Enemies Lack Character?

[Peregrine]

Possible Small Spoilers, don't read if you really don't want to know anything about the game until you've completely beaten it.

 

 

Does anyone else feel that the enemies, and the saber wielding enemies in particular, lacked any feeling of distinct character? It just doesn't seem satisfying beating any of the characters in the game. Killing a "saber wielding cultist" is just kind of blah. Anyone remember good old Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight? Now THOSE saber wielding baddies had character and were therefore much more fun to do battle with and triumph over. Gorc and Pic were cool! Yun was one of my favorites, a dark jedi with honor. And how about that guy with no legs, Maw. Or the insanely fast twi'lek with two sabers, Boc? Or even Jerec himself. Those were all fairly well done characters and they all had a distinct feel to them. Jedi Outcast didn't quite live up to JK1 in that department, but at least it had Desann and Tavion, both with a decent bit of character. Jedi Academy has .... Alora? She's just kind of there. And Tavion? Whatever character she had in JO is gone. That leaves us with Rosh, who I can't really complain about, and all the reborns/cultists. Oh, and Kyle if you decided to go Dark Side. I have to say that the Kyle fight was the most satisfying. Why? Because fighting him wasn't just like fighting any old reborn. You feel like you know him and his motivations. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is summed up like this: When it comes down to it, which fight will you remember: Fighting Sariss around the crashed ship with Yun's saber after Yun gives his life to give you a fair fight, or killing that cultist in the hallway outside the hanger.

 

Don't get me wrong, I like having lots of saber fights, but having one that feels like it means something or is different from the 500 others in some significant way would be quite refreshing. Ok, I'm done.... flame away.

[Andy867]

Why should they have character. They had the Dark Side controlling them, so they were virtually zombies so to speak. Last time I checked, ZOmbies have ZERO personality. ANd with Kyle, he was in my way, so defeating him was no problem for me, whether he had character or not.. He, IMO, was just another obstacle in my way for my path to the Dark Side:)

[Peregrine]

The reborn/cultists don't need much character, they're filler. But a fight or two with a sith who had something unique about him would have been nice. Look at the movies. Vader had character. Maul had character. Dooku had character. Palpatine had character. And I didn't say I had a problem with fighting Kyle, in fact I said it was the best fight in the game

[StormHammer]

I agree with you, Peregrine. The only cultists that seemed to have any defining character at all were those who protected Rosh. While I enjoyed the saber combat in JA...by the end I was thinking 'not another cultist' *sigh*

 

I've said it elsewhere, but I'll reiterate here...I would have preferred a handful of more powerful Dark Jedi to fight, like in JK. Alora was starting to get interesting, until I killed her off, and I enjoyed both encounters with her. Tavion could have been better throughout, but was acceptable. A handful more enemies with their own personalities, who could be encountered and fought, to escape and fight another day, could have been very challenging.

 

A running saber duel across an entire level, while other things were going on, would have been awesome.

 

JK still stands head and shoulders above the others in the series in terms of characterisation and plot. Part of that was due to the amount of 'screen time' the characters received in the cut scenes.

[C'jais]

If they have designed this beautiful saber combat simulation, I bet they're going to use it as much as possible - hence all the saberfights.

 

But you're also right in that personality in enemies count for something - you have to be afraid of them, most importantly. I was a bit scared each time I faced a dark jedi in JK. And I hated the shadowtroopers. The reborn (old and new) were just mince meat equipped with glowsticks.

 

But I think we need some sort of hybrid. More lightsaber fights than JK, but way less than in JO and JA, where you were almost elbow-deep in broken cultists and gutted reborns. Something like 3 dark jedi each level, with the last one being "special" in a minor way - perhaps you know it was he who personally slaughtered all those civilians, or maybe it was he who continually harassed you throghout the entire level and now it's showdown time.

 

I find the "lone jedi versus a horde of gun users" much more satisfying than the flukey, happy-go-lucky jousts against dark jedi - especially in this game, as you can now block blaster bolts even when swinging the saber - tremendous difference, and much more fun now.

[StormHammer]

Originally posted by C'jais

But I think we need some sort of hybrid. More lightsaber fights than JK, but way less than in JO and JA, where you were almost elbow-deep in broken cultists and gutted reborns. Something like 3 dark jedi each level, with the last one being "special" in a minor way - perhaps you know it was he who personally slaughtered all those civilians, or maybe it was he who continually harassed you throghout the entire level and now it's showdown time.

 

Yes, I agree. Definitely more saber battles than JK, but less than JA.

 

Maybe have a handful of 'Dark Jedi Masters'...and each has a few 'apprentices'. So as you say, you could fight the learners before facing down their masters.

 

I can just see it now.... Shadow Academy.

[JediLurker]

Ever since JO, I thought it would be a pretty cool idea to have a sequel where the main villain somehow gets inside the academy and seduces a bunch of students to the dark side right out from under Luke's nose. IMO, it would have been a perfect plot device for academy, given that you play one of the students. It would open things up a bit for far deeper character development....and it beats the tired old 'cult suddenly springs up out of nowhere' idea.

[SITH_ShadowCat]

This is why a crack team of master-minds like you need to get toghter and make an SP map pack that revovles around a massive story. I'd download this baby any day if it were to be released. I remember plenty of JK and MOTS levels on massassi.net that were extremely fun to play over and over, one about Han Solo comes to minds were about 10 levels of how Han tries to find Leia and goes to all sorts of places.

 

Your guy's doesn't need to be long as long as it has something strong and unique.

[Doug Thompson]

I agree with the thread's starting statement. This is one area where Jedi Outcast has Jedi Academy beat hands-down. The bartender in Outcast had more character than any of the villians in Academy.

 

You know you're in trouble when the maiin villian has been dead for 50 centuries.

 

There were opportunities. For instance, why not confront the Hutt crimelord who has the prisoners who he feeds to the rancor? Then there's the slease who makes the assassin droids.

 

The only glimpse of this type of characterization is in the mission where you're taken prisoner by the reincarnation of Charles Laughton.

 

In the droid recovery mission, where you're supposed to learn some "negotiation" skills, you wind up wiping out a whole settlement.

 

On a related note, the game series has to find a new enemy. The remnant's getting stale, frankly.

[[PMOH] Wolf-Man]

I guess you build interaction through cut scenes and interacting with characters. Perhaps a good one for the next game is to find out where all these saber trained bad guys are coming from, and you do that by infiltrating and joining the cult itself. Along the way you do dark side missions, but try and do it in a way that you're actually thwarting their plans while you're undercover.

 

You meet and work with a whole bunch of bad guys, and during the course of the game, you have to take them down when they 'find out too much'. That way you can have bucketloads of bad guys, and characters you get to know before you fight them. Big boss at the end is the one who is training these guys. Master Swordsman, etc. The big bad.

 

Call it Sith Academy if you want. Or Academy of the Sith. I don't really want copyright. Just cash.

[Doug Thompson]

Originally posted by [PMOH] Wolf-Man

Call it Sith Academy if you want. Or Academy of the Sith. I don't really want copyright. Just cash.

 

Sorry, dude, but Qaz already had that idea in detail on the "Chilling Thought."

[-=FB=-Jagged]

let me start off by saying JA is the only game in the series i have beaten. that said, my opinion is this: don't whine for more personality in your enemies that are made specifically for you to wipe the floor with. the cultists are going to lack special powers because they were GIVEN the force, they did not develop their skills. they lack personality because they suck; they're not designed to last long against you because there are so many of them to fight.

 

i'm not trying to be a jerk or a smart-a** or anything; i know you guys realize all this crap. what i'm saying is don't mess with the cultists. they were put in the game to be stomped on, wiped out quickly. instead, pick on the designers for not creating more BIG villains, more boba fetts and aloras and maybe more fights with rosh. that is where the mistakes were made. there should have been more memorable boss fights, not necessarily memorable stormie slaughters.

 

hey, another cool story idea would be to have jaden explore boba's apperance. who hired him and so on. i dunno, another fett fight would be sweet.

 

hehe...did anyone else think that jaden's voice (male) sounded hilarious when he turned the dark side? not especially when rosh died, but at koraban, before and after the tavion fight?

[Templar101]

I think the idea of more decent Dark Jedi in a JK game is the best idea... I got really bored fighting all of those cultists that always were the same and allways had Red Lightsabers.

 

I really enjoyed the fight with Alora where she escaped right at the end, and I think there should perhaps be more Dark Jedi and more fights like that (perhaps when you defeat a Dark jedi you only succeed in lopping off his/her arm and they come back next time with a robotic one and a different saber)

 

Hordes of guys with lightsabers are cool to fight, but more of an effort should have been made with them... At the very least they should have given them random saber colour each time.

 

And why couldn't I choose a Red Saber! I mean they let you learn dark side force abilities saying "Its not abilities that are evil but how you use them" surely a red lightsaber is not Evil!

[StormHammer]

Originally posted by -=FB=-Jagged

the cultists are going to lack special powers because they were GIVEN the force, they did not develop their skills. they lack personality because they suck; they're not designed to last long against you because there are so many of them to fight.

 

Yes, you're right, they're just saber-fodder. But if you place it in the context of the game's story (rather than game mechanics), this cultist 'army' is supposed to have been created to take care of the Jedi. If they're so easy to kill, then the whole idea of the cultists as a viable menace to the galaxy falls flat on it's face. If you know you're not going to be as strong as a Jedi in a face-off, then you need an ace up your sleeve.

 

...instead, pick on the designers for not creating more BIG villains, more boba fetts and aloras and maybe more fights with rosh.

 

I thought that was what we were doing.

 

hey, another cool story idea would be to have jaden explore boba's apperance. who hired him and so on. i dunno, another fett fight would be sweet.

 

Yet another example where loose ends are simply left hanging, and a 'guest' appearance could have had a stronger sub-plot in the game, and been tied in to the overall plot in a more meaningful way.

 

 

And Wolf-Man, I like your idea of tracking down the cultists to their base, and infiltrating their organisation. Again, it would have added a great deal more depth, and opportunities for some sneaky behaviour.

[Scoundrel]

Yeah, those Cultists and Reborns feel like mass production:D

 

Just lots of them. No name, no history, no personality. I liked JK1 Dark Jedis, but these are ok too. But there should not be so many of them, or at least they should be something more important. They are just.. Like stormtrooper.

[Dethsaint]

The problem with Reborn is that they aren't really Sith.

 

If you guys have played JO in SP to the end and defeated Desann, the story was basically that these people have been imbued with force power and are as such not Sith but just evil men with force powers (Trust me, there's a world of difference between the two)

 

Being a Sith compromises other diciplines than pure destructive power (although it helps alot) like being able to decieve your enemy, avoid suspecion etc. hence the the reason to the covert operations of Palpatine before the fall of the Republic.

 

For some reason "true" Sith are only allowed to have one apprentice which I vaguely remember being implied in Episode 1 (correct me if I'm wrong) - Something in the way "There are always two" which also holds true in Episode II, IV, V, VI (Vader and Palpatine). Same thing in JO: Desann and Tavion and in JA: Tavion and Allora

 

DF2:JK is an exception since there are more Sith than what is normally "allowed", but that can be put aside since they were all really cool

 

But once again - I'd just like to see more people in the JK games in general. I loved the village in DF2:JK where you had the opputunity to save the innocent or slay them at your leasure.

[-=FB=-Jagged]

Nice one Dethsaint! no kiddin, he's got a point. though many sith would be sweet, the movies prevented it with prophecies. this is a viable reason for the game designers not to have made more potent sith warriors, or just more of them.

 

stormhammer, sry but i gotta disagree with you on the cultists. i dont think they were designed to wipe out anything; most definitely not the new jedi order. Ragnos was gonna do that. the cultists were made to do tavion's bidding. go snatch this force, release that mutated rancor, so on...

 

let me point out though that they are rather powerful COMPARED to the other jedi knights at the academy. at koraban, there was only about a 50% success rate in the jedis' duels against the cultists the 2 times i ran thru the game. just cuz jaden can mop em up or because i say theyre made to wipe out nothing doesnt mean they cant put up a good fight....

 

....if you turn the difficulty level high enough!

[Peregrine]

I think the idea with only having two sith at a time was this: In the past, there had been many sith, but whenever there are more than 2(a Master and an Apprentice who knows his place) then they end up turning on each other and struggling to become the most powerful. Just look at Vader as he tried to turn Luke to the dark side, he was already plotting to overthrow the emperor. But hey, I have no problem with having many sith struggling to become the dominant master, actually sounds like a cool plot to me. I'm sure theres much more detail to the "only two sith" thing than that, but I only vaguely remember reading/hearing about it somewhere and don't remember any more than I've already said. Anyone else remember reading about it somewhere?

[Andy867]

From my understanding, it was like Darth Bane or something like that who came up with the rule of 2 for Siths, because of that very reason. He knew if the sith #'s grew, it would cause chaos, whereas limiting it would allow for more powerful combination.

[StormHammer]

Originally posted by -=FB=-Jagged

stormhammer, sry but i gotta disagree with you on the cultists. i dont think they were designed to wipe out anything; most definitely not the new jedi order. Ragnos was gonna do that. the cultists were made to do tavion's bidding. go snatch this force, release that mutated rancor, so on...

 

No need to apologise. You make a good point, and I was probably reading too much into things - including a hangover from Jedi Outcast, where the Reborn were supposed to wipe out the Academy. Or something.

 

As for the 2 Sith rule...well, that was a long, long time ago. There's nothing to say a new bunch of Sith wannabes couldn't care less about ancient rules, and start sprouting up here and there, and get engaged in some power struggles.

 

I'd actually prefer some 'chaos'...

[yoda_alex]

Originally posted by Templar101

I really enjoyed the fight with Alora where she escaped right at the end, and I think there should perhaps be more Dark Jedi and more fights like that (perhaps when you defeat a Dark jedi you only succeed in lopping off his/her arm and they come back next time with a robotic one and a different saber)

 

I really like that idea. Its a bit reminiscent of the cutscene at the start of JK where Rahn cuts maw in half. When you next see him, he's missing his legs.

 

Also, the whole arm thing fits into star wars very well (by my count, in the films, 3 seperate arms/right hands have been cut off!)

 

ON the subject of the post though, I don't think that the enemies have to have distinct characters like in JK, but they do need to be distinct from one another. I know some had single sabres, others had duals and the rest had staffs but I couldn't tell which were which until I got close and even when they drew their sabre I took them on in exactly the same way.

 

Compare this to JO. It was instantly obvios which type of reborn you were fighting (from their outfit) and I can honestly say that I took them on in different ways (e.g. I'd always use heavy stance for a shadowtrooper, I'd never run right at a fencer, I'd never throw my sabre at an acrobat...).

 

Althought the cultists did wear different colours in the game, as far as I could see, this just told you theirrank and not what fighting style they adopted.

 

What I'm saying is that a variety of oponents is only worth it if it forces the player to adopt a variety of methods to overcome them. Look at the stromtroopers. If you include the rocketeers and the hazard troopers there are at least 7 different types in the game (including the variation in armaments) which meant I had to deal with them differently - for example, say I'm facing a squad leader armed with a flechette. I make sure he's the first to die as he can hurt me badly. If he's got a MSMS, I'll push the rockets back at him....

 

The one good point about the enemies in JA is the force users. They are a really original idea and forced a change in tactics from the usual grind of taking out the rest of the cultists.

[Wa'es]

About that "only 2 Sith" thing. Yes, Yoda mentions this in Episode I. However, that doesn't explain how we now have Darth Sideous. Given their relative strengths, I would say that Dooku is (or was) apprenticed to Palpatine. Therefore, Maul was likely apprenticed to Dooku OR Palpatine. Either way, we have 3 Sith running around the galaxy and mixing things up. Discontinuity? YES and yet more evidence that George Lucas' prequel trilogy is a cash grab. (Sorry for that last bit...but I'm not happy with the plot holes and horrible acting that have been the rule rather than the exception)

[SpaceButler14]

I have to agree about fewer bigger saber fights. It was slightly disappointing to me that they made all the boss battles difficult only by endless hitpoints. I remember there was a feeling of accomplishment when I first beat Gorc and Pic that was lacking in JA and even JO.

[T-Dogg]

I think the only problem is that there were too many reborn/cultist fights. The characters themselves would've been cool, but there's just too many of them - they get boring. It would've been better if there were just 2, 3, maybe 4 saber battles with cultists per level - they would've stayed special that way. Less cultists but with more health so that the fights would be longer is what I would like to have seen. And the "boss" fights? They were alright, but none of them were really really extra special. The characters once again served their purpose, but I think there could've been more to facing a Sith. And it would be cool if there were the kinds of fights like the one with Maw in Jedi Knight: you go through a whole level while fighting. Just like in The Phantom Menace or Luke vs. Vader in Empire Strikes Back. Being in one room is fine also, but then it should be more of a special event - like the emperor's throne room in Return of the Jedi. None of the locations where you fight a boss in JA had that vibe to them, in my opinion.

[-=FB=-Jagged]

we all seem to think that the cultists weren't that difficult. but what level where you guys playin at? i beat the game on padawan, turning to the dark side the second time around, while selecting duels instead of staff. so i've beaten it twice all the way thru on padawan. of COURSE the fights were easy. so i'm gonna turn up the level.

 

has anyone played the game through at a rougher level? are the cultists still easy kills? :quesbrn:

 

please say no...