Kotor 2 - Tumblr Posts - Page 2

sort of a tribute to some of my favorite rpg games and their protagonists

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I’m gonna engage with discourse and give my hot take on Star Wars:

Knights of the old Republic 2: The Sith Lords is the best Star Wars game and one of the best computer RPGs full stop.

I know that the first is oft heralded as the best, but that is understandable. It is a good Star Wars game. It has good world building, a solid plot, but it is a BioWare-ass game. The dialogue is very Good option - Evil option - Questions. There really isn’t nuance. The game is kinda critical of the Jedi and gives the Sith a few justifications but there still is a clear good/evil dichotomy. Republic good, Sith Bad. Very Star Wars. But that I think is it’s greatest pitfall; It is do laughably safe. You’ve got redeeming an evil person, you’ve got shock twist about connection to dark side, a super weapon that must be destroyed, it is even a by the numbers hero journey - just like the original series. It is solid, but aggressively unoriginal. It has few original themes inherent to the broader story telling in Star Wars. Each planet you travel to there are personal conflicts and themes, but they are contained and they do not engage with the upheld status quo of the Star Wars universe: that the Republic, in all its capitalist glory is good and that the evil people are evil for choosing to be evil (broadly). I will admit that the game engages with this once with a dark Jedi who fell to the dark side out of a desire to do good, but had forgotten her purpose due to the dark side, but the game does not extrapolate this more broadly. I think the first game is so lauded because it is one of the more accessible and solid of the periods of BioWare RPGs, and also the twist towards the end, which I think is given to much praise, which is extrapolated to the rest of the game. This is not to say that people don’t enjoy it or shouldn’t enjoy or stop enjoying it. The reason I’m so harsh on the first game is that the second highlights how tame it is as a work derivative of the broader Star Wars universe.

Knights of The Old Republic 2 is very much the inverse of the first game. The Jedi are dead from internal conflict an the Sith are in the shadows. The game is also critical of the Jedi and Jedi practice, but it also has Jedi who have failed their oaths, fallen and are in denial, and acted without compassion. Of the surviving Jedi that the character is Searching for one fell to the dark side, one hid and did little to help an oppressed group of refugees, the only one who felt sympathetic to the player is dead, one is helping a monarch remain in power, and the final one is a pompous asshole. All of the living Jedi are critical of the player characters choice to fight in the mandalorian wars, even when the mandalorians were committing GENOCIDE. The player was exiled and cut off from the force as a result of them being to only Revanchist (the faction that fought) Jedi to return to face justice, even though there choice is the one morally superior to the Jedis’ who stayed. The Jedi in the game are far more flawed than in the first and you can be critical of them even while being a light side character. The Sith are better contextualized by the game as they are far less sympathetic (this will come up later). The game engages with the aftermath of war, how normal people are fucked over by larger conflict, and it shows a a republic that low key sucks and is teetering on the edge of collapse. It also highlights moral ambiguity of action and how even small ones can have rippling effects. The first game fully ascribes to Great Man Theory where one person can be responsible for all things rather than collective action, and while in the second the player character makes choices with big effect, they aren’t on the scale of directly saving the republic; by stabilizing the monarchy of a planet the republic is less likely to fall. One reclamation project is the straw that hold up the camel’s back, but while these things are locally important and the failure of one probably won’t signal the end of the Republic as a whole entity, they create ripples that would create domino effects over time. Another way that the game rebuffs the notion that the character is all important is that some things move around the character in a way that the character can’t effect. Political turmoil is not solvable by one person doing one thing.

The second games engagement with the force textually and metatextually is also excellent. Firstly the games perspective on the force is rather critical. The game points out how the force moves the trajectory of the galaxy beyond what people can do, often in spite of them trying to achieve balance, but always overcorrecting as if balance could be achieved broadly, then it would be easy for it to upset by a single act either way. This demonstrates the binary of the force, that one can’t be neither light nor dark, but that they must move in either direction(I’m not engaging with the Grey Jedi stuff, common understanding is misconstrued). This binary is encouraged by the game as bonuses are given when a force side is maxed out the player gets an attribute bonus. The game clarifies why the dark side is so damaging, as it makes explicit that once one falls, they only crave more power, which is expressed by the game best when during the confrontation with the Jedi masters, or lack there of as it is on dantooine, and Kreia asks why, all the options boil down to a quest for power. The player character is denied agency or choice because their character has fallen and cannot think beyond the quest for power. The game also provides an explanation for player leveling with the in game explanation being that the player character with their unique connection to the force draws strength from those around them influencing them, and gaining power when they kill others. This is also why their companions Chang by being in their company and why they join the player in the first place, the player has bonded to them in the force. This is expressed well in certain characters when playing the light, and others when playing dark. On the light, the character Mira joins the party, and she is a competent lethal character. When you talk to her, she says that before she met the character, she never killed. It is the players actions and influence that removed this agency from herself because of the way the force removes agency in everyone searching for balance. When playing dark, a companion Atton is driven into homicidal rage because the player is acting so evilly again with the force depriving agency. This power that the force has on agency is the impetuous for the mentor figure, Kreia to try to kill the force entirely, using the player characters connection to do it, and while I disagree with Kreia’s world view I agree with her on this.

All the characters are good too, but I still hate Canderous/Mandalore. Kreia is fascinating to engage with philosophically and all the other characters, even the more bland ones have insight to offer. All of them have insight to offer on the mandalorian wars and are just interesting people. I will concede that the opening of the game is too long and the ending too abrupt, or that some quests don’t work, but Obsidian was given like 14-16 months to fucking make this game and is so fucking good and no one had played it and I need more people to play please god. I’m flagging here some I’m going to finish. Can y’all tell this is like my biggest fixation ever? Just like everyone loves the first one and like the second is so much more interesting and philosophical and arcane and deep with better characters and dialogue and metatextual engagement and aughhggh…