Ah. Point taken.

 

So would I be right to say that the Sith are losing MOSTLY because of internal chaos?

I don't think so. In addition to some pretty important victories of the Jedi and Republic Special Forces, the Empire gravely underestimated how willing the citizens of Corellia (and also Balmorra) are to fight for their freedom. On both sides you notice how much trouble resistance groups are giving the Empire.

Only the imperial raid on Ilum was ruined by imperial infighting, but the Ilum raid itself started because the Empire was loosing the war. (The idea was to create a stealth fleet for hit-and-run attacks, because conquest didn't work.)

Even though it wasn't at the end of the game, I loved how...

It is most certainly time for an Imperial come back - For the Empire!

Actually, I think it's time for the Republic to invade an Imperial world. We had the "Empire conquers a Republic planet, Republic conquers it back" already. Two (or even three) times. I would like to see the Republic almost conquer Ziost, but then the Empire strikes back.

Back to Mandalorians:

No they aren't. So they Mandalorians would just bombard the world into submission. And this scenario is if the Jedi had completely abstained from the war.

 

I don't think the Mandalorians would turn on each other. Mandalore the Ultimate was one of the greatest Mandalorian leaders. He united the clans for a single purpose. They were united in the fact that they wanted a glorious victory. They wouldn't jeapordize that.

 

We also have to remember that Republic morale, numbers and supplies have run low. By the time the Mandalorians hit the Core Worlds, they have taken control of vital trade routes, gained multiple victories against Republic forces, and just the fact that they were in the Core would give a sense of hopelessness to the people.

Well, at one point the conscripted soldiers and slaves would have outnumbered the true Mandalorians... which wouldn't turn out well for them.

But if they did manage to completely destroy one of the important Republic worlds (which I doubt, the didn't destroy Taris either and occupied it instead), Republic citizens would have joined the military en masse. If you fight for your home it is different than fighting for some Midrim colonies. (Especially in this case, because the people would be right to fear the Mandalorians.)

Of course this is a what-if scenario and we won't know for sure.

That's actually a good point. I'm sure the Emperor was keeping tabs on the Mandalorians and would started to move in if his minions were doing well. Then we would see the Jedi go to war. This is what they were waiting for, but I don't think the Jedi would have much of a chance once the Sith Empire steps in.

I actually think they would have had. After all, Republic and Jedi managed to hold their own against Empire+Mandalorians in the Great Galactic War... again because civilians were willing to fight for the Republic, this times the Smugglers. And if the Empire managed to conquer the Galaxy, we would simply have the Rebel Alliance some thousand years earlier.

(If the Emperor doesn't manage to eat the Galaxy somewhere along the way.)

It is most certainly time for an Imperial come back - For the Empire!

 

 

I thought Tormen's death was a light/dark choice. So if you count dark side choices for imperials as canon, he is still alive.

Well I killed Tormen. No one attacks Mako on my watch!

Haven't finished Coreilla yet, I was assuming that I would keep him alive being darkside, but if he lays a finger on Mako... well he's dead.

Haven't finished Coreilla yet, I was assuming that I would keep him alive being darkside, but if he lays a finger on Mako... well he's dead.

I just finished Corellia on my BH, but you get a Dark Side option after the fight.

If you talk trash to him at the beginning of Chapter 3 (which I did because I got bad vibes from him... and that's just how I roll) he Force Chokes you and Mako. Hence why I let the Chancellor go to kill Tormen.

Oh lol, I remember that. Though I did more than talk trash to him, I killed his 'escort' and blasted my way to his chambers, lets just say he wasn't best pleased.

But hey, that's how my BH rolls

Oh lol, I remember that. Though I did more than talk trash to him, I killed his 'escort' and blasted my way to his chambers, lets just say he wasn't best pleased.

 

But hey, that's how my BH rolls

Nice. I'm thinking of re-rolling a new Bounty Hunter just to replay the story. One of the best imo.

Nice. I'm thinking of re-rolling a new Bounty Hunter just to replay the story. One of the best imo.

Definitely agree, I'm having great fun

My point isn't about good vs evil, my point is that Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion must be inferior to the Hobbit, for not sticking to it's children's story roots, which is what Middle Earth originally was, about a Hobbit and some dwarves that did silly things with a funny creature called Gollum who hid in a cave, until Tolkien decided to write the Lord of the Rings when asked for a short story.

That's still not a great analogy. In terms of significance to their respective franchises, Kotor 2: The Sith Lords is most certainly not the Lord of the Rings to the Hobbit of the entire rest of Star Wars.

It can work though. Seeing as Revan was always evil and the mandalorians wars only begun his slide, we can assume something gave him the final push. I mean don't you think its a bit strange that he ran off into the unknown regions then came back a sith lord bent of conquering the republic, without the TOR arc it makes no sense. Basically be combine KOTOR 2 motives and TOR motives. He found the Emperor, fell to the dark side, broke away from his control then went on a campaign to reforge the Republic so he could defeat the Emperor. The fact he had fell to the dark side and was corrupted by it, made him make this decision.

Yeah I know it kind of works, but there's still some stretching that needs to be done, IMO. Revan and Malak's interactions don't quite make sense in the first game now because Malak's whole goal is to overthrow Revan and become Dark Lord of the Sith. Yet in all their conversations, "that other guy" they met in the Unknown Regions who sent them back to attack the Republic in the first place never gets mentioned once. It also makes a huge bit of a difference (to me at least) whether the choice to attack the Republic in the first place came from his plans or was forced on him by someone else. Plus, this now raises the questions of why Malak didn't have Revan's foresight about preparing for a future war when the TOR backstory shows how they confronted the Emperor together.

Sometimes its nice to have a change, things aren't always black and white. I agree it felt different from normal Star Wars, but I didn't resent it, I enjoyed its originality.

Of course things aren't always black and white. And believe it or not I often enjoy a good story with shades of gray, but I don't believe it's appropriate to apply to every story or franchise. Or not in equal measure at least. I don't want to be too down on all of Kotor 2's originality, because I think TOR sometimes has the opposite problem.

And the thing is, Kotor 2 and it's theme had implications beyond it's own story. It almost tried to paint the Jedi Order as an institution, it's basic doctrine and even belief in the Force itself as a fundamental problem for the galaxy. Both in the present conflict and previous ones. Isn't that why everybody supposedly hates EU author Karen Traviss? For purportedly nonsensically trying to twist the stories to makes the Jedi into the bad guys and the clones and Mandalorians into the good guys?

Getting back to the Lord of the Rings analogy from before, it would be one thing to make a story where the Free People of Middle weren't exactly the good guys in whatever conflict it was about. But Kotor 2 was almost like it tried to make the good guys of the previous stories into the real problem and all history's wars were somehow their fault. Plus add in a few hints about how Sauron's atrocities somehow might not be so bad because he was trying to save the world from Morgoth or something. I didn't have a problem with that new revelation of Revan's actions, but I did have a problem with Kreia seemingly trying to get me to respect him for turning to the darkside. Turning to the darkside = bad, has always been a stable of the franchise to me.

Of course some of the things she said are highly controversial and arguably wrong. But I think her main message was important. That Jedi and Sith should try not to be so dependant on the Force, and that if you have become so dependant on it that you can't live without it, you don't deserve to live. Its sad that you found her annoying and useless.

But that's just it, that is wrong. You can't live without the Force. Star Wars established the Force is created by and connected to all living things. Everyone is dependent on the Force, whether they are force sensitive or not. it's like hating the fact that everyone is dependent on air. The game tries to hammer home the theme of living without the Force from Kreia to your other companions to the Mandalorians and it was a premise I firmly rejected from start to finish because I didn't think it made sense for a Star Wars story. The dialogue and story however, seem to try to imply she was right though, and I don't remember being given the option to even say you think she isn't.

EDIT: Kreia is in fact, an anti-hero. She realises she has fallen to far and done to much to do any good in the galaxy. And that she can never become a Jedi or Sith. But she sees that you can - she puts her faith in you, faith that you can be her last and greatest pupil who will defeat the threats of the galaxy (Sion and Nihilus) and make the galaxy 'see'.

I suppose that would meet a definition of an anti hero, yes, but Kreia still had a very twisted view of what is "good" and she seemed to expect you to carry on her philosophy. I think that might be what bothered me the most. I found most of her views on morality to be as despicable as the other Sith or Mandalorians' (in fact in some cases they were identical), but the game seemed to insist I regard her ideas with more weight than I thought they deserved. Plus her inane anti-force philosophies did not survive into any later Jedi or Sith orders so, I don't see why the game tried to paint her as the victor. The Jedi didn't change a whole lot afterward, even before TOR came out.

But again, thats your opinion. But I will correct you on a few things. She wasn't the main villain, far far from it. Nihilus was the main villain, hence his blown up face being the cover of the box art where the villain always is in star wars posters. She wasn't working against you, her motives were to understand you and get you to understand yourself. She never wanted to kill you, that was a test. You or rather Meetra was proof of her beliefs, that you can live without the Force. Thats why she won in the end, because you realised what you were, and she believed you would help future Jedi yo try and be less dependant on the Force. Maybe her companions learned from Meetra, and maybe thats why the Order of the Prequels is not as arrogant and fanatic as the OR council.

Well, I suppose part of that comes down to perspective on whether the final boss should be considered the main villain and what the player thought of her reasons for doing what she did.

But yeah I got that she wanted to test the Exile and saw them as proof of her beliefs. But I also thought her beliefs were absurd in the first place, and her reasons for thinking that the Exile was proof of them silly. The desire to kill the Force is insane. If destiny exists then, somehow killing it strikes me as a wholly preposterous notion. And her reason for thinking the the Exile was proof of living without the Force was because she saw her as "a place where the Force's will might be denied" after what happened to her in the Mandalorian Wars. There's no way she could possibly know if that was true.

Kriea wanted to understand why the Exile was able to survive the destructive echos in the force at Malachor V, while the others perished. She learned that the Exile was able to somehow unconciously deafen her own connection to the Force instead of dying, but clearly the Exile was still connected to the Force on some level otherwise she couldn't have learned to use it again. The Exile was not the first or only person to have their connection to the force severed. Ulic Quel Droma for instance, but in the end he still became one with the Force when he died. Kriea seemed to believe that the Exile was different from all these cases but I saw no reason to think that. All I saw was a desperate crazy old woman who seemed to insist she was right when she wasn't. After the final duel, I was ready to just ignore everything she tried to teach me, but maybe that's a moment where the game has player and the player character diverge because the point of the story seemed to be that she was right all along.

But then it comes back to my opinion of Kotor 2, it's like it was trying to change the basic cosmology of the franchise.

KotOR 2 didn't try to change a thing, it merely questioned everything previously established, that was the goal of the game, whilst pure good and pure evil can clearly be defined(The Jedi Order and the Sith Lords), that does not mean there can't be those who have other views on the force(Like Qui-Gon Jinn a G-canon character), it does not mean they conflict, but instead merely add to the many views and philosophies surrounding the force, the two we all know more than any, the two that are defined, are the orthodox Jedi Order's view and the Sith view(Which isn't really a view, it's always been seen as a path to power.

As far as Kreia goes, she admitted that perhaps all she was, was an old woman who had come to rely upon something she despised, but her blind hatred for everything Jedi and Sith wouldn't let her see that, instead she used any and all evidence she could find to support her argument, she was basically your typical internet arguer who is too proud to admit when she's wrong and grasps at any straws she can find, the sad thing about her is the fact that when she died, did she only realise that she was wrong and came to accept the force, it was kind of her redemption.

She had been a Sith the entire time, even Atton could see that, she just couldn't accept that.

"Young fool, only now, at the end, do you understand."

KotOR 2 didn't try to change a thing, it merely questioned everything previously established, that was the goal of the game, whilst pure good and pure evil can clearly be defined(The Jedi Order and the Sith Lords), that does not mean there can't be those who have other views on the force(Like Qui-Gon Jinn a G-canon character), it does not mean they conflict, but instead merely add to the many views and philosophies surrounding the force, the two we all know more than any, the two that are defined, are the orthodox Jedi Order's view and the Sith view(Which isn't really a view, it's always been seen as a path to power.

 

As far as Kreia goes, she admitted that perhaps all she was, was an old woman who had come to rely upon something she despised, but her blind hatred for everything Jedi and Sith wouldn't let her see that, instead she used any and all evidence she could find to support her argument, she was basically your typical internet arguer who is too proud to admit when she's wrong and grasps at any straws she can find, the sad thing about her is the fact that when she died, did she only realise that she was wrong and came to accept the force, it was kind of her redemption.

 

She had been a Sith the entire time, even Atton could see that, she just couldn't accept that.

 

"Young fool, only now, at the end, do you understand."

^^This, I agree with Rayla - KOTOR 2 wasn't saying Kreia was right, it just wanted to question what had already been established and make you think, and I like games that make you think. Your right to say however (OldVengeance) that Kreia was perhaps blinded by her hatred for the Force, but she had good reason, she had had her teachings rejected and her students taken from her, she was exiled from the Order, she witnessed the destruction of the Mandalorian Wars and Jedi Civil War, saw her best pupil fall and then when she finally turned the the dark side she was betrayed again. She's been through a lot, and has every reason to be bitter. But I think Rayla is right here in saying at the end she realised she was wrong, that the Force is necessary and in some way was 'redeemed', she did still believe that Jedi and Sith shouldn't be so reliant on the Force (not give it up, but don't depend on it so much and use it to solve everything).

I think this is a good message, after all wasn't it the arrogance of the Council, born from their fanatic dependence on the Force to show them what to do, that led to their apathy during the Mandalorian Wars? Those Jedi needed to learn that the Force isn't the answer to everything, it won't always show you what to do and it won't always solve ever problem. Sometimes you need to rely on yourself for guidance. I believe the Jedi learned this eventually from Meetra, and so have become the better Jedi that we know today.

This is just a general commentary on the policies of the Jedi during this time period.

If you're sworn to defend the Republic, and it's being attacked by the Mandalorians (******, pillaging, barbarian hordes tearing towards Rome... er, Coruscant) it seems to me that your first thought should be "How do we stop these guys?"

If you think there's a shadowy threat lurking behind the obvious one, it makes sense to take out the first threat ASAP in order to give yourself breathing room to prepare against the more dangerous threat. When you're fighting two people, you outflank and kill one without stopping to think, otherwise you'll be outmatched and killed.

Aurbere's suggestion of entering the war as advisers strikes me as foolish. Placing Jedi on planets to defend them? That can only lead to Mandalorians concentrating their forces on one planet at time and killing a few Jedi here and there. Defensive war is suicide, particularly in an environment like space that affords so many avenues for attack and maneuver.

My conceit is that Revan saw and understood that the only way to win was by taking the fight to the enemy and concluding the war with all possible speed to prevent a battle of attrition that just burned away lives. It seems he was aware of the threat posed by the Sith Empire, and sought to unify as much territory as possible to prepare for the coming onslaught. His use of the Mass Shadow Generator to kill his own troops was underhanded and devious... but he was very pragmatic, and knew that those who wouldn't turn with him might as well die fighting the Mandalorians rather than have to be killed by his own loyalist forces.

As for choosing to sacrifice some Republic worlds in order to attack Mandalorians... well, kids, this is war. Only a fool believes he can defend everything, everywhere. If it's not going to kill you to lose a certain planet, but a strategic victory can be won by striking elsewhere, then you use the fact that your enemy has committed to attacking a lesser target in order to outmaneuver him. This is what I liked about Revan, he reminded me very much of General Grant, taking command of an army that wasn't sure of itself, and crushing a warrior culture through ruthless calculation and efficient leadership.

This is just a general commentary on the policies of the Jedi during this time period.

 

If you're sworn to defend the Republic, and it's being attacked by the Mandalorians (******, pillaging, barbarian hordes tearing towards Rome... er, Coruscant) it seems to me that your first thought should be "How do we stop these guys?"

 

If you think there's a shadowy threat lurking behind the obvious one, it makes sense to take out the first threat ASAP in order to give yourself breathing room to prepare against the more dangerous threat. When you're fighting two people, you outflank and kill one without stopping to think, otherwise you'll be outmatched and killed.

 

Aurbere's suggestion of entering the war as advisers strikes me as foolish. Placing Jedi on planets to defend them? That can only lead to Mandalorians concentrating their forces on one planet at time and killing a few Jedi here and there. Defensive war is suicide, particularly in an environment like space that affords so many avenues for attack and maneuver.

 

My conceit is that Revan saw and understood that the only way to win was by taking the fight to the enemy and concluding the war with all possible speed to prevent a battle of attrition that just burned away lives. It seems he was aware of the threat posed by the Sith Empire, and sought to unify as much territory as possible to prepare for the coming onslaught. His use of the Mass Shadow Generator to kill his own troops was underhanded and devious... but he was very pragmatic, and knew that those who wouldn't turn with him might as well die fighting the Mandalorians rather than have to be killed by his own loyalist forces.

 

As for choosing to sacrifice some Republic worlds in order to attack Mandalorians... well, kids, this is war. Only a fool believes he can defend everything, everywhere. If it's not going to kill you to lose a certain planet, but a strategic victory can be won by striking elsewhere, then you use the fact that your enemy has committed to attacking a lesser target in order to outmaneuver him. This is what I liked about Revan, he reminded me very much of General Grant, taking command of an army that wasn't sure of itself, and crushing a warrior culture through ruthless calculation and efficient leadership.

What are you a Necromancer? No but I agree with you, the Council should have found a solution to the problem, Revan did - but it was the wrong one.

Despite my best efforts, the secrets of Necromancy are beyond my grasp at the moment.

But was there a better solution than Revan's? Had the Republic just won the Mandalorian Wars, they might have ignored any warnings of an impending invasion, and let their forces atrophy. Revan was trying to ensure that Republic space was as unified and militarily ready as possible.

Despite my best efforts, the secrets of Necromancy are beyond my grasp at the moment.

 

But was there a better solution than Revan's? Had the Republic just won the Mandalorian Wars, they might have ignored any warnings of an impending invasion, and let their forces atrophy. Revan was trying to ensure that Republic space was as unified and militarily ready as possible.

I really don't think we can say. If it had been a normal conflict the answer would be a simple one, but it was not, it was orchestrated by an ancient Sith Empire that had survived the Hyperspace War and planned on conquering the galaxy - I really don't think anyone could have prepared for that...

I am curious if you, Aubere would please do a thread on failing to the dark side. And as an opposite Redemption. I mean on these threads it ends up Dark vs light, I read a thread that stated Electric judgement was the most powerful because the light side is unstoppable. I know each side has their own strengths. The dark more visual displays of power, while the light usually offered a more subtle support. I know this thread is abou the Mando wars but I also wanted to gauge other about these topics.

Good call, I'd like to see a thread on falling to the dark side as well, I figure there are other powers involved other than temptation of power. Rakata would also be interesting.

I am curious if you, Aubere would please do a thread on failing to the dark side. And as an opposite Redemption. I mean on these threads it ends up Dark vs light, I read a thread that stated Electric judgement was the most powerful because the light side is unstoppable. I know each side has their own strengths. The dark more visual displays of power, while the light usually offered a more subtle support. I know this thread is abou the Mando wars but I also wanted to gauge other about these topics.

Good idea. I'll look into that.