Lit The Official The Old Republic: Revan Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

The ANH analogy mostly doesn't work cause that was once the first SW movie for everyone. Millions knew it as step one for 22 years.

I think Revan stands on its own...sorta. We learn plenty about Revan which was cool for me, a non gamer. One problem for me is that the book is consistently playing catch up with the reader, either explaining KOTOR 1 events, or worse, the Kotor II events which were huge on a galactic level but are merely glossed over in a paragraph or two here. I've read no other SW book that does this. I don't think it's the fault of the author, really. Revan was his subject matter. It's not confusing but feels odd and really incomplete. If Karpyshyn was a more expansive author I think the book could have been more satisfying.

I think the strange thing is that it seems to satisfy non gamers more than gamers. Those that have played Kotor I and II seem to feel a lot more cheated and unsatisfied than those of us that are meeting Revan for the first time in the book.

I will say that the TOR Sith are utterly unsatisfying no matter how you approach it. Vitiate is a neat idea but his minions are a mass of illogical contradictions and cartoonish stereotypes. I'll also say that I thought Bastila, Revan's wife was one of the weepiest and weakest female characters I've read in a SW book. She didn't strike me as Jedi material at all. Was she once a powerful character in KOTOR I or was she actually as she was depicted in Revan?

I would actually recommend against reading Wook until after you've read the novel. The books explains what you need to know for the novel itself. I would think the Wook pages would be more interesting after you've read the book. I hate the idea of having to do research before I enjoy a one shot novel.

 

Mileage definitely varies. I actually thought that being a huge fan of the games allowed me to make the book much better than it probably should have been.

Like Manisphere says, really nothing is contradicted in KOTOR II, like otherwise reported, just either not mentioned or significantly glossed over. To say what the Exile did was important is simply an understatement; she is directly responsible for reviving the Jedi Order, and I believe I've read that every single one of her apprentices went on to form the Jedi Council (damn, I would have loved to have seen a meeting between all of the the Exile's apprentices, considering they were always at each others throats in the game ). It is understandable why this isn't mentioned, as the order didn't begin to thrive until after she had died, but still somewhat disappointing.

I think prior knowledge of the Exile might be more important than prior knowledge of Revan, as most of his story is adequately recapped. From this book alone, you really only get the impression that she was a close friend to Revan and a powerful Jedi. You could argue that's all it really needs, but there's definitely more weight to their interactions with more information. Or perhaps there's just the illusion of weight

 

You've not? I'd have said that's what every EU book does.

In LOTF, it just glosses over the NJO. In the NJO, it just glossed over the Hand of Thrawn. In Hand of Thrawn, it just glossed over Dark Empire. I've never expected a new story to waste time telling me what happened in the last one all over again. I'm not paying them to tell me the same story again. Had Luke spent the first ten minutes of ESB telling me what happened in ANH, I'd have gone to sleep.

In Revan, I wanted the story of the Sith Emperor, and that's exactly what I got. If I wanted the story of KOTOR2, I'd have gone back and played it again.

 

What I meant was that I don't recall ever reading a SW book that recounted such huge galactic events which take place off screen during the novel itself. I don't recall reading anything that takes place during the NJO that only recalls those events in a paragraph or two. That kind of thing.

But I have read well over a hundred of these books so I might've seen this happen before.

 

We also haven't had very much in the way of overlapping books. The closest that I can think of is the beginning of Isard's Revenge, which equally glosses over the events of TTT at the time.

 

Ammending myself a bit, the thing of it was that KOTOR II events have never happened or been brought up in any other books or comics. I suppose lots of stories could take place around the time of Order 66 and just casually mention the events. But in this case the reader has no other source to go to (except wookipedia) so it came off as this clunky but necessary non sequitur in Revan.

 

Nah. Rhett was obviously cloned from the DNA found on one of the many Revan mementos Bane kept in his shrine to the guy:

[image=http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h125/Ulicus/OrderoftheStickLords.jpg]

Seriously, in light of all the TOR stuff, I kind of love that Bane's biggest fangasms were reserved for Revan.

It also comes off the back of two prior "episodes", in KotOR (now TPM) and TSL (now AotC). With TOR now taking up the "OT" spot of the era, Revan as a RotS that takes place centuries before ANH now seems the most appropriate analogy.

 

Further proof that even the Sith were victim to the information loss of the Dark Age.

No wonder he wanted revenge against the Jedi. Erasing the mind of his teenage Sith idol and forcing Revan back to the light against his own will?! For Bane, it'd have looked like character assassination.

"But... but I respected you!"
"Blame the wife."
"All Jedi will die for what Bastila Shan did!"

Poor Bane. After learning about the canonical ending to the story, he forever yearned for the dark side ending.

 

I was always a bit confused why Bane loved Revan so much, considering he turned back to the light. I suppose he just really respected his beliefs as a Sith Lord; wasn't he the first to voice the opinion that having thousands of Sith is not a good idea?

 

She was pretty much Jedi Leia with the snark turned up to the 11 and the Jedi Attachment Nonsense turned up to the 12 (so it became a weird form of flirting).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKgIEABNgaU

 

He was pretty adamant that there should be only one Dark Lord of the Sith who in turn had only one apprentice (possibly having been bitten in the ass by apprentices ganging up on him before, recall that the KotOR opening crawl refers to Malak as "last surviving apprentice of the Dark Lord Revan"). But he was obviously cool with many other Sith running around to be ruled by that Dark Lord otherwise.

What was stranger was that Bane considered Revan "one of the last great Sith [to use the Darth title]" (my emphasis). Even now, he remains one of the earlier Darths we can place in the timeline.

 

Note that Bane only got the Sith version of Revan; in which case, he is a very badaSSSS Sith. During his "Path of Destruction" formative years as a budding Sith Lord, Bane didn't go down to the local branch of the Jedi Library and check out "How to Help the Republic and Influence You Friends, by Master Revan." He found Darth Revan's holocron on Lehon.

So, that may skew his perspective a bit.

And I understand fully my feelings about TOR: Revan. It's really not the book I ever really wanted written or to read.

What I really wanted to read is "Knights of the Old Republic: Revan." That novel would be a great novel.

What we got instead is the means to turn one of the greatest EU characters we all love into an advancement tool for characters we don't know and love who are going to become the greatest Jedi and Sith in the entire history of the Star Wars universe. That's what the "The Old Republic" sub-title meant for our beloved character.

 

I wanted KotOR III. *shrug*

 

I'll be frank. This one was bad. Really, really bad. On its own merits, the characterization is lacking. There is so little 'there' to Revan himself. He's a borderline cipher. And no, I don't think this is 'clever.' You're not playing KOTOR, you're reading a novel. Characterize him.
A lot is frankly squandered. We have great opportunities to learn more of SW lore, and flashbacks to Revan's greatest accomplishments. Instead, we got one brief thing with Mandalore. Very, very little in regards to Malak and almost no filling in the blanks for us. The Sith Empire comes off as flat and one dimensional. Bastila reduced to a fretting housewife makes me roll my eyes and except Canderous (whose subplot could be dealt with in a short story), we have pretty much next to nobody from the actual KOTOR story.

The Emperor is just a typical Villain Stu. He's not interesting, he has no character. He's just 'evil Force God' who's just ind of there.

NExtly, Karpyshyn just seems spiteful while writing this. The Exile (Her canon name is terrible. I won't bash Mr. Karpyshyn for that one as I have no idea if he came up with it or not), comes off as a joke and Revan's very empty praise of her is largely unjustified. Mr. Karpyshyn had a prime chance to tell us why Meetra is so awesome. In fact, her accomplishments rival that of Revan's. She's the one who fixed up the mess of the Sith War remnants. Who saved existence from Nihilus? Who defeated Darth Traya in single combat? Who revived the Jedi Order? And just 'well, I just didn't address it' doesn't cut it. We deserve to have her backstory elaborated on when she's a major player in the novel. Instead, she's Revan's sidekick and flunky who needs him to bail her out of the fire when the going gets too tough.

Which is why I must address that hideous fight with Darth Nyriss. I'm sorry, but this strikes me as nothing but spite. That the Exile, an amazing Jedi in her own right, who has fought Dark Lords of the Sith, who has walked through the Trayus Academy, is defeated, alongside Lord Scourge, by Darth Nyriss while Revan, cool and awesome, steps in to just save the day with one move. No, I'm sorry, but this is positively sickening to me. It just screams of "My character can beat up your character" . The end of the novel? I'm sorry, but they clearly could have won. Scourge acts like an idiot, and 'always in motion is the Motion' seems to be frankly dead. Instead, Meetra is killed off in a way as stupid as her name and we all go down thanks to it.

A wasted effort and Revan, rather than being a character, is a Gary Sty who just makes me roll my eyes. I have my issues with the Darth Bane trilogy, notably Bane being an overpowered villain stu himself, but so much of those problems are to the forefront in this book.

I'd give this book a zero , but I'll let it slide by on a 2/10 and it's lucky for that.

 

But the book seems to say just that: that they could have won. Scourge sees many possible futures, and in one of them Revan is triumphant right there in the throne room. "Always in motion is the Motion", which usually goes by the name "always in motion is the future" when it's not at home, doesn't seem to be in any way undermined by this.

I find the complaints about the Exile's name a little hard to take seriously. In a galactic setting such as this there are going to be a lot of unfamiliar-sounding names. I suspect that those who can't stand her name have worked and gone to school in the real world alongside many people having names with similar foreign-sounding qualities of "other"ness. And yet they never openly criticized those people on the basis that their names were terrible. Why? Because it was socially and politically unacceptable to do so.

With a fictional character, however, the gloves come off.

 

It's a bad idea to resolve your plot with 'Lord Scourge is a mongrel idiot,' frankly.

And are you seriously complaining about complaints over fictional names? Yes, with fictional characters, 'the gloves come off,' because 'Meetra Surik' is an awkward, ugly and unfitting name.

 

Yes.

To you, apparently, but that's largely due to cultural bias. Someone from a place where it was a common name would undoubtedly see things differently. What was her name supposed to be, Alison Smith? You're talking about a fictional universe with uncounted numbers of planets and names like "C'baoth", "Tzizvvt", and "Skynxnex". Meetra Surik should be positively tame by comparison. Surik even sounds Vulcan. If you were in the Star Trek universe, would you go to Vulcan and tell them their names were terrible? You know what they would say to that. Highly illogical.

 

Agreed.

Plus: "Only the Sith believe in absolutes!"

Scourge wasn't a Jedi, so seeing him blindly act on a vision isn't surprising; it's what Anakin Skywalker did.

 

It's a pity this book has chosen to backslide on TSL's implication that the Exile had surpassed Revan.

And you're talking about a fictional universe in which the single most heroic character of the franchise is named Luke Skywalker. Oh, what an alien, strange and exotic name that is....

It's hardly surprising that someone might consider the Exile's name crap. It is crap. "Meetra" or "Surik", paired with something else, could maybe be okay. Together, however, they're horribly discordant.

 

I don't know that they did.

Both Revan and the Exile got owned.

 

Well, sure, and that was to be expected. But what about this "Exile and Scourge are being whipped by Darth Whoever and Revan comes to the rescue" stuff?

 

Fascinating. I'm just going to ignore this eye-rollingly awful point about trying to claim cultural bias on fictional names

Also, Ulicus: what was TSL's implication that the Exile had surpassed Revan?

 

Kreia: You are greater than any I have ever trained.

Canderous: I thought Revan was a singular Jedi. Now there's you.

And we're talking about Revan's biggest IU fangirl and fanboy, here. But, yeah, I'd think they should at the very least be on an equal footing. Though I suppose if we assume the Exile still draws strength from her bonds and she's away from all her friends, that's going to have an affect.

 

Honestly, that just lampshades the idiocy of KOTOR 2's ending.

"I have the Force solely because I'm drawing from you guys and your ability to use the Force."

"So I'm leaving you all to go face the Sith!"

"Buh-bye!"

 

The game didn't end like that. The Exile had the option of saying "I'm going to follow Revan" but, as I recall, there wasn't ever actually any suggestion she was going to do it alone. The first definitive source I know to suggest that was the KotOR CG. (Though it was a rather pervasive opinion among the fandom prior, too, so maybe I'm misremembering something?)

Kreia also insisted that Revan left everything behind because "he knew he would not need them", which doesn't really match up with... "Revan doesn't really know what he's going to face but he ventures out alone, anyway."

Yeah. Wish we'd got a KotOR 3.