Just started KOTOR II, kinda boring

[Mastermind]

I can't believe that I just brofisted Liberal...but there it is....

Oh and ban Mastermind and his faggot alt/cheerleader Eyeball...note that one always shows up immediately after the other to affirm whatever devilish retardation has been uttered. How this entity(ies) know how to breathe is beyond me.

Yeah bro, there can be no other explanation as to why two people can hate the same shitty writing. They must be the same person. Commie, splitting atoms with his mind!

 

[Severian Silk]

You misunderstand. A party of 3 suits the KOTOR engine just fine. It's easy to control 3 characters without things getting confusing. More characters would likely end up being a chore to control, though, as the UI is really pretty simplistic and lacks easily viewable status indicators for your AI controlled teammates. Imagine playing Mass Effect with a party of 7 - shit would be unplayable due to the interface. Same thing goes for KOTOR.

Basically you're saying that Awesome Feature X wouldn't work with Crappy Engine Y because it would be confusing. It makes you look like a retard.

 

[Eyeball]

Uh....not really. My point is that the 3rd person nature and zoomed in camera of the KOTOR engine as well as its lack of a better team control UI would make it very difficult to keep track of more than 3 characters without it becoming a clusterfuck. Games like JA2 (which is apparently an RPG cuz RPGCodex loves it) or Wiz8 have much clearer interfaces and make it a lot easier to get a tactical overview than KOTOR does, making it easy to manage 8+ characters in them. If you think KOTOR combat would work particularly well with a party of 6+, you need to go back and try to micromanage some of the more hectic firefights in either KOTOR. It quickly gets messy.

Does this make more sense?

 

[Roguey]

KOTOR was an XBAWKS game, you're lucky you can even have two additional companions.

 

[Harold]

The Force Bond thing was just another one of Avellone's many subversions/retcons of the motifs of KOTOR 1 since, you know, REVAN HAD A FUCKING FORCE BOND WITH BASTILA IN THAT GAME YOU RETARDED DIPSHIT AUTISTIC MORONS WITH NO MEMORY OR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ROLE OF THE POETIC OF A STORY AND WITH SUCH IDIOTIC PSYCHES THAT ALL YOU CAN DO IS COMPLAIN ABOUT 'LOGICAL INCONSISTENCIES WITH THE ESTABLISHED SETTING' (newsflash: setting is created by piling bullshit upon bullshit and trying to give the illusion of it fitting together after one singular story becomes succesful <in this case, 'A New Hope'>, which is mostly done to cater to dipshits like you who can't comprehend that it's not the immediate point of storytelling) OR OTHER SUCH CRAP SO YOU CAN FEEL SMARTER AND BETTER ABOUT YOURSELVES AND NOT LIKE THE RETARDED MANCHILDREN THAT YOU ARE.

The only thing wrong with K2's writing was Avellone's tendency to repeat himself, i.e. he could've used a good editor. Oh, and the fact that Atton had a terrible voice actor who, half the time, seemed to not even give a fuck about whether the tone he used made sense with what he was saying.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

The Force Bond thing was just another one of Avellone's many subversions/retcons of the motifs of KOTOR 1 since, you know, REVAN HAD A FUCKING FORCE BOND WITH BASTILA IN THAT GAME YOU RETARDED DIPSHIT AUTISTIC MORONS WITH NO MEMORY OR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ROLE OF THE POETIC OF A STORY AND WITH SUCH IDIOTIC PSYCHES THAT ALL YOU CAN DO IS COMPLAIN ABOUT 'LOGICAL INCONSISTENCIES WITH THE ESTABLISHED SETTING' (newsflash: setting is created by piling bullshit upon bullshit and trying to give the illusion of it fitting together after one singular story becomes succesful <in this case, 'A New Hope'>, which is mostly done to cater to dipshits like you who can't comprehend that it's not the immediate point of storytelling) OR OTHER SUCH CRAP SO YOU CAN FEEL SMARTER AND BETTER ABOUT YOURSELVES AND NOT LIKE THE RETARDED MANCHILDREN THAT YOU ARE.

The only thing wrong with K2's writing was Avellone's tendency to repeat himself, i.e. he could've used a good editor. Oh, and the fact that Atton had a terrible voice actor who, half the time, seemed to not even give a fuck about whether the tone he used made sense with what he was saying.

Despite your caps (and judging by the tone, there is some sort of explosion sound coming somewhere from behind your back), you got the point.
So, take this.

 

[Eyeball]

The Force Bond thing was just another one of Avellone's many subversions/retcons of the motifs of KOTOR 1 since, you know, REVAN HAD A FUCKING FORCE BOND WITH BASTILA IN THAT GAME YOU RETARDED DIPSHIT AUTISTIC MORONS WITH NO MEMORY OR UNDERSTANDING OF THE ROLE OF THE POETIC OF A STORY AND WITH SUCH IDIOTIC PSYCHES THAT ALL YOU CAN DO IS COMPLAIN ABOUT 'LOGICAL INCONSISTENCIES WITH THE ESTABLISHED SETTING' (newsflash: setting is created by piling bullshit upon bullshit and trying to give the illusion of it fitting together after one singular story becomes succesful <in this case, 'A New Hope'>, which is mostly done to cater to dipshits like you who can't comprehend that it's not the immediate point of storytelling) OR OTHER SUCH CRAP SO YOU CAN FEEL SMARTER AND BETTER ABOUT YOURSELVES AND NOT LIKE THE RETARDED MANCHILDREN THAT YOU ARE.

The only thing wrong with K2's writing was Avellone's tendency to repeat himself, i.e. he could've used a good editor. Oh, and the fact that Atton had a terrible voice actor who, half the time, seemed to not even give a fuck about whether the tone he used made sense with what he was saying.

So because a much more subdued version of the foerz b& existed in KOTOR 1 (and in the first films too), the derptastic idiocy that they re-wrote FB to be in KOTOR 2 is now somehow good writing. Not sure how that works, but you can't really argue with angry internet allcaps.

Incidentally, FB with Shan was, IIRC, not the "u die I die" shit from KOTOR 2, nor did they make much of the game revolve around that particular piece of shit writing. Once you start relying on SPACE MAGIC to drive your plot forwards, that's what you really need to slap yourself and go back to writing class.

I have no idea what you're saying about piling shit on top of more shit. Is this somehow a good thing now? Does this excuse the terrible writing of KOTOR 2? All they managed to do with the Wound In The Foerz and Force Bond crap was to add even more silliness to a setting that really didn't need any more.

 

[tuluse]

Once you start relying on SPACE MAGIC to drive your plot forwards, that's what you really need to slap yourself and go back to writing class.

Yeah that original trilogy of Star Wars really sucks and everyone should just ignore it and anything it spawned.

 

[Eyeball]

*sigh*

That is what we call source material. When you want to build upon established source material, what you write should adhere to it at least along general guidelines of what can and cannot be done. FB as seen in KOTOR 2 appeared nowhere before that game and was used as a plot device to drive the plot forwards and encourage you to keep the obviously evil Kreia in your team. It was sloppy. It was clumsy. It was just not very good writing.

That is the major, MAJOR pitfall of writing fantasy or sci-fi: justify everything that doesn't make sense with magic/high technology/psychic powers or whatever and forget that the shit you write just doesn't make sense. KOTOR 2 is perhaps the most grating example of this I've seen in a video game.

 

[tuluse]

Kreia wasn't evil.

 

[Lord Andre]

trolli troll trol

Why don't you and Mastermind write a star wars fan fiction and post it on the codex to show us how it's done. Or at least give us the name of your favourite fantasy/sci-fi book. Show us how you are.

 

[Eyeball]

Considering she was a sith and responsible for untold suffering I'd say "evil" fits the bill, but that's an uninteresting discussion. She WAS quite obviously up to no good, though, and only a motherfucking retard would trust her or keep her close or listen to her "advice."

Dune is pretty much the only actually GOOD sci-fi book I can think of. Mainly because it doesn't rely entirely on sci-fi high tech or space magic to drive its plot, it's driven by politics, betrayal and interesting theories on human evolution instead. Or at least until Paul turns into MohammedJesus, it's downhill from there.

 

[Harold]

Despite your caps (and judging by the tone, there is some sort of explosion sound coming somewhere from behind your back), you got the point.
So, take this.

Yes, sir. In the future I will doublecheck all my posts to make sure they adhere to your delicate fucking sensibilities, oh ye newfag/alt who jnoined on Wednesday.

Eyeball Midichlorians as seen in 'The phantom menace' appeared nowhere before that movie in the SW universe and was used as a plot device... actually no, I've no goddamn clue why it was used. This goes back to my point that settings in general are created by piling bullshit (not shit, bullshit i.e. fabrication, fiction upon fiction) together and trying sometimes harder, sometimes easier to give the illusion of consistency (The vaults were not social experiments in Fallout 1, the designers piled that bullshit along with the Enclave for Fallout 2 and thus the setting changed a bbit more - just to give one example). There is no such thing as consistency in fiction, if you try hard enough you will find 'plot holes' in any story, but that isn't the point of storytelling anyway, it's conveying themes that evoke emotions and thoughts. Some autists (guys like you and Wyrmlord for example) cannot into that unless they get what they consider a p. good illusion of consistency. So yes, the force bond is a plot device to keep Kreia along, but it is also much more than that: it ties to a number of other stuff that I'm too lazy to write about (just read that scorchy lp). You either accept that from the beginning and see what the story wants to do with it, or you hate and stop playing because otherwise you're just plodding on so you can write all the 'plot holes' or 'badly used story devices' on a notepad so you can bitch about them on the Internet and feel smarter than MCA.

In short:
And that is what I sought to understand: how one can turn away from such power, give up the Force and still live. But I see what happended now: it is because you were afraid.

 

[Eyeball]

So in other words: bullshit plot device. Pleased to see you agree.

You do touch upon an essential part of my dislike for the game, though. I just do not buy the force wound/bond shit. It's silly. It's shoehorned in. It's a plot device used poorly. And when the whole game is built around this stupid plot device, it's no wonder I end up disliking it.

SW movie 4-6 never happened, by the way. It's a collective illusion. Nothing that terrible could exist in a just universe. Although I would personally gladly swap Kreia for Jar Jar Binks. At least nobody can argue that he's somehow a deep character.

 

[Glyphwright]

Is this thread going to be Retardoed and the brainless cretin Mastermind/Eyeball nuked for life, already? I have never seen so much abysmal stupidity on any forum in my life.

 

[Eyeball]

Jeez, Yoda thought I'd said something bad about Georgia or something.

 

[Harold]

I give up, Eyeball . I'd rather pluck my own Eyeball out and pretend I'm TNO than keep arguing with such an unmonocled Eyeball as yourself.

 

[Eyeball]

Apologism for poor and inconsistent writing. Being about space pew-pew is no excuse for this.

 

[Captain Shrek]

Apologism for poor and inconsistent writing. Being about space pew-pew is no excuse for this.

It would constitute to apologist stance and I would accept that IFF it was not the intention of KOTOR 2 to active mock Star wars. That being said, I never considered ANY video game writing to be real literature standard. That includes PST, Thief and KOTOR 2. These are well written stories FROM COMPUTER GAMES point of view alone.

 

[Xor]

Kreia wasn't evil.

I'd argue that she kind of was, just not the same kind of evil that we usually see in video game stories (see Malak). She had reasons for what she was doing, and she wanted to fail, but she was still trying to kill the Force. That's kind of a dick move. It's like how Ravel was evil even though she's in a position to help TNO. But anyway, let's not derail this into an argument over the nature of evil.

So because a much more subdued version of the foerz b& existed in KOTOR 1 (and in the first films too), the derptastic idiocy that they re-wrote FB to be in KOTOR 2 is now somehow good writing. Not sure how that works, but you can't really argue with angry internet allcaps.

That wasn't his argument. He's arguing the force bond existed in canon before KOTOR2. The force bond in KOTOR2 is stated to be different than ordinary force bonds. There is nothing wrong with this; it's a typical method of expanding a fantasy universe. It builds on already established canon and adds a new concept to the setting. Writers do it all the time. I could list a dozen examples from the modern Star Trek series alone off the top of my head.

Incidentally, FB with Shan was, IIRC, not the "u die I die" shit from KOTOR 2, nor did they make much of the game revolve around that particular piece of shit writing. Once you start relying on SPACE MAGIC to drive your plot forwards, that's what you really need to slap yourself and go back to writing class.

I don't think you understand how fiction works. Or what a plot is.

That is what we call source material. When you want to build upon established source material, what you write should adhere to it at least along general guidelines of what can and cannot be done. FB as seen in KOTOR 2 appeared nowhere before that game and was used as a plot device to drive the plot forwards and encourage you to keep the obviously evil Kreia in your team. It was sloppy. It was clumsy. It was just not very good writing.

So, as an example, the use of the force to erase someone's memory would be bad writing because there was no basis for it in the movies and it drives the plot forward? What about all the other EU concepts that have nothing to do with the movies, like a race of aliens from another galaxy that don't show up in the force? What about their gravity-based weapons technology? What about all the EU explanations for Lucas's bad writing, like a parsec being used the measure how quickly a ship can make a journey?

I would agree that anything introduced in a Star Wars game should at least make sense in the established setting, but it seems to me you're arbitrarily drawing the line at force bonds and then bending over backward to defend it. Force bonds existed in Star Wars canon before KOTOR2, and the mechanics for the Exile's force bonds are explained in KOTOR2. It's not a complete abandonment of the setting, it's just a natural extension of previous authors' works.

Dune is pretty much the only actually GOOD sci-fi book I can think of. Mainly because it doesn't rely entirely on sci-fi high tech or space magic to drive its plot, it's driven by politics, betrayal and interesting theories on human evolution instead. Or at least until Paul turns into MohammedJesus, it's downhill from there.

You haven't read much science fiction, have you?

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Yes, sir. In the future I will doublecheck all my posts to make sure they adhere to your delicate fucking sensibilities, oh ye newfag/alt who jnoined on Wednesday.

Then I'm sorry for being such a pain in your emotionally unstable arse.

Apologism for poor and inconsistent writing. Being about space pew-pew is no excuse for this.

Then could you point at one, single game, where writing is not 'poor' and 'inconsistent'?
inb4 Call of Duty

 

[Glyphwright]

I'd argue that she kind of was, just not the same kind of evil that we usually see in video game stories (see Malak). She had reasons for what she was doing, and she wanted to fail, but she was still trying to kill the Force. That's kind of a dick move. It's like how Ravel was evil even though she's in a position to help TNO. But anyway, let's not derail this into an argument over the nature of evil.

Kreia is completely and utterly selfless in TSL, she does not care about herself or anyone other than the Exile. From the moment she meets the Exile and to the end of the game, all she ever wants to do is to teach him to be strong and to take pride in the choices he made, because they set him apart from anyone in the galaxy. As Scorchy pointed out in his Let's Play, Kreia is a completely unique example of a mother figure in a video game, and the relationship between Kreia and the Exile has all the makings of a motherly love (which most Codexers probably never experienced).

And while it's never stated directly, her opinion of the other characters in the party is dependent entirely on her philosophy. She scorns and despises Atton because he turned away from his true calling as a Sith Assassin, ran away, hid on Nar Shaddaa, changed his name and tried to forget about his past - to Kreia this represents the ultimate betrayal and denial of the self. She holds less contempt for Visas for, while she did end up betraying her master and her Sith allegiance, her loyalty to him was never much of a conscious choice to begin with. Of all the party members, she treats Mandalore with the most respect, and she doesn't like to tolerate the droids and Bao Dur because she can't sense them with the Force. She is never truly evil to anyone, she even didn't want to kill the Jedi Masters who cast her from the Jedi Order, only to show them that their views and teachings were wrong.

As for killing the Force... was this ever her real goal? Or was it merely a pretext to draw out the Exile, make him face her when she is at her full strength in the heart of Malachor? Kreia is delightful when she is finally defeated, she states that the Exile's apprenticeship is finally over and that he is stronger than anyone she had ever trained, and sends him to find Revan in the Unknown Regions. While she did hate the Force for being controlling and inscrutable, she never really tried killing it.

 

[Glyphwright]

Mastermind/Eyeball, listen to this. I'll only say this once because I'm in a good mood. Got your ear holes cleaned of wax and semen?

THE FORCE BOND BETWEEN THE EXILE AND KREIA IS ANOTHER ONE OF KREIA'S LIES. It isn't lethal and never has been. It does transmit pain and Force powers from one to the other, but when Kreia says that the Exile can possibly die if Kreia does - SHE LIES. How do I know this? AT THE END OF KOTOR 2 KREIA DIES AND THE EXILE REMAINS PERFECTLY ALIVE. Which means that the Force bond has either never been lethal, as strongly implied by conversations with the Jedi Masters, or Kreia knew how to disable it all along and chose not to.

Kreia isn't with the Exile because of the Force bond, get it through your stupid, stupid brainless head already. She is with him because she seeks to train him to become stronger than the Jedi who sat in their headquarters and watched the Outer Rim burn under the assault of the Mandalorians, as well as the fallen Jedi who blindly followed Revan in assaulting the Republic, never knowing his true goal. Kreia used to be a Jedi Master, and a Sith Lord, and she found both ideologies lacking and led by the will of the Force, rather than the will of the individuals. She wants to prove to herself and to the galaxy that there can be someone greater than both the Jedi and the Sith, and the Exile is the only possible recipient of her teachings, because he is the only one who chose to abandon the Force and become deaf to it, thus putting his individual will above the will of the Force that drove him. When the Exile cut himself from the Force, he broke the shackles it puts on any Force user, light or dark, and became an individual more precious to Kreia than the rest of the galaxy combined.

Now shut your stinking hole.

 

[Roguey]

Writing fan-fiction to excuse bad writing, the kotor2 experience.

 

[Glyphwright]

I'm relating the plot points from KotOR 2 exactly as they relayed by the characters. You don't know this because you clicked through the conversations without reading/listening, then stormed the forum to cry "omg the story dosnt make sense worst thing ever!!".