Chuck's thoughts on KOTOR 2, review, & Kreia?

[Madner Kami]

Balance isn't about Equality... Balance is about Equilibrium,

IE everything being in place, IE The Grass is eaten by Antelope, The Lion eats the Antelope, The Lion dies to provide nutrients to the soil that gives rise to new Grass

Sith screw that chain up... by arming the antelope with an ak 47

No. The Force does.

The Light side and the Dark Side are not Two even halves of the same whole... 'Thats the DND logic excuse used to explain why Jedi can use force lighting... cause the Dark side has all the cool powers, something Zahn bitched the rest of the EU out since they pretty much ran with the Force is just black magic/white magic


the Jedi being presented as stagnant is the Writers latched onto an idea that made it easy to identify the hero in their stories. The Jedi aren't suppose to be cloistered in until the final generations of the original republic

This is ironically a problem KoTor started cause it aped the PT Jedi's presentation to make Revan and Co seem more badass 'and apparently ToR can't help but constantly go down the Republic corrupt, while the empire's just flawed... several thousand years before hand...'

The thing is before the PT, The Jedi of old were presented well as Space knights, attachments were fine, feelings were fine, They were people. After the PT, you had transition period where the Writers clearly had no idea what to do... writing stuffy holier than thou heroes as your central characters does not good fiction make. so for the most part alot of the major named Jedi pretty much were characterized like the Pre PT Jedi... Thats where the whole Mundi is married, Aayla is the temple bicycle etc etc stuff comes up from cause eventually the point got across that the Jedi of the PT era were suppose to have lost their way... and then you got the wave of writers who saw the Jedi as the Villains who got what they deserved and the Empire was good but flawed ideal!

The real world reason for why things are what they are, are inconsequential to the internal history of the material. That history is an internal reality that other things work off of. Interestingly, the repetitions of history are actually a theme worked in by Lucas himself (either as well or in the first place, depending on whether the hen was first or the chicken-egg). Remember how he said: "It's like peotry, so that they rhyme. Every stanza kinda rhymes with the last one."? History repeats itself, quite literally, in the Star Wars Universe.

[hammerofglass]

@mathewgsmith Calling everything she says a lie is absolutely false. She's lying about her past, why she's here, etc, etc, but her philosophy is the most real in all of Star Wars. We do achieve definition in conflict, don't we? And the galactic power is just a shell to surround whichever Force power holds on to it. And there really is a difference between a fall and a sacrifice. Or how people are sometimes slaves to their beliefs to the point that they don't even know it. Again, take the Jedi. Just as much slaves to the light as the Sith are to the darkness. If Disney ever remakes a "canon" KOTOR 2, God help us, because they just won't understand her character at all.

Yeah, that was overstating it. Mea culpa. I was really thinking about the whole "destroy the Force" bit, which she admits in the finale was hypocritical bullshit.

Disney actually did kind of bring her back in Rebels. The unnamed Sith Lady who made the holocron they found on Malachor teaches Ezra a version of the Sith philosophy that is a lot closer to her version than to the generic "we're bad guys because we can" version Palpatine and Vader favor. The same episode brought the Sith Code (invented for the first game) back into canon, incidentally.

[Yukaphile]

@Madner Kami That history repeats is the greatest argument for the Force being a cruel deity. It was old by the time Kreia lived in, and her point of view is only strengthened the longer time goes on, with more and more countless battles that mean nothing. More loss of life. And the winners rewrite history so that in the end, what is accomplished? Makes you feel tiny and useless. So what if you save 100 people on this one planet? So what if you fall to the dark side and take control of the galaxy? Unless it's like the God Emperor from Warhammer 40,000 then that's never going to change, which admittedly Palpatine was trying to do. He wanted to rule for "10,000 years," after all, lol.

@mathewgsmith Just more Legends easter eggs without actually canonizing Legends. More poor decisions by Disney. Give it a few years, and this new EU will be as much of a mess as the old one.

[Wargriffin]

@Madner Kami That history repeats is the greatest argument for the Force being a cruel deity. It was old by the time Kreia lived in, and her point of view is only strengthened the longer time goes on, with more and more countless battles that mean nothing. More loss of life. And the winners rewrite history so that in the end, what is accomplished? Makes you feel tiny and useless. So what if you save 100 people on this one planet? So what if you fall to the dark side and take control of the galaxy? Unless it's like the God Emperor from Warhammer 40,000 then that's never going to change, which admittedly Palpatine was trying to do. He wanted to rule for "10,000 years," after all, lol.

Kreia is a self deluded, Self absorbed old SITH 'despite Her protests to the contrary' Bitch whining about How the Force screwed her over due to its will trumping her freedom/manipulations *When she's too vain to just admit she played the game and lost to the other players and Kotor II is just her getting back at them by proxy'... actually giving merit to her The Force keeps it going whats the point of life is self indulgent nihilism

If your basically complaining that the fight never ends... guess what thats true in the real world, THE FIGHT NEVER ENDS, There is always another crisis, there is always another war looming on the horizon, there is always some social upheavel, There is always another fucking bill to pay! etc etc, If thats all you ever focus on, Then yes Life is pointless

The fact you are actually demeaning the idea of saying a hundred lives which would be an incredible feat by todays standards makes me truly wonder about the state of your mental health.

Life goes on, for better or for worse, trying to paint the Force as cruel cause it permits life to continue is basically blaming something else for the faults of People. I mean that is ultimately what Kriea's kill the force idea is rooted in... Life is pointless, so it be better to just end the whole life thing and put us all out of our misery.

What about all the heroes who stand up and stop the violence? What about all the plagues cured or lives changed? Life is short, a brief flicker in existence, NOW is what matters to those lives,

The past is gone, and You aren't promised Tomorrow, Fight the good fight Today... cause its YOUR fight thats what makes it important, not if someone 300 years from now remembers you did it.

The Jedi fight on cause thats what is asked of them... and they answer that call cause the Darkside will always find a new patsy to fill with delusions of Granduer... The jedi need to learn to stop relying on the Republic... oh wait they do at times and the Republic STILL Finds ways to sell them out.



If Kreia actually PRACTICED what she fucking preached. She wouldn't have left her goddamn daughter alone and devoted what was left of her life to revenge, cause for all the talk Kreia has about how beautiful a normal life is... She's STILL playing the Sith game to the point she's trying to have her own hand molded pawns to take the reigns of the Jedi order 'She only loses in this case cause Meetra is the one who shapes the companions, not Kreia much to the latters constant griping.


Kreia is basically just a vengeful ghost, She's effectively stopped living when she meet Meetra 'and Kreia only shows up cause she knows Revan would come calling for Meetra

which would make sense... Kotor II's Sith triumviate all have an undead theme to them when you stop and think about it.

Nihlus = Vampire -Needs to feed to Live, His minions all show the classic traits of being a Vampire's ghoul'
Sion = Zombie 'He's a walking corpse'
Traya = Ghost or more specifically the Onryō, a Vengeful Ghost 'Has a habit of appearing and disappearing through thin air comes to mind when I think of Kreia and of course how she kills Vrook and the other masters is similar to the Onryo devouring their victims souls

[CharlesPhipps]

I feel like KOTOR 2 works best if you assume everything Kreia says is wrong and her attempts to deconstruct Star Wars is just her being a bitter old cynic.

[Yukaphile]

To call her a Sith is to fail to understand her philosophy. She was Jedi, and was a Sith, and then she rejected both. And she takes the time to call out how both fail. When did she ever "whine" about the Force screwing her over, huh? Yes, Kreia is an old cynic, but when you've lived so many years, and see the ways that both Jedi and Sith are slaves to the Force, how is she wrong? How the hell is she a Sith for wanting to kill off the Force? Most Sith are so dependent on the Force that that kind of thing is past even their sadism.

The fight never ends, and if that's the case, then it might just be that the Sith have the better philosophy, ignoring Kreia here. Have you ever read the Darth Bane novels? Equality really is a lie, isn't it? I mean, some just have better advantages that circumstances have given them, or perhaps in their genetics. I can't see all human beings in our real world as equals when a good chunk have done horrible things throughout history, and you put another person with pretty much the same circumstances in his same place, and he wouldn't do them. Our modern civilization is still, at its heart, just a really sophisticated form of tribal rule, and conflict and war is ceaseless and never-ending. It gnaws at you until you realize maybe Kreia was right, maybe the Sith were right after all.

Nice. Accusing me of being mentally ill. I'll have you know that I have never committed a crime, beyond stealing some food in 2009 because we were desperate. My point was to illustrate how it's all meaningless next to the universe, especially when we all die. And Kreia herself talks about how she simply wants to test her views in killing the Force. That's what I got out of it. If she wins, it's because her beliefs were true. It all goes back to that "betray your views" thing. If you really want to test how strong your beliefs are, challenge them. And if they win, then they're strong enough to survive.

The heroes deserve to be lauded, but it is a sad fact of the world that you cannot save everyone, and sometimes you have to sacrifice the few to save the many. Or as Spock puts it... "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." Yes, what we do now matters, but... those who have the power, courage, and compassion to lead rarely do. I mean, you're judging and blaming and condemning me for my views on a freaking game? What do you know about me really? I've tried my hardest to help out my friends and family, and I've tried my best to offer a random kindness every now and then when I can, because we need more of it in the world, but I have no power! I have no money or influence that could let me help as many people as I want to. How is that fair? How is it that some who would transform the world into a happier place aren't the ones who lead? And those who indulge simply in their own lusts and greed and decadence do instead?

The Jedi stood by and let millions die to the Mandalorians. Millions. That fact should be past dispute. And they don't care about the needs of individual Jedi. As Palpatine himself said, they are taught what they are supposed to want. They never ask them what they want. I mean, they draft babies barely out of the womb into a hellish life of public service that Qui-Gon admits is a hard life, and then deny them something basic and wonderful as a loving attachment? And we see individual Jedi make attachments anyway. That should tell you it's a flawed philosophy and they are hypocrites! Mace Windu is attached to the Republic. Obi-Wan was attached to Anakin despite it all. Many Jedi were too attached to the Jedi Order to let go after Palpatine killed it. And then take all the Jedi who had to get married in secret. The Jedi just don't understand people. At all. And I'd rather be a person than an unfeeling droid.

WHAT DAUGHTER? You mean the Handmaiden? That's only a fan theory. I have heard nothing about it being confirmed. Nothing!

[hammerofglass]

Kreia IS a Sith. Her philosophy is almost entirely in line with the Sith code. The reason she doesn't seem like a Sith is that most of them are just thugs drunk on the dark side who barely bother to give lip service to it as anything but a flimsy justification for doing whatever they want, much less think it through. This is her main criticism of the Sith as an organization. Whether she's an actual darksider is up for debate, though.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. "A culture's teachings, and most importantly, the nature of its people, achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves, or find themselves lacking."

Through Passion I gain Strength. "If you seek to aid everyone that suffers in the galaxy, you will only weaken yourself... and weaken them. It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards."

Through Strength, Power. "From such small things, from such critical points, the universe and its masses may be moved... that is why you must be careful in all that you do, and in every choice you make."

Through Power, Victory. "Direct action is not always the best way. It is a far greater victory to make another see through your eyes than to close theirs forever." "Do you think I seek the death of all living things? There is no victory in such things. I do not want to win our war like this, little Jedi. When I win, I wish it to be because I was right, my teachings true."

Through Victory my chains are broken. "To believe in an ideal, is to be willing to betray it. It is something no Sith or Jedi has ever truly learned."

The last line, "The Force shall free me", is the only part of the Code that her philosophy rejects. "Ah, but at what point does the power the Force exerts submerge any attempt at choice, or free will?"

This may simply be because she was a rather philosophical Jedi before falling. "If you are to truly understand, then you will need the contrast, not adherence to a single idea." Although her response to the Jedi attitude of dispassion is summed up in her favorite phrase: "Apathy is death."

[Wargriffin]

Except Kriea doesn't want the force dead to be equal, She wants the force dead cause its the one thing she can't control and the thing that scares her more... it can manipulate HER which to a master manipulator is maddening, Its A typical Sith behavior... I mean she shows it in her casual conversations... especially in regards to Atton. Where she's always belittling his Value as a person

Yes the Jedi stood by and let the Mandalorians advance in the outer regions, cause they suspected there was another player in the game. Lo and behold they were right, as Revan rushing off to play hero is what set the chain of events in motion that will culminate to the Sith sacking the Republic in ToR... all because Revan, Meetra and others didn't stop and play the long game. Revan stopped the Mandalorian Advance sure... He and his Jedi that ran off then became a worse threat and despite all his attempts to keep the infrastructure of the Republic intact and simply turn as many Jedi as he could... the moment Malak took over all that went down the drain and Revan crippled the Republic and Order he wanted to save.

Not to mention Revan's recklessness is what created the monsters Nihilus and Sion one who devoured several force sensitive worlds and the other who to launch a terror campaign. The sad truth is if Revan had waited till the Jedi and the Republic had consolidated their forces and launched a full strength offensive, The Mandos would have still been outright crushed without the serious insane gambits Revan had to pull IE Revan abandoning tactically low priority worlds for important ones cause he was short on men." or ... Malachor. Thats the thing the moment the Jedi got involved the Mandos lost so hard they'd be reduced to a galactic nuisance before they were ever a threat again. Essentially Revan made it worse by acting cause Revan really thought He'd be more then a match for the Emperor... Pride goeth before a Fall and what a Fall Revan's was

The Mandalorian war happened a few decades after Exar Kun's War meaning "IE the thing that caused the Jedi's sudden crackdown on attachments cause Kun used a Campaign of Psychological/Emotional torture to turn so many and The Jedi were still recovering from THAT war.


The Jedi are not unfeeling droids, They like all people are complicated, You seem to only want to vilify them at their worst. Cause like all religious orders you have different sects of thinking within it. The Jedi never really punish anybody for breaking the 'rules', IE a large chunk of those relationships are largely shrugged off by the Council.

Hell Qui-gon despite embracing emotion and teaching Obi-wan the same is never threaten to be kicked out of the order... The whole He never made it on the council was largely he kept rejecting the offer not the others wouldn't let him on it

Jolee is probably one of the best examples of this... He didn't run away from the order cause they kicked him out... Jolee ran cause they had the audacity... To understand his situation, and were even gonna Knight him for it

The Jedi seem to only exile people when they comment something far more damning then a simple breakage of standards.

and lets make one thing clear, A child joining the Order is ultimately the parents choice, If they tell the Jedi to piss off, The Jedi piss off


Equality is one of those Human ideals, that in a fair perfect world would exist... The world is not fair, nor perfect and lord knows Humans aren't anything close to perfect, but Its something to strive for

The Sith ideal is basically to cave to carnality, If you are strong enough to get it, TAKE IT, ITS YOURS don't strive for an ideal that doesn't exist, Life belongs to the strong and if you're weak either become strong or submit to your place.



On Brianna
The hints are all there in game

Brianna is the only other person Kreia gets defensive of 'Shes the only one Kreia openly tries to talk you out of awakening as a force sensitive', doesn't talk condescending too 'Big giveaway', seemingly knows EVERYTHING about her backstory off the top of her head 'which she had to pull the info from Atton's mind and She shadowed Mical like a motherfucker to figure him out' said info she constantly keeps word slipping from a personal on hand stance to , an "I heard she was like"

plus Kae is the only Master of Revan, Kreia never mentions or belittles. Cause Kreia claims she's Revan's first master... and then Mical says Kae was Revan's first and left with him to fight the Mandos

that and if you mix Kae and Traya together and then simplify it down what do you get?

[Yukaphile]

Then that makes me a Sith, because I hate the Jedi, their hypocrisies, their abuse of innocent children, their holier-than-thou superiority complex, and the stale answers they offer that don't matter to the people in the galaxy suffering, many times brought about by wars that were started by Force users. And I find Kreia, Darth Bane in his book trilogy, and Palpatine as presented within the Revenge of the Sith novelization to offer way more wisdom than does the entire 25,000 years of Jedi rule combined. SF Debris himself said it best when the Jedi's philosophy of total peace will always fall short, as will the Sith's preaching about freedom. But I find the Sith more compelling, the mass murder and torture aside.

[Wargriffin]

KOTOR 2 is fascinating and adds a lot to the mythos...but I'm glad that the majority of other Star Wars Legends-era tales don't really support it's underlying philosophy. I also know that the creator of said game really believed a lot of what he put in Kreias' mouth and earnestly thought he was deconstructing Star Wars, but I think in reality he just misunderstood certain concepts he was taking issue with.

My most cynical friend once said

"Kotor II is a Star wars Game for people who hate Star Wars"



then again Bioware's not much better... instead of portraying the Jedi of ToR having learned from Kotor like its implied they need too, BW likes to portray the Old Republic and Jedi so set in their ways while spending a large chunk of their energy making the Empire as nuanced as possible with varying levels of adherence to the Sith/Imperial stereotypes

BW seems to go out of its way to portray the Empire as wide and diverse as possible... yet kinda phones it on the republic