I mostly agree with it, though there were opportunities to play Darksider intelligently. Many possibilities in Sith Academy on Korriban, including double-backstabbing of your mentors come to mind. Pity I couldn`t take control of the Academy.
Though I would argue that our jolly bunch of Darkies in PT game is not really subtle..... I would love some more politics there, I tried to create some opportunities with Epireans, but my noble corruption efforts were sellfishly countered by other players. Fortunately I currently have much political fun in PT game, here there would be so many opportunities to use Corruption.......
Psychotic evil and manipulative evil are both fun to roleplay, actually. Palpatine could have both.... Gallador is both half-insane and thoughtful at the same time....
__________________ Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.
"… his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedeom, and he shall make you stronger than they."
Sauron to Ar-Pharazôn
1. Indeed, the EU is not really used as source material in my game. Certain aspects (like Seronno and the design for Malastare) do come from it, much as GL himself sometimes poaches bits of it, but it is not a general source. However, this game world not being utterly 100% canon in itself, very few parts of the EU are actively forbidden. Those parts being the really silly parts, which have been known to be common in some areas.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
__________________ Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.
"… his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedeom, and he shall make you stronger than they."
Sauron to Ar-Pharazôn
REX: Could Galder use Corto-
USH: No! Nothing stops lightsabers but lightsabers! NOTHING! *beats into the ground, then regains composure* ...oops.
REX: *twitch*
Yuuzhan Yong weapons certainly stop lightsabers......., though I doubt it is the element of EU Ush likes.
__________________ Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.
"… his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedeom, and he shall make you stronger than they."
Sauron to Ar-Pharazôn
Easily one of the worst things to come from EU...along with cortosis, basically anything to do with the Yuuzhan Vong, and it's habits of having characters be insanely overpowered and go from light to dark and back again...
...
Yeah, I'm not the biggest EU fan either, personally.
I have actually stopped reading the New Jedi Order novels halfway, did I miss much? I heard the recent Legacy of The Force books are quite good, I may try it.
Though I wouldn`t really mind playing in a EU-based game, even New Jedi Order, though having the Jedi slaughtered by Yong would be a tiny bit annoying..... suddenly an entire race of Jedi killers immune to Force?
Ush was once planning the NJO game I remember, though Yong were out I think....
__________________ Yet the lies that Melkor, the mighty and accursed, Morgoth Bauglir, the Power of Terror and of Hate, sowed in the hearts of Elves and Men are a seed that does not die and cannot be destroyed; and ever and anon it sprouts anew, and will bear dark fruit even unto the latest days.
"… his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedeom, and he shall make you stronger than they."
Sauron to Ar-Pharazôn
1. It's just not as good as Balder's Gate, it's really not. That's not really relevant though.
2. The storyline isn't THAT good. It's adequate, but some people seem to treat it like the second coming. It's reasonable, it's nice that people tried something like that, but objectively speaking, it's really not all that. Again, frankly, BG was better.
3. Fine you have to adapt a setting to be a game. But it indulges in silly extravagencies. Cortosis-lined weapons are a crime on many levels- I don't like cortosis at all, it's an intensly lazy plot device seen in a comic book style of thinking- create something powerful, counter it, counter the counter, and so on, until the original thing looks silly... it is stuck in that sort of thinking. But even as designed, Cortosis was incredibly rare AND no good for making weapons out of. KOTOR totally reverses the trend to fill the game Universe with swords that can fight sabres... and the crime is that it is not even stylistically justified. it is the OPPOSITE of that, it gors actively against the style of Star Wars. There was no need for any of those non-sabre physical melee weapons in the game. It's not how Star Wars works.
It compounds it with ridiculous force powers, worse than even in many arcade games. RPs should be a little more grounded, but the force users here could fire off Lightning like it was on a hose, freeze people with the force and what in the name of buggering hell is 'Force Destroy Droid'? How much further from the source material do they want to go?
4. Irritating rejection of what GL says about his own source material- their interpretation of the 'love' thing was way off base, sounding much more like some of the whiny EU fanboys we see in the EU area moaning about things. People don't like what GL does with love in SW, but he still did it.
5. The game system is broken and easy character abuse made the game piss easy. Sequel was even worse here- flurry of blows killed most enemies without breaking a sweat. D20 system actually does not work with Star Wars, and they even used the D&D defence system instead of SW's tabletop adaption, componding the issue.
6. Ok, their Light/Dark Side system, which got so much praise.
SERIOUS issues there. This whole 'start neutral and change by your actions', first used in Jedi Knight, does not work right.
Why not?
Well, first of all, to make it work, they had to start both games with your character as an amnesiac. Lazy.
Secondly, the decisions are banal. Turning to the Dark Side seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the issues of gravity and destiny that the movies have it as. Light Side seems to be about not accepting money for missions, and Dark Side seems to be about stealing money and maybe going on a spontaneous kill rampage for no explained reason. It's trivial, it is an utterly surface treatmet of what should be a deep issue and it is not appropriate for what is meant to be a deep RP game.
Thirdly, the benefits are mis-judged. It actually gives BONUSES for reaching the maximum of either end of the spectrum. What the hell is that? For the Light Side, especially, there should be NO reward for getting anywhere. Being good IS the reward, and yeah, that might well suck if you are obsessed with seeing your character development in terms of how many +s to hit you get. Suddenly, people are not trying to do good or evil because it is part of a reflected personality, No, they are being bribed into it by power. Yay! I topped the Light Side, so I get loads of cool bonuses! Honestly, what kind of Jedi is that?
Fourthly, it is deeply and fundamentally backwards. It assumes what you do makes you what you are. No! What you ARE causes what you DO. This is especially important in Star Wars. A true Dark Sider could do every single nice thing in the game, if the whim took him, but it wouldn't make him any less of an evil bastard. Yet the game would score him up the Light Side for doing that.
It's really not an opposed spectrum that counts up good deeds and evil deeds and produces a balance sheet. That reads Light and Dark side all wrong.
In my opinion, sophistication to make Light and Dark work is probably astill beyond a computer based RP. They should do intertwining plotlines choosing Light or Dark from the start. There, they could do REALLY well. Then they could explore what kind of Light/Dark Sider you are, which would make things work much better.
There.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Oct 17th, 2006 at 12:48 AM
"Fourthly, it is deeply and fundamentally backwards. it assumes what you do makes you what you are. No! What you ARE makes you what you DO. This is especially important in Star Wars. A true Dark Sider could do every single nice thing in the game, if the whim took him, but it wouldn't make him any less of an evil bastard. Yet the game would score him up the Light Side for doing that."
That rung the loudest for me just now, seeing as I'm currently Darksiding in KotOR II. Now if I were in this position, and a Darkie, I'd be doing my utmost to gain as many strings to manipulate as possible. Helping others should theoretically gain favor, put them in a position that you can demand help or resources right back. Generally, being manipulative, the absolute goal of any Dark leader. Yet I keep getting damn Light points.
And the game makes it even worse by throwing it right back in your face as Kreia. She's the very essence of what being a Dark Sider should consist of: She doesn't want to go out of her way to help the undeserving, but she doesn't approve of random murder, and would really rather keep people alive to be used. She even tells you her beliefs and reasons, and they all make sense. So if the game is going to spoonfeed me the way a true Darkie thinks and acts, why can't I think and act like that?
__________________
WARNING: The above post may contain sarcasm and/or sophisticated satire. Any psychological damage sustained is purely your fault.
I played Light Side in KOTOR (actually the first time I've ever played a light-sider in any SW game, ever), and got to be a Sith Lord in KOTORII before I got so bored I quit. I normally much prefer playing dark side in SW - I simply find it more fun...didn't find it so much in KOTOR, though. Really couldn't live up to really being a darkie.
And yeah, I wasn't exaggerating when I said we had a half-hour convo on this...
Though I must admit that it's fun to shoot down the people who claim that KOTORII was only sub-par because it wasn't finished. No, that game was just flawed from the very start...if it bores me so much that I quit a quarter of the way through, there's something wrong with it.
I played both sides in the first, but I actually haven't finished the Light Side...
I started Lightie in the second, went about half-way through, then a deluge of other games sidetracked me...
And a couple of days ago I decided to continue it, to find that all the save files were simply gone.
And Sith Lord is hideously overpowered. Hell, the Fighter-type I'm playing now is overpowered. Two rounds of Flurry kills any enemy, and two or three rounds of Storm massacres the entire room... XP
__________________
WARNING: The above post may contain sarcasm and/or sophisticated satire. Any psychological damage sustained is purely your fault.
Last edited by General Kaliero on Oct 17th, 2006 at 01:19 AM
Gender: Male Location: Dreaming...Or am I living...
Yea, I figured out a combination of powers where you could be incredibly overpowered, in KOTOR 1.
I beat Malak in like 2 seconds. It bordered on stupid.
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Oct 16th, 2006 11:26 PM
