Do "they" care about KOTOR continuity at all?

All these notes by KOTOR writers seem a little troubling.

Chris Avellone brags on the Obsidian forums about how Lucasfilm approved almost everything in K1 and K2 on the first pass (except for Krath, the Sunriders - these two for non-SW-related reasons - and Dark Jedi Hanharr, because Lucas said that Wookiees cannot become Jedi any more). The radical departure from the TOTJ look in K1, the Mandalorian Basilisk in K2, the term "Jedi Civil War" - it all got approved on the first pass.

It seems even more concerning that LucasArts put very few restrictions on Obsidian's plot, which they preferred to whatever ideas they had for the sequel (again, according to Avellone). Basically, the protagonist had to be a Jedi and there had to be a lot of Jedi vs Sith action. (What we got was an exiled Jedi who had lost their connection to the Force, and the Sith were mostly non-Force-users, but that's another story.) Maybe something else, I don't remember, but it was insignificant.

John Jackson Miller, in an interview, has also mentioned that he never had any problems with approval for the KOTOR comics and he was surprised how easy the approval process was, in contrast to what he had heard.

So the question is: do they care? Do they even read what goes for approval to Lucasfilm (and Avellone says that everything does)? Or do they just say "well, meh, whatever", which results in continuity inconsistencies and plain errors?

 

Interesting post Sikon.

Since I'm a bit of a cynical guy, I'm leaning towards "they don't really care as long as it makes some money", or, "Oh well, if we make a mistake Abel or one of the guys'll fix it later."

Actually, maybe it's just because they don't really *know* the continuity as well as the more avid fans. They've probably just got a few things that they know they shouldn't contradict, without knowing all the details around it. I'd wager that while they probably have a better general knowledge of the entire GFFA than an avid KotOR fan, they probably don't know the game as well.

Therefore, what they're looking at is: "Malachor V was the last battle of the Mandalorian Wars", which leads to them seeing no problem in approving Obsidian's "Malachor V was, more or less, a giant implosion that crushed loads of Mandalorian ships"...

What a fan is looking at however, is Canderous' entire description of the Malachor V battle, which takes a fair bit of work to reconcile with the K2 depiction.

Honestly, I don't know why they wanted a *direct* KotOR sequel in the first place, it would have made more sense to jump forward a few hundred years... It's as if they were *asking* for a bunch of continuity errors.

 

It's the little things that bother me. Come on, every melee weapon that you can buy or find on any of the planets in any of the games is made with Cortosis that acts nothing like Cortosis? Canderous found Mandalore's helmet, but it conveniently looks nothing like Mandalore's helmet from either TOTJ. Heck, they can't even do it right within their own game. Revan's robes that you get on the Star Forge (if you're DS) look nothing like the outfit you're wearing in the cutscenes.

All in all, nothing to get your undies in a bundle over, after all, Abel or someone will sort it all out sooner or later.

 

KOTOR 1 had awesome plotline. It wasn't very similar to the TOTJ even though it has been only about half a century between the comics and the game, but never the less the story is great. I loved to see how others talked about the TOTJ events and all. KOTOR 2 destroyed it all. Unfortunatly, when KOTOR 2 was made, they pretty much stopped caring about the storyline. There are lots of illogical events and even persons in K2 and they've changed the galactic fashion again. KOTOR 2 doesn't fell like KOTOR era at all. Well, maybe on Onderon, but the rest shows that Obsidian (or should I say Lucasfilm) failed completely. Unfortunatly, KOTOR 2 showed that they don't really care about the KOTOR era very much. It is all about making more and more money, not paying attention to the real thing. *sighs*

 

Retcons, retcons, retcons. *They* don't mind about continuity because someone else will always find a way to fix it, be it an Abel or just us regular fans. The people who approve these things aren't looking for those sort of errors, I'd imagine they're there to ensure the plot stays Star Warsy enough that it makes lots and lots of money. Plenty of Jedi, plenty of Sith, space battles, and keep controversial stuff like homosexuality out, etc etc.

So it's up to the authors themselves to keep things consistent. Personally I think Avellone and co. did a pretty good job in KOTOR 1 and 2. There were some concessions to gameplay- the cortosis thing is one of them, purely to ensure that lightsabers don't cut through all swords (and from the other perspective, that cortosis-weaved swords don't shut off every saber). Mandalore's helmet probably got spruced up a little since TOTJ- if threepio's head got black metallic casing it would still be threepio's head.

 

From the New Essential Guide to Droids:
"One variety of cortosis shorts out a lightsaber blade when the energy and the mineral interact. The more common variety, which is malleable and can be shaped into armor, forms an interlocking bond that cannot easily be severed by lightsaber energy."

Not to mention the ending fix to KOTOR2 in it. Like the man said, Abel or someone else would take care of it.

 

Though KOTOR is a good story, it should never have been considered part of actual continuity.

Same goes for all games.

(Yes, I know how canon works. I'm just saying: it shouldn't work that way.)

 

Why not? Sure there's a lot of plot holes, but you know what, the prequals created plot holes too. Maybe they shouldn't be canon. ESB created a plot hole. Maybe ESB shouldn't be canon.

 

The KOTOR comic issues I've seen thus far are top class quality: art, dialogue, and storyline wise.

 

They may not match up with Zahn's cortosis, but they act like the cortosis in prior games (like Jedi Outcast).

 

Avellone didn't write K1, Drew Karpyshyn did.

 

If you don't know Cortosis comes in different forms, then saying KOTOR made a mistake to "Zahn's" is puerile. There is a pure form, which shuts the blade down for a few minutes, there is a weave, which means not all the ninja sword is covered in it, so it only rebounds. Why is that illegal?

 

Wookiees can't be Jedi? When did this happen? This is silliness.

 

Well we obviously have Wookiee Jedi... Lowie still exists after all. Just no author is going to be allowed to write about one more specifically. If it holds to pattern it's something LFL is thinking about / going to do in an upcoming project maybe the TV series...

 

Agreed, but they have continuity mistakes as well. The most blatant one is probably Gryph's reference to bacta, which wasn't available in the KOTOR era (JJM later admitted in his blog that he wasn't aware of it, and offered a rather silly retcon). Also, there are plenty of non-Humans in the Upper City (even the Senator is a member of an unidentified green-skinned near-Human species), which contrasts with the description of Upper City residents as speciesist (and there are indeed few non-humans there, in contrast to the Lower City).

 

Minor Mr Quibbles, although not saying the Mrs wasn't better. Actually, I'm not sure what I'm saying. Skiing to the point---> We don't have a fixed date when bacta was first mass produced, do we? So it's not a continuity error that can't be justified. Remember, New Rebelleion did say the Pyrdyrian healing stick was also a forerunner to the bacta breath. Your other point about alien scum is Quibbleous too; after all, it's a whopping big world, and 8yrs before the game. Who's to say you can't see Gorton Colu's scum at all, at any time?

I loved that guy.

 

Teh Lucas said so before ROTS came out, which is why Lowie was banished to Dagobah in Dark Nest, and probably won't be back anytime soon.

 

Didn't the speciesist attitudes only come about after the Mandalorian Wars?

I seem to remember some of the aliens saying that they used to live in the Upper City, but were driven out...

 

Unfortunately, KOTOR implies the "policy" has been around a while... but then again, the actual implementation probably comes and goes. If the Mandalorians recruit non-humans, then the old hatreds will probably come to surface after Taris is occupied by them.

As for the bacta; yes, he admitted he made a mistake. I think we can all just adjust our minds to see "korto" and move on...

 

Its very possible that the bacta error will be corrected in the TPB---that's something that Dark Horse has done before.



Wookieepedia says that there was a Taris civil war ~4150 BBY that caused the segregation, not the Mandalorian Wars. My mistake. So it is an error, though not the worst ever. Perhaps regulations were growing relaxed at the time of the comic, but the Mandalorian Wars and/or Revan's Sith War caused old hatreds to rise up again, and the speciesism resurfaced, causing the segregation seen in the game.

 

Exactly. I think that the presence of the satellite Jedi academy probably played a part in suppressing that - as well as the fact that Taris is a member of the Republic! We've only seen Taris before while under Sith occupation, where the Sith claim to not want to interfere with their "traditions".

 

<rant>
"Kolto", actually.
</rant>

 

Considering I just played through both last month, I should know better than that... looks like I had Quinlan Vos' alias stuck in my head!

 

Right. Well Karpyshyn did a good job for K1, Avellone for K2.

 

The main thing that angered me was how all the Prequel-era Jedi restrictions were imposed on the characters. I mean, 20 years after we have Jedi Andur and Jedi Nomi marrying and giving birth to Jedi Vima in TOTJ, we have Arren Kae being kicked out of the Order for having a kid in KOTOR II?