Sometimes the littlest choices have huge outcomes!!! [Spoilers]

[vanir]

When I first played K1 and I know, I know this is a little sad, but I kinda developed one of those silly little fantasies about Bastila that you do when you don't have a gf, and what honestly blew me away, because I wasn't into the community and had no idea was that an actual romance developed in the game. Honestly I started wearing a tin foil hat. But then I was just tremendously impressed with the game which instantly shot to my all time favourite.

 

Playing TSL it was quickly obvious your choices/results in K1 were being tested early in the game. Light Side. Male. Easy, all I did was read and answer honestly. Hell that's how I played the first game, do what I would do.

 

Thing is though I still haven't unlocked all the dialogue options in TSL and of course have seen neither hide nor hare of any DS options since I do just go through RPG doing things I would do. That's the escapism for me.

The only way I've known about some dialogue options and gaming content is through the community, and some of them I still haven't unlocked or experienced simply because they arrive by choices that, when I'm actually in the game my character simply wouldn't do.

I knew Kreia was a Sith right from the getgo. Didn't talk to her much. Went after Handmaiden and Visas like a guided missile though. Didn't trust Visas at first but when I unlocked her personal story...well I was a bit miffed at the rape allegory by Nihilus and this event really brought me into the game. I was like a man possessed for the rest of it, determined fully to carve him into lightsabred meat patties for such an act, and totally dedicated to Visas' well being and protection. My only disappointment was that he turned out to be such a wuss and then this whole irrelevent thing with volcano breath and the hag was just boring, repetitive hack and slash with plainly no point, as it was plainly an epilogue more like a playable cut scene than anything else.

So the story for me really ended on the Ravager and it was entirely inadequate, with no follow up and conclusion with Visas. I'd rather have gone to an epilogue of a marriage ceremony with Visas and some dialogue interaction with Carth and Bastila, along with an attempt at some non-combat RP choices relating to civilian life for a sense of closure, than that annoying Malachor ranting hack and slash over who cares what (one day I'll make a mod for this).

 

You see I think RP is partly about playing style. And hot chicks. And you actually have to be less "there" to be so explorative in your options that you experience what the gaming engine, rather than your character's individual story has to offer. Inherently more limited, but also far more personal.

 

Most of these gamers who gave Shem those comments obviously played dark siders, by choice or complacency (like there's a difference). Their playing style I dare say is as condascending and dismissive as they are as human beings; they've a lot to learn as people and the type of game which is RPG in general reflects this for them. It is totally appropriate.

 

Our gaming group used to get the occasional addition who was more into sports spectating, bullying their way through life and generally being expectant of others join a session. The cost of their life choices are no imagination and the social development of a pirahna. They'd play one session, couldn't get into it, felt like a fool, found it boring or embarressing, couldn't handle party arguments without knocking heads for real and never returned, half the time breaking something like someone's mum's window with a shoe.

 

Now with video games you get many more people with no imagination getting involved. They're not really RP'ers and play them like an action-pausable FPS before going back to their regular FPS, which they consider RPG.

[Shem]

About six hours ago I got this comment:

 

"intersting..i never could get this..does Revan have to have been male to get this scene? my Revan's a girl."

 

Again, someone didn't read the dialogue choices when talking to Atton. It does make me curious to how many 1000's of people skipped over that one.

[Totenkopf]

They're not really RP'ers and play them like an action-pausable FPS before going back to their regular FPS, which they consider RPG.

 

After you play RPGs enough times, they're little better than FPS's with a storyline you still like. Still, KOTOR was probably the first RPG I think I've played. Seems a waste to only explore the same set of options over and over when there are often a lot of choices to make in a game. Even toward the end (last summer), as many times as I'd played either of the two, I occasionally ran across a piece of dialogue I'd missed. If you're going to treat the rpg like an fps, at least explore your options before going to default mode.

[Shem]

I was getting ready for another update to "What Game Did You Play" thread I have going and ran across some more interesting comments.

 

More about the Bastila is Kreia rumors:

 

"yuppp. canderous is mandalore, kreia is bastilla."

 

"bastilla=krea main guy from #1=revan=main guy from #2 Canderous=Mandalore"

 

Queries about character outcomes:

 

"okay wat happened to bastila? is she still alive?"

 

 

Of course, more queries because of dialogue skipping (or picking blindly) when the Exile talks to Atton on Peragus:

 

"this is gonna sound stupid but i know how to decide if revans a guy or a girl but not if there light side or dark. so when do i get this option?"

 

"ok people. when i play knights of the old republic 2 i know how to decide if revan was a male or a female. aparently there is a way to decide if revan was light or dark side but i dont know what part this is or if i just havent realised ive been deciding. do you decide or is it based upon wether you are light or dark?"

 

"i saw bastila in kotor 2, i dont get it, i mean i can kill bastila so they shouldnt put here in kotor 2 to make it a lot less confusing"

 

"And how do I unlock all the stuff with Carth and Bastila? I've never seen anything in the game about them, really."

 

 

 

So is this a reason why so many people hated TSL? I mean is it the game's fault that people decided not to read the dialogue in a role playing game:

 

"ok this is the part of KOTOR2 that really [ticks] me off you don't see any of your old crew member of the ebon hawk EG - Carth, Bastilla, Canderous exctera....

[Shem]

I got this quote after someone saw one of my videos of Carth meeting the Exile currently less than an hour ago:

 

"How do you get this cutscene? i have never seen this one"

[Jedi Homer]

I just finished TSL last week and it was clear to me something was wrong with the game. So I went looking and thankfully found Wookipaedia and also TehPrincessJ and JediShemL at You Tube. I didn't know till I ran across this thread that Shem = JediShemL. So thanks very much for all the time and effort putting up those videos, they really help to fill in the blanks, (so many blanks *sob*).

 

Comprehension:

Anyway during my initial search for stuff on the cut ending I was on another TSL forum (cant remeber which one, so cant provide link), and someone posted about Kreia's prophecy for PC's friends.

 

The next post was something like this (paraphrased):

 

What! I've played Tsl 2 times, when does Kreia tell you about you're Friends?

 

No they weren't joking. Now how could you possibly miss it? Iirc 2 of the 4 options in the last dialogue lead to this, and you can go through the whole dialogue twice. I was dumbfounded.

 

Atton dailogue choices:

I never played KOTOR, and only recently picked up TSL because a friend told me KOTOR was excellent but nothing about the game. So when I encountered these choices I was a little confused i.e. 'why are they asking me for history I know nothing about? Who's this Revan person?' The information available to you through TSL is minimal at that stage. But I did suspect that it was to set something up, so I just set Revan to opposite my character and thought 'I'll find out'.

 

Really though I only found out the significance of these choices through Shem's videos etc. So I think you can forgive the section of the community thats like me.

 

Having said that I dont think the order of questions would make a difference. You either realise something significant is being asked or you don't. These are fairly bald untypical questions, and if you played KOTOR I think the link is fairly obvious.

 

So is this a reason why so many people hated TSL? I mean is it the game's fault that people decided not to read the dialogue in a role playing game:

 

TSL is a subtle game. But I've seen posts and walkthroughs that will have something like this Kreia 'blah blah'. Kreia is very like Delenn in B5, she carries the burden of exposition. If you aren't listening to npc's, especially Kreia, you miss half the game, because this is where many of the themes are introduced and explored. Master Vrook is another example, many hate him so disregard what he has to say. I didn't like him either, but some of the things he says is quite illuminating. This is my round about way of agreeing with Shem that many of those that hate TSL simply haven't noticed the story because they have disregarded the dialogue.

 

Some recent players of PlaneScape: Torment post that it has no story. Yet its probably the finest story crafted for a cg to date (Chris Avellone co-wrote it).

 

These commentators are probably combat or build-centric and if thats the way they want to play thats fine, but they shouldn't mistake their play style for the story. I could go on here but it will lead to NWN, WoW and TOR so I'll stop.

 

Anyway in closing let me say that you should check out Shem's channel page and two vids on it 'Darth Vader in Love' and 'Atton's Death Scene Animated'. One made me laugh the other brought a tear to my eye.

 

Cheers.

[Ping]

So is this a reason why so many people hated TSL? I mean is it the game's fault that people decided not to read the dialogue in a role playing game:

Now I know why everyone hated TSL. It wasn't because of the crapload of stuff that was cut, it was because a crapload of people ignore everything in the game.

[Shem]

Here are a couple of comments in the last couple of days that added to the list of people who are lost in this video:

 

(This BBCode requires its accompanying plugin to work properly.)

 

Though you never talk to Bastila, but see her, here is one of them:

 

"wow [crap] you can talk to Bastilla in this game? o.O"

 

Here is another person who played the game, but obviously did not redeem her:

 

"wait... but didnt bastila turn evil?? how is she here?"