Lit A/V Kotor? remake? is? probably? (not?) happening?

Same here,

TOR era is my bread and butter.

 

My enthusiasm for a potential KOTOR III is not meant as a dismissal of the love other fans have for TOR. Though I am not a fan of that game or its stories, I have to admit I also never played it. But my feelings are more about enthusiasm for potentially seeing a story that just sounds really cool and different.

Indeed I haven’t played any of these games, so I’m just very curious to finally play KOTOR next month and then its remake in the near future. Regardless of whether I end up enjoying the gameplay, I’ve always respected the love this game garnered from fans. I’ve also always been intrigued by the stories themselves and their exploration and re-opening of this era in storytelling. The same goes for KOTOR II, although I know that game was released in a very rough state.

And KOTOR III is only known vaguely through a few comments from its creators. But the premise of a totally different look at the Sith, potentially from a more philosophical and psychological angle, is almost irresistible. Part of me wonders if it would have leaned into the horror genre more than anything, emulating the likes of Silent Hill 2, as it takes players into a confrontation of what the enemies of KOTORs 1 and 2 had risen in power to oppose.

 

Best thing about TOR is Darth Marr:

 

I really don’t care about KOTOR 2. It was hands down an improvement over the first gameplay wise, but the pivot in story from Revan to Exile was disappointing. As far as TOR, it’s OK, but a lot of MMOs like Star Trek Online, TOR and WoW all have these vague Cold War scenarios to explain how pvp servers can be at war, while pve servers are not. And it leads to weird story choices. As far as to how it handled Revan, I think 300 years later was too late to resolve his story, and the constant light side/dark side flip flopping got to be too much IMO.

To me, KOTOR’s ending was where I wanted to see a KOTOR 2 pickup with more or less the same cast. Story telling in games has come a long way since KOTOR, and I wouldn’t mind “KOTOR 2” (sequel to the remake) continuing the story in a Mass Effect fashion. The KOTOR 2 we got made Revan’s choices from the first game irrelevant as no matter what past you describe to Atton Rand, the game is largely the same. Whether Revan was redeemed or conquered the Galaxy had no long term effects on the Galaxy


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It is strange Kotor II did not continue Revan’s journey. Missed opportunity that. To see Revan versus Darth Nihilus! Oh how glorious that would have been!



Nihilus: I hunger!
Revan: [Eat a Snickers.] What is that to me?
Nihilus: You will do!
Nihilus uses Force Drain on Revan.
Revan: Feed all you want. The Emperor could not break me, nor will you!
Nihilus: We shall see.

TAG: @Sinrebirth

 

Our role play shall make it so.

 

Honestly I wonder if this hypothetical Kotor 3 would have introduced a third new character to play as, or brought back Revan or the Exile. Or both, though having two customized, voiceless characters seems hard.

But yeah, I have grown increasingly fond of SWTOR over time (even if I think it works a bit better as an au than being an ancient part of the basic timeline - but I want to state it is amazing as an au) and it has some characters and moments right up there with Kotors 1 and 2, so I am not quite as excited as others about the possibility of a new trilogy that replaces it entirely.

Especially since unlike many others, I am not in love with the ideas I hear they had about this Kotor 3. For instance, I am not a big fan of these "scarier than Palpatine eldritch sith" types like Nihilus and the SWTOR Emperor, and the whole game was going to revolve around a bunch of these? All these super powerful beings with no real connection to sith past or present despite being the "true" ones, who apparently don't actually use their powers to do anything except screw with minor systems in the Unknown Regions?

I mean, execution can make even the most questionable plot brilliant, and this is based on scant details of early work, but honestly when it comes to the basic idea for a conclusion to the Old Sith Wars saga, "some remnants of that first sith empire survived and want revenge" seems like a more solid foundation for a story there. Heck, if they had just stuck with the space Egyptian/Babylonian aesthetic instead of going super hard into the future empire stuff, I would have unreservedly loved it from the get go.

 

KOTOR2 seemed to take vaders line about destorying a planet compared to the force, as literally as possible.

It seemed like they were making a bunch of Abeloths sitting in their corner of the galaxy. So honestly I couldn't think of much worse.

But the whole story was weird. I don't get why they just didn't set it 10 or even 20 years after the first, since the original had little impact.

 

I think it's really a matter of how well an idea is executed. A lot of fiction tends to introduce characters that are in some way associated with inhuman forces, but oftentimes this is just a surface-level imitation of other stories that did work well. Authors might drop some words like "ancient" or "abomination" or what have you, they might use a vaguely Lovecraftian name or overly poetic description for the character, or the look of the character might follow some of the now-familiar and tired tropes for these types of things. But that's not really a good way of executing that type of vision; it's just imitation and doesn't really capture the sense of the uncanny and inhuman that is most appealing about that concept.

Abeloth's first appearance worked well in this sense. I didn't love the way she was described, and she did follow quite a few of the annoying tropes. But in general her role in Abyss was executed well enough that it did evoke the uncanny. Unfortunately, none of the later works in that series were able to maintain that, and they eventually fell back to the same old tropes that strip this sort of idea of much significance.

As for Vitiate and Nihilus, I can't accurately say since I have not experienced those characters first-hand. But with Vitiate, I got the sense that, outside of the initial vague references to the character, the direct encounters were always of the sort where the tropes are on full display and none of the eerie atmosphere is there. If his quotations in Wookiepedia are any indication, I'd say it's all tropes, all show and no substance. But again, I do not know for sure. It could be more a limitation of the format of the game.

I'm similarly unsure about Nihilus, though I will say that his look, his lack of real speech, and his extended presence in KOTOR 2 do a lot more than any powers attributed to him to make him seem uncanny and inhuman. I do think that Nihilus's fame makes him seem overpowered and almost a caricature; but I get the sense that this is mainly born from the impressions fans have of the character or outside materials that took what characters said in the game at face value. For example, we don't really know if Nihilus can drain entire planets, or if he even did that with Katarr itself. It's all rumors, in-universe fears and legends, when in "reality" he is only confirmed to be a ghostly vampiric presence; powerful, but not necessarily overpowered. So in a sense, I'd say the uncanny is there in the execution, but the fame the character acquired afterward tended to make him feel overpowered and hurt that atmosphere that had been created for him in the game itself.

All of which is not to say that I'm confident Obsidian would've executed the concept well enough. But there are certainly ways to do it right and ways to do it wrong, and because KOTOR 3 has only been vaguely described, the basic concept is all we have going for it. I will add, though, that one good example of the uncanny in Star Wars was the role of the ancient Sith Lords in Dark Lords of the Sith. These spirits, seen in Korriban as gigantic enthroned mummies, but having a foothold wherever their artifacts exist, are manipulating the entire story and the rebirth of the new Sith. All the while they are simply dead, but somehow keep on living. The economy with which they're used, the atmosphere they are given when they are actually shown, and the simplicity of their look, all of these make them excellent examples of the uncanny.

And it's beings like these that KOTOR 3 would've been interested in exploring. Of course, it's all just a big intriguing question: Why were the True Sith so much worse than the Sith we saw in the first two games? We have hints that it had to do with their lack of reliance on technology and military power, that their threat was directly tied to the power of the Force, which, when seen from a certain lens, can be quite terrifying. I don't think they would've necessarily upstaged Palpatine, and indeed may have come into play to set up the Sith legacy that would eventually culminate in his lineage. But I do think they would perhaps have been a more abstract threat, not in terms of not being a concrete threat, but rather in terms of the game focusing on the effect the Force can have on minds and souls. Its ability to dominate, to shape the perceived world, to guide and define destinies. The Force as a dark god, with these Sith Lords being its ministering angels. After all, Revan's journey into the unknown sounds a lot like an expansion of Luke's encounter with the dark side cave in Dagobah. So this would've been a great way for the games to explore more about the dark side itself and what it can do to the human mind.

But that's just my impression, and it's the reason why I'm so intrigued by it.

 

@Darth Tormentum Enjoy!

 

Revan: You hungry?! Eat this!
*Uses Force Lightning and then uses lightsaber*

 

Another thing I’d be interested to see is how they address the main character and voice acting.

You were able to name your character whatever you wanted, because your character was silent and so any dialogue in which you introduced yourself only existed as text and was never spoken and nobody except maybe aliens (I can’t remember) ever said your name.

Mass Effect let you customize your first name but gave everyone a fixed last name (Shepard) which allowed for voice acted characters to address you as Shepard.

I wonder if they’ll continue to go the silent protagonist route, or if Revan will be fully voice acted, which may require a fixed name for dialogue purposes in the early game.

I will say that when I play a game like DragonQuest XI or Skyrim with a silent protagonist vs Mass Effect or FF7 Remake, I feel a lot less attached to the character.

I’m currently playing FF7 Remake here and there when I get free time, and one thing I really appreciate about that game is how the characters will chat just while traversing the world or even shout to each other in combat. Or in Corneo’s Colosseum where during the arena battles announcers will offer commentary on the battle and call out the names of characters that are defeated or get hit.



Which would be something cool for the fights in the arena on Taris.


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Silent leads have made a comeback with some recent CRPGs.
Remember they said "from the ground up" so don't expect anything to be the same as it was before.

 

Development on KOTOR II started before KOTOR was even finished. And Obsidian didn't have a full view of what the story of KOTOR was going to be, so they were kind of going blind early on and had to make changes once they saw what KOTOR was going with.

There never was a chance that KOTOR II would continue with the old characters, not once Bioware rejected doing a sequel and suggested that Obsidian should take over.

 

Plus we still don't know how the KOTOR trilogy would have ended, so we'd have a whole new story to enjoy without being spoiled.

 

Not saying this is gonna happen but what if they say Revan and Bastilla were a Dyad in the force

 

Somehow I do not see it. Sure they are a couple but why exactly a dyad? Not every couple needs to be and story needs rather something special to warrant it. So what specialty can you deal me?

In fact, if there is a dyad in Revans era I believe it might have been Revan and Exile! They more closely circled each other and sometimes were aligned in light or in darkness and in between one dark the other light. That's a dyad for me! Both also more essential than Bastila and both one way or another, dead or alive, made it to TOR.


Edit: Only now it dawns on me, what if Rey and Ben the same way could make it to a later era? He bliped out on her in TROS like Revan "left" from Bastila's and Exiles lifes. Yet still TOR has Revan and Ghost Revan and Ghost Exile. So I could see Ghost Rey and somehow via WBW or else Ben in a future era alive.

 

I just got it from a tweet

Since in Canon the Rule of Two comes from the concept of the Dyad

and in Legends Bane was inspired by Revan

Revan should be part of a Dyad

Or well Revan could be part of a dyad.

 

I don’t know if they’ll keep the D&D rules, but I do hope the keep the class system. Though I think Scout and Sentinel need a second look.

Soldier is obviously the warrior class. The scoundrel is more your thief/rogue. The Jedi Guardian is again a warrior or perhaps paladin. The Consular is more the mage.

The Scout gets bonuses to defense and saving throws, but doesn’t really excel at anything. The soldier has high HP and learns feats fastest, with the ability to master weapons. The Scoundrel can get big bonus damage when attacking immobilized opponents or from behind. Scout cannot master weapons and gets no opportunity for bonus damage and really only shines perhaps when opportunities to repair or use computers comes into play.

When moving onto a Jedi class, Jedi Master Dorak tells you that Sentinels focus on skills, though they actually accumulate skills slower than scouts.

If you play a Soldier and use recommended stats, you’ll prioritize Constitution and Strength, making for effective melee. If you go recommended Scoundrel, you’ll focus more on dexterity and charisma (charisma will carry over into effective Force power usage). If you go recommended Scout, you’ll get bonuses to Dexterity and Intelligence. Intelligence lends itself to skill points earned per level and a bonus to sniper shot, that’s about it. It doesn’t translate well to Sentinel at all as intelligence becomes useless as you’ll accumulate fewer skill points per level as a sentinel than as a scout, and you won’t be using sniper shot so much as the number of lightsaber wielding opponents increases.


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Makes sense to me. Given they have a close force bond. They COULD dive more into the lore around the Dyad.

 

I hope Malak gets more of a backstory. People love Revan, Kreia, and Nihlus. Malak is the guy that follows Revan into war and then turns because of him, and ultimately betrays and usurps his master. The game constantly beats it into the player’s head that Revan is the best and Malak is just kind of there.

I would like to see Malak developed more into a great villain himself. He’s kind of a tragic figure, just tagging along with his buddy all the way to the Dark Side, possibly never making those decisions on his own. More Revan-Malak interaction and flashbacks would be appreciated


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Did you read the KOTOR comics? Malak gets a lot of backstory in there. But yes in KOTOR Malak is said to be a loser.

 

I have not read the comics.

I’m replaying the game on mobile. I probably haven’t played the game within a decade, but I really am just taken aback by how much they constantly praise Revan and treat Malak as just Revan’s lackey. It’s not conducive to building a formidable villain. I didn’t remember how little his name really comes up, except towards the end.

I know the structure of the game and story make it so there can’t be much interaction between the heroes and Malak throughout the game, but I think he really needed a big “when I left you, I was but the learner” moment.

Over the course of the game, he slowly learns about your companions. I feel like they could make it where he kills one of your companions based on choices you make throughout the game.

E.G. he learns that Carth is Saul’s former pupil. Carth’s son is also in training to be a Sith. Perhaps if you have a poor relationship with Carth, then at a certain point Malak uses Carth’s son to make him let his guard down and kill him, while you’re helpless to stop it.

I feel like he needed a big moment like that. Or establish that Juhani’s girlfriend joined Malak and Juhani gets seduced to the Dark Side over the anger she’s feeling and struggles with it throughout the game. When Malak shows up, she charges him like Drax trying to attack Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy and gets murdered.

I feel like given how little time he gets on screen, he needed more of a “oh crap!” moment like that

Something that would make both the player and the player’s character want to see Malak get what’s coming to him, and perhaps tempt the player towards making some Dark Side actions late game to see that happen


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