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We've been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet! The Endar Spire is under attack! Hurry up - we don't have much time!
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Jul 15, 2023 22:31
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KOTOR was my first exposure to DnD style stat building RPG systems so i can't even imagine how badly made my Light Side Solider/Guardian was back in the day 
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Jul 15, 2023 22:42
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Arc Hammer posted:We've been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet! The Endar Spire is under attack! Hurry up - we don't have much time! "We take different shifts. That's probably why you haven't seen me before." That top tier BioWare writing!
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Jul 16, 2023 02:37
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That was one of the games I got for my first PC, which IIRC had a 128 MB graphics card, and something about the sunset effect on Dantooine turned it into a slideshow. I would have to pick out a destination, hold down W, read a book or something and hope I had arrived five minutes later.
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Jul 16, 2023 02:51
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Chairman Capone posted:Happy 20th anniversary to Knights of the Old Republic. Feels like it was just the 20th anniversary to Heir to the Empire!
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Jul 16, 2023 02:54
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Rochallor posted:That was one of the games I got for my first PC, which IIRC had a 128 MB graphics card, and something about the sunset effect on Dantooine turned it into a slideshow. I would have to pick out a destination, hold down W, read a book or something and hope I had arrived five minutes later. Geez and I thought my then-PC's integrated graphics lacking Hardware Transform and Lighting functionality (thus making all the reflective cube maps in the game render as transparent or a glossy white) was annoying
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Jul 16, 2023 14:36
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Arc Hammer posted:We've been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet! The Endar Spire is under attack! Hurry up - we don't have much time! On the flip side of that mood-wise, just standing around in Manaan and vibing to the soundtrack is one of my all-time favorite chill moments in gaming even today. Was delighted to repeat the experience when the planet popped up again in the Old Republic MMO with the developers wisely re-using the same theme, though you never got to really linger on the planet there.
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Jul 17, 2023 02:46
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MadDogMike posted:On the flip side of that mood-wise, just standing around in Manaan and vibing to the soundtrack is one of my all-time favorite chill moments in gaming even today. Was delighted to repeat the experience when the planet popped up again in the Old Republic MMO with the developers wisely re-using the same theme, though you never got to really linger on the planet there. I did get an odd serotonin hit when you go to the wreck of the Endar Spire as part of the Republic side in SWTOR.
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Jul 17, 2023 03:05
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MadDogMike posted:On the flip side of that mood-wise, just standing around in Manaan and vibing to the soundtrack is one of my all-time favorite chill moments in gaming even today. Was delighted to repeat the experience when the planet popped up again in the Old Republic MMO with the developers wisely re-using the same theme, though you never got to really linger on the planet there. Just the other day I watched this video and the musical divide between Kotor 1 and Kotor 2 is a frigging chasm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8sw97Quv4 Kotor 1: Peaceful, serene and occasionally intimidating with a ton of Jeremy Soule Brass. Kotor 2: There is a wound that won't heal at the center of the galaxy reaching into everything like rust. I love Soule's music a lot especially his Skyrim and Dawn of War music but Mark Griskey is something else when it comes to Star Wars music that feels Star Wars without feeling like it's aping Williams. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Jul 17, 2023 |
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Jul 17, 2023 03:41
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Dawgstar posted:"We take different shifts. That's probably why you haven't seen me before." I could believe considering how you're basically just waking up in the new personality they constructed for you and they weren't expecting to be attacked that was the best he could come up with on short notice and hoped you'd just accept it and move on without too many questions
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Jul 17, 2023 10:49
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This does make me wonder just wtf their plan was for Revan once they woke up from the coma. Why'd they have them on a battleship going to Taris rather than just keeping them in whatever secure place they presumably did the mindbender on them at?
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Jul 17, 2023 12:02
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Another question: why the hell were they going to Taris in the first place? What was one cruiser going to do against an entire planet under blockade?
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Jul 17, 2023 12:57
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Gnome de plume posted:I could believe considering how you're basically just waking up in the new personality they constructed for you and they weren't expecting to be attacked that was the best he could come up with on short notice and hoped you'd just accept it and move on without too many questions It's more funny that it's just written clunkily like a lot of BioWare stuff. I, the player, am not thinking 'why haven't I seen you before' because I haven't seen anything in the game before. Slashrat posted:This does make me wonder just wtf their plan was for Revan once they woke up from the coma. Why'd they have them on a battleship going to Taris rather than just keeping them in whatever secure place they presumably did the mindbender on them at? They were hoping to be able to access Revan's memories to get a leg up against the Sith and were hoping to use Bastila's bond with him - which they got when Bastila defeated and then saved Revan before his memory wipe - to draw it out and Bastila was too valuable to the war effort to just have her sit around. Arc Hammer posted:Another question: why the hell were they going to Taris in the first place? What was one cruiser going to do against an entire planet under blockade? It was, according to Wookiepedia, ambushed and forced out of hyperspace so it might be imagined it was headed to link up with a Republic fleet so Bastila could do her Battle Meditation thing and the fleet could break the blockade around Taris. Dawgstar fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Jul 17, 2023 |
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Jul 17, 2023 14:51
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io9 has an interview with Casey Hudson on KOTOR's development, including some pieces of concept art by John Gallagher that haven't been shared before: https://gizmodo.com/star-wars-knights-old-republic-bioware-interview-20th-1850633925 A few interesting tidbits at the end about things that were changed during development, including Lucasfilm forcing them to cut back more development of the Tuskens. I'm guessing due to the Anakin massacre scene in Attack of the Clones?
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Jul 17, 2023 16:58
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Chairman Capone posted:io9 has an interview with Casey Hudson on KOTOR's development, including some pieces of concept art by John Gallagher that haven't been shared before: yeah. i did actually like mando and boba fetts development of tuskans even if fett was weakned from it a bit(bigger issues)
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Jul 17, 2023 17:54
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Chairman Capone posted:io9 has an interview with Casey Hudson on KOTOR's development, including some pieces of concept art by John Gallagher that haven't been shared before: That's really surprising, because AotC goes out of its way to present the Tuskens as a culture for the first time, largely I think to make Anakin's massacre of them more horrifying. It's possible to read them in ANH and TPM as just a bunch of raiders who live out in the desert and dress like that because it's hot, but in AOTC you explicitly see them living in family groups and wearing gendered clothing and stuff. I think you'd want to do more to show them as a culture. I really liked that the final reward you get for the culmination of the big Tusken quest, IIRC, is just the story of their history. No gem, no XP, just being told their foundational myth. Maybe that quest line got borked due to the Lucasfilm requirements, but it felt like a brave choice. Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah. i did actually like mando and boba fetts development of tuskans even if fett was weakned from it a bit(bigger issues) Totally agreed, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen sci-fi groups communicating with sign language. I don't think Mando or Fett were the best places to tell that story, but every little bit we get of the Tuskens is worthwhile. Also, I know it doesn't really matter since they're not real, but it's kinda hosed up that the only two names we have for the people, Tusken Raiders and sand people, are obviously derogatory names given to them by outsiders.
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Jul 17, 2023 18:26
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Yeah, agreed both that the Tusken part of Boba Fett was really good, and also like the development they got in the Mando S2 premiere. Speaking of, that episode felt like an adaptation of one of the Tatooine sidequests from KOTOR. And I also don't know why Lucasfilm would be against KOTOR humanizing the Tuskens in relation to the AOTC scene but that's the only thing I could think of that made sense, especially during what would have been the development timeframe of the game. (Speaking of, I remember when Manaan concept art came out in 2001 or 2002, people thinking it was the same water planet that was going to be in AOTC.) On the subject of Tuskens in games and AOTC, it was kind of funny that Jedi Academy came out the year after AOTC and had a mission where your Jedi character could just run around slaughtering Tuskens who were depicted as mindless savages. A bit of a walk-back from the movie.... Rochallor posted:Also, I know it doesn't really matter since they're not real, but it's kinda hosed up that the only two names we have for the people, Tusken Raiders and sand people, are obviously derogatory names given to them by outsiders. Aren't their name for themselves the Ghorfa? I forgot if that was in KOTOR or not in the tale about their history.
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Jul 17, 2023 18:50
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Lucasfilm nixing deeper exploration of Tusken culture in KotOR is almost certainly just to avoid Bioware stepping on the toes of the script writers for the movie, and any excuse they gave would just be to avoid leaking that the Tusken Raiders would show up in the movie. Pre-production on KotOR started in 2000, and filming on AotC began later that year, so Lucasfilm would have known with certainty early in pre-production that the movie would be using the Tusken Raiders.
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Jul 17, 2023 19:45
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Speaking of KOTOR, the E3 2001 demo was recently uploaded to youtube. There's quite a few differences from the finished game, but a lot of that can probably be chalked up to all the scenario-specific stuff being placeholder. It is interesting that they were suggesting there could be time-sensitive game elements though, like missing a transport to another planet because you spent too long doing sidequests. There was also a bit of information floating around at the time that never made it into the game - such as your character having a sibling who was a powerful Jedi, or the game's website saying you could visit 10 different planets. 8 made it into the game (if you count the Yavin station DLC) and Sleheyron was cut, so I wonder what the 10th planet was going to be? Maybe they were counting the Star Forge as a separate planet?
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Jul 17, 2023 22:42
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Dawgstar posted:"We take different shifts. That's probably why you haven't seen me before." Rochallor posted:That was one of the games I got for my first PC, which IIRC had a 128 MB graphics card, and something about the sunset effect on Dantooine turned it into a slideshow. I would have to pick out a destination, hold down W, read a book or something and hope I had arrived five minutes later.  Rochallor posted:I really liked that the final reward you get for the culmination of the big Tusken quest, IIRC, is just the story of their history. No gem, no XP, just being told their foundational myth. Maybe that quest line got borked due to the Lucasfilm requirements, but it felt like a brave choice.
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Jul 18, 2023 04:12
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Best part is that you can thank the Tuskens for telling you the story of their people by having HK-47 translate your apology for killing their tribesmen and stealing their clothes. HK thinks this is a wonderful idea which tells you something.
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Jul 18, 2023 04:24
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Arquinsiel posted:Back in the day it wasn't quite so played out. I know people love to say they totally saw the twist coming in the first scene when they played it and to those people I wish them the best of luck in finding something surprising someday, because clearly they've seen all the tricks and must be terminally bored by now. Oh, it got me too. I've never been able to do evil playthroughs of games, mostly because like in BioWare they're cartoonishly evil, but just once I had to side with Dark Side Bastila when she came to recruit me and offed Jolee and Juhani and it was pretty fun and I did it because I didn't see it coming.
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Jul 18, 2023 07:21
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I do wish that the game locked you out of a hero ending if you played dark side. Taking every evil option in the game and then not only rejecting Bastila's offer, but bringing her back to the good side by acting like you've been some paragon of virtue the whole time is pretty clunky. At the very least, having some options gated by morality in the same way there's dialogue options for different skills could have added some depth to the system. Jedi Knight actually had a pretty good implementation. If you played Dark Side up to the point where the story diverges, the game made you watch as it stripped away any Light powers you'd accumulated in the game one by one, and then played the cutscene where Kyle kills Jan.
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Jul 18, 2023 20:20
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A lot of that sort of thing would presumably have been included in the stalled remake. People talked about the party influence system being revolutionary back then even if it was just an incremental improvement on the Baldur's Gate era alignment party morale system.
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Jul 18, 2023 20:34
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If the remake ever actually does come out, one thing I hope they do change is the combat system. It wasn't bad once I got used to it, but I don't think it's aged well. I'm also curious if it will/would have included a voice for Revan, which is the other thing that kind of feels out of time now.
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Jul 18, 2023 20:59
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Rino Romano is the voice of Revan in Kotor 1
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Jul 18, 2023 21:02
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Arc Hammer posted:Rino Romano is the voice of Revan in Kotor 1 I...also don't remember Revan having a voice. What?
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Jul 18, 2023 21:04
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thrawn527 posted:I...also don't remember Revan having a voice. What? He has combat barks and action barks whenever you slice computers or unlock doors.
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Jul 18, 2023 21:12
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They also brought Revan back in SWTOR, where he was voiced by Jeff Benett or Spencer Garrett depending on which quest you're on.
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Jul 18, 2023 22:28
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Robot Style posted:They also brought Revan back in SWTOR, where he was voiced by Jeff Benett or Spencer Garrett depending on which quest you're on. They really kinda did the Exile dirty in SWTOR.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:40
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I think that happened in the Revan novel.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:46
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Exile does show up in the MMO as a Revan cheerleader and little more.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:51
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Arc Hammer posted:He has combat barks and action barks whenever you slice computers or unlock doors. Interesting. Curious, are those sounds the same when you chose a female character? thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Jul 19, 2023 |
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Jul 19, 2023 00:10
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Arc Hammer posted:Exile does show up in the MMO as a Revan cheerleader and little more. Yeah, she's basically holding on as a Force Ghost so she can say vaguely prophetic things until you free Revan and then goes to Force Heaven.
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Jul 19, 2023 00:11
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She does also make a reappearance (probably her most substantial one too) later on when you kill Tenebrae for realzies no-take-backs but yeah, Drew Karpyshyn should be in the Hague
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Jul 19, 2023 00:24
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thrawn527 posted:Interesting. Curious, are those sounds the same when you chose a female character? I think they change slightly. Charity James does the female combat barks. The one that always sticks out to me for Rino's voice is his Critical Hit bark "That aught to hurt, I bet!" but it has been years since I did a female revan run so I'm hazy on what her barks sound like.
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Jul 19, 2023 00:29
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VaultAggie posted:gently caress yes E-wing. Rest of the trailer looks cool but agree that we’re going to need a Lego E-Wing. Coming back to this, because you're in luck, an E-wing set tied into the Ahsoka show was just announced. Just fyi, might be very minor spoilers for a few character names with the minifigs included: https://www.ign.com/articles/comic-con-2023-lego-reveals-new-star-wars-ahsoka-sets
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Jul 19, 2023 17:03
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There's a podcast called It's All Stover going over the works of Matthew Stover (unsurprisingly), and since I enjoyed their episodes on Shatterpoint and the ROTS novelization I decided to pick up Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, since I had never read it. Quite good so far, but there's two things that immediately jumped out at me: 1) it's almost a sequel to Shatterpoint, which I was not expecting, and 2) the following passage, concerning the bad guy studying Luke's mannerisms in preparation for taking over his body:quote:Yes, there were all those numberless holothrillers—and studying them had been a useful preparation, especially in creating the theatrical Shadowspawn persona and devising the stage dressings of the Shadow Throne—but the computer-generated Farmboy Hero depicted by these holothrillers would convince none but the ignorantly credulous fans who devoured such preposterously contrived tripe. Did... did Stover predict digital Mark Hamill ten years in the past?
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Jul 19, 2023 17:46
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Back when Shadows of Mindor came out I thought it was good, but my least favorite of Stover's Star Wars books (which still puts it ahead of almost any other Star Wars book). But I wonder if reading it now I might have a better reception to it, as I feel like a lot of the plot centers around notions of fandom and casting and sequels/continuity in a way that has more resonance now, after the Disney purchase. The passage you quoted is a perfect example of that. Please let us know when you finish the book as I have some thoughts on the ending and the way which I think it gets misinterpreted by a lot of fans. On the general topic, I rewatched the Star Trek TNG episode with Spock in it ("Unification") a few weeks ago and I forgot that a big aspect of it was the Romulans making a holographic copy of Spock. Besides the more modern notions of deepfakes, it also made me think of it as a prescient take on the CGI-ing of legacy characters, especially since Trek has generally gone with recasting instead of Rogue One/Mandalorian-style de-aging or digital copying. I also remember that during the KOTOR comic, when asked about KOTOR game characters appearing, John Jackson Miller cited "Unification" as a bad example of using legacy characters, which I really didn't get.
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Jul 19, 2023 18:57
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Chairman Capone posted:Back when Shadows of Mindor came out I thought it was good, but my least favorite of Stover's Star Wars books (which still puts it ahead of almost any other Star Wars book). But I wonder if reading it now I might have a better reception to it, as I feel like a lot of the plot centers around notions of fandom and casting and sequels/continuity in a way that has more resonance now, after the Disney purchase. The passage you quoted is a perfect example of that. I've still got a ways to go, but Stover's Luke seems to be very much in conversation with his portrayal in TLJ: extremely skeptical of his role as Hero of the Galaxy, with a villain who is trading on that perception. I'm excited to see how it all ends up.
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Jul 19, 2023 19:24
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