Assault Korriban Academy

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jc2

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In early 2021, the concept of an aggressive and alternate path into the Korriban Academy was conceived. 

What if you could charge in lightsabers ignited and guns blazing into Korriban? Especially Post Events of the Leviathan (PEL)! 

CONCEPT QUESTIONS:

What if there was a Darkside & Lightside routes of assault to Korriban Temple? Would you subjugate it as a Sith defeating Master Uthar and usurping his authority or would you recruit him as your pawn? This latter option led to the same issues of Shanilia of the PC deciding pre-unknown world (Lehon) which LS or DS path they'd choose, and creates a minor plot hole with Jolee/Juhani/Bastila and other PM who think the PC is saving the galaxy; thus the workaround is prevention of those characters accompanying or requiring the PC to do it solo. Raising the difficulty in terms of gameplay and modding those conditionals. 

Or would Revan enforce the Rule of Two, or merely adopt the Sith philosophy of testing and destroying the weak amongst them, and wipe out the entire Academy? This raises issues of the famed strategic mindset Revan was accredit for having. 

On the Lightside, would the PC eradicate all evil in open combat and take on an army? Would you lead a strike team of Jedi to launch a sneak attack and cripple the inflow of new Sith recruits? Would there be any room for repentance?

The greatest point would be for the Lightside PC to actually save the fleeing Sith students in the caves. This entire incident would suddenly become a major plot point of the Assault Korriban Temple mod, while still being optional, as most of the vanilla plot would be removed. 

NARRATIVE CHALLENGES:

For all these narrative reasons, the mod's creative direction was hard to settle upon. Eventually, I determine PEL was the only reasonable justification for the mod even existing, otherwise the PC is too weak and power scaling doesn't make sense. Though anyone could argue that this was countered by the vanilla game sending the entire academy at you. 

How do you accurately represent the Sith within the Temple responding to a Sith PC, it would be initial hostility followed by respect and a conversation with Yuthura/Uthar allowing the PC to subjugate or completely destroy them. Destroy has to be an option for PC expectations of Sith, DS jedi or DS elitist or Rule of Two, etc...

Eventually, I settled on that, and the LS version was also PEL followed by an optional but recommended Jedi Strike team that had infiltrated the Dreshdae colony and were about to strike. Therefore, it would be more coincidental that the PC was there (Will of the Force) resulting in the death of all Sith, except fleeing students found in the cave.

ENDINGS:

The PC would then be able to simply walk into the Starmap module or be escorted by friendly Sith, dramatically shortening the quest list on Korriban and player time on Korriban. 

TECHNICAL HURDLES:

On a technical standpoint, this required massive changes to all Korriban modules, massive changes to dialogue, lack of voice acting and replacement of aliens VOs, doors would have to be unlocked, party member specific scripts, enormous bug testing, compatibility issues for practically any Korriban mod, removing triggers, re-doing sidequests like the Mandalorian prisoner (planned to make him Republic), creating new sidequests like allowing PC to free & save Republic soldiers used as sparring partners. 

The more I write about this crazy idea, the more I like it!

This was simply an idea I had for a mod, it would be awesome to see this or something like this done by anyone. I may in-fact come back to this project in the future.

But, alas, I have an even more exciting and original modding project in development that may take me years to complete! Or like this modding project fall to the wayside and become yet another gravepost of the Journal of jc2. 

 

May the Force be with you,

-jc2

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lack of voice acting

It's a complete non-starter without proper custom VO, especially for the party members and major NPCs like Uthar and Yuthura. But fortunately we are on the cusp of that being a realistic proposition (as in it actually sounding good/natural).

As to the mechanics of the rest of it, the way I'd tackle it would be to create a branching point with a cutscene on the Hawk after landing. If you go the "guns blazing" route then you could just load a separate module. Otherwise you'd get the vanilla module. That would maintain compatibility with existing Korriban mods with minimal issues, although certain mods might need extensions to have their content appear in the other module.

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On 9/7/2022 at 11:30 AM, DarthParametric said:

 

 

It's a complete non-starter without proper custom VO, especially for the party members and major NPCs like Uthar and Yuthura. But fortunately we are on the cusp of that being a realistic proposition (as in it actually sounding good/natural).

As to the mechanics of the rest of it, the way I'd tackle it would be to create a branching point with a cutscene on the Hawk after landing. If you go the "guns blazing" route then you could just load a separate module. Otherwise you'd get the vanilla module. That would maintain compatibility with existing Korriban mods with minimal issues, although certain mods might need extensions to have their content appear in the other module.

Yeah, I think that the cutscene would have been a brilliant method!

I forgot to mention another one of the issues, which was the door's description implying it was a fortress door, unassailable. IIRC it was something like "this massive door can only be opened from the inside." So either an alternative point of entry or massive force power justification, thus reinforcing the PEL. 

Perhaps about the voice acting, just take lines directly from PC's combat engagement in the tomb, the game already has Uthar swearing allegiance. It would be finnicky but I think with enough creative effort and minimalism, you could get something working. Perhaps if you had a way of narratively pre-occupying your party members, I.e they have to fight off screen somewhere, stop reinforcements, transmit some information back to the Republic, etc...

It could also be fun to just recast those characters with other voice actors for the mod as a potential fix. 

Always interesting to hear your thoughts on modding DP!

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