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The Old Republic, it is not.


jayderyu

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I love this game. I will continue to play, but ToR's setting irks me. Yes this is a non helpful post. I just want to get this off my chest.

 

For years Dark Horse Comics has had the Star Wars comic licence. Their stories have added a huge depth to the pre movies era in regards to the Golden Age of the Jedi. To me KOTOR was a fantastic Star Wars Game. It was set in the Golden Age period of time. It was set in what was the Dark Horse EU. KOTOR was just amazing with Bioware's own creative minds only adding to the over story.

 

Check this guy out. He's a bounty Hunter that Bioware created with their own creative juices. Most of KOTOR is filled with wonderful Golden age of the Jedi elements. Let's take a look at Calo Nord a little more in regards to what's "Wrong" with him.

http://www.starwarsklub.hu/06_toys_comics_&_games/toys_042/calo_nord.jpg

http://bestgamewallpapers.com/files/kotor/calo-nord.jpg

 

He has no jet pack. He has no missile launcher, he has no wrist mounted flame, missile and high end weaponry pack. What's wrong with him is that he represents a Bounty Hunter in the films, comics, fiction that is not Boba Fett.

 

The game of ToR. This is all over the place in regards to movie fiction of a linear elements. All Hunters are Fett. I don't know why, but they are. Alderaan, really? House Organa? we are talking about 3000 years and no other house has ever risen to power? How do we even now that House Organa was even prominent on Alderaan?

 

Hoth. Hoth was chosen because it was an ice planet that no one ever went to. Hoth was the republic base because it was well hidden. Why is there now a civilization and bases on it for 3000 years? I could go on, but I'm wasting valuable play ToR play time on this.

 

I don't blame Bioware or EA. I Blame Lucas Arts. They do this kind of work all the time. They take whatever they felt is popular in the movies and adapt it as close as possible to what they are making.

 

So in answer to my personal irk about this. I made the decision that this does not take 3000 years before the movies, but instead 300 years. That's why everything feels just before the movies. Because it is :D

 

Anyway. It's still a fantastic game that I'm going to enjoy for the next near decade and for now I've wasted enough time not playing ToR. it's time to do something more constructive. in the SWTOR universe than rant about the LA Palpatine style of control. May the Force be with you.

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I do agree with you that there is a little "Universe Breakage" by having every Bounty Hunter be Boba Fett's clone, however in Bioware's defense, the premise of this game from a player/developer's view is to enable the player to "create his own saga in the Star Wars Universe, to be whatever character he desires to be, and do whatever he wants to do" and so you know all the bounty-hunter-wanna-be's are 98% Boba-Fett-wanna-be's, so Bioware makes sure that their fans get what they want.

 

I do also agree it is kind of cheap going to Alderaan, and I would question that the Organa's never lose their seat in 3,000 years, however the "Ultimate Star Wars Canon" (aka "the Movies") states that in the rise of Darth Vader (19 years Before the Battle of Yavin > 19 BBY) that the Republic was founded 25,000 earlier, and had NEVER been overthrown, one could deduce that political movements are EXTREMELY slow in this Universe, while wars/uprisings are resolved quickly, preventing the adversary from gaining any real strength before they're overpowered and defeated. "Change" is obviously something that doesn't really occur in this universe, I mean just look at the technology: it hasn't changed in the 300 years since KotOR, or the next 3,000 years until the death of Qui-Gon Jin... or the 35 years after that until the Battle of Endor... and yet somehow R2-D2 is still regarded as a "top-of-the-line" droid despite being at least 35 years old by Episode VI.

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Spoilers incoming!

 

If you have been questing you would know that House Panteer has been ruling Alderaan the last couple of years only to be decimated by House Ulgo. Now House Organa and House Thul try to get control over Alderaan.

 

Hoth has never been heard of before, but there happened to be a large battle over Hoth a few years ago and now they want to claim the technology of the ships that were destroyed. The quest givers on Hoth actually want to leave and have never heard of Hoth before they got stationed there.

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I definitely get what you mean, although in the case of Hoth, I'm more a little more sympathetic, as the game takes place 3,000 years before the movies, it's entirely feasible the planet could be completely abandoned long before the movies.

 

More what I'm... "curious" about, is Dromund Kaas. I was under the impression that the Emperor had completely left the galaxy, or at least taking place is a far more remote location. Maybe I'm just misjudging it, but it doesn't look any more out-of-the-way than Hutta or Hoth, striking me as odd the True Sith could've gone *so* long without any contact beyond Revan and Malak, and their handful of spies.

 

I will agree, it's a little disappointing that all Bounty Hunters stick *exclusively* to the Fett lineage, but truth be told, I probably would've chosen to anyways, save that I might've chosen a different type of weapon.

 

Ironically, my biggest grip with the Jedi Guardian is that he's forced to wear Heavy Armor, instead of the nimble clothing donned in the movies.

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I definitely get what you mean, although in the case of Hoth, I'm more a little more sympathetic, as the game takes place 3,000 years before the movies, it's entirely feasible the planet could be completely abandoned long before the movies.

 

More what I'm... "curious" about, is Dromund Kaas. I was under the impression that the Emperor had completely left the galaxy, or at least taking place is a far more remote location. Maybe I'm just misjudging it, but it doesn't look any more out-of-the-way than Hutta or Hoth, striking me as odd the True Sith could've gone *so* long without any contact beyond Revan and Malak, and their handful of spies.

 

Dromund Kaas is in the far outer rim in the Esstran sector. It's unexplored space, far beyond any trade routes that the current Republic uses. It's near the Chiss, whose dominion was undiscovered by the galaxy proper for almost 2,900 years after this game.

 

I believe you are misjudging it.

 

I will agree, it's a little disappointing that all Bounty Hunters stick *exclusively* to the Fett lineage, but truth be told, I probably would've chosen to anyways, save that I might've chosen a different type of weapon.

 

They actually stick more to the Mandalore style imagery.

 

Ironically, my biggest grip with the Jedi Guardian is that he's forced to wear Heavy Armor, instead of the nimble clothing donned in the movies.

 

The Jedi during times of war, even in the films, were seen donning some heavy duty armor to protect themselves. Aayla Secura and many other "Jedi Generals" were seen in Episode III and in the Clone Wars series donning Clone Trooper styled body armor underneath their robes.

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According to the Galaxy Map, Dromund Kaas is the 3rd farthest planet into Dark Space away from the galactic arms, with the others being Taral V, and Tatooine (which has been moving back and forth towards and farther away from the center over the past 30 years since it's conception in 1977, traditionally Hoth has always been farther away from the Core than Tatooine but this time it's way out there). With that, the only nearby planet to Dromund Kaas of any significance to the Republic Senate/Jedi is Korriban. With the "Sacking of the Sith Empire" at the end of the Great Hyperspace War, the Galactic Republic performed a literal massacre and genocide on the Imperial Planets and peoples, the faction that survived was never found out by the Republic until decades into the Great Galactic War when Republic spies were finely able to uncover and report how the Sith survived, returned, and were now decimating the Republic's hold on the Galaxy. The closest real-world comparison would be the Trojans who's kingdom was decimated, but Aeneas and his small band were able to escape the Greeks, and eventually found a new kingdom that would become the Roman Empire centuries later. Therefore, with the Empire's old planets now abandoned, there was no reason to for Republic vessels to venture that far again.

 

As for finding Dromund Kaas, the Loading Screens of Knights of the Old Republic explain that Hyperspace routes need to be charted in order to be traveled, and discovering/charting new routes is extremely dangerous (this is what Revan's reprogrammed identity was supposed to have done if the player chose to be a Scout), so if the Republic had no reason to go into the old Sith Imperial Region, they DEFINITELY had no reason to chart new Hyperspace Routes FROM the Region.

 

Millenia pass, and then the Mandalorian Wars see Revan (supposedly) chasing the remnants of the Mandalorian Navy into the Unknown Regions (the old Sith Empire, that has still not been re-inhabitated). He and Malak no doubt landed on Korriban, probably encountered a Sith Lord Spirit, which either directed them to the Emperor, or the Emperor was able to summon them from Dromund Kaas. Revan and Malak return to Dantooine to begin their search for the Star Forge. With the end of the Jedi Civil War, Revan's nightmares of his Sith Life still haunted, and so he ventured back into Unknown Space to either rediscover Dromund Kaas and inform the Republic so that they could annihilate the Sith once and for all (he did after all have to rediscover the Star Forge), or to possibly pose as still being Sith, and destroy the Exiled Empire from within. Either way, he apparently failed in his plan, and his final fate is STILL uncertain.

 

Revan must have informed someone on the Jedi Council of his mission, and the existence of the Sith Remnant (he was the hero of the Jedi Civil War, so obviously he would have to have told somebody what he was doing before he went anywhere). This information, along with the importance the risen Sith from the Jedi Civil War placed on Korriban, must have led the Jedi to put the Orbital Station in place to act as a watchtower, but even by the time the Sith did indeed return, to retake Korriban 300 years later, the Station had been all but abandoned by the Senate and Jedi Council.

 

Even now, almost 40 years later, the location of Dromund Kaas is still unknown to the Republic (even the knowledge that it's near Korriban continues to evade the Republic); only it's name, the fact that it's where the Sith have hidden for the past 1,000 years, and that it is now the Seat of the Empire are known.

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... speaking of Tatooine: WHY DOES IT HAVE TO APPEAR IN EVERY SINGLE STAR WARS MEDIA, TO INCLUDE ALL BUT 1 MOVIE, PRACTICALLY EVERY VIDEO GAME, AND A NUMBER OF BOOKS??? For a planet that nobody in-universe is supposed to know about, all the important stuff always occurs there.
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More what I'm... "curious" about, is Dromund Kaas. I was under the impression that the Emperor had completely left the galaxy, or at least taking place is a far more remote location. Maybe I'm just misjudging it, but it doesn't look any more out-of-the-way than Hutta or Hoth, striking me as odd the True Sith could've gone *so* long without any contact beyond Revan and Malak, and their handful of spies.

 

Don't get fooled by the star map. It makes the galaxy look pretty small. In reality, the actual placement of the systems should make no difference what so ever. You cold probably hide an entire empire right in the middle of the core worlds, and no one would notice.

 

The milky way has about 300,000,000,000 stars in it, most of which with their own solar system. And still more than 99% of it is empty space. You don't just happen to "drive" by a solar system on your way to work. Either you know exactly where it is and are specifically going there, or you won't see more of it than a little sparkle in the sky.

 

This also holds true for the Star Wars universe. Even if they can travel faster than light, they still have to know exactly where they're going, or they'll end up in empty space. The old Sith Empire and the Republic coexisted for thousands of years, spanning hundreds of worlds without them knowing of each other. The only way the Empire found the Republic is because they got the coordinates from some (statistically incredibly) unlucky traders. Otherwise, the Republic would have remained invisible to them.

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if you read the book Revan recent release by Drew Karpyshn it will explain much of the Dromund Kaas gripes you have and if you played the first 2 games you must read this book it is essentially KOTOR 3 i did the audio book on my night shift......twice in a row!
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... speaking of Tatooine: WHY DOES IT HAVE TO APPEAR IN EVERY SINGLE STAR WARS MEDIA, TO INCLUDE ALL BUT 1 MOVIE, PRACTICALLY EVERY VIDEO GAME, AND A NUMBER OF BOOKS??? For a planet that nobody in-universe is supposed to know about, all the important stuff always occurs there.

 

Not so much that nobody knows about it but that most don't *care*...

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To be honest, as far as bounty hunters go, I think a lot of influence was taken from how BH's are represented in the Clone Wars cartoon. (And this isn't necessarily a bad thing, they are pretty awesome, and everytime i see them, it makes me love my own BH even more).

 

I'm torn on the Hoth issue. They make up some good explanation for people being there, but really, the planet shouldn't be discovered (or at least not named Hoth anyways) for thousands more years. I understand it's in there for the sake of being iconic, but do we really need 4 ice planets in the game?

 

(Alderaan, Hoth, Belsavis, Ilum). It's a bit much

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Not so much that nobody knows about it but that most don't *care*...

 

Then why were there no Imperial troops sent there to hunt down a "crazy old wizard" and "the offspring of Anakin Skywalker"? ... especially since Anakin knew about his family there (and supposedly Palpatine knew, since Anakin told only him and Padme what he did to the Sand People out of revenge for his mother). The only reason why the Imperials ever did arrive was to find the Death Star plans in R2's computer.

 

Dagobah still makes sense as a hiding place, as the prequels STILL don't explain what connection Yoda has to it, nor why he went there.

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Don't get fooled by the star map. It makes the galaxy look pretty small. In reality, the actual placement of the systems should make no difference what so ever. You cold probably hide an entire empire right in the middle of the core worlds, and no one would notice.

 

The milky way has about 300,000,000,000 stars in it, most of which with their own solar system. And still more than 99% of it is empty space. You don't just happen to "drive" by a solar system on your way to work. Either you know exactly where it is and are specifically going there, or you won't see more of it than a little sparkle in the sky.

 

This also holds true for the Star Wars universe. Even if they can travel faster than light, they still have to know exactly where they're going, or they'll end up in empty space. The old Sith Empire and the Republic coexisted for thousands of years, spanning hundreds of worlds without them knowing of each other. The only way the Empire found the Republic is because they got the coordinates from some (statistically incredibly) unlucky traders. Otherwise, the Republic would have remained invisible to them.

 

Well, you could send a probe to each star and then have the probe figure out if a planet is heavily populated or not. If it is heavily populated (as the Empire's capital would be) then do a little more investigation.

 

If the Empire could find a tiny rebel base on Hoth then there is no reason why the Republic couldn't find a multi-world Empire.

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Who says they were looking?

 

I agree about the way they try to make things like the movies when there's absolutely no reason to think there should be any similarity. Think about how earth looked just a thousand years ago, politically. It's hard to believe the Organa family name should even exist.

 

On the other hand, it was pretty funny as an imperial running into the noble who says, "I'd sooner see my planet blasted into rubble than in the hands of the Empire!" Request granted.

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Who says they were looking?

 

As hard as Palpatine tried, Order 66 did not kill off all the Jedi all at once, there were still several spread throughout the Galaxy who weren't involved in the War, and thus were nowhere near any Clone Troopers. This is why the Clones sent out an emergency signal from the Temple alerting all Jedi to return to Coruscant at once... until Obi-Wan and Yoda reprogrammed it instructing the Jedi to stay away, and go into hiding. Therefore Darth Vader spent almost a decade "help[ing] the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights" that were in hiding. Anakin/Vader obviously knew Obi-Wan survived Order 66, and although Palpatine told Vader that he killed Padme, he said nothing about killing her child as well, thus Vader still had a child somewhere. Palpatine most likely knew this, and probably had a secret detachment, that he kept from Vader, to search for the possible young Skywalker. Years without any leads would have led him to abandon the search (as he did with Yoda, whom he knew was still alive).

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Personally I both love and hate parts of the story. It seems that parts are really well written with great intentions but then others are there merely to make people think of the movies. Now don't get me wrong, I love the odd reference here or there to the films such as the Wookie at the Dejarik table on Nal Hutta with a protocol droid whose arms are on the table, but there seem to be so many sweeping nods at the movies that it begins to get extremely annoying.

 

My biggest problem in this respect is probably my Smuggler storyline. I love the premise of creating your own storyline in the Star Wars setting but when I play my smuggler it really doesn't feel this way. I'll wrap the details in spoilers as I don't want to ruin anything for people.

 

 

 

As I said, I love the idea of my own storyline, but when playing my smuggler it really feels far too much like I'm just playing the storyline of some ancestor of Han Solo. One or two references here or there is great, but my all whole storyline feels like one big reference. I'm flying around on a ship quite similar to the Falcon, with a Wookie companion, a princess, a farm boy and an almost Jedi. A big crime lord has put a bounty on my head so I'm constantly trying to avoid his thugs, I get frozen in carbonite, have very little choice early on but to wear gear that looks a lot like Hans (except when I get to end game and have little choice but to start looking like Cad Bane) and a quarter of my dialogue seems to be pretty much lifted from the films.

 

That's a fair bit more than one or two references. I know that Han is of course the most well known and well established smuggler in the Star Wars Universe, but does my character really need to have such a similar storyline to him?

 

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I don't see the problem. :p Corellians have apparently been making starships for millennia already, and still are in the films. Even the Kuat Drive Yards already exist, and have existed since the early days of the Republic, that's a company existing for nearly twenty thousand years.

 

And even in KotOR we already have our hyperdrives and everything. I've just come to accept that things don't change an awful lot in the Star Wars galaxy.

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As hard as Palpatine tried, Order 66 did not kill off all the Jedi all at once, there were still several spread throughout the Galaxy who weren't involved in the War, and thus were nowhere near any Clone Troopers. This is why the Clones sent out an emergency signal from the Temple alerting all Jedi to return to Coruscant at once... until Obi-Wan and Yoda reprogrammed it instructing the Jedi to stay away, and go into hiding. Therefore Darth Vader spent almost a decade "help[ing] the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights" that were in hiding. Anakin/Vader obviously knew Obi-Wan survived Order 66, and although Palpatine told Vader that he killed Padme, he said nothing about killing her child as well, thus Vader still had a child somewhere. Palpatine most likely knew this, and probably had a secret detachment, that he kept from Vader, to search for the possible young Skywalker. Years without any leads would have led him to abandon the search (as he did with Yoda, whom he knew was still alive).

 

Um... why on earth would you think this has anything to do with what I said?

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Personally I both love and hate parts of the story. It seems that parts are really well written with great intentions but then others are there merely to make people think of the movies. Now don't get me wrong, I love the odd reference here or there to the films such as the Wookie at the Dejarik table on Nal Hutta with a protocol droid whose arms are on the table, but there seem to be so many sweeping nods at the movies that it begins to get extremely annoying.

 

My biggest problem in this respect is probably my Smuggler storyline. I love the premise of creating your own storyline in the Star Wars setting but when I play my smuggler it really doesn't feel this way. I'll wrap the details in spoilers as I don't want to ruin anything for people.

 

 

 

As I said, I love the idea of my own storyline, but when playing my smuggler it really feels far too much like I'm just playing the storyline of some ancestor of Han Solo. One or two references here or there is great, but my all whole storyline feels like one big reference. I'm flying around on a ship quite similar to the Falcon, with a Wookie companion, a princess, a farm boy and an almost Jedi. A big crime lord has put a bounty on my head so I'm constantly trying to avoid his thugs, I get frozen in carbonite, have very little choice early on but to wear gear that looks a lot like Hans (except when I get to end game and have little choice but to start looking like Cad Bane) and a quarter of my dialogue seems to be pretty much lifted from the films.

 

That's a fair bit more than one or two references. I know that Han is of course the most well known and well established smuggler in the Star Wars Universe, but does my character really need to have such a similar storyline to him?

Look, everything in this game is a gigantic reference. One of the SIS agents you meet in the Knight story is Rieken... who would be an ancestor to the Rebel Alliance's head military guy on Hoth.

 

Part of this is because they had a mandate to stick to the art style of the prequels (which is why sith troopers became more like the love child of Storm Troopers and the Brotherhood of Steel, and Republic troopers just became Clone Troopers), and part of it is because they wanted to make sure people playing a star wars game could feel like they were in a star wars game.

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Look, everything in this game is a gigantic reference. One of the SIS agents you meet in the Knight story is Rieken... who would be an ancestor to the Rebel Alliance's head military guy on Hoth.

 

Part of this is because they had a mandate to stick to the art style of the prequels (which is why sith troopers became more like the love child of Storm Troopers and the Brotherhood of Steel, and Republic troopers just became Clone Troopers), and part of it is because they wanted to make sure people playing a star wars game could feel like they were in a star wars game.

 

Then on Balmorra, the guy in charge is Commander Madine.

 

If he asks where his darn cover is, I'll feed him to the Imperials...

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Just a quick tidbit, Hoth was named long before SWTOR lorewise and was not named after General Hoth from the Russan Reformation area, although many incorrectly are led to believe that.

 

Second quick tidbit: The galaxy is big with billions of systems and millions more undiscovered. Try finding Dromund Kaas thousands of light years from Korriban without hyperspace coordinates to it.

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Then why were there no Imperial troops sent there to hunt down a "crazy old wizard" and "the offspring of Anakin Skywalker"? ... especially since Anakin knew about his family there (and supposedly Palpatine knew, since Anakin told only him and Padme what he did to the Sand People out of revenge for his mother). The only reason why the Imperials ever did arrive was to find the Death Star plans in R2's computer.

 

Dagobah still makes sense as a hiding place, as the prequels STILL don't explain what connection Yoda has to it, nor why he went there.

 

Palpatine probably decided, if the entire Jedi Order couldn't defeat him, a few wayward Knights and Masters wouldn't prove a great obstacle in his plans. Especially since none of them were lending any real aid to the Rebel Alliance.

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