Posts tagged kotor

When my brain likes to randomly remind me that Carth never saw Revan again and spent his life waiting for her

ellewood117 said: Oh god, Dustil and his whiny bitch ass self. What are your thoughts on that whole dynamic between Carth and Dustil when they first meet again and everything you have to go through? I love your Mass Effect/KOTOR rants/explanations. :)

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I’ll have to admit that the first time I played the game and ran across Dustil, my reaction was “WTF is wrong with this kid? Can’t I just force persuade him to wise the hell up?” … but after really thinking about it, I can’t really fault Dustil.  If he had been a grown man, then he honestly should’ve known better; but the fact is, he was just a kid when everything went to hell on Telos.  

A traumatic incident, followed by a healthy serving of Sith brainwashing/indoctrination, followed by a whole lot of misunderstandings.  And unfortunately, Dustil is definitely Carth’s son; he’s clearly just as passionate as Carth is, to a fault.  His impassioned personality at a younger age makes him snap easily at people and make rash decisions.  He’s basically like if Carth let his emotions go and never restrained them.  Carth is also guilty of being quick to anger, but because he has experience and wisdom for his older age, he can keep himself in check…  or at least better than his son at any rate, lol.  

The only thing I didn’t understand is why he didn’t try to find his father… Carth didn’t know if Dustil survived, but Dustil knew Carth had.  Was he that upset at his father constantly leaving to fight battles that he wouldn’t even try to reconnect with him?  Apparently so, I guess.  Carth at least actively looked and made inquiries about his son, so it’s not like he didn’t try to find him. 

The positive thing about the run-in with Dustil is that he’s not so far gone that he doesn’t give Revan and Co. a chance to show him proof of the Sith’s evil, and that when they do come back with that proof, that he’s somewhat mature enough to accept it and not keep living in denial.  

My only complaint with the whole Dustil subplot is that it ends so abruptly.  He does a complete 180 way too quickly once he’s presented with the incriminating datapad.  I would’ve liked to have seen a longer scene with a better illustrated turn from the dark side…  for all his angry tirades at the beginning of the quest, he forgives and relents far too quickly to be satisfying to me.  Maybe a time-elapse in there…  like Carth says “we have so much to talk about,” then a fade to black and then when the scene comes back it’s indicated that they’ve at least had a bit of time to talk things out a bit more.  That’s not a great solution, but I think it would’ve helped.  The other thing is he mentions he’ll stay on Korriban a bit more, potentially to help with any information gathering that he can… but for the life of me I can’t remember that ever coming up again later (no holocall from Dustil or whatever) confirming he really came through on that.  

So yeah, you know? I dunno.  My initial reaction to him was some real irritation, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn’t really blame him.  Poor kid was tossed a bad hand, and was too young to really know how to deal with it properly.  Not to mention Carth might’ve been guilty of not being the best communicator either, since the kid clearly didn’t understand why his father kept leaving them.  Not ragging on Carth, but it was probably just something he didn’t realize at the time.

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… but if there’s one thing I’m glad wasn’t in the final games, it was the whole dead fallen Dustil subplot in KOTOR 2 (the infamous unnamed dead jedi in the tomb in the released game).  Now that would’ve been a huge fucking downer.

Every now and then I notice a post with someone bitching about people bitching about Revan being a canon white male, and it always bugs me how they don’t really understand the real problem behind it. So for anyone who may be in that “stop bitching about Revan being a white dude” club, this explanation is for you.

At the heart of the matter, most people aren’t angry at Bioware making a canon Revan white and male.  Consider Mass Effect and Dragon Age as comparisons.  Most of the promotional material for both consists of white male portrayals for their leads, and yet not nearly as many fans are mad.  Why?  It’s because of the gamer’s choice in the games.

In both Mass Effect and Dragon Age, the player is allowed their own customization of the hero, and, as it should be, that customization is held and maintained throughout the games.  If desired, the same FemShep moves across all Mass Effect titles. In Dragon Age 2, there are still mentions of the customized Warden that the player chose.  Everything always remains consistent to the choices the individual player made.

Unfortunately, this is not so with the KOTOR series, as of SWTOR.  A player could’ve made a black, female Revan in KOTOR 1 who romanced Carth and then is mentioned by a lovesick Carth in KOTOR 2.  However, Bioware decided to enforce their canon Revan shortly afterwards.  Keep in mind they hadn’t stated a canon for Revan until some time after the first one was released… but as a lead-up to SWTOR, they chose to make a novel which heavily enforced their canon of Revan (white, male, Bastila romance eventually leading to a son, etc) and then went so far as to make that Revan present in SWTOR, one that you both see and can fight.

It’s not that people are mad that Bioware stated all these things about Revan’s canon.  Consider Commander Shepard.  Bioware loves to show him as male, white, and often romancing Liara.  BUT, this view never encroaches on the player’s own Mass Effect gaming experience.  Even in the recent Paragon Lost anime, Shepard is never referred to as male or female.  The player is still free to play as they choose, and not told otherwise.  

SWTOR did encroach on this, however.  Instead of keeping Revan faceless or keeping Revan in the shadows story-wise, they effectively negated anyone’s playing experience who played their Revan differently, be their Revan female, non-white, or romancing a different NPC.  Not only that, but thanks to SWTOR’s story, they also forced Revan’s darkside fall and other various personality choices that a player might’ve done differently.

They eliminated the player’s choices up to that point and replaced it with their own.  That player could no longer play their Revan in the KOTOR series from that point onward. 

This is a cardinal sin in a video game, particularly a Bioware one.

Bioware was telling those gamers that their view, a view that went through multiple games and hundreds of hours of gameplay, had no value.  From that point on, the player’s Revan was dead.  Bioware forced their hand, by wiping everything the player had created.  You often find that the people least affected by this are people that had Revans that mostly lined up with Bioware’s canon, and thus are often the most unsympathetic to anyone else’s view, which is unfortunate because that means they don’t understand why Bioware made such a huge mistake.

Bioware’s games were built on a foundation of having players feel that their own choices and customizations mattered, and more importantly, that they were retained over the various games within a franchise. 

…And the fact that it’s not the case anymore is why people are mad.