Lit 2003-2005 Perception of KOTOR

Knights of the Old Republic I and II hold a very special place in my heart. We are now 20 years out from the first's release in 2003, and much has changed; when I do my replays, I now do it through the filter of the Dark Horse series, the 2008 campaign guide, the TOR MMO and tie-ins, fan mods and restored content patches, the looming presence of a remake, and of course the TOTJ comics which I read only after completing the games.

What I'm interested in discussing is stripping all of these things away and learning how these games were received, discussed, and speculated about around the time they were released. My big questions mainly pertain to the connections (or lack thereof) to TOTJ, but I'll enumerate everything on my mind:

KOTOR 1:

• Revan: how was the Revan twist taken? Did most adult players see it coming and anticipate it, or was this talked about like it was a clever play on the Vader twist?
• The Infinite Empire: before the Celestials of the novels or the True Sith of the next game, was this story viewed positively or negatively? It seems that to some extent the Rakata have been forgotten or downplayed ever since; even KOTOR II mocks them in a few item descriptions.
• The aesthetic: way closer to the films than to TOTJ. How did fans feel about this?
• The connections to TOTJ: only 40 years had passed between the end of the Sith War and the events of the game, but it seems that much has changed and there are very few returning plot threads or characters. The Sith on Korriban could be seen as an incongruence or a clever retcon and "hint" that Revan might not be a "real" Sith Lord, in a sense. I don't usually agree with it, but I can sympathize with people who would rather move KOTOR further away from TOTJ. Was there any evidence that the game was meant to take place much later?

KOTOR 2:

• Original release: no restored content or knowledge thereof. How did people receive the story without the extra dialogue, cutscenes, background information, etc.? Or did people immediately go digging for information since Black Isle/Obsidian has a reputation for their cut content anyway?
• Sith Triumvirate: one of the remaining great mysteries of KOTOR II. With only 45 years between TOTJ and KOTOR II and 5 years between the games, when did these Sith arise? How did people assume they interfaced with Revan's Sith?
• The Exile: how was the main character received? What outcomes did people assume would be canonical? The game seems to skew for or outright confirm a Light Side ending for KOTOR I even though you get to choose via dialog Revan's fate, but KOTOR II's Dark Side ending was never confirmed as non-canon until years later.
• The connections to TOTJ: It seems to me that KOTOR II did go out of its way to closer link up with TOTJ than its predecessor did. Most notably we have the daughter of Galia and Oron appearing in the flesh on Onderon, but there are other details that try to tie things closer together.

For those who were around for this era in the board's history (or elsewhere online), or people who just like to go digging around in old threads and archives, anything you can share regarding my questions or just the general perception and reception of these games would be great.

 

There would have been a lot more connections to Tales if there had not been that legal dispute with the Sunrider name. If I remember right the person that wrote tales used the name Sunrider in some other work they did.

 

I was frustrated with two things by Kotor when playing it blind. Bastila not being Nomi as was the intention and the aesthetic looking like the PT not TOTJ.

Didn't see Revan coming, but I wasn't an adult and for a long time didn't see it as comparable to the Vader twist.

 

Here’s a thread from when KOTOR was first released. https://boards.theforce.net/threads...s-and-the-eu-thread-kotorii-spoilers.9693624/

 

Very interesting! It'll take me some time to read through all of it, but even the first page has some interesting preproduction rumors and details--the PC having a Jedi sibling, for example?

You know, it's interesting to me that Bastila-as-Vima would require the timeline to be somewhat compressed. Vima would have been 44 at the time of KOTOR, and Bastila is clearly meant to be young, probably younger than Revan. They would have to slide back the events of the game and the Mandalorian Wars by maybe 20 years. Does it still work in 3976, only a decade since Ulic Qel-Droma's death? Revan would almost certainly have been a participant in Exar Kun's War, with a timeline like that.

 

Vima! Yes. I read that they shifted the timeline because it couldn't be her, but they kept their character design from when it was going to be, even let her keep Battle Meditation. It bugged me then, but now I accept it was one of Star Wars idiosyncrasies.

 

Cool as it would have been to have Vima as a party member in the game, the compressed timeline necessary to include her would have caused the same continuous conflict that people complained about in the post-ROTJ era, with no downtime between the Great Sith War, Mandalorian Wars, and Jedi Civil War. I’m glad they bumped the game 30 years down the timeline instead of; we still could have gotten the rest of Vima’s story in Mandorla, but whoops they didn’t do that.

 

I always wondered if it got a lot of initial hate from EU diehards because it took so much visual inspiration from the prequels despite being set in an era that had previously looked like Ancient Egypt. Because let's face it, that's totally something we would have gotten mad about back then. And a lot of the bold, different, and out-there EU that we grew to love was initially hated by us --- the Samurai Jack Clone Wars micro-series was at one time Public Enemy #1 because it contradicted Labyrinth of Evil. But then a few years later, after the 3D The Clone Wars came out, we looked at the old one again and realized how good it actually was.

 

Amusingly, I just stumbled upon this post in the thread @darklordoftech linked wherein someone suggests that Kreia is Vima Sunrider, which is an idea I came up with just yesterday. Other amusing parts of reading that old thread include people speculating if the new Mandalore character in KOTOR II would be as cool as Canderous Ordo--can't help but smile.

Reading through, I had forgotten how while KOTOR II does attempt to strengthen certain connections to TOTJ, it also stirred up some controversy. There is the establishment of the Coruscant Jedi Temple and solid Jedi Council, which is clearly Prequel-inspired rather than TOTJ-inspired. Also worth noting: the hologram recording of the Exile getting her lightsaber taken by the Council must be set around 3960 or 3959BBY, shortly after the Battle of Malachor V. Forget what we know from post-2006: there are no members of the Jedi from TOTJ present on the council: no Nomi, no Tott Doneeta, no Sylvar, and most disappointingly for me no Thon (I am a sucker for non-humanoid Jedi...) This didn't seem to rile fans at the time from what I have read in that thread, but I think today it would rile people up.

What did people back then posit for their fates? Seems likely to me that Sylvar would have gone with Revan and Malak to fight the Mandalorians, or maybe had even taken action before that with the genocide of the Cathar. Was Nomi present for most of the Jedi Civil War? There's a mod that changes the Jedi strike leader on the Star Forge to look like her, and I quite like that touch, but surely her Battle Meditation would conflict with or override Bastila's. Did she perish at Katarr with Vandar? Did something happen to Nomi prior to the Mandalorian Wars?

 

Pretty sure Kreia is intended to be Arren Kae, Brianna's mother. From everything Mikal and Kreia say, in the base game, that's what I got. Then the RCM made that feel even more likely.

 

It's kind of sad how often Star Wars fans came to accept the New, Scary Thing only in response to a Newer, Scarier Thing coming out, TBH.

 

Yeah, I remember when I discovered Wookieepedia back in 2007 and the Battle of Coruscant article had that now-familiar notice that there are multiple sources contradicting each other and no settlement had been given and I thought "okay, in a year or so this would be settled and all will be fine". Yeah, right.

As the meme goes:

TCW: how many levels of continuity contradictions are you on?

CW: er, two or three?

TCW: you're a little baby. watch this.

 

The latter. I don’t think many people saw it coming.

I have no idea how anyone felt about the Rakata. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were theories that they built Centerpoint Station and The Maw. I do find it interesting how KOTOR 2 doesn’t mention the Rakata or the Star Forge aside from the item description and Bastila’s holocron on Korriban. Maybe if KOTOR 2 was completed or KOTOR 3 would have explained how Revan’s quest for the Star Forge and his discovery of the True Sith tie together?

They disliked it. They felt it contradicted TOTJ and they found the idea that techology didn’t advance over the course of ~4000 years absurd.

Sion says he was at the Korriban Sith Academy when it fell to infighting after the deaths of Uthar and Yuthura. It was assumed that Sion was a follower of Revan and Malak.

 

In Dawn of the Jedi Comics Ships Holograms already existed in 20000 Years BBY so high technology always existed in the Legends Universe maybe TOTJ Era looked less advanced for the Wars or for the Planets in those Stories something similar of how the OT Era looked less advanced in technology than in PT Era

 

I love that this thread exists. I often find myself hunting for clues about this type of stuff all the time.

One curious thing I wanted to talk about was the Sith lineage at the time. KOTOR 1 mentioned the Sith reaching out to the Mandalorians to start the wars that preceded the game. This may have changed with later games and books, but it seems the original intent was for these to be the same Sith faction Exar Kun had led 40 years before. That meant that Revan and Malak didn’t start a new Sith Order, they took over the one that existed from the comics. Some people even suggested there was mention of dark lords they took over from, but I never found an explicit mention of this.

Of course, this was before KOTOR 2 introduced the idea of the True Sith, the ancient Sith Lords who survived in the shadows. Interestingly, even KOTOR 1 suggested that the ancient Sith had access to the Star Forge at one point. Ajunta Pall mentions the secret of the Sith Lords to the player character:

“Our oldest secret. Only... only we would know, we lords. Only we would know where our power came from... You... you will find the old place, the dark place... and you will regret it.”
​

He’s clearly talking about more than just the map. The first game seems to set up the Rakata as the precursors to the Sith, an older generation of dark siders. And then the second game seems to flip that, downplaying the Rakata’s role and refocusing on the Sith, perhaps even suggesting an older history than the one we knew about. After all, when the games were written, the history of the Sith Empire spanned more than 20,000 years, rather than only 5,000 or so.

 

Seems to be confirmed by that old thread--only one or two people guessed it, and they were written off by other fans as crackpot theorists. The more things change, the more they stay the same

I don't recall the exact dialog, but this is interesting and perhaps incongruent. Sion appears to be of an older Sith lineage, to me. Based on the state of his body he's been through a lot more than the Jedi Civil War, I'd wager. If he were a Sith of such talent that he could preserve his body through hatred and pain alone, then why didn't he rank higher in the Sith hierarchy? Unless he did, and was lurking in the shadows...

I sort of picture a Maul-Vader relationship between Sion and Revan (and Malak/Bandon by extension); both the students of Darth Traya, but one was clearly favored for his prowess over the other. Did they make up a Triumvirate before the Jedi Civil War ended and Nihilus showed up on the scene? And then, after the death of Malak, did Sion return to Korriban and recruit followers only to witness it almost immediately fall to infighting?

I've been of the opinion that, even if you take into consideration post-2005 additions to continuity, Traya and Sion probably predate Revan and Malak. My real crazy idea is that it was Darth Traya who anointed Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma, not the spirit of Marka Ragnos, but that's just because I prefer a stronger continuity between my Sith lineages and I don't really think that works out with what we're shown.

Nonetheless, I can see Traya or Sion encouraging the Mandalorians to begin their crusades, and their authority in doing so is strengthened if their relationship with Ulic Qel-Droma was direct. I also think it's entirely possible for Traya to have done all this and held the title of Dark Lord of the Sith while still nominally serving the Jedi and teaching Revan. There is that theme in KOTOR II that Atris is the new Darth Traya and doesn't even realize it yet; that her fall began with betraying the Jedi on Katarr. I can see something similar for Kreia/Arren Kae in the years preceding the Mandalorian Wars.

As for this point: while this was indeed before the Sith Empire's history got cut short (this is one of the retcons that inspired me to make this thread), I think Kreia was explicit that the True Sith were a continuation of Naga Sadow's generation, right? I would need to pull up dialog to be exact.

 

No, she wasn’t. To the point a lot of folks were surprised, and believed it to be a Retcon when TOR said the True Sith were just Korriban Sith. The TSL lead writer indicated in a post-TOR interview that he had something else planned and Kreia says "The True Sith are a belief, not an order, an ideal." That’s a paraphrase, but it’s one of the things that's stuck with me about the game.

 

Here's what Chris Avellone (lead writer for KOTOR 2) has said about the original plans for the True Sith:

Eurogamer interview:

"The idea was that even before the 'modern day' Sith came into being in The Old Republic ... there were even more distant Sith Lords that were considered the true Sith, and the idea that they were still lurking out there in the galaxy waiting for a chance to strike, kind of like the Shadows in Babylon 5, I thought would be a cool finale for that Old Republic trilogy.

"Part of the fun with designing them," he adds, "was if you have these incredibly powerful Force users and they have their whole hidden domain out in the distant reaches of the galaxy, what would that Sith empire really look like at the hands of these things?

"If they could shape entire planets or galaxies or nebulas, and they had all these slave races at their disposal, how cool would that be, to go into the heart of darkness and you're the lone Jedi and/or new version of the Sith confronting these guys? What would that be like? I thought that would be pretty epic."​

PCGamer interview:

"These guys would just be monsters. These would have a level of power that was considerable, but at the same time you’d be able to dig more into their psychologies, and their personalities, their history, and even how they dealt with the player, how they talk with the player, the different powers they cultivated and developed, and for some of them like—they’re the ancients, so they’re not just ruling a solar system, [but] swathes of the galaxy.

“So the places you travel to [you’d see] how they left their stamp on that world, or that solar system, or whatever collection of moons. You’d see how horrible that was. Part of that environment would tell a story about that. [That] would be a great, epic way to end the trilogy.”
​

Kotaku interview:

"They were survivors of Naga Sadow’s empire. Much like the Shadows in Babylon 5, they were orchestrating the collapse of the Republic from behind the scenes, interfering with key events to cause echoes through the Force and leave it ripe for invasion – hopefully without a shot even being fired. In essence, they were changing the shape of the galaxy through manipulation of specific people and conflicts, much like Sidious did, but on an even larger scale than Episode 1 through 3.​

"The idea was that in Knights of the Old Republic II, Revan slowly became aware of this underlying threat (because Revan is a tactical badass) and went off to seek out the true source of the threat to the galaxy. This was why he was trying to keep the Old Republic infrastructure intact so he could use it against the Sith. Anyway. Fairy tales and legends and what might have been, but that was the intent, yes."​

 

Excellent. These quotes do help give an idea of what was to come (and yet was not to be). It feels more like the Eternal Empire than TOR's Sith Empire, to me.

If they were survivors of Naga Sadow's Empire, then I think the dots become easier to connect. These were probably the Sith Lords that Freedon Nadd challenged but failed to subsume (more KOTOR questions inbound; just WHAT was that ritual on Dxun??). If these Sith were as Avellone describes, then it's a miracle that Freedon Nadd made it out with his life. These were the horned Sith Lords that anointed Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma, not the ghosts of Marka Ragnos and company. And if the Trayus Academy was built by the True Sith (as a beacon no less, as Atris says), then were these the Sith that gave rise to the unique lineage of Darth Trayus/Traya?

"There must always be a Darth Traya, one that holds the knowledge of betrayal."

I've been watching a ton of clips from KOTOR 2; the game has so much dialog, full analysis is hard. It gives volume to the world KOTOR 1 established, which I love. I've been focusing in on the history of Arren Kae and Kreia (almost universally taken for fact that they are the same character), as well as dialog from the Disciple about the Jedi, since admittedly he is the companion I had the least experience with during my last playthroughs. Mical has a lot to say about Arren Kae:

• She taught on Dantooine at the Jedi Enclave. Based on her assumed age (no younger than 50), I'd posit that her master was Vodo Siosk-Baas, and that she was contemporaries with Sylvar and Exar Kun.
• She was Revan's primary master, but in a sense Revan was brought up collectively by the Dantooine Enclave. Kreia is also stated to have been Revan's first and last master, which is a big part of this theory.
• She left for "the Wars," which by context seems like it means the Mandalorian Wars prior to Revan's faction entering the war.
• During this time she met the Echani Yusanis and conceived Brianna Kae, the Handmaiden. Brianna was born in 3976BBY, which is when the Mandalorian Crusades began, confirming Mical's earlier comment.
• I would presume that during this time, Kae/Kreia discovered Malachor V during her participation in the early crusades against the Mandalorians. She may have found the Trayus Academy very early.
• Revan eventually returned to Arren Kae to learn how to leave the Jedi. Did she send him to Malachor? was this at the beginning of the war or at the end in 3960BBY?
• This next part is between Atris and Kreia: despite Revan apparently coming to her for this sage wisdom, Kreia never really left the Jedi Order--she requested the exile of the Jedi Exile in 3960BBY or so, and was there on Coruscant when it happened.
• "It is such a quiet thing to fall, but far more terrible is to admit it." When did Kreia fall and when did she admit it?
• The Jedi never expelled anyone before the Exile; not Kreia/Kae for having a child with Yusanis and going to war, not Jolee Bindo for arrogantly training his wife only to see her fall to the Dark Side; even Ulic Qel-Droma's exile was self-imposed (at some point I want to discuss Veitch's plans for Ulic Qel-Droma's fate, but I don't know what thread is right for that).
• Who or what did Kreia betray to become Darth Traya? Who betrayed Kreia? Was it the Jedi? Yusanis? Revan? Sion? The Exile?

I stumbled upon a lovely blog post that gives a really well-crafted theory. There's parts to it that I love, and other parts that unfortunately don't work if the above is all the correct timeline. What I can say for certain is that it makes me crave a novel, comic, whatever that fully explores the exact relationship between Revan and Kreia.

 

KOTOR was an amazing intriguing rpg game that was light years ahead of its time. KOTOR 2 was unfortunately was Lucasfilm became known for, which was crappy rushed second games sequels. KOTOR 2 started out great winning awards and garnering praise but over time, little by little, people began talking about and then complaining how certain parts of the story felt very incomplete. And then the truth came out and the game began to be looked very differently. I for one was not to thrilled with the MMO of the Old republic because it didn't really answer and close the trilogy, instead it created a wide open story that unless you followed it from game one you would be lost.

 

Honestly i think that Video Games like the Force Unleashed, the Jedi Knight Saga and Battlefront they were better known among the general public in my perception i remember being surprised that a Video Game from the Old Republic Era existed maybe KOTOR was not as popular as those Video Games because it was a Turn Based RPG Game based on Dungeons and Dragons KOTOR was not as simple as other Star Wars Video Games and it was not an Online Game like SWTOR

 

KOTOR 2 wasn't crappy, even in its unfinished state. It got great reviews because it was a great game. Then news came out that it was rushed, after people found more and more data of removed content. That caused a bit of a backlash against Lucasfilm, but it's not like it had that big of an impact on the reception of the game among the audience as a whole. That news came way too late to have an impact on the player-base.

I really don't think so. There is a reason why KOTOR was the one Star Wars game to blow everything away in terms of awards. It had far and away the best reception of Star Wars games, and it's no surprise that people asked for a KOTOR 3, or a remake, for ages, while no such thing existed for the other games. It's also the very reason why SWTOR came around, and that was still the period where MMORPGs were the big thing. Next to Halo, KOTOR was also the main early XBOX-game.

Video games in their entirety were a niche thing among the general public. And yes, multiplayer shooters tended to have a bigger player-base than single player RPGs, but in terms of reception KOTOR was as widely known as anything around. Revan might possibly be the closest one to Thrawn in terms of publically known EU-villains.

 

It’s surprising reading Avellone’s quotes again how close the SWTOR story actually has ended up covering a lot of the bases, from a certain point of view.

I only played the original launch but have kept up with it on youtube and the whole Vitiate, Valkorian, Tenebrae development has felt comparable to the “True Sith” we used to speculate on all those years ago.

 

I'm feeling the same way after reinvestigating the affair. Now I'm trying to recall why so many fans felt SWTOR retconned or disrespected KOTOR and its sequel.

KOTOR II I will admit has not received the love and attention it deserves. I've recently noticed after going back to sourcebooks of the era that KOTOR II was largely avoided as a topic and what did get covered was often inaccurate. For example: G0-T0's backstory seems to have been translated poorly to the writers of the KOTOR Campaign Guide and the New Essential Guide to Droids; in the game it is told that he was originally a GE3 protocol droid, and his new body does not have a designation but does not seem related to his previous identity as an infrastructure planning droid. In the sourcebooks, that spherical droid model is given the designation of being an infrastructure planning droid too. Problematic. The campaign guide also gives Darth Sion a backstory that on its face is problematic when compared to the game. The idea that he was present for the Great Sith War is questionable and not backed by the game, in fact I would say it's improbable for many reasons.

Since that era, KOTOR II elements that have been included in SWTOR were also questionable. I know a lot of people hate the Exile's fate in the Revan novel. The lack of reconstruction for Taris made for great level design, but I would imagine that Taris would have been one of the planets rebuilt after the JCW just like Telos. There's the potential Kreia appearance in "the Entity" that is also really, really problematic.

 

I guess vanilla TOR felt like just a generic Jedi vs Sith story, with no true depth, designed to be balanced enough (a la Alliance vs Horde) to support a MMORPG. This view felt supported by the statement of Marketing Manager Roger Evoy, who seemed confused about when the game was taking place:


"[The video games are] set between the two trilogies. Based off some of the inspirations we got from BioWare, we were able to develop new combat styles and storylines that as far as the Star Wars universe was concerned, were really new and fresh—we've never seen a Jedi temple get its butt kicked like this."