Lit What do you want from a canon Old Republic?

Superpowered ancient civilizations
Superweapons
Sith Lords
Jedi
Space ships which look like spaceships
20,000 of advanced technology rater than acting like 8000 years ago is the Dark Ages.

You know, Star Wars

 

Not much. I have a whole head canon set up about that era that doesn't exactly fit with the games or comics. (Though it will most likely be steamrolled once Disney shifts its attention to that era but I can dream for now.)

Want I want to keep?

-Mandalorian War(s)
-Jedi Council/temple/order/similar set up.
- Massive battles.
- Technology naturally advancing through the eras.
-Jedi
-The Old Republic (I mean you have to have the old republic in the old republic era right?)

(Depending on where you place "The Old Republic")
-Massive lightsaber skirmishes
- Darth Ruin
- Sith betraying each other
- Sith Lords
- Weak Jedi Order
-I did like the Knight Errant series, though they should check in on the front lines once in a while too, not just behind enemy lines always.

 

It's been a while sense I played the game so forgive me if I'm wrong, but: Bastila was sent to arrest Revan if possible, but no combat ever occurred between them (Malak blew Revan up first). The literal mind screwing was not on Bastila's part, it was the Jedi Council's choice, and she had no part in it (in fact, IIRC, she was kind of iffy about it). She did lie after his mind was wiped, yes, but to be fair if Hitler was turned into an American infantryman would you remind him of who he was? And the Force bond was a result of Bastila saving Revan's life, so it's not like it came from some soiled, creepy mental touch.

But your views on that may vary.

 

Yeah! That was the real Republic!

 

Bastila and Revan fought on Lehon.

Bastila was complicit in the mind screw.

The lies, regardless of rationalization, makes consent ambiguous. Think about it. The romance began when Revan didn't really know who he was, and Bastila did. Does that sound fair to you? Does it sound healthy?

Regardless of how the Force bond was created, the bond establishes a powerful link between the two's thoughts, memories, feelings, their very souls through the Force. They have a powerful influence over each other, whether they want it or not, so I can see it as a sort of violation. Once it happened, it becomes ambiguous as to what originates with who. Is Bastila attracted to Revan, or is Bastila feeling Revan's arousal through the Force, and therefore feeling it herself? And vice versa?

Revan was unconscious, and incapable of consenting to the bond....assuming it was actually Bastila who formed the bond, and not Revan himself, to save his own life. lol jk

Bastila said she felt Revan's dark nature through the bond, and well...

The need to resist implies strong influence...dark side influence. What other kinds of influence did the bond have?


I think the health of the relationship is pretty ambiguous.

 

...I'm getting the sense you didn't particularly care for Tales of the Jedi, here.

 

Well, the aesthetics of TotJ are pretty daft considering it's a 20,000 year old society. They grew on me eventually, but they're still sort of ridiculous.

Though I've long felt that a large part of that can be chalked up to the old colouring techniques. If you gave those old issues a fresh lick of paint I imagine many of the "why does it look like the stone age in space?" criticisms would evaporate.

. . . .

Anyhoo, RE: the title . . . I'd really just like for it not to be a carbon copy of the PT era Republic, with the same scale, problems, and levels of inefficiency and corruption. I really, really don't want for it to have been the sole galactic superpower for any longer than the thousand years running up to the PT.

 

Oh! I have never tought that I will see a discussion about Revan's consent in his romantic relationship with Bastila.

You are rising very interesting points here, but I would like to clear some things up.

Firstly, nor Bastila or the Jedi Council planned to create a bond between her and Revan. Their bond was a direct result of her saving his life after Malak bombed Revan's flagship.

Secondly, it also seems that the idea of using the bond to extract his memories was conceived after Bastila began to experience his memories (Dantooine vision) unless they (the members of the Jedi Council) were sure that the bond will result in that (at best they only could hope). I am also pretty sure that the bond was a mystery for Bastila. At one point she wonders if the council had not told her everything about its nature (that it might "bond" them romantically) leading her to think that they wanted to test her comitment to the Jedi and their rules.

You are right that force bonds were hugely influental (there is a lot of talking about them in KoTOR 2) and breaking them is extremely traumatizing, which might result in one falling to the dark side (which is the reason why Malak wanted Bastila to kill Revan and (by the way) might explain some Revan's actions in TOR).

As you have rightfully pointed out there is an implication in the game, the theory that the relationship between Revan and Bastila was in fact a result of such bond (thus making the feeling between them unnatural or even illusionary). Here I would like to point out that the force bonds were supposedly not all that uncommon escpecially between students and their masters. Such bond also existed between Kreia and Meetra and later between Meetra and her "students" but as we know they do not all fall in love with each other during the story of the second game.

The truth is, that Bastila and Revan have fallen in love regardless of their bond. When she did actually fell in love with him, she would rather blame the force than admit the truth and "condemn" herself in the eyes of other Jedi. Her fear was so big that "she hated herself for loving him" and because her feelings she thought that "she betrayed everything she ever believed in". The entire thing plays very nicely with quote from Jolee that "love itself will save you... not condemn you". In the end, love saved her and she was no longer afraid of it.

As for Revan in the entire thing. If Kreia is right the Jedi Council never changed Revan but "they merely stripped away the surface, and allowed the true self to emerge again". He was himself the entire time and his feelings were also "true".

Thank you for starting this discussion. I think I now understand better what people at BioWare were after in Revan and Bastila romance.

As for Kylo/Rey thing... how is it even similar (beyond the fact that they might look similar and one is bad and the other is good)?

As for the thread question... I would not mind KoTOR story with happy ending.

 

Eh? When did Exar Kun become canon?

 

Exar Kun, Ulic and Nomi, the great Sith War.

 

KOTOR and pretty much the epic wars of the old Jedi and Sith orders. The Sith lore before the rule of 2 is some of the best stuff around.

 

He's saying what he'd like to see happen. I was puzzled as well, but I got the message eventually.

 

But Thrawn and Darth Bane are canon, so if that's what he meant, it's a very confusing way to say it.

 

You bring interesting points. I hadn't really thought about it that way before. Revan and Bastila's relationship never felt odd to me (especially with the similar Force bond also existing between the Exile and Kreia...or basically the Exile and everyone on her crew), but the points you bring out are very interesting.

 

Maybe. It says here's he's mentioned in TCW.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Exar_Kun

Don't know how accurate it is and I can't find independent verification.

EDIT: It's listed in the Appearances section. Apparently, he's referenced in TCW.

 

Looking at the appearances list, it's actually TCW the video game, which isn't canon.

 

Oops! Sorry. Thanks for catching that.

 

I love the first Tales of the Jedi and the Exar Kun storyline.

HATED Freedon Nadd and think the Golden Age of the Sith is one of the worst things ever made for Star Wars.

So, yeah, totally keep technology all looking advanced and awesome throughout.

 

Technology can still be futuristic to Earth standards, while progressing throughout Star Wars history. Have slower and vastly more expensive hyperdrives, etc.

 

Old Republic shelling of the bad guys.

Exar Kun. Darth Bane. An explanation of the formation of the formation of the OR, Jedi, and Sith.

 

Yes. Yes, this is huge.

 

Eh...I've never really gotten those critiques. Why would we expect another civilization to design its technology to look like 19th-or-20th-century European-American technology? Different societies put different levels of emphasis on aesthetics, and draw their aesthetics from different places. A lot of what we think of as "futuristic"-looking stuff is pretty historically-contingent, based on theories of utilitarianism and a cultural emphasis on the value of technology and convenience and so forth. If they'd made space-ships in, say, Medieval Europe, I doubt they'd look much like our ideas of "realistic" space-ships either; their design would be shaped by all kinds of aesthetic and religious and communal ideas that would be entirely foreign to our idea of what constitutes "advanced" and "technological."

And there's no particular reason why a society like Medieval Europe (or Imperial Japan, or Classical Rome, or whatever) couldn't find itself in a position to build ships--indeed, that's in part the whole point of Star Wars as a setting.

I mean, yes, there are also technical pressures at work in design, but there's no need for aereodynamics in outer space, and you'd expect more advanced cultures that had been around for a long time to have a lot more freedom in how they make their spaceships rather than less.

I don't care, I like TotJ aesthetics. Give me more weird stuff!

 

Yeah, that's fair.

But I think it's relatively plain that the thinking behind TotJ's look was a simple "this stuff needs to look like it came five thousand years before the movies", and was rooted in a very modern conception of what "ancient stuff" should look like, rather than any effort to aspire to represent a 20,000 year society in all its alien-to-us glory.

Still, like I said, a large part of why everything looks so strangely archaic is the colouring rather than the design.

Compare the Senate Hall as it appears in TotJ vs KotOR (comics), or Mandalore's mask.

 

• Kolto
• Refurbished, updated story of Nomi Sundrider, so that it retroactively can match the greatness of KotOR era
• When republic wasn't republic, but a Galaxy of many individual star systems, federations governed by different political systems

 

I'd like to see the era when the Zygerrian Slave Empire still existed. It would be interesting to see how it was, and whether the Republic existed around the same time.

I'd just like to see some more non-Republic communities, like the Neutral Systems in TCW, or the Hutts, and how they relate to the Repbulic. Or maybe pre-Repbulic civilisations.