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The Old Republic, it is not.


jayderyu

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The onl part of story line of history that bothers me is Knight errant And the bane series appear next on the timeline. Am i supposed to believe that The sith win the war then miracoulosly the republic comes back or are they just gonna denounce Knight errant because i lioked that book Anyone?
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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.

 

I am not the only one in the world named Heimir (few, but over 100), and the surname Smith is incredibly common. They don't have to be related to have the same name.

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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.

 

In regards to House Organa, dynasties last for a long time.

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The onl part of story line of history that bothers me is Knight errant And the bane series appear next on the timeline. Am i supposed to believe that The sith win the war then miracoulosly the republic comes back or are they just gonna denounce Knight errant because i lioked that book Anyone?

 

The Sith Order was refounded 1000 years later by Darth Ruin. His Empire and the Republic fought a war for the next thousand years until Bane destroyed it's remnants. The Odionites and Daimonites are among the splinter mini-Empires of Darth Ruin's.

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  • 3 months later...

I agree with the OP.

 

KotOR added much to the Star Wars universe that shouldn't be so quickly shelved just because it wasn't seen in the films. I am surprised that given the amount of customisation in many areas of the game Jedi are pretty much limited to baggy Robes or Slave Girl outfits. What happened to the stylish tight-fitted robes and the sensory amplifiers of KotOR?

 

Personally when I bought this game I was hoping to recreated my double-bladed wielding Twi'lek Jaden Korr from SW: Jedi Academy. Now I seem to be playing a nun.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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.

 

The books however do explain Dagobahs connection to Yoda where he hunted down and killed a few dark jedi that left a large darkside zone which helped mask yoda from the emperors senses.

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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.

Realistically, the Star Wars canon has no good concept of time. When the Tales of the Jedi period was conceived of, the writer (Tom Veitch?) I think just chose some random number that sounded like it was "a really long time ago." This is an instance of the classic Sci-fi/Fantasy writers have no sense of scale trope, IMO.

 

Given that, you have to kinda judge the TotJ/KotOR/TOR world through the lens of the writers not really comprehending just how much of a stretch of time they're working with. Whether it's technology (really? ships changed that little in 3,000 years?) or simply aesthetics, it is easier if you pretend this period in Star Wars history is really more like 200 years before the films rather than 3,000.

 

Having said that, I do agree that the aesthetic they chose for a lot of things corresponds a lot more to that of the films than the TotJ comics. Really, though, this criticism applies as much to KotOR as it does to TOR, though (FWIW).

 

I do kinda like the idea that the Galactic Empire was borrowing imagery from an old, legendary Sith Empire (e.g., the Imperial logo, the appearance of Star Destroyers), a la the Nazis seeing themselves as descendants of a long tradition of German Imperialism. (Not that the latter manifested in Nazi imagery so much as their ahistorical propaganda.) Granted, this isn't ever stated in any SW canon, but I like the idea.

 

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.

Yeah, all Bounty Hunters are Boba Fett—this would "work" if Bounty Hunters were Mandalorians, but they're not. Worse, IMO, was the idea of making the Han Solo/Lando Calrissian archetype into a whole class. TOR isn't the first offender (KotOR for example had the "Scoundrel" class), but I've never gotten the obsession with this. The Imperial analog, the Agent, is so much cooler, and having the Republic version be an SIS Agent or Scout (to borrow a KotOR class) would've been a much, much better idea, IMO.

 

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?

Again, the sense of scale thing rears its head. But if you look at some real royal lineages, some of them continued for hundreds of years. Famously, the Habsburgs of Austria (and Spain), for instance. They were Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire in 1273 and good ol' Archduke Franz Ferdinand whose assassination kicked off WWI 641 years later was heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, descended from a branch of the same House of Habsburg. It's not unprecedented.

 

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?

Completely agreed on this one, but I'll mention another pet-peeve planet for me: Tatooine. Tatooine is supposed to be a backwater dump that no one would ever want to go to and that nothing important ever happens on. And yet it comes up in Star Wars over and over again. Even George Lucas pulled this when he made Anakin from Tatooine. It's absurd.

 

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.

Well, it's hard to say where the idea to use Hoth and Tatooine (for instance) came from, Bioware, EA, or LucasArts, but regardless, LucasArts should have nixed the idea. As stewards of the Star Wars franchise in gaming, they do a pretty terrible job with the canon.

 

Still, love the game, and it at least takes a dump on established Star Wars canon far less than some other games (or than, say, WoW does with Warcraft lore).

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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.

That is one of the rare advantages of having such an absurd amount of time between TOR and the original movies. Usually it's nothing but a problem, but it works out pretty well here. :)

 

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.

It's a bit weird, but then again the whole concept of the Unknown Regions is a bit silly. Of course, so are the monoclimates of various Star Wars planets. Really, what it comes down to is that Star Wars is really bad science fiction and is just fantasy dressed up in sci-fi clothing. ;) Think about it: Tatooine isn't a desert planet, it's just a desert; Hoth isn't an ice planet, it's just the "frozen north." And so forth.

 

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.

 

This isn't a gripe specifically about TOR, but the fact that so many Jedi are running around in Obi-Wan Kenobi robes is rather silly. Actually, this terrible idea comes from the awful prequels as it is wonderfully explained here (on a side note, the whole set of those reviews are actually quite worth watching, in fact), but that doesn't mean KotOR/TOR need to continue to propagate this. Oh, well.

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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'm sure this was it. I'm sure a similar motivation was behind the horrible, stupid idea of a "Smuggler" class. But I already mentioned this.

 

I do also agree it is kind of cheap going to Alderaan,

I disagree that going to Alderaan was a bad idea. If it was worth blowing up to Tarkin, it was probably a relatively important planet in the Star Wars galaxy. No, going there wasn't the bad idea, it was having the Organas be important. Though, as I mentioned above, that wasn't necessarily a catastrophic idea.

 

"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.

Well, maybe R5s were top-of-the-line and R2 really was old. But, really, if you're space-faring for more than 3,000 years, there can't be much technological progression, or things would reach complete absurdity pretty fast. Total stagnation almost makes more sense... assuming you commit to the ridiculous idea of having these spans of time take place. It would certainly explain why beeping astromech droids have been in use for thousands of years.

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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.

Just want to throw this out there since you mentioned "the real world," but you know that was a propagandist myth, right? That the Romans just wanted to link themselves to Ancient Greece? I'm sure you do, but I just wanted to throw that out there for people who don't know anything about the Aeneid.

 

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.

An excellent point, and kudos to whoever thought of that explanation for why the entirety of the Star Wars galaxy isn't known and colonized, since apparently it's not a big deal to go from the "outer rim" (i.e., Tatooine) to the "core" (i.e., Coruscant) on even a small vessel.

 

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).

I think Revan's not supposed to remember what it was that he found out in the Unknown Regions. He just had a bad feeling about it, went to investigate, and got captured by the Emperor. Something like that.

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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.

 

Being home to some of the most notorious smugglers and Bounty Hunters Tantooine would be like the seedy under-city place no one has jurisdiction on.

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Personally, I like that the SW universe has such long periods of time with very little advancment. It makes me think that the Republic is doing a very bad job of running the galaxy.

 

For the record, I think there's some kind or "dark age" between now and Bane's era. Mostly because, near the end of the first book when Zannah first shows up, her pet... Thing is shot and killed by two Republic soldiers. These two soldiers are useing blasters that need to be hooked up to a power pack to function.

 

Did any of the guns we used in KOTOR need that? Do any of the blasters we use now have such an archaic feature? Nope.

 

Edit:

An excellent point, and kudos to whoever thought of that explanation for why the entirety of the Star Wars galaxy isn't known and colonized, since apparently it's not a big deal to go from the "outer rim" (i.e., Tatooine) to the "core" (i.e., Coruscant) on even a small vessel.

 

 

I think Revan's not supposed to remember what it was that he found out in the Unknown Regions. He just had a bad feeling about it, went to investigate, and got captured by the Emperor. Something like that.

 

1. Hyperspace routes are really difficult to chart and navigate. Any random jump into space is pretty likely to send you through a star.

 

2. He did remember. It's all explained in the Revan novel.

Edited by Velaran
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Yeah, all Bounty Hunters are Boba Fett—this would "work" if Bounty Hunters were Mandalorians, but they're not.

Here's the thing: not all bounty hunters all Boba Fett in TOR. The player's BH is very much a Mandalorian-inspired hunter who uses armor with numerous gadgets and weapons attached. The majority of the bounty hunters in the galaxy do not use that armor.

 

When it comes to canon, there is only one "Bounty Hunter" in TOR. Every player is just playing his or her take on the character. It's the same with every class in the game: There is only one "Jedi Consular" or "Imperial Agent." There is only one "Revan," but everyone played his or her own take on the character.

 

Worse, IMO, was the idea of making the Han Solo/Lando Calrissian archetype into a whole class. TOR isn't the first offender (KotOR for example had the "Scoundrel" class), but I've never gotten the obsession with this. The Imperial analog, the Agent, is so much cooler, and having the Republic version be an SIS Agent or Scout (to borrow a KotOR class) would've been a much, much better idea, IMO.

You don't get it. That's fine, but a lot of people do get it, and they really enjoy the smuggler archetype. For example, my first Star Wars character I made was a soldier who left the Republic military to go into business for himself as a "freelance cargo hauler." My current character is a man who started as an Exchange smuggler, but now runs jobs for the Republic as it fights the rising problems in the wake of the Jedi Civil War. I love smugglers, and that directly comes from my connection to the Han Solo character when I was a kid.

 

I think it would have been a much bigger problem to make a class that was not only a mirror version of the agent as gameplay goes, but also as story goes. They already have that archetype: it's the Agent. Why retread that territory? It's the same with an Imperial Trooper. It would be the same as the Republic Trooper, but with a different CO and the targets wearing different colors. These character archetypes should be put in only when Bioware can think of a way to make the classes play differently enough to justify the similarities in story.

 

For the record, I think there's some kind or "dark age" between now and Bane's era. Mostly because, near the end of the first book when Zannah first shows up, her pet... Thing is shot and killed by two Republic soldiers. These two soldiers are useing blasters that need to be hooked up to a power pack to function.

I'm not sure if you've ever played Battletech or know anything about the universe, but this is exactly what happens in the game's history. Eventually, warfare becomes so devastating and widespread that we actually regress technologically. Battlemechs built in 2750 have superior technology those built in 3039, almost 300 years later. By 3050, the only people left who know how to fix the interstellar communications network's machines are a quasi-religious cult.

 

It's very possible that, in the 2600-year span between TOR and the Sith Brotherhood (a period about which we know next to nothing), the Republic is locked in mortal combat with various organizations calling themselves Sith. It's quite feasible that tech will progress and regress numerous times in that period due to widespread warfare.

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You don't get it. That's fine, but a lot of people do get it, and they really enjoy the smuggler archetype. For example, my first Star Wars character I made was a soldier who left the Republic military to go into business for himself as a "freelance cargo hauler." My current character is a man who started as an Exchange smuggler, but now runs jobs for the Republic as it fights the rising problems in the wake of the Jedi Civil War. I love smugglers, and that directly comes from my connection to the Han Solo character when I was a kid.

Han Solo got involved in galactic affairs by accident. Ditto Lando. I can't imagine at any point during A New Hope Han taking orders from a Republic soldier, Or even helping out of his own volition. Smugglers ought to be self-interested to the point of not caring very much whether the Empire or the Republic is in charge. So making a character like that follow a roughly similar story path (i.e., the sidequests) as Jedi and Trooper... it seems odd to me. Difficult to make work.

 

Having said that, I'm glad to see that there are at least some people who are interested in the Smuggler class, because the consensus between my wife, my brother, and myself is that we have no interest whatsoever in playing that class. While I haven't seen any "census data" of TOR servers, I would hope that our sentiment isn't widely shared.

 

I think it would have been a much bigger problem to make a class that was not only a mirror version of the agent as gameplay goes, but also as story goes. They already have that archetype: it's the Agent. Why retread that territory? It's the same with an Imperial Trooper. It would be the same as the Republic Trooper, but with a different CO and the targets wearing different colors. These character archetypes should be put in only when Bioware can think of a way to make the classes play differently enough to justify the similarities in story.

While there's some truth to what you say, isn't that basically the case with the Force-wielding classes? Perhaps moreso for the Sith Warrior/Jedi Knight than the Inquisitor/Consular.

 

Also, as I said, there is always the option of the Scout, too, rather than an SIS agent for an alternative to the Smuggler. ;) Though it's of little consequence—what's done is done.

Edited by RobertMcDonald
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The Imperial analog, the Agent, is so much cooler, and having the Republic version be an SIS Agent or Scout (to borrow a KotOR class) would've been a much, much better idea, IMO.

 

While I understand your point and agree to an extent, I also like that each faction has one non-force-using class that works for the government (IA/Trooper) and one non-force-using class that's just out for profit/fun/whatever (Smuggler/BH). If the Smuggler were turned into an SIS agent or what-have-you, then literally every Republic class would be working for the government, with no room for freelancers.

 

I wouldn't be opposed to BW adding an SIS Agent and Imperial Trooper at some point though.

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While I understand your point and agree to an extent, I also like that each faction has one non-force-using class that works for the government (IA/Trooper) and one non-force-using class that's just out for profit/fun/whatever (Smuggler/BH). If the Smuggler were turned into an SIS agent or what-have-you, then literally every Republic class would be working for the government, with no room for freelancers

Good point. Though I feel like Freelancers almost need to be faction-neutral. There's no reason why a Smuggler couldn't work for the Empire or a Bounty Hunter for the Republic. Granted, that would make things much more difficult for Bioware, but it would be a neat idea. Perhaps you could pick a faction at level 10 and only be neutral on your starting planet. Given how the classes mirror each other, I don't think it's a terrible idea.

 

On a slightly related note, the fact that Jedi Knights play rather like Sith Warriors isn't too big a deal to me (the absurdity of Force Choke --> "Force Stasis" aside). But Bounty Hunters working identically to Troopers seems a bit weird and the Smuggler to Imperial Agent parallel doubly so. I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I just find it weird. (It also makes writing and reading guides somewhat bothersome.)

Edited by RobertMcDonald
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Good point. Though I feel like Freelancers almost need to be faction-neutral.

 

Were it up to me, there'd be a third faction: Hutts, and the Smuggler and BH would be with them by default. Also, I'd allow people to move from one faction to another, albeit with some limitations (e.g. no more than one move per character per month). But it's not up to me! ;)

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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.

 

Not really. Only a few of the armor sets look anything like the Fetts'. Plenty of the earlier armor looks like the other bounty hunters you see in episode 5, for example the Arabic-looking head towel or a robo-cop style visor.

 

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?

 

Organa didn't have power in SWTOR, it's stated that one of the other houses just recently fell and now there's a dispute between Thul, Organa, and some of the other houses.

 

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.

 

They explain that there was a space battle that occurred above Hoth and all the starships fell to its surface. The only reason republic/imperials are there is because they want to reclaim the technology from the wrecked ships, including that of a few prototype ships. But otherwise it seems like they're ready to get off that planet as soon as possible.

 

Don't forget that technology hardly changes at all over the entire star wars timeline. Stuff is what it is not because it "makes sense", rather because it's more interesting to be part of. There are a couple retcons I can think of in SWTOR, but otherwise everything is spot on.

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