ZeldaTheSwordsman

1. Canderous explicitly refers to it as the final battle. Here is the entirety of what he says about the Battle of Malachor V: "I still remember that final battle in the skies above Malachor V. The two fleets filling the space around it, outshining the stars...It was not your ships or your men or your vaunted 'fight for freedom' that won this, the final battle of the war. It was by the actions of one person - you - that the Republic prevailed. Your strategies and tactics defeated the best we could send against you. Even Mandalore himself was taken aback by the ferocity of your attacks, the tenacity of your defenses and the subtleties of your plans. You fought us to a standstill and then began pushing back. We didn't really have a chance. It was by the actions of one person, the Jedi Revan, that you prevailed." No implication of a cataclysmic superweapon or of some potent Jedi other than Revan playing a pivotal role (or Revan being late to the battle). Every implication of Revan themself, leading the charge and ultimately overwhelming the Mandalorians through force, cunning, and sheer cussedness. Explicitly saying that the Mandalorians were fought to a standstill and then pushed back, which while not the most detailed is still very much at odds with the sequel's conceit of the Mass Shadow Generator being what did the job and the Exile being the one behind it. 2. The thing about the Star Forge is that Revan abruptly abandoning the Sith and the Star Forge is consistent with neither the implications of the first game's Dark Side ending (the wickedly triumphant return of Revan the conqueror, Star Forge at their disposal and poised to take the galaxy) nor what this game tries to retcon Revan's goal to have been (toughen the galaxy up and build up military in preparation for a nastier outside threat). Having reclaimed the Star Forge, Revan would then abruptly abandon it instead of resuming the original agenda because...?

The game doesn't explicitly encourage you, no. The encouragement comes from the experience of the game basically punishing you for not refraining. It is encouragement in effect. But never mind this thread anyway...

I'm not talking about making it easy, just about making it less like "taking on the TSL Handmaidens' first challenge when you're not built for unarmed fighting" (I.E. You miss most of the time while they hit most of the time, and can do a lot more damage), which Marl and Bendak can sometimes get like if you're level 7 or 8. And I figured that modding in situation-restricted equipment would be a good way of achieving that balance without nerfing them or making you overpowered outside of those fights. Or maybe my memory's messing with me and they're not actually that problematic at those levels... And you know, I did specifically say that you're encouraged to refrain from leveling up too much while on Taris. Not that you're encouraged to refrain from leveling up at all, just encouraged to refrain from leveling up too far too soon. I don't think I was? But that run was a long time ago. And I resolved never to have another run like it again.

No, you're still effectively encouraged to refrain from leveling up too much. Because bonus Force points or no, if you don't refrain you get gimped on Force Power progression. I say this as someone who was once Level 12 before leaving Taris.

1. Re: The Star Forge. That is a cheap copout if ever I heard one, especially since the idea of Revan not intending they keep the Star Forge and the idea of Revan leaving at all are completely disconnected from the first game's Dark Side ending. And I reiterate that the "Revan was trying to toughen the galaxy against some other threat" retcon is flimsy bullcrap. 2. Re: The Academies. A. If the Trayus Academy was specifically used for breaking Jedi to the Dark Side, why did Malak take Bastila to Lehon to do it instead? B. The policy of taking Jedi to Trayus and disappearing Force-sensitives in the Sith ranks to Trayus (as Atton establishes) seems at odds with the Dreshdae Academy's entrance policies and scrutiny (or lack thereof) of its students. C. The idea of the Trayus Academy having anything to do with Revan and Malak feels like a forced attempt to unnecessarily tie the sequel's Dark Side McGuffin Place of Doom to the first game's baddies D. There isn't a Sith Academy on Taris; not for actual Force wielders, anyway. 3. Re: Who trained Revan. Okay, fair enough, I forgot about the explicit thing with Zhar. That is my bad. I forgot about that and was going by remembering Vrook being extra-ornery towards and suspicious of the amnesiac Revan. However: KotOR II's saying "Revan had many masters" is a retcon that exists to shoehorn Kreia in there. 4. The problem is that it's not simply "the villain's point of view." The problem is that A. it's the writer's point of view, mouthpieced through the villain, B. The overall narrative seems to say "if you don't agree with this interpretation of the Force you're wrong" regardless of the viewpoint coming from the villain, and C. said viewpoit comes off as shallow and knee-jerk on analysis, making A and B all the more irritating. 5. Re: Kreia's prophecy about Mandalore. It is an explicit reference to Jango Fett's death. And it's stupid, because it implies that Jango Fett was the last of the Mandalorians; that was wrong even at the time the game came out. 6. The inconsistency is that the dialogue in KotOR 1, sparse on info though it is, implies an intense but straightforward battle, not a battle where the Republic resorted to a cataclysmic superweapon to turn the tide. "The Republic broke our ranks" does not really paint a picture of "The Republic used a gravity crush superweapon that wrecked their own fleet almost as bad as it wrecked ours"; it paints a picture of Republic troops and/or ships battering their way through the Mandalorian lines. That reminds me: The Mass Shadow Generator needs a new name. Because mass shadows are just the "shadows" in hyperspace that correspond to realspace masses of sufficient size.

One of the issues of KotOR 1 is that due to the level cap of 20 (which was hardcoded, last I heard), you're encouraged to refrain from leveling up too much while on Taris, lest you gimp your Jedi progression. I wouldn't go past 7 or 8, personally. But this isn't without its own troubles. Starter world though Taris may be, the enemy NPCs aren't toothless, and beginning with the Black Vulkar Base the fights can be problematic for a PC trying to stay that low. But at least with the dungeons you have the option of relying on other party members. The Duel Ring, not so much. I seem to recall both Marl and Bendak being hard to manage at those levels (Twitch on the other hand seems to have a hard time dealing with you shoving a vibroblade in his face). One way to counteract that would be buffed equipment that you could obtain to even the playing field a bit. But I feel that runs the risk of being overpowered for that point in the game. So I think a good mod would be temporary equipment that you can only use in the Taris Duel Ring somehow. Is that something anyone would be interested in making, if it's even possible?

Honestly I don't know if anything will come of this... But I wanted to air the idea while the thoughts were still crystallized in my head, before they slipped away again. I don't own a PC version of the game to tinker with right now, although I can at least draft ideas..

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is a fun game to play, at least as far as character leveling and battling your way through the game is concerned (so many of the sidequests being broken as all get-out, not so much). Which is good, because if the story as-is was the main draw of the game? I might have donated or pawned my Xbox copy and never looked back. Because... hot take: The majority of KotOR II's writing is crap, especially in regards to the Jedi Order and the Sith Triumvirate. Now, there are some things and concepts I like, but there's a lot (especially to do with the areas just mentioned) that has grated on me more and more with every subsequent playthrough. So, I'm going to cover the things I have problems with and pitch fixes for them (marked with underlines). Now, I realized a lot of these fixes cause contradictions with Legends storylines that referenced this game, but you know what? Serves Legends right for having mindlessly rubber-stamped practically every non-Lego game that came out after SotE as canon (especially The Force Unleashed). And for the NJO novels. * Letting the player decide whether Revan embraced redemption or reverted to evil. Letting the player have it either way as far as Revan's gender is concerned? That's all fine and dandy (that is, aside from the sloppy coding not checking this properly especially wrt the stupid Jedi Masters). But KotOR II also tries to let you choose whether the first game had the Light Side or Dark Side endings (hence why the galaxy is so jacked-up) but that. Doesn't. Actually. Work. Because except in the situational alternate Dark Side ending, THE STAR FORGE DOESN'T GET DESTROYED on the Dark Side path. The Dark Side ending of KotOR 1 is: "Revan kills Malak, reclaims the Sith empire and the Star Forge, is poised to conquer the galaxy." With something like the Star Forge in play... trying to have it both ways like KotOR II does just doesn't work. I'm sorry, but no. Revan needs to be locked in as Light Side. * Most of the attempts to tie the Sith Triumvirate and their crap, and the Trayus Academy, to the first game need to be excised. 1. Revan already had a secret ancient Dark Side MacGuffin facility that was part of what factored into their going Dark: it was called the Star Forge. 2. I'm sorry, but I think if Revan and Malak's empire used the Trayus Academy to convert Jedi then Malak would have taken her there rather than Lehon, no? 3. If Revan was sending suitable captured Jedi to Trayus as well as "disappearing" Force-sensitives from the ranks to send them to Trayus (and this seems too big a thing to keep secret from Malak), then somehow I don't think the Dreshdae Academy on Korriban would have been so blindly welcoming to defector Jedi and supposed defector Jedi. And would have been screening students in need of "correction". 4. Subtext in the first game seems to strongly indicate that Revan was Vrook Lamar's Padawan. Chris Avellone's Mouthpiece Kreia doesn't get to usurp that. Chuck it all, work in a nonconflicting setup for the Trayus Academy. * Speaking of Kreia... Ugh. Just... Ugh. I think the game would almost be better off without her, but she's a little too enmeshed to be chucked so some rewriting will have to suffice. Chris Avellone has said: "When it came to the narrative, a lot of thrust for the storyline came from an examination of some interpretations of the Force that were coming out of Episode I, II, and III, mostly the fact that the Force seemed to have a will of its own and it had a plan for everybody in the universe but that plan didn't seem beneficial for a whole bunch of people, result in a lot of death and destruction, and then lastly the idea that we didn't really have any choices over our actions; it was a lot of predestination. As a role-playing game designer, all of those things kind of bothered me" (quote found on Kreia's Wookieepedia page, but it's not the original source). Hence Kreia's extreme bitterness towards the Force and its will, to the point that she's trying to kill the Force. But there are some major problems with that thrust. 1. The timeline proves that Avellone is either fibbing or mis-speaking in that interview, because TSL predates RotS and so RotS (and interpretations of the Force based thereupon, including a more competent examination of "the will of the Force" from Matt Stover's novelization) can't have actually been much of a factor. 2. Speaking as a prequel fan I don't seem to recall people talking that much about "the will of the Force" in the films. 3a. While those interpretations may have been present in Expanded Universe novels and whatnot of the time, they don't really match up with what the movies themselves (OT or PT) show (indeed, the movies themselves would seem to portray predestination as false - "Always in motion, is the future," remember? Avellone referencing that makes this writing even more painful- and actions that assume predestination as dangerous and self-destructive), or George Lucas' conception of the midi-chlorians and the Whills (which is more along the lines of destiny-as-choice, same for George Lucas' personal beliefs). 3b. George said in 2003 that what he was exploring with the prequels was how someone would fall into evil ways, and that his conclusion was the inability to let go and move on in the face of change and loss - which is exactly what we see with Anakin in the prequels; "will of the Force" has nothing to do with it, nor is it said to (at least in the movies). 4. All of that being said, Chris Avellone's counter-interpretation of the Force as mouthpieced through Kreia comes off as more than a little shallow and knee-jerk. It's made worse by the fact that the narrative doesn't offer much in the way of counterarguments to the interpretation given through Kreia, so it feels like the game is shoving that interpretation down your throat. For me at least, this is amplified by the fact that you're rarely if ever allowed to actually counterargue any of Kreia's philosophical attitudes. Rebuff? Yes. Counterargue? No. Something else Avellone said is that the lesson he hoped players took away from KOTOR II was "it's okay to question the franchise." Well, as far as I'm concerned he couldn't have blown that one harder if he'd tried. Because what I took away from this game was "It's not okay to question my super-negative intepretation of the Force and I'm gonna viciously staple it to your forehead." Rebalance the narrative to present good counterarguments to her interpretation in-story (both spelled out in dialogue and implied through actions in scenes) and also maybe tone Kreia the f*** down in places. Or, in lieu of toning her down, maybe change the story so that the Jedi Masters are overtly trying to draw her out (only to get more than they bargained for)? Just rewrite things around her hard enough that the game as a whole isn't cramming her view of the Force down your gullet (even if Kreia herself still is) * Kreia's prophesy re: Mandalore is dumb for various reasons even in the context of Legends (I'm sure Karen Traviss in particular probably had a few things to say to Avellone about that one). Rewrite it for accuracy or just chuck it outright and never look back. * The Jedi Masters' verdict on Dantooine feels very forced and abrupt, especially given Kavar and Zez Kai-Ell's individual reactions to a Light Side player. The first couple times I played through the game, I actually thought both Light Side and Dark Side players got this scene and it didn't properly take Light Side players into account (because, well, it honestly doesn't). As it stands, this is an unacceptable mess. Fix 1: Insert sufficient buildup to actually justify the verdict Fix 2: Change their reasoning for why they're doing what they're doing (maybe along the lines of "Under better circumstances, we would be content to let this be, but there are dangers"?) Fix 3: Change what they're doing and the setup for Kreia's intervention entirely * This game's presentation of the Battle of Malachor V doesn't seem to quite jibe with what the first game told of the last battle of the Mandalorian Wars. Not sure of a fix here, admittedly. But... It does feel worth commenting on. * It feels like there's a bit too much information critical to plot logic walled off behind Influence with party members. * The game tries to pull the same "trying to toughen the galaxy up for an outside threat" retcon on Revan that was elsewhere attempted in Legends re: Thrawn. It doesn't really work with Revan (it was semi-plausible with Thrawn, at least as an original, pre-corruption-by-Palpatine motive), although I'll admit that trying it with Revan still isn't nearly as bullcrap as people using it to try and excuse Palpatine and the Galactic Empire's sins. Regardless, it should probably be chucked. * Rewrite the timing and wording of HK-50's drugging of the Exile and sabotage of the Harbinger to better fit with the established info about picking up the Ebon Hawk and investigating the Sith warship I realize this is a huge undertaking, and not everyone will feel the same way I do about the narrative... But I feel it would be worth doing.