Reviews VideoGame / Knights Of The Old Republic II The Sith Lords

You act like the deconstruction is a bad thing. :(

I felt rather enlightened by the over arching story and I thought the characters therein were very well written. Even Kreia. Who is the villain for a reason.

Well, I felt like the deconstruction was more like shallow whining than anything else. And it's really easy to make a character look smart when, as the writer, you can bend reality to make her always be right, no matter what. Its intense disdain for Star Wars, and for *you* if you like Star Wars is built-in to the game's DNA, and it is inescapable.

I mean, hey, I ragequit over Kreia too. And this is the one complaint that is indisputable, because even Chris Avellone admitted after the fact that he basically used her as his mouthpiece to bitch and moan about Star Wars for the whole game.

It's not inescapable. If you got yourself fixated on believing it was inescapable, then sure. But that's partially you're fault.

Avellone said he made Kreia ask the questions he had about the Star Wars universe. He didn't say he made her spout the answers.

Obsidian are always very careful to make sure that there's no 'right' way of doing something or thinking about something. You can see that in Fallout: New Vegas, you can see that in Planecape: Torment, you can see that in Alpha Protocol. And you can see that in Koto R 2 if you haven't blinded yourself to that possibility.

• SPOILERS HERE ON OUT*

Kreia's whole character arc is that Kreia thinks she's right and everyone else is wrong, but whenever she tries to put her teachings into action, they fail. Everyone ignores her and thinks she's full of BS and it absolutely kills her on the inside. She's so angry and bitter at the way people reject her that she would rather see the universe burn than live a day longer. She blinds herself to the reality and will believe whatever it takes about you because you're her last chance to try and prove she's right. And so if you try to spare her life at the end of the game she absolutely flips out because even now you going to leave her old and broken and wrong.

That's why she killed the council. She finally thought she'd found a way to prove to them that they were wrong and she was right because of your character. And then when they see you, they still think she's wrong! Kreia just can't deal with that, so she flips out and kills them.

Sure you could believe Kreia was right. But as Atton says Kreia was a petty vindictive creature who was obviously a Sith from the beginning.

Kreia claims that you can be a grey Jedi, that there's blurry lines between the light and dark. But the five/six people she tried to teach to be 'grey Jedi' ended up being: 1. Darth Revan, who tried to conquer the galaxy. 2. Darth Sion, a being who subsists on pain. 3. Darth Nihlus, a being who exists to eat the life force of entire planets. 4. Darth Artis, who sits all day listening to Sith Holocrons and tries to kill the PC. 5. Darth Traya, who tries to kill the force itself (and blackmails and tortures everyone) 6. Potentially you. But if you follow her teachings you end up with the ending where you sit on your thrown and presumably try to conquer the galaxy.

This is not very good evidence that she's right. As I said, her backstory is "I belive I'm right. I'm a 'grey' Jedi" "Kreia, your disciple just tried to destroy the world. You're wrong" "Screw you guys, I'll prove you wrong just wait and see." "Now you've gone and made three people who've tried to destroy the galaxy" "It's not me. It's them. I hate you and I'll kill you all" "Kreia, we still don't believe you." "Well I'll try and destroy the galaxy. Then you'll see"

I always wonder why when I play the game I see Kreia as pathetic in-universe, whereas other people get so stuck-up on her they feel like she's the only in-universe 'correct' person in the game.

I think the big difference is this, when I played Koto R 2 for the first time, I'd already encountered a lot of Randian Objetivists IRL. So I found it impossible to see Kreia as a deconstruction of the force, because she so clearly represents a viewpoint that's not even well accepted in a universe without the force.

And I'd already come to the conclusion that Randian Objectivism was complete BS made up by people so they could feel better (and) superior about being a dick to other people. So when I was presented with a Randian Objectivist where every other person in the world kept saying that her teachings were complete BS made up by her so that she could feel better and superior about being a dick to other people, I was loving the heck out of it.

Sure the beggar thing went her way. But that's literally the only time in the game it happens. Every other time you ignore what Kreia says, she gets mad and the person you helped gets better. Whereas if you do what Kreia says the people end up worse off.

Deconstruction isn't inherently bad, no. But when it's handled in such a childish and self-righteous way as in this game, which is not a proper forum for this level of "philosophical" discussion to begin with, it sure as hell is.

Where were the editors in all this? They just let this Provolone person run rampant with his Rand-y bullshit while they were rushing the end product to market (not entirely their fault, I know) or something? See, this is exactly why they should outlaw Rand's so-called "teachings" from the entire educational system. Of course, there's nothing stopping some angry, angsty teen with a need for something to "believe in" from picking up this crap from other avenues, but at least a small fraction of tax money won't be spent on the potential ruination of works of fiction.

Way back when, I was forced to live with one of these so-called "objectivists", and now that I think about it, he kinda gave me the same vibe. I've suffered through card-carrying atheists and Christian fundamentalists, but this dude was something else.

To be fair, Chris Avellone is sort of one of the most famous and important writers working in the medium. I can see where he ended up with unnecessary editorial immunity. And, to his credit, he has since more-or-less apologized for being so blunt about it and done a better job in subsequent games.

That said, I think calling him an objectivist is a bridge too far.

What Tomwithnonumbers said. What a lot of people don't seem to realize about Kreia - something which really ticks me off - is that the entire point of her character is that she's Right for the Wrong Reasons at best, and even that's stretching it.

Yeah, she's kind of right about the Jedi being flawed. She's kind of right that they're too dependent on the force. She's kind of right that charity and kindness sometimes, occasionally cause suffering. But she comes to all these conclusions not because she's some genius sage with wisdom beyond comprehension, but because she's a vindictive, hypocritical old bat who would rather destroy all life in the universe than admit that she's wrong - something that the game repeatedly acknowledges. If you're making a Villain Sue who is right about almost everything, making the fact that she is wrong about almost everything the focus of the story seems counterproductive. For every time that Kreia's conclusions are kind of right, there's a chance for you to prove the logic behind them completely wrong.

When you go to such lengths to deconstruct - and in many ways (most notably the Light Side ending and its cut components) reconstruct - the basic philosophy of the series, to the point that you read every piece of supplementary material and watch every movie as preparation for writing it, that doesn't really evoke a vibe of hatred. Even as critical of the series as it is, there's a profound sense of respect for Star Wars as well - for its lore, its philosophy, and its place in the world. And to interpret that kind of devotion to getting Star Wars right as a hateful tirade against it is beyond my comprehension.

If that's what you got out of it, Db, then I'm happy for you. Sincerely. Death of the author and all that.

But what you got out of it and what Chris Avellone wanted you to get out of it are, in this case, two different things. He in on record as hating Star Wars, resenting his trip through the EU to prep for the game, and on using Kreia as his mouthpiece for his views regarding the series in general and the Force in particular.

And I just can't take it.

And as I've mentioned earlier, that's not what Avellone said or did. You've slightly twisted his words to project your own personal feelings on the game.

Don't believe me? This is a direct quote from Chris Avellone describing how he felt in preproduction for Koto R 2 after playing Koto R 1. "they made me love Star Wars again."

That was his attitude before he started writing the story. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-31-fear-is-the-path-to-the-dark-side

What he actually said about Kreia was "She was questioning everything about the Star Wars universe that I thought should be questioned,"

Not answered. Questioned. There's a huge huge difference.

Chris Avellone is a talented writer and he enjoys writing characters who are wrong more than he enjoys writing characters who are right. That's why he describes Kreia as a second version of Ravel from Planescape: Torment, who was completely messed up and screwed up half the plane because of her she couldn't get past her own personal feelings. That's who Kreia is.

There's an huge flaw in your argument, however.

She constantly gives answers, always telling how "things should be". And like the review said, you cannot argue. Ever. And to top it all off, even though she dies, she gets exactly what she wanted.

If you want to give the argument that the game shows her as being pathethic and wrong, then why does she succeed at everything during the game (I'm not talking backstory here)?

There's litteraly no way to prove her wrong throughout the entire game. She's vindicated every time.

"I'm not talking backstory here"

So you want me to show you how the game proves Kreia pathetic and wrong, but I must ignore all the lore the game creates that proves it so? And this demonstrates weakness in my theory and not yours? :P

Even so, it's simple because you've made a mistake. You can argue with Kreia at every stage of the game and with everything you does. All you cannot do is convince Kreia to believe you.

And as I said, the whole deal with Kreia is that she absolutely refuses to see her failing. That is why when the council condemned her for failing she turned to the Sith, and then when the Sith condemned her for failing she tries to kill the Sith and the Jedi.

Why are you any different? You are none more likely to convince Kreia that she's wrong than the entirety of the Jedi council were.

Also Kreia doesn't get what she wants. In both the evil and the good ending she fails. She wants to kill the force and it's canon that this never happens. In the good ending you leave the galaxy to fight unknown forces, in the evil ending you sieze control of the Sith throne on Malachor. Both are actions that Kreia hates and disapproves of.

The only thing she ultimately achieves that she set out to achieve, is having you kill her. That's hardly a grand success.

Canonically in the game your existence is Kreia's failure. She starts following you because she believes that you voluntarily turned away from the force and in so doing so finally proved her hatred of the force vindicated. She believes you will be her success where Revan and the Sith Lords were her failures.

But at the end of the game she realises that that's not true. That you, just like Revan and everyone else, are a person whose values don't match her own, who doesn't agree with what she said, and most of all did not choose to turn away from the force, but had it taken from you and sort to reunite with it as soon as possible.

She gives a whole speech about how she was wrong and how even you failed her just like everyone else. That's when she finally runs away to Malachor and gives up her hope of every being proven right.

Most of all by ignoring her and being light or dark (which the game mechanically encourages and expects) you spit in her face and she [i]hates[/i] it

Because she successfully blackmailed and tortured your companions into doing her bidding? Because she killed the Jedi council? Because she successfully got you to kill her?

Those are all actions of someones whose evil. That's not her being vindicated, it's her being the antagonist.

She kills every single Jedi except for you (her apprentice) and your apprentices. Meaning that every future Jedi will carry her legacy. That was her goal.

I know you can piss her off. The problem is that the game doesn't aknowledge it (or aknowledges it as wrong). The game expects you to be on her side by showing her constantly succeeding at everything she does (blackmailing Atton, taking the Disciple's memory, destroying the Jedi Council (effortlessly), convincing Atris that she has fallen (also effortlessly)).

Not to mention that every time she's shown questioning, she's right. Every single time. Having the antagonist being the deconstructor was probably not the right decision.

You can one three occasions tell Kreia that she's wrong. And the game rewards you for it by lowering your influence with her. Since you can't change a thing about her decisions because she's so blind to others' ideas, that score measures only how much she influences the player character. That she arranges for all Jedi and Sith including herself to die leaving only the Exile is a sign of desperation about her ideas, and perhaps she came to acknowledge they are wrong.

Y'know, considering that, almost all the time with very few exceptions, Light Side actions have benefited everyone else whereas Dark Side actions have screwed everyone else off, including you. Again, with few exceptions. When my brother figured out that Kiera's the main villain before the game even revealed it to you, he felt insulted that it was way too obvious. If Chris Avellone was trying to bring a sense of moral ambiguity to the setting, then he did a poor job at that.

In short... Screw you, Kiera.

Ok. Can everyone stop calling Kreia an objectivist? She is pretty much the opposite of an objectivist in her goals and motivation. As someone on this very site and on You Tube pointed out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NPdEGanRx4), her motivation is close to Beware The Superman - the force creates a world where only people born with the power of the force matters and everyone else is just along for the ride. It is a pretty objectivist universe - the only big players are those with the force. Force-Sensitives. Sidious, Vader, Luke, Yoda, Dooku, Maul, Ahsoka, all of them and more are guided by the force. Ever war is started by force sensitives. Kreia is still a flawed character and I can see why some people don't like her, but her whole goal is to become powerful in the force so she can find a weakness in it and destroy it. She is a villain with a point: the force essentially choices the winners and losers of the galaxy and prevent people from being able to live their lives without having to live through a conflict or war caused by someone with the force. Getting rid of those force sensitives would probably make the world a better place by making an even playing field and fixing a galaxy where every major war is started by some guy with the force. Kreia is basically doing the one thing an objectivist would never do if she succeeded in her goal: give up her power instead of keeping it/using it to make as much money as possible, all so she could be a normal person like everyone else & so the galaxy would no longer have to worry about magic space wizards controlling everybody's destinies.

Except the Force didn\'t decide any that. The people involved did, they all had free will and they all had individualresponsibility for what did or didn\'t happen. Bad or good. The Clone Wars showed time and again that choosing to do nothing when people are in danger or someone has ill intent is wrong. That despite the tragedy caused by Anakin\'s, Palpatine fuelled, hubris and fear, they\'re selflessness inspired and saved helped many. It\'s why Luke returned at the end of TLJ, it\'s why Cal and Rey wish to restore the Jedi. Nobody and nothing made these decisions for them, they all believed in something bigger then themselves.

Kreia, just couldn\'t stand that she failed, that with a great power, people will either choose to do good or bad. So she decided to blame the source of their power when she ran out of other excuses. Bitterly twisting details to support her philosophy until the end.

Chris Avellone is... a character. He's certainly a nihilist, but also a narcissist and not shy of sociopathy. I mean, it would take that kind of personality to write a bible about an IP that you came into later on, contradicting other writers in the process.

You can see these facets of Avellone in several characters he writers. He is... quite bitter and hateful. Fane from Divinity Orginal S In 2, Durance from Pillars of Eternity, Ulysses from Fallout New Vegas, and yes, Kreia from KOTOR 2. His behaviour since he left Obsidian hasn't shown any other side to him, he's been constantly making very petty attacks against Obsidian. Every new game they launch, there's Avellone saying something nasty about them. He did it again with Avowed.

That some Star Wars fan felt alienated by Kreia doesn't surprise me. I mean, if one doesn't conflate intellectuality with nihilism, as I'm not of the opinion that nihilism is especially clever, it's the philosophy of edgy pseudo-intellectuals with very problematic views of courtship looking to "pick up chicks", then that's the vibe you get. Chris is very charismatic, as most narcissists are, and ever since his first job, Planescape Torment, he likes weaving a cult of personality around himself. What you see of him really depends on how taken in by that spell you are.

Another videogame example of his mindset is Tyranny. Tyranny was his baby. He's said countless times that it's only really interesting to him to play as or write evil characters, he prefers that, he sees good and kindness as "fake." Which is, again, a very typically oldschool nihilist perspective. I feel that he, Joe Abercrombe and George R. R. Martin would have a lot to talk about, especially if you consider Avellone's view of women and his Durance character.

I became leery of Avellone a few years ago after being a big fan of him for a good chunk of my life, I saw him in an interview talk about how he wanted to destroy this lady's career because she criticised him. I continued to be leery of him when i found out he posted on Alt-Right forums having "serious discsussions" about the worth of white men using the n-word (those were some really bad optics).

The problem is is that his prowess at weaving a cult of persoanlity meant that his fans believed that he wrote all there was to have been written, ignoring many other incredibly talented writers. A number of whom left Obsidian before Chris was kicked out as they were tired of never being seen. I will dare to say that the best writing in most of the games that Chris played a role in wasn't Chris's own. All charisma, little talent. I mean, even Obsidian's CEO, Urquhart, did some fine writing for New Vegas. As did many others, like J. Sawyer, Eric Fenstermaker, Travis Stout, John Gonzalez, Jorge Salgado, and many more. Yet only Avellone's name ever came up, and this must've been really hard for all of those other writers. I can certainly imagine that this was a big reason for why he was kicked out of Obsidian.

And when he was kicked out of Obsidian, Urquhart offered him a ridiculously generous severance package. It did contain clauses in it that for a short period he couldn't talk about the games he'd worked on, or work on competing games, but that's actually completely standard in the industry for a talent that ends up fired. And yet Chris? He's a narcissist. So to him, this overly generous severance package was a personal attack. As a damn fool he refused the severance, which did hurt him financially. Ever since, he's been attacking Obsidian with every chance he gets. All you need to do is follow his Twitter for a while to see that.

All this is necessary to paint a picture of Avellone. He's a sad, nasty, bitter little man. He's the sort that wants influence and power, so of course the concept of something like The Force, untouchable as it is, would terrify him and his self-insert Kreia. It's a very sociopathic desire to want to destroy anything that could have meaningful poewr over you. Avellone vs. Obsidian et al.

In most of his characters, Avellone is someone that believes that poor people deserve to suffer. He stands above them, to soapbox about what they deserve. I don't particularly like that kind of person or character. I don't find sociopathy, narcissism, or nihilism to be partciularly enthralling or clever. That's what you're getting from Kreia. She's a small-minded nihilist, afraid of things she can't control. She's a self-insert for how Avellone feels about things. I was never able to stomach her speeches, I found her to be incredibly tiresome.

"*Ohhh nnnnnnnnooo, The Force is the centre of the Universe instead of mmeeeeeee, whatever will I doooooo?*" No, thanks.

I feel like you\'re hijacking an old review to make a personal rant, which is bad form. You never really reference the review itself. But also I take issue with one thing here:

If you mean the Fallout Bible, it was never meant to be a \"Bible\", that was what the fans called it and Avellone always hated that name. He was in charge of what would have been Fallout 3, and he wanted to sort through the wacky mess that was Fallout 2 to decide what would be canon moving forward. If you read the thing, he says many times that this is simply his preferred version and not the definitive one. (It\'s less a document than a collection of forum posts.) And when making a sequel, you need to decide what you\'re making a sequel to.

I mostly know Avelone for Lonesome Road. And looking back, I\'m not very impressed because I wasn\'t sure what Ulysses was trying to say most of the time.

Avelone worked on all of New Vegas and, to my knowledge, all games from Obsidian Entertainment before he was fired. There\'s been a noticeable drop in writing quality in their games since, so I\'m inclined to say his talents were valuable. However \"Lonesome Road\" is certainly his most personal part of the game, and shows his tendency to use mouth-pieces to get his points across, so if you don\'t like that style it\'s tough to swallow.

I think the inherent problem with making a deconstruction of Star Wars is that, when it comes to The Force, this universe is built on \"good is good and bad is bad.\" You can portray the Jedi as snobbish and detached sure, they\'d probably agree with you since detachment from emotion is a core tenant of their Order. But this game tries to argue that the Jedi are just as much at fault for the dismal state of the galaxy as The Sith.

But then you look at The Sith and they\'re a literal fucking zombie and a walking black hole who want to consume all life. It\'s not possible to be worse than those guys. Kreia\'s argument that the Force itself is evil is so out of place within the franchise that it actually contributes to her seeming insane. It\'s not a god or even sentient, it\'s just energy that\'s produced by living things.

As a deconstruction of KOTOR 1, 2 is perfect. As a decon of the franchise? It could not be further off the mark.

Well, the game is not trying to say the two sides are equally bad, more that they are part of a dysfunctional system that neither is able to break out of. The Sith being so clearly worse than the Jedi is intended. Avelone admitted that the Jedi come off as worse than intended, in part because of how rushed the game was; I suspect the intention was to show up all the flaws in the usual portrayal of the Jedi in the part of the game that was completed, and then give a better vision of what they could be in the ending that came out so badly truncated. And Kreia, for all her insight and intelligence, is at bottom too self-obsessed to admit she was wrong about anything, and her plan to somehow kill the Force (leaving aside whether it\'s possible) would leave the galaxy far worse; it comes from a place of vindictive spite, not reason. Notice that you can compile hours of her talking about problems with the Force, but barely minutes of her saying what she plans to do about it; this shows where Avelone\'s focus was.

One thing to keep in mind is that Avelone was aiming less at the concept of the Force and its duality than at how EU writers tended to use it. Specifically the tendency to explain away plot contrivances as being willed by the Force, which implies that every evil thing the Sith do is also part of that will. From this meta perspective Kreia\'s critique makes more sense.

I will also add that there are moments that are just clear potshots at the franchise, and feel jarring. I admire Avelone\'s vision here, but his style is sometimes aggravating.

(On another topic: a tenet is a component of a belief system, a tenant is someone renting their place of stay.)