SW The Old Republic: Sith Inquisitor

[SabreMau]

I forgot which class Skadge was for so I looked up a list of companions and it included spoilers of where each one currently is and if they go through with that 5.9.3 plan without giving us a choice to get the alternate version at some point, then it more or less kills my desire to revisit with a subscription at a later date.

Anyway, Skadge is just an annoyance in general, while what's mentioned in the review is "there is one companion in particular who is straining credulity not to allow them to be killed for what they do in the game", which seems to be referring to a particular action that takes place that would/should fully justify the player in killing them if they wished to.

[SuccubusYuri]

I assume it's Warrior and Captain Whats-his-name, who literally, literally, informs on you to your arch-nemesis at one point. And I believe the Dark Side response is now, "Go to your room".

Like, I'm playing a Sith. Are Sith the kind of guys who say "Oh I understand you were following orders from someone with more authority than you"? Or are Sith, on the whole, more "I understand you are a rat who almost got me killed after months of lip-service about how loyal you are to me"? Like not even "Oh, he has other loyalties on the side," no, this is the nemesis. The arch-enemy you and your entire crew have pledged to resist at every opportunity. "There's one rule on this ship, don't betray ME", and he does that one thing.

Yeah, it's a really, really strained contrivance to keep him alive. At the same time, due to how companions used to be concrete roles (and the gear scaling was much more punishing to play off-meta), I could ALSO see it being a problem from the other direction; people would feel pressured NOT to kill him because if you lost him you lost the primary Warrior companion for solo content. At the time, though, there was always the robots which were guaranteed healing machines...literally...ahem. So you could take a robot into any boss fight, even as a squishy DPS, and literally heal through the worst fights in the game. ...Save Zash, who insists it be with Khem-Val, and if you haven't been gearing him properly you'd better be ready to spend all your hard earned credits on the AH to gear his ass up...fucking worst designed fight in the game... xD

I mean I always roleplayed-companion, so if my Lightning Sorceror was going in with Ashara, so fucking be it, no matter how painful it was xD But I imagine Bioware getting blowback from both ends; people who didn't want to lose their companion for PvE or RP reasons, even on accident, and people who WANTED to murder companions but felt the game mechanics were far too restrictive to allow them to make those choices without putting themselves at a massive disadvantage.

[SuccubusYuri]

I'm not as familiar with Ashara as I am with Jaesa, but doesn't Ashara still try to stay pretty much light-ish even after she joins your crew? Less that she goes to the dark side than that she figures she can't go back to the Jedi any more after what happened so might as well stick around with the Sith and see what good she can do from there.

Jaesa, on the other hand, I've never personally turned dark, but I've heard the stories.

Ashara is pretty much, idealized Grey-Jedi. She's still a Jedi at heart, but over the course of her arc (yeah, she has a fucking arc, which is appreciated), she really does do what "grey" Jedi are supposed to do; mix and match Jedi and Sith codes.

Initially she is very hostile, as I mentioned way earlier, probably to make her gel with EVERY route you can take to add her to the crew. Be that sheer power and torturing her into submission, or the more tame, very tame, corruption angle Chuck goes for, which to me always felt less like corruption and juuuuust bordering on contrivance with how little back and forth there actually is.

In those first, 3-5 conversations? She does say things like "I haven't yet the power to kill you, but I won't try anything until I am that strong." Not to spoil too much of her arc before Chuck does his recap, but, she transitions from that to saying "Can't we all just get along? Like me and you, My Lord. We're a Sith and Jedi who don't have to kill each other." We don't get to witness it first hand but her story is basically, her reaching out to her Jedi contacts to try and form a bridge between the Sith and Jedi orders for a majority of the base game. It's only at the very end where she truly rejects the Jedi for emotional reasons (over something they do to her), and becomes a proper "apprentice".

And I said a few pages back, I assume it's because they didn't want Jaesa and Ashara having too much overlap, so Jaesa goes cartoonishly evil or goody-goody depending on her direction, depending how many light side or dark side points you racked up in the conversation (contrary to popular belief, you can still get a dark Jaesa if you spare her master, if you've guided her along intelligently, and vice-versa, JUST killing him isn't enough to turn her, if you've done it enough to ferret out which options are worth "points" xD).

Also, a side note, Ashara was also the only "sexist" companion in the base game. Like REALLY so. No matter the gift you gave her as a female Inq, she only gave you 1 point of happiness from them(on the 1-3 point gift scale). So it took a LOT of work to see her story as a fem-Inq. Male Inqs had the more standard distribution where she goes from fair-good-best depending on the object. Like I suppose that was intending that canonically, Inq is a male and Ashara is literally seduced to the dark side, but it always, always bugged me how much I had to dump into her xD And gods forbid I kill a single orphanage! Then I lose all the progress I've made on this world!

[Deledrius]

which to me always felt less like corruption and juuuuust bordering on contrivance with how little back and forth there actually is.

It was practically perfunctory. The scene was almost uncomfortable in how infantile her dialog was. She looks like an adult, but egads the Padawan must be really sheltered to be that mentally and socially naive. It didn't come across as "Hah, I tricked this idiot neophyte into violating their training" as much as "I set a toddler who just learned to walk on their feet facing a busy highway to see what would happen".

Maybe my ignorance of the EU material is showing here, but based on what I see in the films it's really hard to believe that someone even a bit younger than Obi-wan's age in The Phantom Menace would have such a trusting attitude toward a random Sith showing up and offering them an "alternative perspective". Or even talk to a Sith at all. Surely an innate distrust of All Things Sith is a huge part of the philosophy drilled into them?

[SuccubusYuri]

which to me always felt less like corruption and juuuuust bordering on contrivance with how little back and forth there actually is.

It was practically perfunctory. The scene was almost uncomfortable in how infantile her dialog was. She looks like an adult, but egads the Padawan must be really sheltered to be that mentally and socially naive. It didn't come across as "Hah, I tricked this idiot neophyte into violating their training" as much as "I set a toddler who just learned to walk on their feet facing a busy highway to see what would happen".

Maybe my ignorance of the EU material is showing here, but based on what I see in the films it's really hard to believe that someone even a bit younger than Obi-wan's age in The Phantom Menace would have such a trusting attitude toward a random Sith showing up and offering them an "alternative perspective". Or even talk to a Sith at all. Surely an innate distrust of All Things Sith is a huge part of the philosophy drilled into them?

Well, we do see how Padawans are trained on Tython, and it's pretty fucking patronizing. Not sure if this is exclusive to the game itself or not, but (I just know Consular best) there's the bit where the Flesh Raiders attack, like that level 2-3 quest, and the Jedi are like "Whoa, whoa, this padawan is (what...24? 25?) a prodigy and passed all her lightsaber combat courses, but you can't send her out against brainless bullshit mutants that we literally use for target practice to protect the younger trainees, that's just irresponsible!" when, the alternative is, "we're short-staffed so those stranded kids are going to die."

That's on top of the anti-relationship stuff that got imported from the prequels. Padawans seem to be given NO responsibilities or trust by their Jedi handlers. I'm actually reminded of the follow up to that Flesh Raider bit, after you fight the rogue Jedi, and if your Consular makes the comment "This guy didn't feel like there was anger inside him..." Satele is REALLY FUCKIN QUICK to, and it's delivered almost reflexively, "Just because you didn't sense it doesn't mean it wasn't there," like it's the only rational explanation why someone would oppose the Jedi. That bit made me so mad I didn't play ANY Jedi, for months, after launch xD

I think there's some cross-pathing going on with the....Warp Bubble Wesley thing. Like, Inquisitor is a great story for allowing you to decide how you want to approach matters. There are actually, off the top of my head, four paths to corrupting Ashara which alter your motivations slightly. There's the one Chuck did, you can brutally zap her into submission, there's the false-flag operation where you kill the Sith and claim "But I'm a good Sith," and there's the direct route, "Hey, I eat ghosts. You have a ghost." And each with its own permutations. It does run into snags as the game goes on, and, "canonically", the story only has three dialogue options but when you're presented with a situation like this and there's probably a dozen different paths it could have been, you get railroaded, it's a hazard of the freedom of interpretation.

Buuut, take that all together and I think it provides a good fame for how the Warb Bubble happens. Not even the Jedi masters understand raw emotions, not really. "There's anger even if you can't sense it," is a pretty ballsy claim to make for people whose entire job is sensing things. It -feels- to me more like the Jedi culture of SWTOR is all about burying emotions. They interpret, "I feel cheated" as anger, they don't appear to teach their students critical thinking, and every little bit of "Sage wisdom" you get from your masters as Jedi characters is all "Hey be mindful of your feelings. Turn them off." Not, "Here's how to best cope with them." Add all that in and you get a pretty easy powder keg, especially with her fatal flaw being pride, that thinks she knows what the Sith are about, I can recognize them by their cackling laughter.

Sith holocrons are pretty explicit in Legends (which SWTOR operates on) as having gatekeepers that intentionally expose users to the Dark Side as a means of testing their power. So, think of it like the imprint of whatever Sith was contracted to guard the holocron, and they just mind meld to allow the user to feel the Dark Side. A Sith holocron still wants to teach you, but it does that by enveloping you in the Dark Side so you BECOME powerful enough to use their techniques, or at the least want to experience it again. So you feel exactly how much power you need, but also all the emotions that gave that Sith that much power. It's like...why Mennonite girls tend to be pretty...crazy...when you teach them they have a clitoris.

What was I saying again?

[Worffan101]

Buuut, take that all together and I think it provides a good fame for how the Warb Bubble happens. Not even the Jedi masters understand raw emotions, not really. "There's anger even if you can't sense it," is a pretty ballsy claim to make for people whose entire job is sensing things. It -feels- to me more like the Jedi culture of SWTOR is all about burying emotions. They interpret, "I feel cheated" as anger, they don't appear to teach their students critical thinking, and every little bit of "Sage wisdom" you get from your masters as Jedi characters is all "Hey be mindful of your feelings. Turn them off." Not, "Here's how to best cope with them." Add all that in and you get a pretty easy powder keg, especially with her fatal flaw being pride, that thinks she knows what the Sith are about, I can recognize them by their cackling laughter.

This is a really good point, and it's pretty much why I view the Jedi and the Sith as both corrupt edifices that need kicks in the dick (and probably why my Sith Warrior, whose philosophy is more "learn how to cope with your emotions and control them" rather than "bury them" or "indulge every stupid impulse" is Lighter than the whole Jedi council, lol).

The Sith are immature children throwing tantrums and getting plastered on cartoonish evil. The Jedi are immature children who think they're adults.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think the Jedi Order gets a lot of flack actually for dealing with an impossible situation.

Yes, there's some corrupt and flawed members but institutionally, they're correct.

If you meet a Sith, 99.99% of them are bullying scumbags.

[chaos42]

I think the Jedi Order gets a lot of flack actually for dealing with an impossible situation.

Yes, there's some corrupt and flawed members but institutionally, they're correct.

If you meet a Sith, 99.99% of them are bullying scumbags.

but thats more that both sides have a lot of extremes that people latch onto and there is no middle ground between the two. Or if there is not many want to publicly go there. The entire dark and light side thing is something i would have like seen played with in the last jedi and make it more that the force isn't as binary as people though and there were ways to make use of your emotions and keep the control the jedi had. I just think that what we see is a problem of neither side understands the other and neither is willing to sit down and talk. The jedi and sith could probably find a new way by coming together and combining their ways, and stop the idiotic tradition sith have of killing each other. The rule of two is stupid. The killing your master part is also stupid.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think the Jedi Order gets a lot of flack actually for dealing with an impossible situation.

Yes, there's some corrupt and flawed members but institutionally, they're correct.

If you meet a Sith, 99.99% of them are bullying scumbags.

but thats more that both sides have a lot of extremes that people latch onto and there is no middle ground between the two. Or if there is not many want to publicly go there. The entire dark and light side thing is something i would have like seen played with in the last jedi and make it more that the force isn't as binary as people though and there were ways to make use of your emotions and keep the control the jedi had. I just think that what we see is a problem of neither side understands the other and neither is willing to sit down and talk. The jedi and sith could probably find a new way by coming together and combining their ways, and stop the idiotic tradition sith have of killing each other. The rule of two is stupid. The killing your master part is also stupid.

I think part of the problem is that the Jedi ARE supposed to be good guys.

If you do the Legion of Doom versus the Justice League, there shouldn't actually be "they're not so different" and "maybe the middle ground is the better way."

Jedi=Good.

Sith=Evil.

Yes, there's an exception or two but you should have them be exceptions.

[SuccubusYuri]

I dunno, Lucas, and now Disney, have gone to great lengths to present the Jedi as...pretty colossal, out of touch douchebags. xD