Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

[rk47]

If it didn't crash so much on my 8600GT card then I'd love it even more, but the game is still worth a replay or two every few years or so. The first time it came out, I was skeptical; a Star Wars RPG with Force as magic. But heck, every kid loves star wars so I picked it up, and it's Bioware!

The game's so much of a black & white. If you're nice and goody two shoes, you will gain light side points, translating into cheaper force cost when using light powers while dark side costs more. So being meany and murderous will turn you to a Sith Asshole, but the good guys ending are so cliche and boring so I replayed as a Sith Scoundrel with Fear powers to disable my enemies as my sneak attack damage lightsabers cut them up.

But nothing could prepare me for the  of the finale ultimate bad choice in this game. I think WUA (Yeah that atheist in the forum) mentioned it before as one of the 'darkest' rpg choice in Star Wars universe. This is probably it. I've never seen Bioware went this 'evil' before in the choice department, but do take a look on my dropbox gallery if you want the whole story. (Thanks Schild for recommending!) https://www.getdropbox.com/gallery/829607/1/DARKSIDE?h=15c6a2

short summary would be:  

[Triforcer]

I have never, ever been able to play a BG or KOTOR bad guy...after the first evil dialogue choice or two, I feel guilty and reroll.  Just can't do it.

[Reg]

Hah, I have the same problem playing evil. It's pretty sad.

[rk47]

I have never, ever been able to play a BG or KOTOR bad guy...after the first evil dialogue choice or two, I feel guilty and reroll.  Just can't do it.

yeah because the options aren't really the sort of evil we all appreciate? Or was it too 'evil' for your taste?

Personally I felt most Bioware evils always tend to fall into:
1. Being a jerk. (Which is why I do this for the funneh)
2. Motivated by money. (Asking for more money usually lead to evil points / mercenary-like)
3. Outright psycho. (Hai. Money or I cut ya)

There's so many instances in kotor where i walked into a cantina and talk to random patrons and see the option "Hey gimme money or I'll cut you" This is probably why evil isn't such an attractive choice. It results into silly dark point gain and 50 creds to your pocket. So shallow and unsatisfying. I know the only patrons i wanna shoot at are pazaak players, but they never gave me that option especially after they beat you with a loaded deck and gloated about it. Where's mah '(Force Persuade) Let's go outside and play pazaak.' option?

Hence this is why I really liked this particular evil. It's another level of malevolence altogether. This stupid kid was asking for it. She knew she was in deep trouble but didn't make a run for it. She DARED me to do it. VERY satisfying to go one step beyond and make her BFF to do it just to prove a point. Too bad I couldn't tell him to stop while she was being choked. I would've done it so she could run away with wet pants on.

[Fordel]

I just have a hard time being a jerk, even to NPC's.


How are you finding the combat on the replay? After playing MassEffect, going back to KotoR's system is really, REALLY fucking hard for me.

[WindupAtheist]

WUA (Yeah that atheist in the forum)

Who told?

Hence this is why I really liked this particular evil.

Damn you, Mission. The Republic and the Jedi might pride themselves on being just and righteous, but under their rule you grew up living in a sewer and eating garbage. Who pulled you out of that shithole? Who whisked you off the planet just before it got bombed into the stone age? Who took time out from his very important quest to dick around in the middle of the fucking desert rescuing your worthless piece of shit brother from sand people? Without me, you never would have learned about your brother's death at their hands, because the garbage dump you lived in would have come down around your ears in a fucking holocaust of orbital bombardment.

And how do you pay me back? You spit in my fucking face with that silly "But the Sith are EVIL!" bullshit. I expected that sort of crap from Jolee and Juhani, and that simpering dipshit Carth, but not from you. You might not be "evil" but I had come to think of you as at least being halfway smart. (You were so damned pragmatic when we slit the throat of that silly blind leader of your old gang on Taris!) I mean I was prepared to tolerate a little bit of lip, but when it became clear that even your emo throw-rug of a wookie wasn't going to back you, it was time to quit sticking up for a regime that never gave a shit about you and throw your chips in with the only people who ever did you any favors.

But no, instead you call me out. Right there in front of my brand new apprentice and the rest of my followers. You force me to kill you, no pun intended. You ignorant little bitch, what made you think I even had the option of backing out at that point? The die had been cast, blood had already been shed. What the hell did you think was going to happen?

But it's all right. I don't really blame you.

I blame Carth.

Maybe you didn't know better, but he should have. In fact he certainly did, given the way ran for the hills once he realized what was happening. I blame him for not buying your life with his own. All that wannabe-hero horseshit he talked, and in the end he ran like a coward and left a teenage girl to face two Sith alone, with little more than a cry of "Run away!" over his shoulder as he fled. It ought to have been HE who stayed behind to die extolling the virtues of the Republic while YOU ran off into the woods.

The new Emperor of the Galaxy will not be kind to Carth, when he finally catches up to him.

/rant

This started out as me half-jokingly bitching at a fictional character and then turned into some sort of full-blown RP fag thing. Oh well, fuck it.

[rk47]

I just have a hard time being a jerk, even to NPC's.


How are you finding the combat on the replay? After playing MassEffect, going back to KotoR's system is really, REALLY fucking hard for me.

Well, as long i'm not firing blasters, i'm totally fine, YMMV. KOTOR 1 had positional sneak attacks for scoundrels (back attacks = sneak atk bonus), so early game pistol ass-shooting is what i do as well as nade spamming. But most of the early mob AI fall easy to kiting if they're totally melee. I admit the early game rakghouls rush was fucking annoying to fight without jedi heals (Pro Tip: Press M: Return to Hideout for FULL HP) By the time I got my saber, everything is mostly pushover with force powers that disable masses and sneak attacks that instantgib with 3 attack per round from Force Speed. And the droids totally suck ass compared to Jedis so party choices are limited. I'm not saying purely from stat perspective either, aside from HK47 ownership background, T3 said absolutely NOTHING. Bioware really treated him like a walking garbage bin.

WUA, you posted it yourself IIRC.  A long, long time ago. And yeah. 100% Agreed with Mission. I don't know why she DARED to stand there after Carth bailed like a bitch. That should tell her that it's serious business from here on out. But no, she stood there acting like a kid in the playground "Go ahead I dare you to hit me!" 

[Fordel]

The whole, press attack, queue up specials, wait, wait, wait, loot.


Totally, fucking, bonkers.

[WindupAtheist]

Something that always eluded me: How do you poison the rancor? I always end up running out, throwing a grenade at it, then running back into the tunnel before it can catch me. Repeat until dead.

[rk47]

Something that always eluded me: How do you poison the rancor? I always end up running out, throwing a grenade at it, then running back into the tunnel before it can catch me. Repeat until dead.

huh? you talkin about the early game sewer passage to gain entrance to black vulkars? Put the grenade in the corpse pile.

oh almost forgot, have mission wear a stealth belt and creep there so she won't aggro the rancor

[Rasix]

You should really spoiler tag that lead in sentence & image.  I doubt there's many who haven't played the game and still intend to, but that's the coolest moment in the whole game.

[rattran]

Kotor&Kotor2 Good/Evil is really just Saint/Asshole. Other than the buggy mess of a plot in 2 it was my biggest disappointment in the games.

[Stormwaltz]

Damn you, Mission.

I liked this and passed it along to like-minded BioWare people.

[Lantyssa]

Poetry.

See, good RP does exist.  It's just a rare jewel in a sea of glass beads.  Hopefully created from the large scale incineration of "RPers" and then bombed after cooling for good measure.

[Hindenburg]

You're confusing good rp with distilled insanity.

[WindupAtheist]

I just really got into the characters in KOTOR. They were damn well-written. Bastila's turn to the dark side, for example, I found totally believable. She was never a very good Jedi. She was childish, arrogant, repressed, and plainly fascinated by my character's willingness to go around puppykicking whatever the hell he wanted. She was far more suited to the dark side than the light. She took to being a Sith with a sort of rebellious "preacher's daughter gone slut" glee and tended to worship power. Even if you did turn her away from the dark side, it was more by showing her that light could kick dark's ass than anything else.

[rk47]

Which would explain why I enjoyed KILLING her more than TURNING her in the Star Forge.
But the Darkside ending was sweet. Especially when you gave that evil look as Bastila gave orders to the Republic Fleet that would doom them.

Here's hoping SW:TOR would at least have that level of evil in the dark side.

[Tannhauser]

Great post WUA.  I never played evil so it is cool to see how it ends.  Carth runs away eh?  Wow.  Always figured him for a pisspants.

I love KOTOR and ME, but I hate how Bioware promised this amazing dialog system in ME and it was Up for Good, Down for Evil.  That still annoys me.  And now they are doing it again with the SW MMO.  Yeah, right.  

[WindupAtheist]

Great post WUA.  I never played evil so it is cool to see how it ends.  Carth runs away eh?  Wow.  Always figured him for a pisspants.

In that case, for everyone who couldn't bear to kick puppies...

Revan turns back to the dark side. Complete with "I will be utterly yours, Master!" Sith sluttery thanks to this player having advanced the romance dialogue with Bastila previously.

The big showdown with the rest of the party. Skip ahead to the 2:00 mark since this guy is recording a whole playthrough and not just cutscenes. Tell me Carth doesn't come off like a total cunt here.

Revan and Bastila scheme to fuck the Republic and those tools fall for it hook, line, and sinker. Skip to 1:00.

Between 1:50 and 3:00, the Republic begins to realize that the tingling in their ass is the player's dick.

From 7:15 to end, the leaders of the Jedi and the Republic fleet die miserable despairing deaths.

And lastly, the only rightful and true ending to the game.

[Kitsune]

The Sith pissed me off in KotOR.  You'd have a bunch of scrubs who barely know how to hold lightsabers stand there watching you cut their teachers into ribbons.  At which point, instead of thinking, "Holy fuck, this guy's scarier than Darth Vader will be in 5000 years, at least until the audience learns Anakin's a whiny bitch; we shouldn't fuck with him," they think, "I can totally take this guy.  LEEEEEEEEROYYYYYYY!"

That's on per with being some henchman in the comic world, watching your supervillain boss get disintegrated by Superman's heat vision, and then trying to pull a pistol on Superman.  A pistol?  Seriously?  Your one super-power is turning into a red mist when getting punched by Superman, and you don't quite have the knack to turn back afterwards, and you really think it's a good idea to point a pistol at him?

[Lantyssa]

You're confusing good rp with distilled insanity.

You're confusing me with being sane?

[Hindenburg]

You're confusing good rp with distilled insanity.

You're confusing me with being sane?

You're prepared?

[Lantyssa]

- Stay Awhile
- Listen

I am a flurry of preparation.  Or was that procrastination?

[Hindenburg]

fine...

You're sane. You're so sane it's boring. You're typing nonsense trying to drive home the point that you can roleplay someone insane. You can't. You never could.

[Lantyssa]

Damn.  You found me out.  No one believes me when I say I'm normal and boring though.

[Hindenburg]

That'd be because they all secretly want to bone a lesbian chick, and disregard your ancient age.

[Lounge]

I'm all pumped up to play this again after this thread.  Is there a high res pack out for this now?

[WindupAtheist]

So, which face did everyone pick?



I was always the bald guy, center row, all the way on the left. He looks like a cool enough guy, but the shaved head and the mustache give him a sort of sinister edge that none of the others have. Shit, none of the other men have facial hair at all, except that douchebag who's third from the left on the top row, who looks like he listens to Limp Bizkit. I mean come on, I submit that if you decided to play "pick the Evil Space Emperor" with this lineup, you'd have to pick my guy.

[Hindenburg]

First row, fourth from left.
Most evil looking guy is the one on second row, third from left.

[Khaldun]

Bald guy in center was always my pick too--whether I was playing good or evil. He's the only guy who looks like he has a personality.

I agree re: evil in Bioware games. They've really got to do something better than "asshole". Maybe if they stopped thinking of it as "evil", exactly, it would help. WUA's great little dialogue above gets at it:  there is honestly a real case to be made against the Jedi Council as it appears in the Star Wars universe. They're a bunch of Buddhist ascetic control freaks. They steal children from their parents. They try to deny the emotions that make sentient beings what they are. The Force is about life: the Jedi don't understand life any better than a Catholic priest understands what a typical heterosexual marriage is like. etctera. You could really do that kind of character very well, and not just have them be "FUCK I KEEL YOU and TAKE YOUR MONEYS" thing.

[Murgos]

... except that douchebag who's third from the left on the top row, who looks like he listens to Limp Bizkit.

Same guy?

[carnifex27]

I have never, ever been able to play a BG or KOTOR bad guy...after the first evil dialogue choice or two, I feel guilty and re-roll.  Just can't do it.

I have the opposite problem. After the third or fourth time I save the galaxy and  say "No. It's okay. I don't need a reward" I just snap and re roll.  That ummmm doesn't make me a bad person though.......right?

[Velorath]

Bald guy in center was always my pick too--whether I was playing good or evil. He's the only guy who looks like he has a personality.

I agree re: evil in Bioware games. They've really got to do something better than "asshole".

Depends on the game.  For the story they wanted to tell in Mass Effect, I think it made more sense to go with hero/anti-hero rather than good and evil.  The villains in the game are trying to wipe out organic life.  Any villany the character commits is either going to pale in comparison, or would have the character siding with Sovereign which would lead to a dramatically different outcome which makes it a pain in the ass to continue the story in the sequels unless you pick one ending as canon and invalidate the choices of everybody who played through the other way.

[schild]

Haha. Like Deus Ex.

I remember when they said "We're assuming every ending happened."

I was like "wtf?"

[WindupAtheist]

Third row, third from the right. In KOTOR, safety is not guaranteed.