KOTOR (series)

Turned Revan into an extremely generic and shallow villain and cut off a lot of the more interesting branches along with it.

But what's done is done. If you play nothing else, TOR's Imperial Agent storyline is a great SW RPG.

Oh, right, but that's in TOR. I thought they meant something was done to the overall franchise. I just ignore most of TOR these days. Played until last year and got really tired of it's annoying parts. It's a neat concept that gets ruined by being an MMO.

Kotor needed a third game to close out the franchise or atleast give the Revan era a more proper sendoff cause there is alot of WOW syndrome in To R when it comes to the Kotor 1 and 2

SWTOR is genuinely a good game...... when it's not being a MMO. Even then, SWTOR should've never came at the expense of KOTOR. Those 8 classes are some of the most engaging Star Wars Expanded Universe stories there is. Can't say the same about the expansion stories, especially the ones that involve Revan.

Unpopular opinion I'm completely fine with Revan's character. That being said I'm sure as fuck not fine what ultimately happens to him. Avellone (probably butchered that name up) was the one that made Revan's character popular to begin with. Which makes incredibly when Karpyshyn failed to grasp on what made Revan so appealing to begin with. Namely that Revan's entire character was always meant for the players interpret for themselves. With them being Revan after all

If you ask me who really got screwed over that would be the Exile.Bioware can go fuck themselves for that one.

... Avellone didn't do that though.

If Avellone made it to where Revan was up to you to decide, He did it in SPITE of how he went about it.

Then again giving Game characters concrete Novel characters has never really worked out, Kyle comes to mind. then again... Kyle got really out there powers.

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Jul 5th 2018 at 7:37:35 AM

Yes, he wasn't exactly subtle about how he felt about the lore of Star Wars but I could've sworn a lot of Revan's grayness came from Avellone or just KOTOR 2. Either way, I was under the impression that KOTOR 2 made an already popular character even more popular.

What are you talking about? You can make the Exile be horrified about Revan's pragmatic tactics. The only one who was willing to sugar coat him was Kreia & we all know how manipulative she is. Not to mention how much preachy & pretentious she can be.

Eh. The whole thing about Revan in KOTOR 2 is for every thing Kreia or Atton or Carth or whoever tells you about them, you're given the chance to dispute it, to shape it. The thing about the opinions Avellone writes into most of his work is that they're there for the player to argue against. So the "in spite of" part seems like it was more than likely intentional, and most of what Kreia thought she knew about Revan's intentions had every chance of being completely misguided.

Not sure KOTOR 2 is where Revan got popular, though. KOTOR 2 has a very dedicated cult following, but KOTOR had more mass appeal at the time. Revan is popular in part because a lot of fans just really wanted a sequel with that character, and never got it.

Such a shame when some great-looking RP Gs get paywalled off behind the MMO treadmill.

Edited by Unsung on Jul 5th 2018 at 6:52:56 AM

Revan, I find, works better when made vague, so we can throw onto them whatever impressions we have of the character. Featuring him in the MMO was always going to be a bad idea, doubly so the way they did. Same for the Exile.

I'm not sure about Avellone (And yes, you spelled it right) making Revan into what they are now, but I will say the man came up with one of my favorite stories in all of Star Wars. Yes, he gets a bit too carried away with some things here and there, but the story and the basic theory he comes up with for the Star Wars universe is something I find amazing.

On SWTOR, I think it's got a lot of good ideas, but it ultimately wastes them in order to be an MMO. Granted, about the only thing that could dream of rivalling WOW is the Star Wars franchise, but there was a lot of good stuff that was sacrificed to do it. The eight different stories, a lot of the characters, both Knights of The Fallen Empire and Knights of The Eternal Throne, those things are pretty cool, but they suffer for having to be fitted into an MMO. A third KOTOR game with those elements would have been really cool.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Jul 5th 2018 at 9:51:15 AM

Of course not.

Revan always been a popular character since KOTOR 1.

Being able to shape & interpret one of the coolest Sith Lords probably didn't hurt. Not too surprising being an Avatar and all that.

Edit: Wow, you guys are really fast at posting.

If Nerdslayer's video is to go any by then Star Wars: Galaxies was the better MMO. I took that with a grain of salt since I personally believe MMO are most evil games out there because of my experience with SWTOR. & I agree with your statement except the Expansion Pack having a good story. Even though I like Theron & Lana.

From what I can tell & what seems to be the general consensus SWTOR's biggest problem is that it's having an identity crisis. It can't focus on being a MMO & while having an engaging story.

Edited by agent-trunks on Jul 5th 2018 at 6:18:57 AM

Thats cause you can't in an MMO, Stories with mass changing consequences have to be uniform across the table cause the timesink in an MMO is not the same as a Single player RPG. MMO's YOU CAN'T have a drastic change in status quo

Its why the latest important person to die event is so eye rolling... cause one is more drastic then the other, Yet Narratively they'll be treated the same.

Not that fast, that was a reply to Frozenwolf. I wasn't sure if it was even Revan we were talking about, because of the "Avellone made Revan more popular" thing.

TOR wants to tell single-player stories. It always has. It has to fit them around multiplayer mechanics, and that's never really worked out. Another game that I would still really like to be able to play as a purely single-player experience was The Secret World, which came out around the same time, IIRC.

Edited by Unsung on Jul 5th 2018 at 7:19:34 AM

Going off on the "Nathema Conspiracy" expansion did to those story relevant characters, those were some of the worst ways to kill off those characters. Well not generic Sith Bodyguard for the Jedi Knight, but damn near everyone else was.

Edit: Damn it, it happen again.

Edited by agent-trunks on Jul 5th 2018 at 6:22:52 AM

I mean Galaxies was the better MMO with all its whacky mechanics ,You had three "health" bars, If you wanted to be a force user you had to pretty much max every class to unlock it 'They didn't include the holocron hints for the three classes you needed to master till later'

You could build your own city it was kinda fun in its aimless waiting for the War to kick off

I'll take your word for that. Especially for my disdain towards MMO.

x4 I remember having to go grind in order to face the Sith Warrior's Act 2 boss, because it was supposed to be fought by a group of players, and I was going single-player on him. It was definitely a nice story, and I wanted to complete it, but the game being an MMO would sometimes force me into these kinds of ridiculous situations.

x7 Personally, I like both KOTFE and KOTET, although I never finished the second one. I find they have interesting stories (not KOTOR-level stories, mind) and shake up the game's basic workings pretty nicely, but ultimately fall flat, once more, for being MM Os and dropping the streamlined, single-player narrative.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Jul 5th 2018 at 11:06:29 AM

I mean Galaxies was the better MMO with all its whacky mechanics ,You had three "health" bars, If you wanted to be a force user you had to pretty much max every class to unlock it 'They didn't include the holocron hints for the three classes you needed to master till later'

You could build your own city it was kinda fun in its aimless waiting for the War to kick off

But everything changed when the NGE and their "nine iconic classes" attacked

In the middle of Korriban. Hella enjoying backstabbing the shit out of everybody. That's what you get for taking something as inherently awesome as Force users who subscribe to something as inherently blood-pumpingly OO-RAH as the Sith Code and interpreting that to mean "yep, we should institutionalize backstabbing people as a legit way to promote". Live by backstab, die by backstab.

Choices: told the first Sith guy to just make the prospectives run around naked, encouraged that other student to attack the guard as his final test, helped Lashowe and then killed her when she insisted on reporting the mission success alone (ain't nobody stealing my credit), killed the Sith interrogator when he tried to claim credit for my success (ain't nobody stealing my credit), saved Mekel when I disappointedly realized I can't kill the old Sith hermit if I let him die and then killed Mekel, and also prepared to poison both the Sith master and my mentor.

There's kind of a reason most "cut throat" working environments in real life tend to at least frown upon overtly crossing the line into "hostile" working environment.

Am justifying my Revan as a Cao Cao type figure, a tyrant hero who gets shit done and would rather betray the world than let the world betray him.

Was there supposed to be a way to save Dustil (Carth's son) or something? Waifu was super annoyed by Carth once we hit that part. Kid skipped right towards the "I hate you, Dad!" and tried to kill us, and then Carth starts blaming me for "not doing something" because his kids are my responsibility or something. She doesn't want to take Carth on any missions now, and I'm inclined to agree with her. Whole situation reminds me too much of stupid-ass situations we've either encountered or heard of which involve shitty parents unloading their parenting responsibilities to innocent bystanders. No more Cassus Fett's Heavy Blaster for you, Carth!

There's actually a way to not save Dustil? It's been years since I played but I'm pretty sure it's fairly easily done.

Edit: Just googled it. There's a datapad you get from a locked crate in the Academy Master's bedroom that indicates he was involved with the death of Dustil's girlfriend. Old school rpgs really encourage kleptomania.

Edited by Hackett13 on Jul 5th 2018 at 11:11:52 AM

It looks like there's one dialogue option that lets you try to convince him the Sith are evil. All other ones result in him attacking you.

Me, I just kind of got tired of his shit and picked the one that was like "forget it, Carth, he's never going to believe anything you say". I was expecting that to branch into another conversation path, or at least Dustil telling us to GTFO rather than skipping right into trying to kill us.

Sorry-not-sorry, Dustil, ya done goofed, now that's a paddlin'.

Edited by PRC4Eva on Jul 5th 2018 at 2:44:56 AM

On the Unknown Planet now. Got a tad impatient with the Rakata scouting party and slaughtered them all. Found out that this unfortunately cuts off various sidequests that I could have done, although being that I'm already fully leveled, this doesn't really harm me much.

Here we see the weakness inherent in the Dark Side, I could have gotten rewards from doing stuff and maintaining relationships with others, instead I killed everyone.

Amusing enough, I keep accidentally killing them because I tried to tell them there wasn't anything special or sided with "The Elders". I said this is a mistake on my part, but they were very quick to arms about it so, screw' em

Goodbye, Juhani and Jolee. Been nice knowin' ya, but ain't no Jedi Code gonna keep my from my destiny.

Am kinda miffed that you can't turn Juhani. Seems like her personal plot was made for it. I even had her kill the bully purple Twi'lek guy.

Did feel for Jolee, though. He was a Jedi in the end, and that kind of dedication to the ideals if not the implementation set by the Order is admirable.

I did purposefully not give either of them Force Resist or Force Immunity specifically for this reason though. Felt like Master Li in Jade Empire.

Anyway, got Bastila back...what do you mean you don't know how to buff people now? Not fond of that develpment, so I used the save editor to remove some dark side powers and give her back her buffs. There's no reason she should lose powers from going dark; we don't even do that, and the game's mechanic of having opposite alignment powers cost more Force points already handles this. If anything, it should just add some dark side powers to what you already specced her as.

Anyway, I think I'm ready to slaughter those Elder Rakata too before going to the Star Forge and dealing with the dissidents in my own camp.

Should I kill Mission myself, or let Big Z do it?

Star Forge acquired, Malak rekt, made the Sith Empire great again.

Started KOTOR 2, running around Paragus mining station right now. It isn't gripping me as much as 1 is. Think it has something to do with how much solo activity there is compared to Taris where Carth joins you right away and you almost always have at least one other party member as soon as you hit the Undercity. Also, while I appreciate the whole "murder mystery" aspect to the place, it just drags on for so long...

Also also, currently not feeling any continuity with KOTOR 1 other than we were on Revan's side during the Mandalorian Wars.

Yeah, Peragus is admittedly a very weak start for KOTOR II. Heck, you probably won't even get a lightsaber until late into Dantooine.

The worst part though is how infamously buggy the game is. Case in point, have you noticed how the gender pronouns for Revan keep getting screwed up?

My advice? Find and install the fan-made restoration patch ASAP, it fixes so many bugged quests, script lines, missing items, etc.

Edited by SgtRicko on Jul 19th 2018 at 12:16:11 AM

It's available on the Steam Workshop so that's your best bet.