"He Could Even Keep the Ones He Cared About From Dying"

Started by Noedig8 pages
Noedig Restricted

no

Dr McBeefington Restricted

So, does rex want to get rid of the dupe posing as gideon?

Lord Lucien Lets all love Lain

Smart.

Pyron_Knight Eater of Worlds

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
I give up.

Anyone else wanna try?

I'm sorry but it seems you just have a limited view of the matter.

Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Especially not in the SW setting.

Noedig Restricted

Originally posted by Pyron_Knight
I'm sorry but it seems you just have a limited view of the matter.

Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. Especially not in the SW setting.

True, but facilitating the deaths of billions or trillions is nothing to sneeze at.

Pyron_Knight Eater of Worlds

I understand that. But you have to understand things from the point-of-view of a writer to his audeince.

Star Wars is a space opera. Billions, millions, quadrillions, they die all the time in such settings.

Yo can't mourn every death. Nor are you expected to. These are non-existent people who you have non-existent feelings for.

If a character you've come to appreciate dies, if someoen you've come to emotionally invest yourself in is slaughtered or hurt, that's going to effect you more than a bunch of nameless, faceless people kicking the bucket.

That's what I'm saying. What Cade did effected me on a far more visceral level than what Anakin did.

Noedig Restricted
Originally posted by Pyron_Knight
That's what I'm saying. What Cade did effected me on a far more visceral level than what Anakin did.

Understood, but what you're relating here is your subjective reaction. Within the universe, what Anakin did was far more horrific as to be on an entirely different plateau of villainy.

Pyron_Knight Eater of Worlds

Well that's a fair enough point. There's no arguing that because Vader is actually a villain while Cade is just.....not heroic.

But yeah, I can agree with that.

truejedi Senior Member

link to the dope? or is it noedig? Cause he doesn't seem like gideon to this one...

Lord Lucien Lets all love Lain

Originally posted by truejedi
link to the dope? or is it noedig? Cause he doesn't seem like gideon to this one...
Noedig. Use of the strike feature. Mentioning Dark Empire sourcebook. In italics.

G-Man alright. Plus his name...

truejedi Senior Member

hmmm... yeah, his name is tricky. n/m. i withdraw my idiocy.

Oh, and obviously Anakin is more evil than Cade....

Noedig Restricted

I have it on good faith that the individual in question is curious as to why no one ever believes that it's actually him when he posts.

Zampanó The Blind Critic

Originally posted by Nephthys
Really? She was always in my party due to the force bond giving me all her buffs. Really useful ability I found, it enabled me to ignore them for the most part and focus on dealing MASSIVE DAMAGE.

That's boring as hell. The only use for my party of three is killing as fast as possible. Thus, HK (who does all of the damage) and glitch!Hanharr (who has all of the strength). The others are taken with if and only if they have an influence point or interesting quip.


Subjective.

Not really. Initially her only defining character traits are "bossy" and "cryptic." That's even lampshaded a few times, most notably during the very first conversation in the game. Getting deeper than that requires the PC to ignore the various Sith connections (which could have been interesting if we didn't get an explicit cutscene while still on TarisTelos) and bring her everywhere. There's no motivation to bring her except to keep her away from the ship.


Again, subjective, you can't say she's a crap character just because you didn't like her. Besides, she is your mom*, she's supposed to be preachy.

*metaphisikally.


Nope. Being preachy or not is an empirically testable trait. Does Kreia spend more than nine tenths of her screen time in a monologue? Is her soliloquy designed to assert her world view? Is she utterly apathetic about events around her, favoring chastisement about utterly irrelevant decisions or problems that could not be avoided? Is the answer to any of these questions yes? Then she is preachy. Whether or not that is a detriment to her character is up to you to decide, but the trait itself is not in question. I did not like her because of the trait, but it obviously doesn't bother you. I'm not trying to convince you, but to explain my position. We're having a conversation, not an argument, fuckwit!


Lol, did we play the same game?

You didn't find the 5 credit scene to be annoying? When your every choice leads to the guy getting stabbed AND a lecture, there is a problem that really becomes apparent after your seventh or eighth playthrough.


I personally found that a really interesting contradiction. That she wants you to be a totally free manipulative bastard and hates the Force for taking away free will, but acts like an even bigger manipulative bastard in order to force you to do what she wants you to do.

Yes. This is an interesting concept for a character. There is no awareness of this shown in the game that I recall, however. Even in the final scene, she talks only about her own hopes for you, her own intentions. For a game about the power of a single choice, you aren't given one for the entire plot! There are obviously limitations of the hardware, but the story itself (limited in large part by a mostly passive protagonist) is both reactionary and limited. The player chooses to be a saint or a demon, and that's it. There is no chance to turn away from the path, nor (explicitly) a motivation for that choice in-universe. As Kreia notes at the end, "there is only you."

Basically, the writer just gives a big middle finger to anyone interested in the plot; it's just a collection of things that happen to a nameless, ultimately unknown Jedi.


What motivations? The times when she calls you on this you're either being Jesus cuz its the right thing to do, or being a dick for teh luls. Unless you want her to actually just go, 'you're only doing that to max out your alignment, you prick.' You're already called out on your exp points and other various gameplay mechanics, how much more meta do you want this game to get?

I want it to be less meta. It's great to point out the limitations of the genera (the "hardware" I talk about above) but then you have to do something about them. There is no such innovation, just the apathetic, dispassionate surrender to that obstacle. "Well, we're stuck outlining your path, and even in universe it's obvious that you have no choices, but we're not going to let the player jump the rails or even let the player attack the railroad plot vicariously through the railroad plot." The most fun that I had during the KotOR series was on Korriban while navigating the Sith Academy. Uthar and his apprentice were dead set on betraying one another, and you can use like three different debuffs on them at once. The writers know that you can't do anything about the fight in advance, not even preparing yourself for a fight against two Sith masters. So, it gives you an out. Even though the player is committed to the fight, the character has an out. In KotOR 2, the player is going to have to meet every single Jedi Master; that's just what the game is about. What is so disappointing is that there is no agency given to the Exile whatsoever. There are just these things that happen, many of which are directly caused by Kreia. It's like dueling Mary Sue for the writer's affections.

Noedig Restricted

...There is much anger in you, child.

Lord Lucien Lets all love Lain

Originally posted by Zampanó
You didn't find the 5 credit scene to be annoying? When your every choice leads to the guy getting stabbed AND a lecture, there is a problem that really becomes apparent after your seventh or eighth playthrough.
Whenever I focus my disappointment and anger of the game, this scene is always what comes to mind first.

truejedi Senior Member

I spent hours trying to say the right thing to kreia to keep her from blasting me on dantooine. what a waste.

Nephthys The Gr8est!!!!!!!!

I like that scene.

I'll respond on the morrow when I'm not avoiding writing an essay and have hopefully gotten some sleep.

truejedi Senior Member

do you think a Fallout 3 playthrough where I don't use VATS at all would be worth the time?

Zampanó The Blind Critic

Originally posted by Noedig
Understood, but what you're relating here is your subjective reaction. Within the universe, what Anakin did was [b]far more horrific as to be on an entirely different plateau of villainy. [/B]

I'm gonna have to disagree.

The SW Mythos has a defined and known afterlife. Killing people just sends them to an eternal session playing tanglebuddies with every other life form ever to exist. Nothing wrong with that.

Keeping someone from that is literally the most vile thing imaginable. If [value (life)] is some decreasing value like 1/x^2 (where x is any positive value) then lim as x goes to infinity converges to some finite value. That value may even be negative, if the immortal being would prefer to die. However, the value of infinite oneness with Bliss itself for eternity is something like infinity to the infinitieth power infinity times.

Immortality as a flawed creature when the afterlife is infinitely more desirable is the most damning action imaginable. There were like seven pods holding Jedi back from becoming one with the Force on the Star Forge, and that was enough Dark Side Energy to consign an entire galaxy-spanning civilization to the abyss. This is srs bsns.

Noedig Restricted

For the record, I like where they're going with TOR. The timeline gives the plot some character (pun intended).