excluding Taris to Dantoine of course. I think I remember some exclusion on turret sequences involving travel to and/or from Dantoine as well.

    So you avoid turret sequences if you don’t backtrack. Post-Taris, Post-Leviathan, and Pre-Lejon are the only turret sequences in that case. And since you’re not backtracking for things like the Genoharadan quests or taking all your loot to sell to Suvan Tam you’re not getting as many turret sequences as you’re used to.

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