A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 110: Character Creation and Repairing the Ebon Hawk (KOTOR II 01)

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

As we announced last week, today we're diving headfirst into Knights of the Old Republic II, Obsidian's follow-up to the BioWare game that dug into the ancient history of our favorite galaxy far, far away. (Though before we dig into that, we talk more about that announcement from last week to try to share some of our thoughts and process about getting where we got.) Because KOTOR II is a pretty big meal, we took our time today to set the table. We dig into our characters, the state of the galaxy after KOTOR II, the mods we used, and the various technical fixes we had to adjust for. If you're playing along with us on a device that can run mods, well here's that mod list (along with additional instructions) for you. (That last sentence had a link in it. If your podcatcher doesn't see one, try going to our site directly.) Finally, another little announcement. We know that many folks don't have time to play through all of KOTOR II along with us. To help those of y'all who nevertheless want to get a sense of the game, Austin will be uploading an episode-by-episode Let's Play to the official AMCA YouTube Channel. Here's the first episode!  (That was also a link.) Next Time: Peragus Support the show by going to Patreon.com/civilized! Show Notes Our KOTOR II Mod List The First Episode of the KOTOR II LP Episode 01 of ReBoot Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Chia Contreras (@a_cado_appears) Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)  

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, the Star Wars podcast, aka Watch This Space. I'm Rob Zaddy, joined by Ali Akampura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners by patreon.com slash civilized, so head over there if you'd like to support the show, and get access to all our Q&A episodes and other. special editions. This week, boys, this ever happened to you?

Months of planning, you're excited for the second season, your favorite Star Wars show. You're this close. You're like, you're like kid on Christmas morning, and then you wake up. You're in a med bay.

Oh, starship. Someone has crammed you in the shapewear that gives you an ass that just won't quit. So true. You've woke it up in Cotor 2, baby. yeah the outfit you're in in this both the shapewear and the jays that you're wearing you know they're pretty it's a look it's a look i mean what are the what are the male um like characters wearing because the dudes in the med tech med tank

were like in sleeves and pants no no no no not your dude so your guy your guy is wearing like original super technical under armor uh shorts and uh like um t like like like t-shirt compression compression wear yeah you're wearing compression wear that's not normal compression wear this is also shape wear though it is doing some lifting it is the girls are in skims the girls are absolutely in skims it's giving it's it's it's it's it's giving tight it's giving uh uh a fit it is giving honestly everything it needs to give I'm I'm a hundred percent for it Krea told me to put clothes on I was like I don't think I need to do that then I met Atten and he was a freak and I was like maybe I should put some clothes on this man will never leave me

alone if I don't oh that's not it got me flashing back to that time we were thinking about sheave wearing a pair of sweats that said juicy across the across the butt and it's like this is, somebody needs a mod this in the Cotor basically. I think this is and I'll be honest when I finally, like later on I got my first suit of real clothes. Yeah. Bring back the shapewear.

Honestly. There's like, okay, you keep playing because by the end of Piraugas which will explain what that is in a second you will all be getting off some looks. They start dropping shit on this space station that you would not get until hour 30 of Cotor 1

in terms of it being like fancy space night sexy prerogas minor uniform plus two that's right that's right yes I'm so glad that they figured out between Cotor 1 and Cotor 2 that we like to be fitted like we care fashion

is important the numbers don't matter so they kind of actually do matter or they kind of matter but I cannot wait to talk about what is different between these games we probably won't get too deep into that in this episode because it's sort of an, it's episode one of our coverage, but it's kind of episode zero, you know, and we should probably do a proper setup and the catch up and other things.

But by the time I was done playing Piraugas, you know, you're going to leave that place, you're going to get in a ship, you're going to fly away, and you do the kind of like classic tour you've left the place. All right, let's all talk about stuff for five minutes, catch up. And at the end of that, one character says, wait, don't you notice that this other character feels this particular way? And I was like, oh my God, no one in KOTR-1 has ever said anything about the way a character feels. And so I'm very excited to get into those things, even if first we have to get through Paragas.

So what are we doing here today? Let's talk about it. What do we want to talk about first? Where are we at? Well, we could open with the first AMCA struggle session. We could talk about our logic with regard to mods. And why are we, why we opted to not maybe do as faithful, or really, what is faithful? What is faith?

Oh, wow. You know what? Keep that question in mind as we play Knights of the Old Republic 2. No matter what answer you say, Craya will chide you for what, what you said faithful was. The one they had, you know, last thing we're going to get to is like, who are we? What's the vibe we're, what vibe do we think we're going to be putting down here? In terms of what characters and such, you mean? in terms of if this is your first AMCA episode

you joined at a wild time. Welcome. There was drama this week. What are you talking about? So where do we want to begin? Where do we want to start? I suppose we should probably get the struggle session out of the way. Uh-huh.

That's how it's done normally. You just kind of knock those out, you know? You just need, sometimes you just need a quick homey check-in between the homies and, and then you move on to the video game that we're playing. True. We already talked a little bit about this stuff in the last episode. I think, you know, I don't think we have to re-go through big picture decision-making, though I think that they're definitely, Natalie, you've been talking about, like, hitting people. I think we've all seen this. people like having misconceptions about what our decisions are or like um is there a sense of like

arbitrariness uh around the rules of bDS etc um uh and i will say like we are doing our best or you know the decisions we're making are one a compromise between people who want to keep making a show together uh who don't all have the same feelings about particular tactics but as you said in the last episode, Rob, agree on outcome, agree on goal. And so nothing we're doing is necessarily what we'd all be doing in a vacuum. We're all coming at this with different perspectives and different decisions and stuff and finding the one that works for us. The second thing I would say is that, you know, I would say thankfully, one, this is one of the things that I think, unless you've read about BDS, you might not know some of the smaller details. You know, BDS is not

a boycott that is about moral absolutism. It's about trying to get people to make strategic collective action with targets that are flexible and are tied to particular outcomes or particular, you know, you're not, the reason they're not boycotting all of Disney is because it's impossible to boycott all of Disney. They know that it is very hard for people to commit to those sorts of boycotts. And so as a strategic, strategic effort, they say, let's pick Disney Plus. They didn't say pick ABC. They didn't say, let's pick ESPN, right?

They said, pick Disney Plus, and they don't expect people who support it to do that. And I actually find it deeply unhelpful when people, even from the left, are like, oh, well, Disney Plus is on the boycott list. So that means you shouldn't be watching NBA games on ESPN. I think if you want to live your life that way, that actually makes sense. But BDS is explicitly limited in its targets because it knows that it's less successful if it hits a wide target, or if it goes too wide and it's targeting. Take, for instance, the response to us not doing and or.

I think that if you're not someone who's committed to BDS, you might see this and go, this was a bad target. This target was way too wide. For me, and I'm not going to speak for Rob or anybody else in the podcast or anybody else who follows BDS, but like my job is to try to have that solidarity and then to like send the people in BDS messages that say things like, hey, I'm standing in solidarity with this movement. Here's what that response looked like. Here's where I think we could have been more effective on this one, et cetera. And so I don't, I think that there's probably an

outside looking in position that assumes a sort of radical, like, mindless zealotry when in fact sometimes solidarity looks like solidarity and then trying to like make sure that the systems work, which is all you could ever ask for. Yeah, there's a couple things. I think some of that reaction um from folks i think you can feel a little bit like uh people do get defensive when like i think this is one of the reasons like ramp up and get like toxic super quickly is immediately there is a freighted degree of like so are you saying i'm not a good person right and one like to get through get through life you're going to have to understand that sometimes like there will be people who will be like this person's doing a thing that they do not think is harmful

I think is, I do not think they're a good person. That judgment doesn't have to, like, that's just going to be life. Yeah. But some of that defensiveness goes in this direction of, well, if they're doing this, they shouldn't be doing any fucking Star Wars because that's all Disney. And yes, to your point, Austin, like, no, that's not what the boycott is. Like, that's a very different principle than sort of the, well, take it, take the boycott to its logical extension. And it's like, no, but that's not what the BDS movement is doing by drawing this line.

In the same way that the anti-apartheid, you know, boycott movements in South Africa or in the Civil Rights Movement in the South. You know, the Civil Rights Movement in the South was not, we should all black people should leave the South. It was, we should boycott this bus system. We should boycott white-owned businesses that are explicitly enacting acts of segregation. not we are going to leave Mississippi because we're boycotting the whole state of Mississippi. One, good fucking luck, right? Or we're not going to spend any money in a city that has segregation in it

to anybody because we don't want tax revenue going to the local city, for instance, or the local state or the county. Like that isn't how these systems tend to work. You target them. Sometimes you take a wider target. Sometimes you take a more narrow one. I think those are things to bring up for me with BDS leadership, not something that any individual, it just doesn't work in any case. I also think it's difficult because they've been very clear on, for instance, the variability and tier system of their Microsoft boycott.

They have really useful graphics out there that are things like, hey, here are some options for how to boycott Microsoft. You could start with Game Pass. then you could up that to key franchises like Call of Duty and World Warcraft, or you could go to all things that Microsoft publishes, for instance. Which I think Natalie is another point of contention that you've run into a lot is seeing a lot of people saying, Obsidian made Cotor, therefore it's also covered by the Xbox boycott. Which is not the case.

It's not the case, yeah. We can be clear, I think, maybe on the first recording, but. Yeah, absolutely. And I think at the end of the day, one of the toughest things to see from the audience was just a lot of, I think, bad faith judgments or assuming really kind of, I mean, I think we've been doing this podcast for four years now. We've been very on, you know, we've, we've had our hearts in our sleeve. We've put our politics out there. We're very upfront about, you know, who we are, what our kind of perspective is on Cotor. I mean, true.

You know what? You're not wrong. We did do that. We did do that. We did do that. on Star Wars, and it was, I think, one of the hardest things over this past week is to just come away from reading some of the responses and feeling so misunderstood as a podcast.

That was really tough. I am grateful to the Reddit mods who closed down one of the AMCA posts on I think it was the remap Reddit to prevent me from crashing out on there because it was... It is Meltdown May. It is Meltdown May. So it's high risk. We're in high risk.

It's... I'm... You give me a reason. Give me a reason. And boy, did I have a reason? And a reason that got me to make a Reddit account and to reply to a person. You did do it.

And look... I almost did. You didn't. You made the account, but you backed off before you. enter on the message. No, I couldn't reply because the mods locked the post. Oh my God, they took away your keys.

They did. I was, I was, I was serving you. I know, I know. It was, it was real meltdown May hours. But I think, you know, I want to point out that I think it's a, it's a funny joke and a funny bit that we do that like we have gotten distracted from. our, you know, core premise maybe, like, oh, you know, we, the pivot, the pivot bit. Yeah. But the actual- Going back to Andor, in fact, right?

Because Andor was a pivot. Yeah, Andor was a pivot. And everyone liked that pivot. Everyone seemed to have been a fan of that pivot. It was disappointing to see other pivots characterized as like, as, as, not thought out or not considering like the health of the show. When the other pivots, I want to name them because I think it's important to push past the bit for a second and say that, you know, one of them was us standing in solidarity with SAG. So there is precedent in terms of this podcast, you know, standing in solidarity with movements that, you know, we.

support and want to, we obviously support unions, we supported the SAG union as they were striking for, you know, AI protections amongst lots and lots of other things. And then the other one was like me taking a medical leave of absence for a health scare. And then I guess we kind of pivoted a little bit earlier this year when Los Angeles was on fire. That did happen. yeah um so i just i it was really disappointing to feel like i don't know just to feel like the response wasn't taking into the consideration tough decisions that we've had to make in the past for the health of the show um i'm really grateful that you all stepped in when i couldn't record and made a great podcast out of it and i think that goes to show you

the way that us for people as co-hosts and, you know, running the show together, you know, just we support each other, you know, when push comes to shove and something comes up if it's, you know, a medical leave of absence. If it's something much bigger than that, like, you know, what happened with kind of coming to the realization that. that we were in violation of the BDS boycott. It's just, I think it speaks more to how we care about each other and the long-term health of the show to be able to make these hard decisions in the past. And, you know, undoubtedly we'll continue to have hard decisions in the future because the world is what it is at this point and life is what it is. And we go out of our way to make sure that that's,

of stuff happens when it's something big you know how many times in the last year have we been like ah shit someone's stuck in an airport someone's you know they didn't they just did a stream that went longer than they thought they were and they're tired uh or they got like a tummy ache um what if we just did an episode with three of us and like every time we that it's been feasible because it hasn't been a health scare or a surgery or fire or BDS or and or dropping we deciding that that was more important than whatever we were watching at the time in season one. We have made the effort to make sure all four of us can be here. We're going to keep making that effort. The show was at its best when all four of us are here. And sometimes that means giving Chia less time

to do the edit or me or Ali stepping into do the edit or us, you know, needing to squeeze it in on a day where one of us is already doing either long day of meetings or other podcasting or streaming or something else. But we do our best because we think that the show is worth doing our best for, you know? So I think that's well said, Natalie. Yeah, I was just going to say some of the, you know, I, the conversations we've had with each other have been really refreshing. And I encourage everyone to like really take the time to consider, you know, what does it mean to support a movement, you know, just because you support an organization. Do you support every decision that organization makes you know how do we how do we achieve things if you know we kind of disagree on the

means i do apologize to everybody who has been having that conversation with strangers on blue sky though bro like have that amongst your friends and family baby yeah i'm not gonna crash out here but i think if you started listening to our show last week i i don't know that you need that person you don't need to have a conversation with that person don't need to have a conversation with you they're not in they're not in you know what i mean like they are the internet fandom definition of a tourist and there's like there's you know that keeps happening is what I will say so uh yeah friends and family people you actually care about people who you trust not just strangers a hundred percent and like for what it's worth I get being bummed bro we were bummed we were

sad we were bummed like I get being disappointed a hundred percent like all we want to do is talk about the show we like to watch uh with each other and get to share that with you. So I'm not, you know, I want to be clear that I'm not, you know, I completely understand expressing that sentiment. I think it's, I think it's always worth taking a beat before you at your favorite creator online and, you know, just unload whatever it is that's in your brain. Take a beat. We are people on the other side of those blue sky handles or Patreon comments or, you know,

whatever it is. You know, we love doing this show and there's nothing we want to do more than continue to make this show for as long as we can and make it a really good one. And I think Cotor 2 has got the juice so far. I'm so, I think yes. I think yes. We'll talk about it. But as soon as I started seeing droids, like going on like a revenge arc, I was like, wait, what the fuck is going on here?

We'll get to that. but yeah does anyone else have any other feelings they want to get off i mean like for me my feelings about this one were pretty complicated because there's the element of like what exactly the position was and then like how we ended up arriving there and just like the time frame of the decision like there's there's layers of like is this how i want decisions about like a collaborative project to like come about uh probably not uh This was kind of an extreme outlier situation. Again, this was the, like, it's kind of crunch time.

We have to decide what we're going to do about this right now. But, yeah, like, it wasn't in terms of sort of a satisfying, like, negotiation around this. It probably wasn't the, like, most enjoyable conversation we've ever had as a group. It was, this was definitely, like, okay, plan B is out. Well, what about plan C? And now we're, now we're starting to go, like, down the list of, like, stuff that we can, we can sort of pull out here. Yeah. Um, yeah.

Um, yeah, the moment of realizing clone wars is only available on bootleg and that what, what we, what I'd seen previously is like, oh, yeah, it's on Walmart.com. No, it's just on walmart.com. Yeah. Uh, uh-huh. So yeah, it's all Blu-ray.com did not legit. Actually, not real. Uh, people keep sending us those and make, look, it's right there. And I'm like, hmm, is it?

Can you actually buy this? Yeah, and that's the area is like, it felt, actually the thing is what has felt super disingenuous was the notion we'd be like, you know, you could always just pirate this stuff. And it's like, yeah, I don't know that I want to be like, we're going to take a position here, but also like, we're just going to do the thing anyway and kind of just like sidestep like the people who made the product. that felt a little bit disingenuous as well so some of those solutions didn't quite like sit right like they kind of felt like sort of a half a loaf but yeah it's it's always a fraught thing because sometimes

these conversations are happening and it's like I have just like increasingly tried to just not look at where the conversations are happening because it does bad things for like my view of audience, my view, like, it just doesn't, it's, it's not a helpful thing, I think, to, like, lurk in those spaces. Even though you know the numbers don't, you know what I mean, like we know what our numbers are. We know that a loud audience, that a loud subset does not equal the whole of the audience, the bulk of people said, all right, cool, let's keep rocking,

you know, and we're probably disappointed like we were about not covering Andor, which I think all four of us are very disappointed about it, you know, no one here is like, yes, I don't get to watch the show I've been looking forward to for a year. I don't get to do the one thing I'm really fucking good at and discuss the show with my friends. Instead, you know, but most people will just kind of move on with their lives because they're busy doing other shit. But even knowing that doesn't make looking at the incoming barrage feel better, you know? Mm-hmm. No, it's, it's a thing where it's like, I am quick to, I am just like, one it's like just I think good to like try try to stay out of the spaces as much as possible

but also I'm also just not here to entertain like direct confrontation about this stuff very often it is increasingly like am I interested in having this conversation if you were coming in this heated about this thing where I'm pretty sure like reasonable people can disagree if I did not find you are being reasonable in those in those situations. I think the odds of conversation continuing are pretty low. That's often sort of my like indicator to, I don't know, just like hit the eject handle on some of these conversations. I mean, this is like, this is a tough one, uh, in part because like, I mean, for me personally, my relationship with BDS is, I don't think I'm unusual on this, like it's, it influences

decisions and it's caused me to abandon some products but it's not something where I'm like consistently reviewing BDS boycott lists to see like what is my next purchasing decision what is the next thing I'm to do. Like it's more presence of my like in my mind when

it's like you're standing there in the produce aisle and you see that like product of Israel thing on a like a pomegranate and you're like fuck that pomegranate. It's definitely like killed my soda stream is is stuff like that, but it's not a thing where every single thing on that list, I'm like,

oh, that is immediately a high priority item I'm going to, like, I'm going to embrace. And I do think, like, there's, I know there's people who think that, like, my purported values, do you place a matter of moral obligation to adhere to those stances and amplify them whenever possible. And they might be right. Like, I'll freely admit, like conversation like this is like, I'll sit there. I'm like, am I motivated by laziness, complacency, destructive individuals? I don't know. Like, I don't know. I just, I disagree. Like, I feel like I have, like in general, I'm doing what I can and what is practicable and useful. But I don't always know if that's sufficient or if it's like coming from the right place. I hope it is. Don't always know. I think I said while we were discussing all

this to begin with was like, I see my life as a series of errors and I do my best to err in the right direction as best as I can. That's not like a, that's like true. Like, that's how I think about life. I don't, I think every action I make is probably an inefficient, incorrect action, but I try to have a decent batting average and like the ball. It's like playing golf. Like, I'm not hitting hole in ones out here. I want to get towards the green. Um, uh, and with something like this, you know, I will say my relationship with BDS intensified in the last couple of years, given the ongoing genocide, given ongoing reading about the situation there. Not stuff that I didn't, you know, I think if you go back to when I was like 20, which was 20 years ago, I was

very much the classic, oh, they've been at each other's throats for thousands of years. This is an intractable conflict. All of those classic, you can't do anything about it talking points. And as I've been educated over 20 years, my position has changed on that and then has intensified in the last couple of years where it's felt increasingly important to be aware and to try to take some statement and try to take some action. And for me, you know, the direction I decide to air here because there's, you know, again, I could imagine a world where what I did was say, and we talked about this, every episode I start going, by the way, Disney Plus is on the BDS list. Keep that in mind. Try to find, like you said, Rob, you could try to find the show some other

way, winking, knowing that half of our audience or more is just watching it on Disney Plus, right? We get people telling us that all the time. You know, or I could continue. And, you know, I could also be that person who's like, I'm just going to go pirate, pirate it and watch it somewhere else. I know a lot of people who are doing that. And a lot of people who are doing that and then like shutting the fuck up about it because of the detention economy. And I'm like, all right, shoutouts. Like, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with anybody doing what they fucking feel like. I'm going to do my best to live my life the best I can. But I will say that part of my responsibility with a platform is to not be the person who gives permission in the sense

that I'm not going to come out and say you're a bad person for not keeping BDS, but I'm not going to, by example, be the person who says, well, does anybody really care about BDS? Aren't we all just kind of like saying that and then watching our show and talking about it on our big platform while it's doing the big press splits? For me, that's a pretty, you know, Rob, you said one of an alternative. exists earlier. For me, there are alternatives, you know, and what we found when we were trying to figure out what our alternative was was our main alternative that we thought we could go do because there were blue rays available was not available. But then I had to, you know,

you know, at that point, it's like, okay, is there still an alternative? And the answer was yes, there is one. There's in fact many, as you've pointed out, we could go to the X-Wing's books. We're probably going to do that at some point. I'm excited to get to those. There's a ton of other Star Wars stuff. I think a lot of people want us to finish Clone Wars. I want to finish Clone Wars. I hope we get the opportunity to do that. As you said, in your statement, we're going to keep revisiting how we feel about all this stuff. I don't have any short-term plans to abandon my feelings about BDS. Again, I can't speak for other people on the show. I'm not looking for anybody to be like, me either, right the second. That's not what I'm trying to get, you know.

But I do think it is something that, like I said, it's about airing in the right direction for me. It's about trying my best to live up to the political beliefs that I take seriously. moment that I think is vital to do that. And it's difficult to do that when what you want to do is have a lot of, you know, I was already like, oh shit, you know, three months ago, oh shit, oblivion remaster is on its fucking way. All the league Jeff Grub, shoutouts, keep saying that this oblivion remaster is real and they're going to fucking shadow drop it.

And then like, you know, three weeks before that happens, Xbox is on the BDS list. And I'm like, ah, fuck. Okay. all right i'm gonna set this one out you know i have other shit to play let me tell you about them dragons dogma two mods they're out there it's happening right now you know um and so yeah i i think that there is a degree to which uh it probably doesn't come across just how frustrating it is for us and i think you know especially for rob someone who values you who values so much planning and consistency and stability this was not an easy choice and it was a difficult one but that

is, I think, in line with our collective feelings about what it means to make something together, which is sometimes someone makes a big ask and you do your best to, you know, accommodate for it with the knowledge that, you know, next time I'm going to try to be on it a little bit more so that we don't, for instance, rush through rebels in a way that was very difficult. Though, Natalie, you've said, you think maybe for the best that we got through rebels at the speed we did. For sure. Yeah.

Well, that, Natalie was cracking under, like, the Rebels was, Rebels was not hitting quite right in, in various places. But, yeah, I mean, look, that was one of the other things that emerged in this conversation, too, is, like, like, how do you view your work in a situation like this? I think, like, Austin and I see, like, have different lines where review work as being, like, promotional. Yep. and this is a like this was really like literally like literally like we're having arguments around this decision about like so what's the value of criticism yeah truly like deep weird what is what are we doing with our lives what does it mean to to make the type of work we do type shit and like i mean like i was like people some people are read it were we're sort of ended up in a place where

where I'm at too, where it's like, I don't totally love that like, and or season two, a major piece of like anti-fascist art is out in the world and we're on the bench for it. And like, there's a question of like, what does more good in the world? I do not know. I have a pretty strong feeling. I don't believe we do good in the world by talking about. I don't. Like, I know that that seems pretty definitive.

I, this has been my journey over the last 20 years of being a critic and trying to be a loud leftist critic. I think that the work that we do, I shouldn't have cut you. off. I just just answered this question on Shell by genre that came up because we're talking about cyberpunk and what leftist or radical cyberpunk might look like and

what it might do in the world. I think that great criticism helps individuals work through their feelings about the world and about the work that they consume. And I think that it can be, it can do reproductive labor in the Marxian sense, which is to say it can

give you back something that lets you go about your day. It can, in the same way that watching a good TV show or having a good meal or getting a new bed, you know, or having a back rub from a loved one or a partner or a massage therapist, can help reproduce you into the functioning being. I think it can do that work. But after 20 years of doing this work, I have come to believe that not just criticism, but art in general, that is the limit of its practice. value. And in fact, it is the reward for changing the world into something where we have time for that. It is not the tool that will get us there. And I think that it's really good to think about it as someone who does it as a tool to get us there because it's very validating. And I spent my

life feeling like that for years and years and years. And my experience of trying to live that life has led me to criticism has a hard limit. Talking about the antifascist show is uh, lowercase you useful, but I don't think it's a big utility. I certainly don't think that the show, which reaches three million people, uh, is, and, and that's, it's position, you know, as a product that is in Disney Plus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, is, um, uh, somehow augmented in a meaningful way by the tens of thousands of people that we reach. Um, I guess it's probably worth saying, we don't reach millions of people. Maybe if we reach millions of people, I would have that calculus differently, I don't think we are the big leftist influencer you are looking

for, if that makes sense. And I think, Rob, we just have a different feeling on this at this point, right? Like, I don't think criticism elevates out of commerce. I once had a conversation with the time an editor-in-chief of a different games outlet when I was still at Waypoint. And he was getting increasingly annoyed that I was talking about the games industry, because he was like, it's an art form. It is not an industry. And I was like, my man, it is an industry. It is tied into all of the parts of industry that the tire industry is tied into. There are lobbyists. There are workplaces that are like factories increasingly. There are, you know, policies and laws being made in the sense of legal control and regulation

of an industry. It is art, but it is also an industry. And for me, the desire for it to be above that, whether that is video games or filmmaking or criticism, is often a shield from that industrial core of what it is, the kind of like, it is work being made in commerce. And so, yeah, I would love to be the critic who's like, the work we do is so important. We're really bringing something to this that is necessary and vital, and I just don't feel like that anymore. And I think that that is the core to some degree about it, because it means that when we do the calculation, and we say, is covering it a value that beats out the value we bring by

committing to publicly this call for justice, this call to stop genocide? For me, that calculus is very easy. And it is not on the side of we get to talk about the anti-fascist space drama. That is fundamentally an anti-fascist space drama that is a popular mass media, product, which I love talking about, but I love talking about it, not because it bottoms out and cashes out into its net good for the world, because it's interesting, because it's fun, because it's compelling, and because talking about it makes me feel more like me, but not because it fixes the world. And I, if I convince myself of the opposite of that, I think I would, I think I did convince myself of the opposite of that for a long time. And seeing it not cash out that way,

seeing that not actually make systemic change in the world, I think it has a timeline eventually, if you've made it your thing, for me anyway. It had a timeline. And that timeline ran out. And so I have to consider the work we do in as part of a commercial enterprise, as part of an industry. And I can't like pull the blinders up and say what we make is, what, you know, criticism is scientific or it is cultural in such a sense that it is, it is, is removed from the material plane and is removed from the network of power and all that other shit. It's part of it. And so, again, if I have to err in one direction there, to me, that's the way I have to air. I think that makes sense, for me, at least, if you don't do this as your day job

and you ain't been doing it for 15, 20 years, it might sound like I've lost my mind. And I think that that's fair. I think that that's a fair thing to feel. But I also think that in a way, Like, this is the rule that brought me here. And it brought me here. It brought me to your ears. And so I'm going to keep following the rule, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I think for me, it's like, I don't know if my position is more about, like, I want to have

greater meaning to the work I do when I get out of bed than just like, are we just like shooting the shit and having good times? And it doesn't really matter. And none of this, like, is landing with people and it's not going to have any impact. I like to think that to agree sometimes these arguments are like so who's putting the correct grains of sand

on the side of the moral scale of the universe and I think something that like for me so part of just like my life this is my experience so it's hard to sort of get outside that but like I'm somebody who's always

gotten just like security and resources from being likable, getting people, getting in people's ears and like winning them over to something, convincing them of, of something. And I'm not somebody who's had a ton of useful results from like direct confrontation. And that might create a huge blind spot in my politics. I might be someone who's like, you don't know the moment, you don't recognize the moment to draw the hard line and like take the stand. I don't know. Any other final thoughts before we talk about Craya? Everybody who said that AMCA taught them a lot, I am expecting an essay to our email address

by the time. Adore hits Blu-ray. Please write two pages about what you learned. You're the one who has to read these emails. Genuine, you know, real thanks also. So we did put out a call in the middle of all of this to be like, hey, what mods do y'all use for Cotort 2? And got some really helpful mods, got some real helpful, like, Reddit posts about builds and stuff. And it was very funny flipping through the email and being like, okay, this is why I'm unsubscribing for you on Patreon.

Y'all are making a big mistake. Make sure to put 16 in intelligence. Okay, got it. 16 in intelligence. That's, give me a skill points. No, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. You got a whole party of people, Rob.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, it was a, the next month's Q&A is going to be awesome. It's going to be the AMCA essay contest. It'll be like college seniors competing for those Ayn Rand prizes. Oh, my God. So did you listen to the entire AMCA struggle session? What do you get out of it?

Are you, like, do you want to get a year of tuition so that you can, can carry forth the revolutionary message of AMCA, which is maybe this has meaning. Maybe it doesn't. We're still working that out on our side. This is the thing is that you're a Randy and you just believe your shit. You know what I mean? You don't have to do this. You don't have to do the struggle session. You don't have to do the self-critique. You know, you just, you are the, you are a great man. You are a great man. You were the world historical figure, you know? Are you a woman? You could be near a great man. Uh, iron, you really, well, Cotor, two is actually speaking of rams.

We met at rams today. All right. So the next day, after, after we had like lots of meetings about this, like what is the meaning of criticism? What is our moral obligation in moments like this? We turned to, so we obliged to play Cotor 2 as it came out. And again, a lot of people fell in love with when it first was released. but and I had always heard

that like this is also the urtext of like fucked up obsidian game that like kind of sucks at release and never fully gets where it needs to go but has been turned into an all-time classic not entirely through the official patch process but we end up in a weird place with these things because there is no equivalent of a director's cut

like it's very nice when these things exist in film, for instance, where it's like, uh, kingdom of heaven. Yeah. Where like, kingdom of heaven,

the theatrical cut is fine. It's not great. The director's cut fucking rips, for instance. Yeah. It happens to get them again. We don't get that. Different meditation on like,

oh wait, this movie is actually about like faith and like mortality. Wow, I didn't get that at all from the theatrical cut. It's helpful. Yeah. Considerably different effort to recut a film. versus restore old content in a game studio making games.

It's very different from making movies. We know this first hand. Yes, this is one of the things about the games industry that continues to be, you know. You're never going to unlock that shooter level where you kill your co-star in immortality. only the fans can find it God So because But we do have something close to

What Has the stature of a beloved director's cut Which is the restored content mod And Then there's questions that that sort of opens up And so our first question was like Which one are we going to do? And I think from my like, as I

approach that conversation, I was kind of like, I don't know, especially with like where the and our conversation left off. I don't know that like, I can swap that for, and now we're going to play a fucked up 1.0 or 1.01 version of an obsidian game for the next couple months. That's going to be buggy on top of being unfinished. Yeah, for people who have no idea. It might not be fun for people to listen to because like it's not if people are constantly running up against the limits of like this is kind of shit it's going to be hard to access the text through that like just both practically and then also just like mentally emotionally if you're constantly sort of like well I had to go back and reload that save or deal with a bunch of other shit so

like for me it was kind of like I was not super jazzed about the notion of like usually I'm I'm like, oh, I want to play it as it was intended to be. And I think that's also like the vibe we give as a podcast. Like we have obviously talked about deleted scenes amongst, you know, different movies and stuff like that. But we try to really consider the final product in all of its flaws and, you know, and then consider cut content and as it. interesting, you know, uh, insights into production, uh, production and development, uh,

processes. However, crisis on utapau exists. That's so true. Mm-hmm. God. And, and when you brought that up, Austin, it really made me think about, like, sometimes the cut content really fucking hits. And it's got the juice.

And if they had just let them cook, thankfully... We could have had a canonical Anakin ghost John Wick in Star Wars. Like, we could have had, like, before he falls to the dark side, like, literally, like, a few weeks before the events of Revenge of the Sith. He could have done John Wick shit. Tragic. It is tragic. It's a shame. I think...

He truly was the Bobbyago of the John. I think it would be useful for you, Austin, if you gave like a little bit of historical context for those people who are maybe did, you know, maybe they only have a switch or whatever so they aren't able to. Can you not say it like that? Maybe they only have a switch. Okay. My bad. My bad. My bad. That's not what I meant. That's not what I meant. I'm saying like a lot of people, it's a very, it's a more accessible handheld console than than, then, look at how much

they're fucking charging for Xboxes these days. This shit is bullshit. I don't, anyway, I'm just, I just, well, and there's a very nice switch edition. We should be clear. Somebody was kind of a remat, meet and greet last year to give me

a beautiful, like, boxed copy of that switch game. Yes. But, you could be, you could have been born the day this came out and you are, I'm taking my notes here, 21 now. You can drink, I think. Maybe you're 20, you're 20,

because it came out in December, 2004. So, yeah, you're 20. You'll be, you're not legally able to drink yet, very soon. Yeah, so this game came out in 2004. It was developed by Obsidian for Lucas Arts. It came out. It was made in like 12 to 14 months. Which is wild to think about.

a full length game. It's not an expansion pack for Cotour 1. It was a full length game. It obviously builds on the engine of Cotor or like the entire, all the assets of Cotor, the animations, etc. There's a lot of groundwork already laid, but it is all new content. It is all new, you know, there's new animations for things like combat even, or at least there are on the disc. Some of them were not implemented and one of the mods we've installed in fact re-implements them or actually implements them. Because of that quick turnaround, the game shipped in an unfinished state. It shipped to the Xbox and to Windows. And then over the years has since come out on Linux and Mac and Android and iOS and now switch in 2022. And when it came out, it was not just unfinished as in buggy. You know, I think growing up, I played a lot of games that are really buggy. Morawind has a lot of bugs in it. famously if you're playing those obsidian or those um playing oblivion and morrow when you're playing those those bethesta games there are things like make sure you don't especially if you're playing on a console make sure you don't like leave too many things around the world the memory will get like corrupted

and you won't be able to load your savings anymore you're loading your saving the game will just crash and it's like all right i just have to remember that i guess even console games you used to have bugs like that this even by those standards was unfinished uh there are the base game, whole companion arcs that are unfinished. You just don't get the ending to them. There is a sort of, I wouldn't say an epilogue, but there is like kind of some closing comments towards the end of the game that give some perspectives on certain characters that are just not, they were written, they're on the disc, they're voice acting,

but they're not in the game. And then throughout the game, there are things. large and small that are like, let's say, banter between companions that has been cut, but it's still on the disc. The, that stuff gets restored in the Sith Lord's restored content modification, which you'll see online referred to as TSL RCM or just RCM. TSL is the game itself. It's cotor to the Sith Lords.

That's the, that's the subtitle to the game. And so this, uh, restores just a ton of material. And importantly, Rob, to your point, it also fixes hundreds of small bugs throughout the entire game. There is not a standalone collection of those bug fixes separate from the RCM.

Closest one is probably the Switch version. That is right. So Aspire did a re-release of this game in 2022 for Switch. I think that they may also, the Steam version may also be Aspire at this point. I think that they did an update to it. And I think that that also has some of the fixes.

For instance, it has a widescreen support out of the box now. If you buy it on something like Steam or Gog. I think on Gog too. I'm not 100%. And so, like, that's, that was not there. The last time I played this game in 2010, I had to get a widescreen mod just to play it in widescreen. Even now, the Aspire version of this game has, if you're like looking in your menu screen, your character avatar will be stretched.

and is not sized correctly. So there are still issues there. But this is kind of all of that is why we ended up deciding to go for the Sith Lord's restored content modification. We also kind of had this thought of like, what is the de facto version of this game? If you're going to talk to another Star Wars person

about this game, what version are you going to are you going to talk about? And you might talk about the base game. You might talk about your experience playing the base game 20 years ago. But chances are they are going to say, oh, the restored content. mod really turns into a game that I love or makes it, oh, did you get the part where

da-da-da-da-da happen? And you'll be like, what the fuck are you talking about? And so that's why we went with the Sith Lord's Restored Content Mod. We also went with a bunch of other stuff that is generally not about changing content in the game. At least, that's the mod list I've put together. I'll have it linked in or embodied in the show text. If you go to a more civilized age.net, you'll find it there.

I'll walk through it if you want What are you going to say, Natalie? I was going to say one more thing about the restored content mod that really solidified my take that we should play it is the fact that it there was meant to be

switched support for the restored content mod to the point that it is even on aspire.com slash games star dash wars dash nights dash, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.

Play Knights of the Old Republic 2, the way it was intended to be played. It does say that, yes. Like, so I think that for their mobile ports, their version for Android and iOS. You, even the iOS version, you can put this mod into the game. The Mac app store version of Star Wars has the mod. Like, I think the fact that there is so much official support for the restored content

mod really solidified that this is something that is largely in conversation, in official conversation when we're talking about Knights of the Old Republic 2, the fact that developers, you know, port studios are taking this mod into consideration to the point that they're offering official support for the mod. It really solidified that this is like, you know, nearly canonical in that sense at least in the sort of

way in which Cotor to at this point in time May 5th when we're recording this 2025 that at this point many people who are playing Cotor 2 or have played Cotor

2 in the years since it's been a release have played it with the restored content mod and are and that is so much a part of the conversation of this game. And my understanding, and I think that Wikipedia says this, though Wikipedia does not, is that, like, at the time, Obsidian wanted to support modders and released additional text, like additional dialogue, released voice acting that had not made it to the disc, but was recorded,

and did ask LucasArts to, like, hey, could we do a big content patch for this game? And they were told, no. So, yeah, I think that there are many ways in which you can be like, okay, this is, they didn't make it. They didn't do the mod, but it's a pretty important one. It has some changes that are big enough that even the developers thought, hey, this is a pretty, some of this stuff should have made it in. I say some of this stuff, for a couple of reasons. One, we did not choose to use the, there's a mod called M478, which is a quote unquote, droid planet, which you know we would have fun on a droid planet.

We love droids. We love droids. We would love to do a whole planet of droids. Unfortunately, that mod is mostly fan-made content. What was available for M478 was not complete compared to what's much of the rest of the RCM is. And so we are not using that. I've also just heard, I think I played M470 when it came out, but maybe it wasn't out Maybe I'm confusing that with a different droid factory that's in this mod, but M478 mostly running around fighting droids over and over again.

Let me tell you, we get enough of that on Paragas. I don't need a whole fucking second place for it. So we're not using M478, and we are using a thing called the unofficial TSL RCM tweak pack, which has a bunch of small tweaks that change key things back to the way it was in the original game. So that's like a character's head, a slight change in a major, not a major, and a side quest, some dialogue that plays, that seems like it should only play if a character is your light side, you know, instead of just all the time. Some other smaller tweaks that don't add up to like, hey, this character says this thing, but that doesn't make sense with the way the whole rest of the story goes.

Maybe this was just cut dialogue or a different take that they decided not to go with or a different, like, you know, direction that they didn't get to go with. So that is also the, we used all of the tweaks from the unofficial TSLRCM tweak pack. And then we used a bunch of stuff that is about simple stability or clarity. I used a couple of great resources to find these.

One is coutore.neocities.org, which has huge write-ups. Real shit. Huge write-ups of mods. for both Cotaur 1 and Cotor 2 and it even has a spoiler-free like mod build page for both of those games so you can like read through the whole thing

and like sometimes you'll get to a thing that is a that is a mod that has to do with the spoiler but it'll just be called like SSL or like well I'm looking at one right now it's called RFL and it says oh boy this is really hard to explain without spoilers okay so there are late game enemies that are not organic but they're vulnerable to crowd control that logically only organics would be,

and et cetera. We're not using that one. It's not, I don't think that it's necessary. But I do think that it's fun that there's this whole page for this. I also used a Steam forms post or a Steam guides post, I think,

called GoTo's, or Goatow, I think it's Goto. It's GoTo's Essential Mods that has a bunch of great mod suggestions that do things like, make, hey, this mod changes the model of some characters to make sure it matches the in-game description of them.

Or a community patch, which has even more bug fixes, or head model fixes, or the poorly named J.C.'s supermodel fix, which I was sure was a clean faces style mod, but is actually a... We need some tens in here.

We got the fucking tens in here. Hot or Not dot Cotor, it's at the same time that Hot or Not was happening, This should look like an Abercrombie catalog from like the early 2000s. But instead, it's stuff that's, I'll just read it. First, Obsidian has added several combat animation variations for Cotor 2, but they messed up a couple of the names

causing the game to play animations that don't exist and resulting in the characters freezing in place. This mod fixes that. Second, the animations for dual blasters had the hand objects in the incorrect positions. For male characters, the blasters would clip through the hands and for female characters, hover above the hands.

I've restored them to the positions they were in in Cotor 1 and et cetera. And so like supermodel fix fixes, weapon placement, adds a whole new combat animations that were not available but should have been because they were made and some other stuff like that. Again, the full list of this stuff is there in the description. And then finally, I'd say that there's a couple things here that are story or gameplay related and not just kind of basic aesthetic fixes. that includes party swap, which lets you use both companions, even though by default,

sorry, not both companions. There are two genderlock companions, and party swap lets you use both of them, which is exciting because I think one of them is a lot better than the other one. But I am curious about whether the other person's stuff will hit for me now, because I remember I think it was very boring when I first played through it. And maybe it's not. Maybe he actually has some juice, and we'll get to all know that. I think importantly, if you're playing as a woman in this game, as by default, you don't get one of the most interesting companions in the game. So this lets you do that.

This is hard because I think if you've never played this game before, these don't really hit for you because you wouldn't know which ones to get. But there are some queer, same gender romance options or mods available from someone named Lelukin, who I think we got a letter about or maybe even from ages ago. Do you remember that? When we were doing Cotor, wasn't there, I feel like I remember, I remember talking about a queer romance modder or somebody that had done like foundational work in queer romance mods for Cotor. That's what I thought too, but I don't, yeah, that's what I thought. And so there are those available.

I want everyone to know that. If you go to L-E-I-L-U-K-I-N.com, you can find those there. But again, if you don't know who the characters are, it might be hard to know who you would like that for. I will also say it's kind of interesting. I think they're really well-made mods, first of all, because it's not just it allows you to do it. It also, the creator has made custom audio for them using edited cut-up audio to make sure that your character is never misgendered when the other person is speaking. And in some ways, that's actually when the other person is speaking is actually really important. because part of what romance and Cotor 2 is, is about how other characters talk about your

character with each other, as much as it is about how they talk to you directly. You know, Cotor 2 is a game about big ideas and big ideological movements and about people's being pulled between their various loyalties and faiths and obsessions and loves. And so there's lots of conversations about that stuff. And those mods will adjust not only the way that they talk to you, but to each other. And so if you haven't played through the game, I, you know, I'm not saying you shouldn't go ahead and just install them all. But it's maybe a harder choice to make for sure.

And then there's some other small stuff. There's a prestige class saving throw fix. And then there's a bunch of optional stuff. And Rob, I think you've gone down this road. But there are a bunch of, quote, unquote, ultimate mods by shining red HD. and then people really love Cexicus' backdrop improvements and high-quality skyboxes.

I haven't gone with those yet, but Rob, you're reporting that they're good. No, I stopped myself. You did. Okay. The high-quality skyboxes light thing looked super tempting. Yeah, 100%. They're very pretty skyboxes. They're very pretty. Sometimes it was like, well, you just put a mountain

in the background. Yeah, dude. And I don't know that they intended Mountain to be back there. Yes. And there's one in particular where it's like, oh, they actually diminished a sort of force field the fact that the original, like, Skybox has that, like, the kind of downplay. But the issue I started to see is, like, the backdrop improvements, a lot of these things. It seems like it almost draws more attention to the disparities that are going to crop up

between, like, the character models and then other parts of the background, or you're going to have, like, a ridiculously high-res image of, like, a planet and, like, a starfield. And then it's a fucking Cotor character up, like, up front. Like, those two things aren't really, like... And there are so... That doesn't go together. But they don't ever get to be... Look like some of these backdrops do in the skyboxes.

That's his supermodels fixes thing failed to deliver on what the box said. Uh-huh. So, yeah, like, it seemed like those mods looked super cool. And, like, in some places, I think, might make the game quite beautiful. But also, it was like, this way lies madness. Because trying to even out, like, I want to... of consistent, like, visual presentation of Cotor 2, it was going to be so much shit going into that override folder and good luck unwinding it at a certain point. So I talked

myself down and was like, I will deal with the less than, less than beautiful skyboxes. Amazing. Yeah, that's what I'm going to try to do too. But people at home, go with God, you know, find the mods that work for you. I should say one other thing here before we talk about the game itself, which is I've been recording myself playing it. My plan is to edit those videos and put them online so that if you are like, I do not have time to play this game right now. I cannot fight 70 droids on Piraugas. I can't do it. You can watch me not do it because I will probably edit a lot of the droid fights down. I will probably, you know, I'm doing, we're doing a let's playover reference at the table for a game called Outward. And that I'm not editing down. I'm

doing a lot of like edited bits for i think i'm doing the opposite here which is i probably don't have time to do a bunch of funny bits in this uh edit also just me so it's it's it's it's entertaining but it's not i'm not cracking jokes like and i don't want to chat you know what i mean i'm not you know i'm doing my best but it's hard to just do that by yourself haven't you heard the kids are just referring to chat i almost did it while recording i was like i'm like no i can't do that that's not what i do the kids are doing this yeah just out in the world just out like just out in the world I'm like, I'm like talking to a 13 year old and he's, he's asking chat questions. We're in real life.

There's no, there is no chat. Anyway. Yeah. So, so I'm going to put those up and they'll give a little bit more of a, I'm playing ahead to help us structure these conversations also so I know what is coming next, for instance. I think that that will help quite a bit, though Paragas is pretty straightforward. There's no side quests on Paragas. us to do really. So for the meantime, it is a pretty straightforward, straight shot. But once we get to places that there are side stuff, I will also try to give in general more structure this time

through in terms of we're going to do these quests. This is what we're going to cover in the next bit. Maybe my videos will be a little weirder than that because of just how that works. But I would love for even if we're playing all the different quests across a planet, for instance, that we come in knowing we're going to talk about quests A, B, and C, you know? Totally. So to make sure that those are done ahead of time, if that makes sense. Yes. I'm very into that.

And then, yeah, if someone like, I don't want to play this game, I don't want to do it. I just want to watch someone swing a Vibroblade at a droid for four hours. Well, too bad, because I'm not going to release a four-hour video. I'm going to release probably a less than four-hour video. But there's a lot of audio-alongs. I might cut down the Vibroblade swinging. Oh, yeah, big time. But to that.

I think one of the things that I did not enjoy about Cotaur was that there's times where like there was a like really dense plot stuff happening and then there was time it was like, all right, go to this fucking place full of rack goals. Oh yeah. I don't know. Deal with that shit for like ever. And like it could be, it felt like really uneven in terms of and in a way that was also frustrating to do a show on because it would be like we're recording, you know, a couple days. And he's start playing through the next chunk of the game. And 90% of what we're going to be talking about might happen in the first hour of play through as you go talk to all the quest givers and catch up. And then it was like, all right, now you've got to go down to this thing and like do the quest. And the quest is just like one identical room after another, you know, kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk, move on.

And like, it's tough to talk about things. It's tough to extract things from that. And the game was really unevenly spaced in terms of like, when is story happening? GoTor 2 could feel like all the stories happening all at once And then it was like Tumbleweeds narrative Tumblewees Or you're going across the screen Cotor 1 yeah yeah yeah

Cotor 2 may end up still feeling that way But my hope is our conversations don't Yeah if that makes sense You know I think this is And I'm curious Allie is someone who also played a lot of Cotor There is just something good about being back Where the opening up a plastic seal container has that sound Or going through the buttons

like that that shit is soothing to me and I do think that that is nostalgia I do think that is rose-colored glasses and not it's good actually because yeah as we will talk about probably in the next episode there's a lot of killing

the same type of droid over and over on Paracas so I'm loving that shit though I don't know it's something's like working for me in this I don't know if it's because I didn't play Cotor because I didn't have the ability to physically play it.

I was just watching playthroughs. So now actually getting to like move my mouse around and click like there's something so crunchy and mechanical. It's like bringing me back to like OG system shock vibes where you just I'm mousing around and I'm clicking on the UI and executing action. I also think the last time I play this, I played, well, for the bits of Cotor that I could play before I just ended up watching a playthrough, I was playing on Switch, I believe. So mouse and keyboard is just doing something for me in this like really, like, mechanical,

crunchy way that I just feel like I've got my like fingers in the mud and I'm just like moving stuff around and it feels like just slow but like really gratifying in a fun way. I'm enjoying it. Well, like, you know, when you see a little sword icon show up over a joy, you had the joy that you hit it with a sword. That's just, that's followed through. That just feels good. That's Interface, baby. I love Interface. I do too. Speaking of, I just want to say a couple of things before we get too deep into this about playing this game if you are going to play it on PC

which by the way if you play it on Switch there are some things the Switch has that we don't have which is an easy to access cheat menu for instance so like if you were like Rob or like I'm sick of these fucking droids or I'm sick of fighting in this dungeon we just toss on God mode or whatever or give yourself more stat points

so I'm sure there are PC ways you could get there too I think there's probably some mods you can install to do that but I do want to let people know that there is, I think it's like you push both thumbsticks in three times to get access to that, something like that, looking up online. The other thing I want to say, if you are playing this on PC or Mac, but I think especially PC, one, do not try to mix and match Steam Workshop mods and mods downloaded elsewhere. It will not work. Or it is every single big mod. It has some disclaimer in it that says, if you run into a problem, it's probably because you're

mixing and matching your mods. We don't advise you do it. Um, there are, ways to do it safely, but it's not guaranteed. So try not to. Two, don't have multiple installs of Cotor 2 on your system. For instance, maybe you bought it from Steam and from Gog, or maybe you bought it from one of those places, and you found on a popular web archive, for instance, a pre-packed version of it with a bunch of mods already installed. You know, like, well, that's most of the mods plus the Droid Planet. They're not playing. Maybe I want to play the Droid Planet. If you do that, and then you also download the Steam version, try to mod the Steam version, Some of the mods will get confused about where they're supposed to go,

except for the ones you're dragging and dropping in manually. Completely different directories? I think that the installer gets weird. This is, this is, I'm just repeating to you what I've read. Don't do it. Just don't do it.

It's like in reboot. Remember reboot? It's like a reboot. If they loaded a game on top of the other game, it was like catastrophic, like millions dead in, what the fuck was the name of the city and reboot? Oh, hard drive city?

Something like that. Hard drive city It's something like that Fuck, what is it? So Meg, no, Megabytes the villain What is the name of the city?

Mainframe, Mainframe. Mainframe. What are you going? Watch the space. Reboot. You don't know about reboot? Oh my God.

What are you talking about? I'm sorry. Let's let me have to shut this down. Watch the space. What is this, you guys? What is this? What am I looking at here? Okay.

It's fire is what it is. Allie, continue, explain? I'll let Rob take the stage here because I was probably so much younger than him when I watched it. Hey, hey, yeah, yeah, well, we don't need the, I don't know, we were the same age, who knows? So, reboot, you know how, like, in some video games,

it was like all the AI opponents weren't shit, but then it was a racing game as one guy that you couldn't beat or like a fighting game, there's one boss. It was like, I don't know, man, I just don't have this shit together. I can't, I can't beat this game. Reboot was a compute, a CG animation, like, cartoon series that, like, imagined that those AI opponents were actually one guy, the Guardian.

And his job was to stymie the player from beating the game. Because when the game, like, ran, it descended on the denizens of this city, this living city inside. computer and it sucked everyone into the world of the game in this neighborhood. It was like a vortex. Yeah. And he had to get into the games that loaded so that he could defeat the player. And if the player won the game, it was like everything inside that district was just like nuked. Like the the the the game executable like killed everybody devastated the city. It was like a zillow beast situation every fucking week. Yeah. Unless he stopped them. and so he had to go in there and some days it was like a racing game some days it was like a starfighter game sometimes it was a like ultimate type fantasy game but in between like the game sequences he hung out with buddies at a diner dot yep you got it and oh the little fucking kid andzo uh enzo yeah yeah yeah yeah um and then but there

were also viral, there were evil, there were malignant programs in the city, uh, megabyte, and hexadecimal. You got them. Uh, and they were there to like, uh, trying to take over, uh, the city and maybe even corrupt. But sometimes he'd have to work together with them. They have to work together sometimes. It's like, what if Rick and Ralph had lore? It's good.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the thing you have to understand is that it's weird. That show looked fucking awesome when it came out. It was just the most unbelievable shit you've ever seen. Yeah. And what's so weird is that all the additions, like, that you can find publicly available now,

don't appear to have any record of the awesome looking reboot that, like, existed when we're kids. They appear to have a barely animated, like, fucked up looking version of reboot that is not what I remember watching at all. I see, I think something weirder happened, Rob, which is, I think when we first saw it, it was the best thing you've ever seen in your life. Pixar Who? Because it comes out every week. There's a new one. Then I think it got, it looked really bad for like 20 years. But I, I think it, something weird happened. I think it might look good now. Because it looks, it doesn't look, we're far enough away that it just looks stylized instead of looking. Do you know what I mean? Like it looks like it means to look like this, which of course it does. But like, it looks like it's from a time and an era in a different way. I think it kind of fucking slaps. Yeah. I should watch some reboot. I'm sold.

I mean, I'm liking what I'm seeing. I see a little guy. I see a sexy evil lady. There is a sexy evil lady. That's true. My needs, yeah, my needs are covered. And there was an entire... Do you remember the slow food episode, Austin?

I don't remember this. there's so his buddy dot runs the diner and it's like this fast like uh short order establishment but she ends up getting like hit with a virus yeah and she needs like good old fashioned comfort food and he has to get it from this one place that only makes slow food it makes slow food on the order of like if everything in in in the city is like on the order of like milliseconds right this thing is on the order of like minutes and so it is like she's like dying it's like This days-long gag of a chain of favor is trying to get this food delivery. It's sort of pre-figures, like the future we live in with, like, DoorDash and some tensions that crop up between, like, convenience economy and then, like, all the established community businesses.

So true. It might be good. I don't investigate. Anyway, sorry. Go ahead. Watch the space. The sexy woman with the teal hair and the exposed mid-trip ended the, like, hard mercenary guy

that you're staying out with her uh-huh it's great it's good in my memory yeah that's what I remember about that show so that was number two don't have multiple installs because it'll be like reboot when two games get loaded yeah yeah that's where we got there this is a rough one

turn off cloud sinking or live in a world of high risk gaming is what I've written here there is a famous Cotor 2 bug that isn't caused by cloud saves necessarily. It's called the Aaron K glitch. Because what happens is something weird will happen in your game and you load your file. You're like, why is my character a different face than what I chose? And why is their name Aaron K? And the answer is because your save got corrupted in some way.

You better load a previous save up. Now, sometimes cloud saves work in such a way that you, your save is fully replaced by it and then gets uploaded. And then if you're a one save person, that's it. It's done. Um, now, another thing here, save as many times as you can. Always be saving. Try to save in a few different slots at least. Right now, I'm just saving new save every time. Uh, maybe at some point I'll start looping them.

But good to have repeated saves. Try to save every 30 minutes to an hour. Um, if you get, sometimes you get a weird buck. I had a bug today when I was playing ahead where the dialogue from other NPCs was not playing. It was just jumping to me talking. So I was like, all right, save, close the game, relaunch it, it's fucking fine. This is a game from 2004 in many different ways.

And then also, it is a pain to screen capture. Don't worry about it. Just don't do it. It's a pain. I've figured it out. I'm running it at a window. It's a whole process. Oh, see, the Nvidia wrapper has done that, like, no problem.

For you, yeah. So it's the thing. The Nvidia wrapper works. Oh, but, but, G-Sig. So, did you fix? this movement bug. Yes, this is another famous bug. Dude, my whole fucking day was battling this thing

because the thing that people... So... Do you want to explain what the bug is? Every time your character enters combat, everything seems normal, combat ends, all movement commands stop working. Your character is just stuck in place,

you can't interact with the thing, you're just out of... If there's like a locker in the corner, you can click it to like go open it, but you don't have free movement. You can't just move around anymore. And it's not coming back. Now, it's not...

It could be worse. You can save at those moments. When you load that save, you'll have movement again. Yeah. Okay. And if this was a game with, let's say, five fights an hour, maybe that would be reasonable. But instead, it's like, that'll happen even in the middle. Like, if there's two pods of enemies in one room, you'll get stuck in that room.

And so, yeah, it's just not a tenable solution. And what people have correlated it with, for the most part, is like high frame rates. that was Austin's initial thought so I'm just like in there like dialing it back like okay except that I was already playing I was playing without touching any of my frame rate shit fine I didn't get the bug by default I only got it when I had to move it

to windowed mode to screen capture it and the thing that fixed that for me was changing my monitor's frame rate to 60 frames a second but that sounds like this is not what happened for you Robb no like I kept I was like all right maybe 60 frames second we'll do it no okay what about 15 not no that ain't gonna work and like i mean doing alt

inter trying to get it nothing's working uh eventually like g sync appeared to be the culprit or some combination of these but it wasn't until i turned off g sync that like stopped happening but it is a thing that crops up with um modern displays and like i don't know fully which like g sync was obviously the final thing that like caused it to be fixed i don't know if the frame rate stuff I did moved, moved it toward the solution. I see. I haven't gone back to like 120 frames. Listen, if it's fucking working, it's working.

Yeah, I'm not touching it. Yeah. But there are resources out there for these things. This is a game that has lots of fans that love it. You'll find Reddit threads. You'll find steam posts about people trying to work through how to fix this stuff. But it is a game that if you're playing on PC, you may end up in a troubleshooting mode. This is part of why you should keep as many saves as you can.

So finally, if you go down the Maldpath, try to, not to read too many mod things. If you use our mod list, I think I've put most things that don't have spoilers, but there's a few things in here that have spoilers if you read the whole mod page. So if you go through this list, follow the instructions. You can install these. Try to install them in the order. I think that I've put them in. I think that that works the best. And then, and then, yeah, that's, those are my caveats. I have it, I have a number six. Please. Oh, right. What happened with yours? Go ahead. Step 6. When you load the game, don't let your brain let you click all the buttons on the start menu.

And especially don't let it click the one that says movies. You love movies. Who doesn't love movies? Yeah, what if it's like there's a movie in there for you to watch? Yeah, I was like, oh, I got to go watch the movie of Code 4 2. So it's like an opening cut scene, right? Yeah, I was like, oh, it'll just, I don't know, it's just the movie button. and I want to click it. So I clicked it. There are ginormous spoilers. Wait,

does this just have major cutscenes? It just every cutscene. Oh, no. What's weird is it's not every cutscene. It's like 10 out of 56 cutscenes. But it includes like the end game cutscenes, at least a couple of them. I don't know why it does this.

I don't know if it's a mod thing. I don't know if it's a... Maybe it's like the mod unlock certain cutscenes. Yes. I don't know. I don't know. Because who knows? Don't click it.

Don't click the movie button. You don't need to watch movies here. Watch movies somewhere else. Not on Disney Plus. I do have a question. Thank you. I do a question, Natalie, did you get your, speaking of a movie? Did you get your cutscene bug fixed?

Have you been able to test to see? When you got to Paragas, did it show the ship landing at Paragas? Did it show the thing that you sent me? Do you see it landing or you see it just like drifting through the after? You see it drifting. It cuts to like a different file that's clearly planned. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you're good.

We were working through your character build, you and making sure that the bug, that you didn't get the movement bug that I know Rob got, you didn't get the opening text crawl for some reason, which is a movie that plays. And so I was worried that for some reason, your install wasn't going to show you any of the pre-rendered cutscenes, but it seems like that was maybe a screen share thing. Yeah, I might have accidentally buttoned through it between alt tabbing, between our Discord call and the game. and my notes and stuff.

So... That makes sense. I have watched it, though. So I do have thoughts about the opening text crawl now. Allie, do you have any bugs that we haven't addressed? Nothing yet. All of the friction that I interacted with was trying to get a controller to work from my PC to my couch on the other side of the wall where my PC is.

Did you get it going? The distance is a little too great for blue. tooth. I had to sit on a chair in front of my TV. Oh, no. Did you get a really long USB cable? I have exchanged my 10 foot cable for a 13 foot one. We're going to see if that works. My heart is in my mouth. Every time I'm doing that, and the dog's like ripping back and forth between, like, in front of the TV. And I'm like, I hope they never grab it. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I have a mild-minard cat. I think it should be okay. shall see um yeah and i might make i might have to remake my character and redo this opening scene because i i guess we're just going to jump it i chose the the like blonde lady with the braids but her her lips are so pink that it's starting to annoy me like first it was like oh this is cute and she's like snatch or whatever you know i like her design and then it was just like it's really starting to be like why are you that dressed up what is happening? here. Which way? Which one is? I'm going to link our image. I'm going to link the which, here we go. Here are all the faces, including the

Synthified faces. So I guess light spoilers, but you know this happens. You played Cotour 1. Which of these faces is it? It is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The 6th from the right with the green. Oh, I see. Oh my God, her lips are so pink. You were not kidding. Yeah, but like they look fine here, but in cut scenes when, like, it's just her face. It gets that, like, frosted, that early 2000s frosted Mac lipstick.

I see. Yeah. Damn, I'm going to remake your character. Thankfully, we've not played through too much. I guess if you're listening and you're like, oh, my God, they can talk about all of Paragas now. We are not going to talk all about Paragas all the way through. We played through debatably the tutorial. You don't have to play through it.

And then the very first, I don't know, 25 minutes of Paragas, depending on how quick that goes. So, yeah, do we want to jump into Knights of the Old Republic too? Let's talk about it. Can everyone point out who they are? Because I, on this, on this, uh, character chart. We send the dudes also because I think I just sent the ladies. One, two, three, four, five, six. The ladies.

This one's for the ladies. I am number nine. Hey, Mom, get out on the dance floor. No one. That's right. One, two, three, four, five. You said nine. The ninth lady.

Wait, you sent the ladies again. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Yes, yes. The black lady with like the, like, the, like, armory, like the blonde at the tips. Yeah, she has, like, slight, like, he may sideburns on this, like, just, not sidebirds, but, like, a face framing pieces with a little ombre. tip and some light blue eye shadow and a slightly frosted lip. She was just, she was giving everything she needed to give for me.

I was also debating between 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14, 15. And now that I'm seeing 15's, like, progression, I'm like, oh, she's eating as a Sith Lord. But it's okay. I'm happy with my choice. I'm happy with my choice. I think that I might switch for the woman with the mullet next to the one that I picked. Yeah.

So five from the right there. Oh, yeah. She rolls. She rolls. On this list of dudes, I am one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Ninth guy, black guy with the mustache with the 70s, mustache, picked the dude who looks most like a background character in

Star Wars. Hell yes. I love him. I love his little smirk. His Sith version or his like his dark side version looks like a guy who heckles you as you're playing ball. You know what I mean at the community center?

Oh, you thought you had ups. Who'd you pick, Rob? From the left. Yes. One, two, three. Soul patch. Oh, of course. Soul patch.

I couldn't find anyone, like nothing had, nothing radiated the same energy as the Dup's Polo character I was fed in the original, like where that guy had a whole situation. But this guy seemed pleasingly toxic. And so I was like, I think I can go with this guy. I just need to shout it out. but there is a classic something awful photo let's play of this of this game that uses one two three four the fifth face from the right any guesses on what the name of that character is Jesus no that's right Jedi Jesus there he is looking like a Renaissance

painting I don't think Jesus would cut it as a Jedi I think there's like you know you got to kill a lot of people yeah he's not fucking with that No. Also, Jesus liked hanging out. Wow, the end of this. So true. So true. You know what I'm going to say.

You like hanging out. That's what we call dramatic irony for how that story goes. I'd like to believe that Jesus had hoes. That's my head cannon. This is, uh, this is when you're helping the council of, Yeah, exactly. Nakaya also made sure that that may have been more than head canon.

The popes, the popes are, or not the popes, Jesus, the bishops are currently conferring. The Cardinals are currently, right. The Council of Cardinals is currently conferring. We will see if the Cardinals pick a Pope who believes that Jesus had hose. He had hose. I'm on Pope watch. Conflave 2, voting for Hose versus, no, he didn't. That's not true.

That's not true. All right. Names? Yeah, let's talk about names. Yes, let's talk about names. I need to check something live. Who did random generator name? I did random generator name.

I did. Okay, we all did. Amazing. It's cool to do a random generator name. Do you know what I mean? I like it. I'm like, what is the, you know, sometimes you're handed a toolbox of a character creator and you're like,

let me play with these markers on one of the, I want to play with what I got here. And I got something, I got something I'm happy with. What did you get? My Jedi's name is Renna Keyes. But Renna is spelled R-E-N-N-A, and Keyes is spelled K-E-Y-I-S in Star Wars fashion. Oh, it does kind of have a Madelorian name vibe, doesn't it? Interesting.

Yeah, I don't know her backstory quite yet because I'm just meeting her, but I'm kind of going for a bit of a Jedi who's maybe not too fond of the Jedi order, according to some preliminary conversations I've had. I see. Craya. Yeah, that's her, Renna. I am playing Kel Morn M-O-R-N like the morning or is it or is it Morn like I'm in mourning Yeah, I'm very happy with it. It gave me the whole name and I was like, oh shit, that's a fucking protagonist name. I'm taking that's really good and then I've spent the last two days being like, no wait, was my name Cal in the last one too? And I don't think that's true,

but I haven't loaded the game to check. I don't have any screenshots with my character so I don't quite remember, which feels bad. But yeah, happy with Kelmore. I like that. Alia, you're going to change your name if you change your character face? I think so. So in what was hours of controller frustration and my keyboard being in the other room, I just went through the random generator, and I got Hala Veral, which is H.A-L-Y-L-Y-Y-Y-Y-S-I-L-A.

V-A-R-A-L, which Friends of the Table fans will be very familiar with Hellaverall, and it was funny to me, so I went through with it. Heller-L-L-L-L is Allie's first Friends of the Table character, iconic, iconic. I come from this name generator? No, no, no, no, it was just a weird coincidence. I really don't have this right-n-s. You had you played this game before you rolled that. I had not.

I swear. I solemnly swear that I had never played this game before. I maybe like Use a different Star Wars Generator to like Name Generator just to get ideas In 2015 Or whatever the fuck we started friends at the table

That's right 215 And yeah So I was like well I gotta pick this I think that's fate I don't know That feels like fate to me That's saying something

Someone is communicating with you Across Plains of Existence I think if you played this game As Hela you would have a hell of it. You would have a, I was not, you didn't mean that. You would have a great time. Like, I think. Yeah. I mean, I tried to do the first one a little bit darksided just because I was so afraid of the dark side options from my experience playing it. Originally, right.

And knowing it. Yeah. And I don't know how I'm going to end up with this game because you keep hinting like, this game is about a bunch of people who hate each other. Well, they, the game is about relationships between people, I think. That's my read on it. We'll get into that. Not too much today because we're just meeting some people. But I think you might meet some people you might hate. So maybe I'm right. But I do think Hela from the Friends of the Table starts with this belief. In the game we were playing, you have like an alignment.

And the alignment is not just like a good or evil or whatever. It's also a sentence. And Hela's was, do you remember exactly what it was? Because I remember how to paraphrase it. But I want to make sure I don't get it wrong. I know the one that I edited it to, which was like to destroy something, rather than understand it? Yeah, I'd rather

destroy something than understand it. That's iconic. Which is extremely dark Jedi coded. A good thing to think when you have a lightsaber in your hand. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh.

All right, Rob. So, initially I was thinking that I was just like, because I loved Dup's Polo so much. Yeah. That I was thinking I would honor that by, it's the second game. Yep.

Why not be Dubs Poyo? Oh. look like there's a little two in his name and that'd be fun and all that. But the name generator gave me something I couldn't refuse. Miko Nass. Oh, Miko Nass. Ooh. Miko Nast feels like someone who has talent cards respect, but not his loyalty or admiration.

You know what I mean? Well, also, you get on the wrong side of him and he'll do the Miko nasty to you and you and your, like, cartel. So that'll be, that, that'll be. be like, you know, that's sort of the signature move. Doing nasty. Great. Perfect.

Can't wait. Incredible. Or maybe, or maybe like, sis, like, Darth nasty. Darth nasty, it's right there. Is that much worse than Darth Insanius? I don't think so. Was it Insanius or was it Ikees? It was there.

Darth Icky, I think. Darth Icky and, uh, I think those are the two. It's Darth Ikey and Darth Insanius are what he suggests. So for force it does for force unleashed Lucas was like I'll give you some Sith names and those are the two that he suggested I feel like they failed a test I feel like you through dark dark icky out there to see if they were real ones yeah because like all the day following was like George like George that that sucks yeah he's like it does it does so now we're collaborators and we will we will build Star Wars together and now you get

your own animated TV show Dave yeah who cool so that's our those are our names um you know someone mentioned like i don't know who that i don't really know who she was first i do think it's worth saying that like this is interesting because it's not a game about having amnesia that your character does have some weird recent memory absences um which will be explained um they do have a particular history they do a particular set of relationships that are very important to who they are so this is not a where you can come in with like, well, I grew up on, you could say I grew up on Corrassant and I did X, Y, Z. I joined the Jedi Order. But like, they met some pretty important

people and were part of a pretty important conflict. I don't remember how much of that is already in the first, the very beginning of the game. So I don't want to get too into spoilers unless someone else brings it up. But I do think, uh, there's still room to think about who your character is and what they've, what they've been doing in the in time. So you'll have time to figure that out for yourselves and play, I think, accordingly. I pick Jedi Sentinel as my starting class. There's three starting classes in this game. There's Guardian, Sentinel, and Consular. Guardian is the most combat focus or the most, the most melee focus or the most, you know, physical combat focus. You can build a really strong gunfighter in this game. I just want to put

that out there. If that's a direction anybody wants to go in, you could just be the guns person. You can be the sharpshooter or the like the duelist pretty easily. I really want that for Rob. I'm going to I'm going to go even further to say if Rob was it was the the gun Jedi, I feel like that would be really cool to me. Wow. Gun Jedi is pretty cool. It's kind of giving Miko Nass. Yeah.

Miko Nass is is gun Jedi vibes to me. Why can't we hit him? Because he's he's probabilistically. analyzed all the laser bolt trajectories and can just do cattas through them. Yeah. You can even do the, you can even block blaster bolts in this game without a lightsaber. There's a feat for it or a force power.

I think it's a feat that like lets you do the Darth Vader handout stop. Or I think that's what it's simulating at least. In any case, so that's one is melee combat or like physical combat. Sentinel is like high skill. You get a lot of skill points every level. And then consularers, you get a lot of force powers and extra force points. And all of your force powers are, you know, you tend to do like a wisdom charisma build. And then you're just like a force.

You're like, you're like Sheave or Yoda more than you are like Darth Vader. You know, Darth Vader's kind of the guardian. I would say, I guess, I mean, Darth Vader slash Anakin or guardian, maybe Obi-Wan is Sentinel. It's kind of like investigator skill-based role. And then Yoda or Sheave are, our consular, very focused on doing sick force magic type shit. So yes, I won't Sentinel And I think of my character As having been a Jedi investigator

Of some sort at one point Like doing that sort of thing And like as he gets his wits about him He's like stumbling into the old rhythms Of like doing interrogation and clue finding and stuff Like true detective Very true detective True detective but Star Wars

You know So that's that's that's Kel What classes does you all start with? I started with consular for Renna I was really I think because I didn't get to play

the last one I was really into okay let me get to play with like the Jedi specific stuff about this game so I'm definitely leaning into a force oriented

build I think my From the limited information I have, I think Renna's, through Renna's study of the force and, you know, continued mastery over certain force abilities, she's realized that the Jedi's version of the force is maybe not, not so aligned with her studies of the force. whether that's towards the light side or dark side is yet to be TBD, yeah. Yeah, uncovered.

But yeah, I'm not really committed to one way. I really want to kind of take the dialogue system seriously is the wrong word, but just like take it, just really try and not answer the ones that I think are light side or answer the ones that I think are dark-sided and just try and be as responsive

to the situation as possible in the way that feels right for Renna, I feel like that's gonna lead me down the dark side path. Interesting, it feels so, the answers are so coded though for a certain like, somewhat, yeah, yeah.

Somebody says something innocuous, and it's like, Boy Scout response, goofus, or Galen, says this oh tell me more i want to be helpful i want to make sure you're you're safe and all this or shut the fuck up i'm gonna do whatever i want now it's shit the difference is fuck off atten atten is so you want to tell him to shut the fuck up and sometimes you're like i got to i got to pull back he's just a regular guy he's he's goading me i don't need to actually be the asshole whereas i felt like in coutre one being the asshole it was rare that

something made me want to rise to tell someone to shut the fuck up. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. We'll see. I do still think this game is a real, as I say in the recordings that I made, there's a lot of kick the cat, save the dog type shit, where those are your options, basically. Do you kill a baby or do you save a cat from a burning building? And yeah, I think we'll continue hitting that. I don't think, Rob, that you're wrong necessarily. I think that there's just different contexts than were available in Cotaur 1. But we'll see. That's what I remember it.

The opening conversations are doing an interesting thing where, like, they're giving a lot of options to try and establish where your character is at with, like, with regard to the Jedi, which is interesting. I'm, like, hedging because I, like, want to know more about, like, where this character is immediately coming from and what the context is. But you can fully go, like, you know, I used to believe in the Jedi way, but I've parted ways from the order a long time ago, or fuck the Jedi. or I'm reconnecting with the force.

A Jedi's destiny is to serve the galaxy. How can I be of service to you? And like I don't, one, like, does the Jedi it's sound like such a fucking weenie. Like, that is, like, boy, we need that a little bit of renegade type thing that comes in with, like, Shepard in Mass Effect without going, like, full evil. So there's a little bit of that, but, like, the dialogue is really letting you sort of put these markers down early where it's like you can play as like I'm an apostate I'm a I'm an

ex-siff or hey man I'm just happy to be maybe maybe this is my way to get back in good with the light side of the force praise Jesus praise Jesus praise Jedi Jesus Robert what class are you playing uh consular uh just because again like leaning hard on force uh abilities and charisma but I don't know maybe I'll say fuck it and grab a gun could be you can do both Allie just made a face because you were also playing consular? I am. That's fair. I am.

I'm not very far. I could, I could. Miko nasty could go get strapped up. Well, and there will be prestige classing. And so, and also, it depends on what your stats are. If you're a, if you're a dex person, Rob, you could still do guns if you're in a Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I could totally do that.

What if you're not a deck source strength, really? Dare I ask what you've, what you've done? You're doing the Dups build. You're doing high wisdom. high charisma. So much charisma and wisdom and some intelligence. Okay. Not so much constitution. You're going to be

prozaptis fuckers. It's going to be fine. That does appear to be the like they give you a lot of stun lock abilities. And they just walk up to people and just kick them in the digit, like in the in the in the in the in the in the droid groin or the smash them in the face like you can't

hit anything with the live but you stun lock it. It's cooked. True. Allie. I do love the consular has that warning that's like, this is only for experienced players. Oh, yeah. I don't know that any of us felt really confident with the way

that we walked away, Cotor 1 and our builds and how that experience went for us. I beat that game with the Dup's polo bill. Like, I'm ready for anything. That's true. I spent three hours running in circles, like dropping grenades at my feet. That's Cotor. I mean, that is my

core memory of Cotor, actually. It's that and Cander is saying, that he loves you. I wonder what that guy's up to. It's beautiful. Okay, so, okay. Who the fuck are these people aboard my spaceship? Okay, let's, can we, let's, can I read the opening text crawl now that we know what our

general vibes are? Yes. It is a perilous, okay, Star Wars. There it is. Cotor, the Sith, Lords. It is a perilous time for the galaxy, a brutal civil war. has all but destroyed the Jedi order, leaving the ailing republic on the verge of collapse.

Amid the turmoil, the evil Sith have spread across the galaxy, hunting down and destroying the remaining Jedi knights. Narrowly escaping a deadly Sith ambush, the last known Jedi clings to life aboard a battered freighter near the ravaged world of Piraugas. Things are bad. That is not the... What the fuck happened since we left off?

That is not the state of things. Yeah, that is not the state of things. That's not how Revin left things. So here's the fucked up thing. So first of all, you can choose if your Reven is lightside or darksided. I don't remember if that's in the initial at in conversation or if that's in like a follow-up at. It is. People are nodding.

And even if you choose the light side version, this is what happened is after the Jedi Civil War, the Sith kept stomping they kept winning which you're right the light side ending of Koutur 1 is like and then the Galactic Republic blew up the star

they blow it up or they just take it they blew it up you blow up the star for it right maybe they shouldn't have blown it maybe they should have taken it and started making a little replacement fleet because it seems like in however many years it's been

the Sith just kept winning I didn't there were some other Jedi alive even for me I think with my dark side co-tore one ending I think is Revin and Bastila being like I think we've done enough and we know how ambitious and you know bright-eyed all of those

the Sith Academy people were they were really you know what you know what this is I guess it is like no there's no way Gamergate could have become a dominant force in, like, politics. No way that they fucking take over the country. And it's like, and yet, here we are. Carth Sun running for public office.

Yeah. Uh-huh. So, yeah, that's the setup. And then you awaken, not as yourself, but as a little familiar droid on the, the, uh, a familiar ship. That's my friend. That's T3 M4. T3.

T3 is back. The droid that you, The, the, he's got a little buddy on. He does have a little buddy. I love, I love that there's two, like, he's got a little buddy now. I can't wait to see how this game unfolds with, like, two droids hanging out, like, in a buddy comedy situation. And, like, I set them up and you knock them down and, like, like, high janks will be happening.

For sure, for definitely sure. It's going to go that way. There's a tutorial. It feels like so much more of a game. Like, here's what I will say. Yes. Yeah, go tell me. In the tutorial, they've got like, all right, get used to this.

where like one character is going to go over and like you're going to have to manipulate the systems on the ship and like go in parallel and like there's just more stuff the environment's more dense, there's more stuff to do and so it feels a little bit less like there are times where Cotaur won at its bleakest

felt a little bit like a gray box build that escaped into the wild where it's like we have some finished game assets in terms of characters and all this shit But like, eh, what we got here is some pretty simple level geometry and not much that you can do with it. And like, I don't know, we put like some Star Wars lighting on the walls. Fuck it. It's done.

That's a room. There's a little bit more in the tutorial where it's like, no, there's going to be more like Star Wars shit of like, go over here and use this character's hacking ability to open up this passage. And another person go wait in the airlock in between the two, you know, like that stuff. Yeah, like that's, that's nifty. And I think, again, like promises so much about like the way these two droid bros are going to like. be working through this game as sort of your like a way team like your sort of like infiltration group

so that got me that I'm super stoked yeah big so does that mean Miko NAST is a Miko Miko Miko Miko Miko Miko Miko is a big droid fan Huge okay well Uh oh well maybe we'll talk about other droids you know

I mean they have a real understanding of how droids work and they can do things to make them stop working. I wouldn't say that as like, I think they can do that, but it means they're not a droid fan. I see. That makes sense. For the listener who has not played along, the section that we're going to talk about for the rest of this episode is the opening that I just said. In terms of the text crawl, then you are on the ship. You're on the Ebbin-hawk, the same ship from the first game as the Little Droid T-3, trying to repair the ship, get its engines working good enough so that you can

go land on the Paragas mining station. And then you'll take the first step. And then you'll take the first steps is your main character coming out of a culto tank, which is sort of like a back to tank, getting your feel for the controls as a person, meeting a strange woman named Crea who was in the morgue, who is wearing brown robes and has the affect of a force user question mark. I was going to say a Jedi. I was going to say a Sith. I was going to say a force witch. She kind of has something going on. Exploring a little bit forward and then eventually finding your way to the prison on Paragas where you find and rescue a guy named Atten Rand, who is a kind of slimy, more smuggler-styled take on the kind of Carthor Nassie.

Oh, my God. It's interesting. He's like kind of a prick, but he's like... We're all staring at Rob. You don't think he's giving slimy? I thought he was doing... Maybe Rob, maybe, maybe, I don't know. know.

Maybe we chose a different dialogue options. Yeah. As a woman, he was the biggest slime ball, like beat what's his name from the last game? What was? Card. The main guy? Oh, yeah. Carth is supposed to be a Boy Scout, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is like, so hang. So I'm curious. Let's get there. Let's get there.

Let's get to him because I don't want to jump ahead. I want to make sure people have a clear idea of what we're talking. talking about. You rescue him and you go to a communications panel. And what you find out is you can't get off of Paragas State. One, the Ebenhawk is under lock and key. Two, the Paragas station is surrounded by asteroids, which make it very hard to come or leave without crashing into them without having a Nava computer pathway thing to set up, which you don't have access to. I kind of like this bit where like it's such a volatile asteroid field that like the navigation paths through it

are only good for like the moment your flight launches and it rapidly expires and that this whole mine is sort of an ocean disaster because like basically it's kind of cool like this bit of like it's like they're using nitroglycerine for fuel in starships at this point and they haven't figured any way to stabilize it

it's just straight like nitroglycerin and you know you gotta be careful You don't have to bump into that stuff. Yep. It'll go bad. Real good, unless it goes real bad. And so then you eventually you make contact with T3, who is elsewhere in this facility.

You've not talked to T3 since he healed you. And you switch over to T3's perspective, and that's where we left off today. Before T3 starts exploring to try to help get you reconnected with him and with the escape ship. Also, there's nobody around except droids that are all trying to kill you. There's mining droids everywhere, and they're trying to kill you as far as you can tell. There's a lot of logs. Oh, and we've skipped up for something else. There's a lot of logs.

We've skipped another really important thing, which is as you leave the Ebenhawk, or as you finish your tutorial, who arrives from a locked door, but an HK unit. Is that HK47? Time will tell. Who seems to zap poor T3 at a certain point, or T3 gets scared. Well, the implication that HK unit is also the thing that's making the bong, bonk, Yes, inside of the... Trying to get in. I think that's exactly right.

It's locked in, I think, the med bay of the Ebenhaka, if I'm remembering the layout, right? And then, yes, Rob, lots of audio logs. It is 2004. The audio log is fucking in. All through Paragas Station from the very, like the first hallway, you were going to start hearing audio logs as people talk about how in the last three days

since your arrival, things have gone to shit. The instantly, as soon as after you arrived, There starts to clearly be some debate about your nature as a Jedi. Machines start to do things they're not supposed to. There are explosions in parts of the station that there shouldn't be explosions. Well, and there's a mass murder mystery. Every, because there were all these industrial accidents, the med bay was full of, like, people that pulled off the Ebenhawk, but also, like, other miners injured and such. And, like, if you pull the medical records of, like, the med bay, every single person was just fed a,

lethal dose of sedatives all at once. Yep. Including you, but you were fine. As Craya says, a Jedi trance could have protected you from that. Whoa, wait, Craya, talk about an entrance. All right. You first see Cray on the fucking floor of the Ebid Hawk. St.3.

Still don't know why she's in my ship. I don't know. Why is Dup's not here? Why is Dup's not here? This was Dup's his ship. Damn it. it feels like squatters getting what they deserve right this is like if this is like I'm like Han Solo

and if I found like Ray and Finn like dead aboard the Falcon I'd be like yeah that's what you get it's my shit yeah did you all did you all play through the T3 tutorial stuff because it's completely optional you can hit a skip button out if you remake your character you can you can obviously skip at this time what are we going to say Natalie I thought it was a great tutorialization of the controls and also just general

like game flow of Cotor 2 I thought there's lots of like crates to interact with it talks you through fans of crates fans of looting

love this game will love what you got going on here I love that there's an added risk to to using your weapon to open crates versus in Cotor. If you do that in Cotor 2, it can potentially break items inside the crates. I will be safe scumming to avoid this as much as possible. I haven't yet, and I do have some broken items in my inventory right now.

But, yeah, I just felt like in terms of getting the movement down and getting familiar with the interfaces and stuff, it actually did a really good job tutorializing all of that. And it's fun to, I really enjoyed the sort of first person camera where you're sort of looking around, getting a sense of where you are,

you're realizing you're on the ship and then you take control of T3. So this is interesting. It's so good as the opening shot of the game where it's like what's going on. You open on first person. like droid cam and all that and it's it's just like rebels recon and but i haven't found a moment where it's like oh yeah i should use this this is the thing i'm going to use more it's like so

good where it's like what's going around what's going on being in this perspective and after that's like yeah okay it's got to our i'm like back to like running around third person i can switch into that first person view i haven't found a moment where it's like oh i gleaned something doing this. Oh yeah, I have not been playing in first person. But I do think Cotor 2 is the cinematic cut editing of the cut scenes, like the camera jumps moving between first person and third person. So far, I'm liking that stylistic choice, these stylistic choices so far.

like they're they're definitely working for me um another thing gameplay wise early on uh you're talking rob about all the different stuff you can do that makes it feel like a more developed game mechanically after you do the switch the party members so the party member a can close the door open the door for member b then you can switch back and move forward and then close the door and open the inside door after that puzzle you get to a place where there is a crafting bench um and as you will come to learn crafting is here. Oh, it's the

crafting bench. That's the old candorous garage. That's right. Yeah, but where's candorous as shit? You can still smell whatever incense he burned

in that room as he worked with his guns. There's a lot of crafting. You mean just like axe body spray and like, you know he's going, he's like, there has to be like a Yankee candle

for like toxic and secure dudes, right? Like what's the black rifle coffee of Yankee Candle? Candles. Where it has to be like, like, camo and cordite lavender or something like that. I think it is. There has to be something like that.

I have found it. I have found it. I did a search here for candles for men. And there's a company. I'm going to say the company. I am not advertising this company. It is called manly indulgence. Mm.

And some of these sound good. I think that, you know. Uh, I would vintage oak, juniper cypress, gone sailing, you know, the OG classic. You know what? This is less toxic than I was, okay, hang on, though there's an American flag. The All-American? There's a classic plus. Duty honor country classic plus collection. Oh, no, this is for oceans are now battlefields, dude. This is for oceans or not, yeah. But the problem is you're not going to get them because they're like, they're on there, they're already, uh, on the sea in their minds.

They don't need to be. You're on a different level than this. There's golf greens. If you want a golf green candle in your room. We just call that grass normally. What does a golf green smell like? Grass. How about top guy?

Like stepping into confidence. Is that a different man? No, this is one of the candles. Oh, it's on their things. I missed it. Wow. Or how about Bachelor pad? like a stylish lounge with a twist.

No. Nothing says good smells like Bachelor Pat. What are we talking about? Oh, yeah. Okay. Anyway. Back to Cotor. There's crafting in this game in a bigger way, as we'll come to see.

But even here, you can immediately see that you can craft at these benches consumables and mods, which I don't think we're in Cotor 1. You could like equip mods in Cotor 1. There's a whole system of crafting them in this game that was not there. And you can craft, like, different types of med packs. There are different types of, I think, in this, one way you can beat this tutorial is to craft, you have to craft a repair kit, I think. Maybe you don't have to be.

You can craft a repair kit to heal T3. You can craft, like, parts, I want to say, like repair parts or repair, like, things from just raw components. You end up getting things like components and chemicals a lot in this game, which are used at the crafting bench to make different things. And those crafting skills are all the different skills you have. So, like, if you have security, you can make security tunlers. If you have computers, you can craft, like, computer spikes. Different types of stats give you different, or different types of skills, let you build different mods for your different weapons and shit. So, like, they're really trying to layer the capital G, the game on top of this game in.

a way that I think, Rob, you're, you were already picking up on. And I don't know how I'm going to feel about all of that because I think some of it is, this is still the same system. This is still a D20, like, system. And so there's a lot of, like, how do you make an interesting thing happen? I don't know, you make a thing or you take a thing. It gives you a bonus to that stat temporarily and some shit happens and maybe you have a better saving throw results.

And so, like, there's a lot of, okay, what if we take that? And instead of just like delusioning you in shit, we deluge you in crafting materials that you can turn into the useful things that's considered you can patch over your weaknesses or amplify your strengths, all that. That's kind of cool. But also, it's a lot of overhead. And I just don't know. It's so far I haven't seen anything like giving what like some of your more interesting crafting systems can can accomplish with that. it's a lot more just like instrumental in that way

it's like with a little extra step the other thing is you know what I shouldn't complain they put a filter system in the inventory that's great I like that and yet still

they did not crack the riddle of inventory management or the interaction between that and the equipment screen how can you get people to put things on their RPG character that they're carrying around their bag. This mystery has not been solved.

You just have to like click around the little slots. And it's like, nope, nothing for that. Nothing for that. Yep. You got to go. You have to check each thing. Is there anything here yet? No, nothing yet.

The other thing in the tutorial that's fun, you go outside on the spaceship. You're a little robot. You crawl around the damn ship. It's all busted up. For me, this is so funny because there's like shades of Mass Effect 2's opening here where the ship is all. It's like destroy the Normandy and the opening. Mm-hmm.

And so like, oh, we're on the Ebb and Hawk, but it's all ruined. There's an emotional resonance to that here. And then you go to a space station and eventually you're going to, oh, can we get back to the ship that we all know and love? Interesting. I think everyone needs to, we all should have been harsher on BioWare, though, for, man, Mass Effect 2. Like, they destroy the Normandy right at the start and, like, Shepard dies. And then you're just aboard the Normandy again, like 30 seconds later. I agree.

and like they printed the new shepherd it's all good and I'm like you can't do that you can't have the opening of the game be like my god everyone's dead and then like good news everybody the Enterprise B is here except it doesn't feel like the Enterprise B it doesn't even feel like that

but bigger yeah I feel the same way I like that game a lot but uh it's so funny considering that and then also thinking how cool that moment was and then playing this and being like oh you're just running this one back again uh huh yeah And a game they didn't make.

Yeah. Just a little bit of like, huh, obsidian. Interesting idea you got there. And now Bethesda has that relationship with obsidian. Now they can enjoy that. The fruits of labor. Wow, people really dug that moment, huh? You know, we tried some stuff too in Starfield.

They just didn't. No one talks about it. But like, yeah. I can't think about Starfield. I can't think about it too hunked closer. My brain will explode. I don't understand. I don't.

NASA punk is what we needed for this moment. What a fucking miss that thing was. I was rooting for it. I really was. Yeah. And then, yeah, you finish repairing the ship. I really like the taking the turbo lift to the outer hull, like to the outer hull of the ship. And you're looking around at different, you know, areas of the busted up ship to retrieve parts and stuff.

For being a go get the stuff you need to fix the thing quest, I found it really engaging to, like, be navigating the kind of exterior of the ship and approaching, you know, sparking wires and, like, ripped off panels to collect your parts. I thought that was fun. That was cool. I don't like it when they call something quad laser battery and it has two guns. That doesn't make me happy. Fair. That's fair.

I feel like people got confused where they were like, quad laser battery means turret. And it's like no, bro. It's like the turret had a quad thing mounted on it. Right. Right. It did make me think of Acolyte when, you know,

the whole deal is there's this era of manual labor where people are just like space walking out in the holes of ships but astromax are coming for those jobs and here in this era of the republic it's like astromax are just like weep boop boop boop beep and then they go out there and they do all the shit and then they come back in that's what their job is that's what they do that's what they always do yeah um and then yeah finish it you go inside you had a moment or you have to blow up a door with a mine uh which will remain a thing you can do at certain points in the game, at least through Paragas, instead of hacking it, you just drop a mine on it, which I'll open it up, and you get to Paragas, waking up in a Colto tank, wearing apparently

maybe slightly different outfits, depending on if you're a dude or a lady. I don't know, you were, it is, it is, it is body, it is close fitting wear for dudes too, but I've not looked recently at what it is for women. Oh, let me show you, I got you. I feel like compared to what the dressed down outfits were in Cotaur 1. This is like equalizing a little bit. I was very curious if y'all had the same like completely covered up outfits as everybody else. Okay, this is, okay, well, I will say this.

You have a lot of leg showing. There's a lot of leg. That's what we don't have. They go all the way down to the floor. Yeah, what we have. Aaron Sorkin would be right. Our look is similar, but I think meaningfully different. Shorts.

It's a little more like it's down to almost the knee. Yeah, this is the same exact shot. You see it's down. It's in the thought. But there's bulges. There are bulges. Yeah, just as much crotch attention. Oh, yeah.

It just, you know, it works. Yeah. And again, these sneakers we have on, these red and white, Jordan. I'm dying. They're so funny. And when you level up your ass glows, is that true? I hadn't noticed that one, actually. Yeah, like when you get, sorry, no, no, no, when you get force points.

Oh, I see, I see. But, like, yes, your body, like, sort of it has, like, coruscating light around it, but, like, it coruscates in one particular place. Like, Detective Vincent Hanna would, would appreciate, like, that moment. That's good. Get out. You run around. You get some chemicals. We hear a voice as we're awakening from the, from the colto tank.

I love the multiple cuts of pushing in closer and closer to your face as you're coming out of your resting state and you hear, awaken. And then you, like, fall to the floor and get up very dramatically. Remember Calto from the last game? I do. Here to, yeah, it's the thing is, a big fish. Didn't I destroy all those Caldo Farms? No, we, oh, you did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but they had some.

Don't worry about it. They had some, they had some, like, seeds, like, there's a seed vault situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Oh, my God, I forgot about that. When we're, when you're underwater mining and you're in the big suit thing. Forever? Oh, my God. I was so happy to watch.

I was so happy to watch that. And 2x speed, that was the best for me. So sorry to y'all. Yeah. And you find your way, I guess, one of two places you can go see some of those audio logs I was talking about in a, I guess you actually have to do this first. So if you go into like the medical bay control room and there's a computer and there's a medical bay technician who has some audio logs or some hollow logs, I guess, describing what I already described. Things are getting bad, that people are showing up, hurt from work shifts. There's weird Jedi is here, or people are saying it's a Jedi.

And you're starting to get little bits of what's happening in the world here. Because, like, it becomes clear that the miners are talking about the Jedi, and there's, like, there seems like maybe people aren't, like, on the Jedi side. They're worried that the Jedi is going to lead to trouble being here. These are not people who are like, well, the Jedi is here. So that'll help us fix the situation. Excuse me? The what?

Jonah. Oh, right. Exactly. Yes. Wherever a Jedi goes, trouble follows, right? But you're able to get, and again, as you get more and more of these hollow logs, it's like, oh, no, there's a fuel detonation. Oh, no, the ventilation system is busted. Everyone should get out of here.

Everyone should evacuate. Not pictured. It is just a character being like, oh, my goodness. Guys, there's some crazy shit. I'm looking at it happening. Whoa. It's so funny. And then you can open the door.

Most of this is on account of droid malfunctioning, which is even despite memory wipes, do not seem to be fixing these droid malfunction problems, where droids are setting off explosives in places they shouldn't be. or turning on some of the minors. I'm going to tell you, if I was one of these people and the droids started doing the shit, I'm leaving. I'm out. I'm sorry to quit on you. I know I should have given you two weeks notice. I'm sorry for a no call, no showing.

I know that it's bad. I have to go. In Spartacus, when the slave revolt begins, and Peter Houston, I was like, well, that's a wrap. It just leaves. Yep. That is, look, once this thing starts happening, you always knew it was a risk. Once that thing starts happening, you need to not be around it. You got to get out.

I don't care that they're just mining droids that just have mining lasers. They have lasers. They're still lasers. I have to go. Not sticking around for it. But you can't. Because the data, you can't just your little Google Maps thing. You can't just, it's not good anymore.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm just like these people have another ship. There is no other ship on board at the station at this point. It becomes pretty clear even in this little intro area that it's not like, you're not a bustling, you know, station where people are visiting a lot. People come to pick up the ore and that is it and no one is here right now, except for the Abbott Hawk, which you do not have access to. And they probably didn't have access to either.

If I was a minor on the ship, I would have been like, we got to get on the ship that we found and leave. I'm not sticking around. Let's send the Republic repair crew here Or whatever the fuck we're leaving Fuck the telos shipment I am out That's right

You can open the door to the morgue You go in the morgue And there are two bodies there I think you can look at the body That is Krea first And it's like she looks dead But I did not do that I skipped that

So I don't know if anybody else Yeah She looks super dead She does look super dead And so I went to the other body And oh no She stands up find what you're looking for amongst the dead

I'll be honest it freaks me out like yes are they telegraphing I had no idea who this character it was like okay some dead Jedi is aboard the ship and so it's like I'm just gonna get my sword from this corpse in the morgue and then like boom she sits up

behind you and I'm like what the fuck Undertaker is here multiple people said she was dead like the droid thought she was dead in the prologue the doctor thought she was dead not coma dead and you get a tiny glimpse of her eyes oh yeah fucking eyeballs uh huh wait i miss that oh yeah no she's got the hood draped but there's a brief moment

before like she sort of locked in the conversation mode eyes rolled back like just just pure whites mm-hmm this is true this is true now we've seen it's interesting The vibes are not good. The vibes are not good. The vibes are not good. This is, I think, personally speaking, and we're barely into this. We'll have lots of time to talk about this. But instantly, one of the iconic audio performances in video games, she's performed by Sarah Kestelman, who is a theater actor, who has done some work in film and TV, but primarily, I want to say, in the British theater, like decades of work there.

And I think it shows she just brings a different energy than anybody else in Cotor 1. There's not a character who sounds like this. She is ominous as hell. She is always speaking in little like proverbs or axiott, literally proverbs. She has this sort of air of the lecture is always on. Well, and the outfit is very Jedi-coded. Yep. But there is an ambiguity to everything that is like, if somebody were to like also trick you into being like, no, I'm a Jedi like you.

But actually, again, you're in a training day situation where it's like this person's not, like this isn't good. This is how they would also present themselves. And the things she says here, so you talk to her, you say, she says, find what you're looking for amongst the dead. And then eventually she'll say, you're like, I'm, I'm. I was a little disoriented or I heard your voice. And she says, yes, I'd hoped as much. I slept here too long and could not awaken. It may be, I reached out unconsciously, and your mind must have been a willing one. Or perhaps you've been trained for such things. As if she doesn't, suggesting that she's not sure who you are, but also immediately putting in

your mind, oh yeah, you must have listened to me. I didn't like reach in. You accepted. In fact, the next thing she says, when you're like, who are you? She says, says, I am Kraya and I am your rescuer, as you are mine. Tell me, do you recall what happened? Wait a second. I'm your rescuer. What's this bond we have all of a sudden? Interesting that you've decided so quickly that you and I have some relationship that we've rescued. We're each other's rescuers. How afraid it is that instantly. And again, not for nothing, but about this far into the game in Cotaur 1, fucking Trask Olga or whatever is like, you take the left door, I'll take the right door.

Oh, no, a Sith. Darth Brandon is here for whatever. I love how ambiguous this dialogue is. I love that she's playing with your sense of like, am I being miniseries. Is she saying that I am willing in terms of, like, I am accepting her, or is she saying that I'm willing, like, I was, like, a suitable host to accept this parasite into my mind? She's so she-pilled to me, like, she's so giving she-fe-ha-ha-hives, but not too overtly, you know, froggy, evil froggy quite yet, but...

Which we didn't get in Kotor 1, right? There is no real sheave equivalent. Malik is like a dark Jedi guy, but we don't really get... And there's maybe some people on Corabon. They should get some forced ghosts who are sort of like that, some Sith ghosts, but like we don't get anybody. I'm not saying that she's sheave, but like she does have forced sorcerer and her sorceress energy happening.

Yes, like powerful, yeah, yeah. Or talzini a little bit, right? Yes, totally. Like, not necessarily dark-sided or light-sided, but has an ambiguous relationship to the force that is maybe not in line with my previous understanding as a Jedi of light versus dark. Like, it is kind of giving, like you said earlier

when you first introduced her, force-wielder, rather than, you know, Jedi or Sith or anything. else very defined. And to Rob, your earlier point, we also get our first light side, dark side point gain moment. Your options here are, I think you can say like, yeah, I'm going to look around and that's fine. But if you say, I'll return soon to make sure you're all right, you get some light side points, you get a light side point.

Or if you say, just stay out of my way, you'll end up like these corpses. You'll get a dark side point. Yeah, I didn't want to threaten the old older woman immediately. so I chose the light side for this immediate, for this conversation. It's like a wario component to some of these Sith options where it's like, Neh. Uh-huh, there really is. Better stay out of my way or I'll kill you.

Uh-huh. She's also the one who suggests a Jedi trans could have protected you from the poison if you tell her about that. And is always just saying shit like, you know, very curious. And like, what the fuck do you? know. Tell me what you know. Why are you so cryptic? Maybe we'll learn more. Perhaps we I'll explain more once we were off the station. There's a lot of like you should focus on the matter at hand type stuff, you know. I love how she frames go go talk to people where she says I think you ask her like what happened here and she says I do not know. I was removed from the

events of the world as I slept. A survey of the surroundings may provide the answers we seek it's just like so what a way of putting that i know right it's just like okay yeah i'll go fucking talk to the other audio logs i don't that's going to hold up at a cross just say you get you're at a trial it's like i was removed from the events for the world that's such a i don't know maybe you look around tell me what happened but it's i'm trying to get there it's a great committee answer if you ever called before senate a senate hearing yeah i was removed from the events of the world that night. So I just don't, I just don't, I don't know. I was not sure. I was removed for the events of the world. But again, immediately, you could

be like, we, why do you think we're in this together? And that stuff I think is more interesting than get out of here, old lady, you know, immediately being like, what is our relationship? Is it, do we, is there a we? Are we actually working together or are you using me? There's lots of ways to come down on those questions. So we'll see as time continues. Mm-hmm. Then you fight about eight droids. So what's the deal with these weapons that we're given at the top? We're given a...

What do we get? A gun, a mining laser, and then like a... A mining laser and a vibro blade. It's not even a vibro blade. No, there's one more. It's the plasma torch. It's the plasma torch, mining laser, and then you get a vibro blade a little bit later. So, torch is melee, laser is ranged?

Yeah, let me just tell you something. You don't need to worry about this plasma torch. Okay. The plasma torch, they give you... But they're like, this one smashes things open. You have to switch to it for opening doors and stuff, though, right? It does one damage per hit, I think, and you do not, you do not need to carry this around. I think it's one damage per hit plus, like, some fire damage.

It's one plus one to six is one. it does. But it explodes lockers open and shit, whereas, like, your vibrable light doesn't do shit. I don't think that that's true. You can absolutely bash weapons, bashed containers with the sword. You can bash containers with the sword. No, it takes a long time. I'm saying, like, I'm sitting there being like, eh.

Awesome. And it's, like, doing, like, 10% chip damage to, like, a foot locker. Whereas if I use the torch, it's just like, boom, open. Mm-hmm. This is my experience. I wonder if. Because I have a strength minus one. Oh, can be because I, yeah, I have a high strength

So maybe the vibrableate is fine Is because Miko Nast is Kind of a wimp Maybe Sorry, a scholar. There you go I'm constantly, Jedi There you go

And then also I bet once we get lightsavers Uh, that'll just do fine Because the lightsaber's cut stuff open You might be right. Yeah. In any case, there's a bunch of droids We don't have to belabor this

Unless anyone has something fun to say about these droids. I like their little design. I like they're like spider droids but with like big big guns gun arms which is funny I don't know what the miners are doing these droids seem like they're the miners here you know that's why there was an uprising I think there's something interesting

happening with crea here where like her position as the quote unquote tutorial lady being so like antagonistic to you like wanting to get information from her but you open that door and suddenly she's like I have things to teach you I'm going to force talk to you I'm going to cut into this

with the cutscene um to say like reach out and you know you should save here before you open this I forgot about that I fucking rocked hey when we do this save yeah uh huh yeah you you have a you have a skill what's it called

Jedi precognition. Jedi precognition. She says, be careful. There is much energy in the room beyond, yet it stems from nothing that lives. And so you're like, what are you talking about? And she's like, I know you can't see droids with the force, but are you telling me you can't sense the energy? Of course you can.

And you reach out. And then with precognition, it's like the Final Fantasy 14 thing of like, get ready for a bunch of cutscenes to happen, except for a big fight, you know? So yeah, you should save. You should always save when it says this. And as a reminder, you should always be saving anyway. But yeah, she'll just reach out and start talking to you all the time. And then you can be like, shut up, old lady. Or thank you for your help. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love this framing around it being like you're reconnecting to the force for the first time. I love that you can respond with. but the answer of like, I never wanted to touch this again.

Yeah. It's very good. You could be like Jedi Adam Jensen. Like I never asked for this. I never asked for this. She says, do not turn away from it. Come, I shall guide you down the familiar paths you'll need it if you, if we are to survive this place. That's just what a Sith would say.

But it's also what a Jedi master would say. Whoa. Um, yeah. Yeah. Like even further like placing her as the sort of like anti-scholar. Like, it feels like it makes so much sense for her to be the one who you're like backloading all that stuff about Revin to. Right.

Because she would probably be clocked in on some of the Jedi politics in that moment. But instead, you're like meeting this guy in a jail and being like, can we actually have a 10-minute conversation about the Jedi? Please tell me what we all know. Yeah, no, no, we cannot. But yeah, you're right. She's like, at no point can you be like, and I will say this is going to be, I think, a point of friction for us.

there are going to be times you're talking to a character where we are like just ask about thing A we all want to know about thing A and there's no way to ask about thing A and it's really frustrating

and sometimes it's not even clear sometimes there will be times you're like I know my character cares about thing A in the conversation just now they brought up Thing A but now they're not going to talk about it what's going on?

But yes you're right Allie like Craya will show up throughout this whole opening to be like here's what a level up is But it's not, here's what the world is, which is interesting, right? There is like a sort of like, I'm here to be your guide for the gameplay systems and force powers. You're going to have to go out into the world to learn about the world, Bucco, you know?

So yeah, beat those droids. Find your way to the security room. We're standing in a yellow jail thing, a yellow like energy field is. Actually, you don't even go in there, right? Kraya's like, ah, yes, there's a guy in there. There's a shithead behind this door. No, she's like, I can't get it off his brain. She says his thoughts are difficult to read.

Which is interesting. Head empty. He's not thinking about anything this one, but he may prove useful. Not until I walk in. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. Aluga. Aluga.

He does the Kite, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. eyes bulging out of your head at seeing a woman walk into his jail cell well you're you're read your underpants I think that's really what he's talking about it I think he has I saw TikToks I saw TikToks of the Brat concert last night at Barclays this is what the girlies were wearing

last night I see at Barclay Center it was it was all this sure your character wasn't kind of encouraging it I'm owning it I'm fully like I am the batty Jedi that is that is my persona

but I did love that our first exchange was him being like nice outfit what you minors change regulation uniforms while I've been here he says that to the dude though too he says that's like he just can't get over the fact you're like half naked

he doesn't hang I don't know where he goes, maybe he goes to the library so that he doesn't see people. He's not going to the Bradcolds in a park place. We don't really know what his deal is, right? So true, Allie, so true.

I don't know. I knew his name. I think he plays cards or something. I mean, sorry. At this point in the game, I know what his deal is, but you don't, he doesn't, what's he say about who he is? He says, he says he violated some trumped up regulation

or another. And he's been in this jail cell for, it seems like, a while now. And he knows about the exchange, but he doesn't seem like connected to them? What is the exchange? We've heard of the exchange. Exchange was in Cotaur 1, right? We know that the exchange is the crime syndicate of note at this era of the galactic, of the galaxy. But he'll tell you straight up.

Silk Road. I mean, yeah, what he says is, yeah, the exchange is a big crime outfit, mostly operated out of Narshadah, spice running, gun trafficking, slave trading. Now I guess they're posting bounties on Jedi. Wait, is the Evan Hawk just like the head of the exchange ship, he jacked it? Was that, it was literally that dude? In the first game. God, was he, what was his? No, because remember he was trying to get, hmm, was he trying to get in with the exchange?

No, no, no. The guy who got you in was trying to get to the exchange, but like. Right. What's his name? David. Dude who was like. Davick Kang. He was a long time

member of the exchange. Yes. So he was an exchange member in the first game. But not the head of it. But it is an exchange guy's ship. So I don't know. Maybe they're still looking for

maybe they're like, we still aren't sure exactly who stole the ship. We got to get it back. Yeah. Atten will say a different thing if you're a woman in exactly one instance, I think. It's very weird. I can guess. What do you think it is? It's when he's like, not that you interrogating me in

your underwear isn't part of my fantasy, but can we move on? Oh, actually, wait a second, wait a second, that sounds like a thing. Yeah, there it is. There it is. Look, not like your half-naked interrogation is the personal fantasy of mine. What? What he says to a guy is, look, no offense or anything, but your weird, half-naked interrogation isn't my idea. And then, so he's like, I'm straight, actually, very clearly. I'm the straightest guy. Defensively harassing women. Yeah.

That's right. Uh-huh. What are your first impressions of Atten Rand? We had a sort of divide on whether or not he was a slime ball. I think we're going to be getting at why that. And maybe I'm poisoned by future knowledge and past playthroughs. He seems like he'll prick, but not necessarily like a slime ball yet. Rob, do you think that because you've played further ahead?

No. Like, oh, right away. So he does get a headset and he's like, bra, bra, bra, bra, bra, bra, bra. But he does do that. In the opening, he's like, what do you mean you don't know what the, the Jedi War was? How, where have you been? What are you telling me? I'm stuck in the cell.

The miners all ran off. What do you think's going on out there? Very like, stop wasting my time. Very, it's very east coast. I would say northeast in some ways of like, just let me out of the cell. So let's let me out of the cell. Let's keep moving. At and ran from Boston.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. To me, he is like, he's like guy that like gets invited to, the parties, but, like, nobody wants him there. Like, the way that he talks about, he's like, look, I, I wasn't there, but, but Revin and Malik and all the Sith, they all turned on each other. And it was, and it was, you know, after they turned on the jet, like, the way he reports

on what happened is, like, he's, he has all this, like, third party information. Like, he's received it through, through the grapevine a bit. never like he was never a direct participant of these of these events um i do think his uh i'm guessing that if you play as a woman the dialogue is different uh for who revin was because i think it says like uh oh he says there was some big civil war on koribon knock that academy to the ground Looks like Revin's Grand Crusade finally consumed her. And you can, that is the same. It's canonically, Revin's a woman.

You can correct. No, you can be like, wait, way, way, way. I heard Revin was a dude. Also, he doesn't just say that. Like, he goes like, women. Am I right? Yes, actually, because I was like, I was like, yeah, I'm not surprised. I was, I confirmed Revin as a woman.

Oh, interesting. Because that's not what he says to me, because I didn't say Revin's the Jedi and the Republic. I said Revin defeated Malik, then went to Corabon to unite the Sith against the Republic, because that's what happened in my ending of Cotor 1. So to me, he says, that was the story. But whatever happened there must not have lasted. There was some big civil war on Corribon, knocked that academy to the ground. Looks like Revin's Grand Crusade finally consumed her. And then you can be like, wait a second, how long have you been in that cage? Revan's a man, not a woman. And then he says, I think we probably all got this. Maybe you're right. Maybe I just hoped Revin

was a woman. No, that's not what I did. Because you said that she was a woman, right? Yeah, I said that she was a woman. I am not surprised. Revin lived for battle. She could not easily turn away from war or death was my response to him. And then he goes, yeah, well, when she became a Sith lord, she sure didn't stop she killed her way half she killed her way across half the galaxy dark Jedi are bad enough

but when a woman falls to the dark side you better space yourself before they catch you oh my god no offense or anything no offense is crazy it's so good with the

oh my god if you're a if you say that Reverend's a dude he'll say the males are bad enough but when a woman falls to the dark side, et cetera. And like, somehow starting that with the males are bad enough makes it worse to me.

That does make it so much worse. Yeah, I wish I had not, I wish I had not clicked on the high five option at that point in the long. Oh. I really feel like the worst version here is him being like, oh, my mistake, I just wish Revin was a woman. Like the idea of him like listening to the galactic news

about this big war breaking up and be like, yeah, it would be really, hot if it's a chick doing that. The fuck, man? What the hell is going on? You know. Do you remember the movie as good as it gets? I don't.

I do know it, but I don't, or I didn't see it once. I don't know it. I don't remember it. It's a Jack Nicholson, like, what if a super racist, sexist, like, uh, misanthrope was the romantic lead of a, like, late 90s rom-com? Right. And the whole thing about it is like, yeah, he's racist and like, believely sex is an offensive, but actually he's just kind of neurodivergent.

Like, they're not using that terminology, but like it's totally like, uh, well, no, he is though, because he's got like an obsessive, compulsive thing that he's, he's, is through the story. But also it's like, but he can be a, he just needs to be taught to be a good man by his gay neighbor, his gay neighbors, like black manager and the waitress he's obsessed. with and this movie was like super like super popular we just have a responsibility to fix him you know collectively and like I'm just thinking about that where it's like this is a few years later but the culture was at a point where it's like unbelievably just like that unbelievably sex and offensive stuff comes out and it's like yeah you know you got a point though

Bitches do be crazy That is the energy Yeah, we'll spend a lot more time with Atten As the game continues, I will say Listen, I don't mind Just You know, humiliating him all the time And talking down to him

I will say I don't want it I know I don't want it to like force My hand to the dark side But I do think I think this is something that was sort of brought up earlier, but the difference in the dialogue options for me in Cotor 2 versus Cotor 1

is so much of Cotor 1 felt like you were always in the position of power talking down, whether it was light or dark. You were always sort of punching down or talking down to, like, there was a clear difference in power dynamic between you and whoever it was that you were speaking to, to me, at least from the playthrus that I watched.

Whereas here it feels a bit more, there's a couple, you know, pet the dog or kill the cat, whatever. But it does feel like there are a few more ambiguous options or at least semi more neutral options that aren't overtly like, I'm evil guy or I'm good, I'm good, you know, wholesome guy,

which I really appreciate so far. I hope that my need to chastise Atten doesn't force me into the dark side. But if that's what happens, that's Renna's path. I can't help that. I will say, you know, I think that the, um,

the only, moment in this whole conversation that will add up to dark side or light side points, excuse me, for this initial bit is when you open the cage. And you could either be like, all right, I'll let you out, which is neutral, or I'll let you out, which is neutral. I trust you. And if we work together, we may be able to get out of this mess, which is light side. And I'll switch off the cage. If you try and run, I'll cut you down without a second thought, which is dark side. Anytime before that, where you're like pushing him for more information or being like, you know, somewhere in your idiotic rant

you fail to explain how you can be of use to me, you are not gaining or losing points for that stuff. Is it only counting your sort of final send-off then throughout different conversations or can it change? I don't want you to think that that's the case in general. Do you know what I mean? Oh, but so Cotor 2 draws a distinction between dark-sided stuff and giving people shit.

That is right. Or it can do that, right? There are times when it, there are going to be times when it feels like all you were doing was giving somebody shit. What I will say is there's actually two things that it's going to start tracking. Light side and dark side is important, but and I think it

tells us, and maybe it tells you this in this conversation, maybe it's early into the next section. It's also tracking influence with individual characters. So it's not just light side, dark side. It does this person, do you have influence with this individual?

And that's, those are different things. things. That's interesting. And they might like you. You might have influence with them, even though you're light side and their dark side or some other component, right? Some other variation, rather. So things to consider as we go forward and to think about. But that's like a key system. I almost had us install a mod that lets you track what your influence score is with everybody. But I decided that that feels like too much of a big jump from the original game where it is a little ambiguous. You know, you can talk to them and see how they respond to you. But it is not, they're at 50.

They're at 80, you know, influence or whatever. I think that that ambiguity is kind of important for what the game is. Yeah, gamifying or like, it's gamified. But like, you know, having a chart for that seems so, like, anthetical to what a system like that can do that, you know, loved in the modders. Yeah. And I think on a replay where you're like, ooh, this time I'm going to do the big. Atten plot line where you can get a certain outcome if you get his influence to blah, blah, blah.

Like, I think it's useful to have a mod for that, you know, but on my first, on our first playthrough together or, you know, your first playthrues, I didn't want to be like, and here, you should all be carefully, you know, monitoring all of your character. I want to get to his as good as it gets ending. Where we make him woke? You can, you could, maybe you could make, maybe you can make, maybe you can make Atten Rand woke. I love that for you, Rob. And so then, yeah, any other any other at and things before the two of you go and run into the big space computer to be like, all right, let's think through our plan here.

I mean, he's the second person you talk to who is a mysterious character that they're doing other things. but like I can't help how perplexed I felt having the conversation with him about Revan in such depth like I was just like hitting buttons and I was like why am I asking you this? You do not see the authority on this like I get the game thing of being like we can't look at your save so can you just establish some things in the world for us but at the same time it was really interesting to be in the position of being the Cotor protagonist

and needing this much of the world history sort of you know, like told to you and then also told to you by this like random dude who is just a prisoner and we know nothing about him. And who makes... Go ahead. I was going to say that's a really good point.

I feel like the game will give us a justification for it in some way. Like I have to imagine that Atten was not just the rando at the party. Like he had like I have to imagine that he's somewhat more involved with the goings-on of the galaxy than the vibe he gives, which is rando. But, yeah, I agree. It does seem funny to have, like,

the woo-woo Jedi-or-Noddye character, Jedi or not character, be like, and this is how you, you know, level up your skills. And then this dude is, like, giving you the Lord down. Yeah, we'll find out more about Atten and the, and the Revin stuff and everything else because, you know, big questions. Based on the various answers we all got, it seems like Revin is not, like no one has said at Revin's Sith Army, you know what I mean? Or Revin was killed by the Sith Army. You know, none of that, we don't know where Revin is.

We don't know what the deal is right now. Allie, you read a book about Revan, so you might deepen your mind remember some Revan lore, but. Maybe we should all read that book. I'm scrubbing it out. Whatever happens to remember that book is not canon. I don't give a shit. I just want to shout out also. Sorry, Nikki Kat is the voice actor for Atten.

Nikki was kind of like a child actor in the 70s and 80s, who was in chips and the movie or the TV show V, the alien occupation story, V, or show V. And then was in a bunch of, was it kind of character actor, bit actor in the like 90s and 2000s as like you know he's in the dark night as shotgun swat you know um he's in sin city uh as a bit character named stucca like he's not he's not a starring role guy but he's like around as tough guy all the time he's in a lot of robert rougas movies um as a bit character or like a guy in a you know the guy working at the the counter at the convenience store or whatever you know um so i think he's like one of those guys

who's like a working actor a real life working actor is just in a war was unfortunately he died a few years uh i think a few years ago i want to say in 20 20 actually wow holy shit is this true that can't be that's not what you what what what day is it oh yeah last month he died last month. Oh no. That's a shame. Unfortunate. He died early April last month. But yeah, we'll spend a lot of time with him with Atten. This is the only video game he ever did. So. Wow. Shoutouts. And I will say this about Atten. Out off the, off the rip, way different than other first companions of games like this. Very clearly, I think, engaged with Carthonassi as. the Boy Scout white dude, but we would, you know, for me, Atten hangs large in my mind

when I think about what BioWare does in the future of their games, where you get Caden, Caden Alenko in Mass Effect, you get Alistar in Dragon Age 1. There is always like one of these guys. No, always white. I think Joshua, obviously, in Mass Effect 2 is black and is still like normal guy who's in your party. And Atten kind of fits in that spectrum for me, and they're doing something a little different with him, I think. Again, right off the rip, you can tell, like, just because he's kind of, Carth sucks, but I don't know, I don't, I don't know that Cotra one knows that

Carth sucks. Maybe it does. It knows, it knows that he's kind of like a goody two shoes, but I think he thinks he's always generally, he might not, he might not have a good reason for, like, distrusting you or something. But I don't think that they understand that he's annoying and and or that he's just like wrong sometimes. They think they have a good Bill Pullman character. That's right.

Yes. And I think he just kind of isn't that. Who is Bill? I have to. President and Independence stuff. Yeah. Uh-huh. Of course.

Wow. But also famously in space balls. Okay. Okay. Now you're speaking to me. Han Solo. So that's right. That's funny.

Often mistaken for the other bill. Bill Paxton. Yeah. To this day, I'll make that mistake. I always have to remind myself, but respect for Bill Pullman to be clear. Bill Paxton's one of the great ones. I have to look at their cat hogs.

I'm still doing the thing where I'm mixing them up even at this moment anyway this conversation is really revealing to me that like do you ever get the sense that any of the Cotor like party characters had ambitions

this is what I'm fucking talking about these fucking people right out of the gate I just a bunch of people that you meet who are like just trying to get to their next paycheck. Mission. You want to like extremely

brother again remember? Oh, fuck me. Yeah, that's true. God damn. I forgot about that kid

entirely. Real quick. I forgot about the kid. I forgot about the wookie. I was like, can we name all of the

Cotaur 1 companions? Absolutely not. Bastila. Okay. Candor's or, or no.

They all it. Absolutely. T3. HK 47. Yep. Mission, mission's friend. Yeah, mission. And then the,

uh-huh, mission's friend. Oh, the wookie. The wookie, yes. Whose name? Mission and Big Baca. No, wait, it's... Big.

Big. Big. Big. Big, big, big D. Big L. Big M. I can't believe this. Big C.

Give me first letter. C is closer in some ways. Big O. Big O. Big Z. It's Big Zee. Big Zee. Which is short for. For Zorribon.

Zabaka. Zubaka. It's not Zubaka. Oh, my God. Zambarvon is closed. Zalbar. Zalbar. Zalbar.

Sal Zabar. Sal Zabar. Zabar, exactly. Zalzabar, right, right. Allie, you said the cat girl. What was the cat girl's name? There was a cat girl? Name starts with a J.

Jolene, Jolani. Jolene was the dude. It's not Jalene. No, but it was. Jolene was the force to take away your man. She did do that. She remember she there was like a love triangle thing with her. Juhani was her name.

And the wife guy. And the wife guy whose name is Jolie. But no end. Oh, Jolie Binda. That's right. The greatest Jedi of all time. Jolie. I like the part where Jolie was like, I don't know, maybe the Seth will win.

That'll suck for a while, but he gives a shit really in the end. I miss him. I wonder what he's doing. Shoutouts to Jolie. He's dead, apparently. According to fucking. I guess so, right? Like if all of the Jedi, again, we kind of buried this.

We are the last Jedi. According to the opening crawl, the last known Jedi. us is clinging to life aboard the battered freighter near the rabid, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That's, hang on. I thought they said the Jedi were basically devastated, but I didn't know that you were like the last of the dead.

That's what it says? The last known Jedi. Maybe to you, that doesn't. Known is maybe doing a lot of work. But the last known Jedi. But everyone is talking about, hey, there's apparently a Jedi. Like, it definitely feels

very significant that you are a Jedi and that does not come around very often anymore. You are the last known Jedi. Maybe Known is doing the work here and you are a Jedi of note. Like you are a plocoon or a, you know, you're somebody that's in the general public eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're not just Jedi number seven who is able to like live a life on wherever, on Corrassant, quietly. Correct. Right. Yeah, because it feels like there's a point of tension here that, like, there's only one Jedi around, but people, having a Jedi is so valuable

that, like, a major crime syndicate is putting effort into getting Jedi because they can get money off of that. Who can say why they want, why there are bounties out on the Jedi? Time will tell. Alas. Yeah.

But maybe it's one of those things, where as the Jedi die, the bounty goes up because it's like they're rarer. It's like, it's like, you know, like a rare book. Oh, like a shiny Pokemon. Yeah, this is, I tried really hard just now to not explain, to not say shiny Pokemon. Because in the less play I recorded,

I literally say it's like if you have a shiny Charazard card and you tear it up, the other shiny Charazard cards to get more expensive. So technically, theoretically, you know. What if the Jedi are trying to, like, secretly like try to repopulate the galaxy there's a fucked up reading program and they're actually working with the exchange where it's like

look we're passing them into Chlorians out I don't think you need to find any Jedi out there that we haven't sort of hoovered up couldn't you just stop having the abstinence clause and the Jedi code wouldn't that just naturally get you there? No fucked up reading program I know this game goes

and I throw a little dark I don't think it's going to throw that dark I think we're going to be okay for that maybe the exchange just wants to meet Jedi I see just an interesting evening with Jedi. That's a fun A dinner party, perhaps. That's a

Bate me, bro, but for the Jedi. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Could be. All right. All right. I think that that's it.

You and Atton go up to talk to the computer console to be like, hey, is there any way to get out of here? You learn. Not yet. We don't have access to anything we need to have access to. But you know who might have access? Our little friend.

T3 and his little. buddy that's right well mostly teaser i don't want to get your hopes up about two of them are going to get us out of here they're going to work together with the power of friendship and they're going to spring you out of this uh uh yep that's right i will hear okay before we wrap up i want to know we just talked about the kotor one companions what types of characters would you like there to to recruit in kotor 2 what are your dream companion set well sassy droid Sassy droid Sassy like

How Sassy like who Sassy like What was his name from Rebels AP Oh AP5 AP5 yeah Interesting I want somebody that

Yeah I want a droid that Has been You know decommissioned from a life I want HK I mean I'm sure HK 47 will be around But I like a I like a, you know, sassy droid sidekick of some sort.

Allie, Rob. Mercenary with a heart of gold. Sure. Yeah. Classic. Yeah. Different than candorous in some way. Actually, heart of gold.

Not like heart of gold by fucked up. Like, what if we chest bump until our bodies explode? Wouldn't that be awesome? Yeah. Oh, I want a Femphital. Give me a Femphatal. Okay. I like this.

Is that where you're at, Allie? I could think so. I think, like, Basila, but with more sauce. Sure. Not the opposite of a Femphital, right? Yeah, like. I feel, you know, like,

Basila was always God, Bastila was like trying to be cool hot lady but was also like the Valvictorian of the Jedi.

The Valvictorian whose GPA slipped at the last second in the solitorian and just like fucked her up. Forever. Literally I was about to say she's like the valedictorian gone bad. I had forgotten that about that game

until we played it again, that she was just kind of insufferable. She never lifts out of the pressure of what the Jedi want from her. And like, it feels like there's more interrogation of some of those ideas in this game.

You could have done some real Thumb Fatal Shia. It could have been like Vertigo where she's Jimmy Stewart and Vertigo. And it's like, no, I will make Revin mine. I will recreate Reven and my image is all fucked up

and like psychological and twisted. And instead, it's like, you tell me of my mom. Like, we just don't. We talk past each other. And it's like super frustrating. and I just haven't worked through it and by the way

you died and I imprinted myself on your brain but anyway my mom's kind of a bitch so I cannot can you just go talk to her in this bar ask her where dad is at oh he's back at that crate dragon

cave that we've been to like five fucking times oh my god I forgot about that I forgot about tattooed his whole way out gotta go back to Jimlin Waste I don't want to you know I'm not trying to sell anybody of build goods I don't want to say that Cotor 2 does not have similar problems as like a RBG from 2005, you know, or 2004 from 21 years ago. There is, uh, it is, it is still the game it is, you know, um, but I do think, I think the

companions have more juice by, by virtue of being the second run and not needing to be valedictorian and not needing to play as the game as straight, maybe I'd say. So we shall see. I think for the next game we should finish Paragas. Deadly esthete. Deadly esthete. Tell me more. And as a character I just want.

It could take many forms. It could be a Thron-like character. I see. It could be like Niles Crane with magical combat abilities. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Can I have one of those too?

Yeah. I'd like to order that too as well. Yeah. No. Could absolutely, like, I think it would be absolutely fantastic. Sounds good. I'm so excited for us to meet

some more characters. I guess it's worth saying for people who are not playing along. Craya has not joined the party as far as at this point, right? Right now we have Atten and T3 because we're playing as T3, right? But whatever Craya can do in combat, we have no idea. We've not looked at Craya's

ability list or anything like that. I guess we're not even sure if Craya will join us. Maybe Cray will just be our mentor figure. back at base or something. So we'll find out. I do think we should play through the rest of Piraugas. It's a little bit of a slog. I got through it today in four hours total from this point to the end.

Okay. And that was me reading, letting all the dialogue play, like, for all the hollow recordings because I'm recording it. So, like, if you're reading it and buttoning through, you'll probably get through faster. There is not a big combat challenge ahead necessarily, or at least there wasn't for my build. so it'll build by build basis. I will say the on-ramp for a dops-like character is way shallower than than Code 4-1, which was like...

I mean, you have force powers out the gate. I can't do shit. Right? So, like, are you zapping people? What are you, what is your... Yeah, there's, there's droid stun and it's just like, turn off that droid. Yeah, I guess I'll say that.

An important thing is you go forward, droid stun is very powerful. A thing that's maybe not clear if you're not doing a deep read on all the abilities. You will eventually have a character who has sneak attack. Sneak attack sounds like a thing that you're only supposed to do from like stealth as a reminder. It was this way in Cotor 1. If someone is stunned or afraid or something, they are considered a sneak attack like target. You get the sneak attack bonus from that. So if you are doing debuffs that are like stunning people or confusing them, that will open up someone who is sneak attack to do a follow up hit.

That's really strong. Oh, is intimidate a pure charisma check or is it? I don't remember. I think it's charisma plus. Oh, that's, I guess the other thing is you should put points into persuade if you have persuade

as a class skill. If you don't, you might want to consider taking the feet that adds persuade as a class skill. Persuade is very valuable in this game. This is a very talky game.

And there are times that you do a check with like awareness or security or something in a conversation, I think. But persuade is the one. And I think,

Rob, that it's, I think it's persuades. I think that your persuade score plus your charisma score is just being checked for both persuasion and intimidation checks. It's just choosing which one is which. But I guess I'm not 100% sure of that.

There's no separate intimidation skill, you know? Although I won't be intimidating many people because frankly, that's frequently just mean. And I don't want those lights. I don't want those dark side points. Fair. I just want to be like, we can be joined my band of friends. Oh.

Yeah, I would. love for you to just try playing the nicest person in the galaxy and seeing how that feels in this one. I want to know if that hits. I'm sorry, Miko Nass doesn't have that in them. Oh, you're right. That's true. Although maybe it could defy expectations. Like, oh, he did the Miko nasty to him. And by that, he solved their problems and also taught them a few things about themselves and the galaxy. Hey, is it called Purgis because of the Purgill? I don't think so.

It's Piraugas. Piraugas. But that could be corruption of the Purgill. It could be. I guess it could be. Pergill love to eat the nitroglycerin. They do. They do get, it is kind of close given that it's like a fuel.

When they say like you can like the planet blew up because somebody lit a match nearly a vein of this. And we've seen that happen with Ezra. firing into that nebula and just like you know burning two stars for us so you know who can say but either way so we're doing

the the space gas station finish up to get the space gas station there will be a point after you leave the space gas station where there is one more conversation that you automatically go into after the after you jump to hyperspace to go somewhere else or when you're in hyperspace

your characters will have a conversation on the ship and then we should cut it there so there'll be like a final does that make sense yep you'll leave you'll be in a conversation and then once that's over you don't go talk to anybody else on the ship okay all right so finish it out sounds like a plan all right i think our plan is we're going to be like recording roughly weekly but i think we're to go back to our regular release schedule because we've been it's tough for us to maintain a weekly clip so we need to bank some uh and yeah so that that is that's going to be the play um just with very

travel things that come up like if we try to record every week we'll probably manage to put out two shows a month plus a Q&A yep and we're so looking forward to your essays about you know the the heavy moral quandaries and the role of criticism and art at times like these it's going to be very special Q&A I think I will have up the first of these less plays along with this episode and I would love to have the next one up ahead of our episode so that people who don't want to, or maybe it'll be along with, but like, you know, I don't want to think that after the episode comes out,

if possible, so, yeah. Do we have an AMCA YouTube channel that you're throwing that on? I don't know where I'm going to put them yet. We have a Google account, so we should just make it there. Yeah, I think that makes them more sense. So, we'll put that up.

I'll put that in the Instagram feed. And then you get us partnered. Oh, yeah. And then we could become Star Wars. Twitch streamers That's right I mean we should probably have an ABC Twitch account

But it's not the worst idea It's not I will say It is such a pain To do the screen capture on this I'm a little nervous About streaming it So let me

For now I think Maybe try it on the watch Watch the space Oh yeah of course Of course Yeah it makes sense Our secret one With that

We've reached the end of another episode Of a more civilized age our show is produced by Chia Contreras. Is this one going to be produced by Chia? I might turn it around quick. I'll message her. It'll be Chia or it'll be Austin. You know, you'll find out.

Yes. They'll figure it out. Yeah, which, by the way, if people were wondering why it said produced by Austin last time, which is because I had to turn around the edit quick. So sometimes that happens. But people are very quick to assume like huge ruptures have happened at the drop of a dime. I was like, I post it.

like, because I am watching Andor and so I was like, so have you left AMCA? I'm like, bro, I'm watching a fucking TV show, man. Like, no, this is that? I hope not. I've, I'm doing my eyeballs and fucking Cotor mods. Bro, it's the classic Brad's quitting giant bomb for years and years. Yes. Yes.

So, you know. I'm not watching it. So don't fucking tell me anything out there. Oh, God, yeah. Stop adding us and things. Don't be, don't be. Sending me clips and fan cams. The fan save them. Oh, yeah. And send them to me.

You know what I did fucking realize, though, this week? So when we get there, we can do a full episode of every and or episode instead of trying to do three and one. And you know what's fucking great? I was so dialed. You know that little reader thing, the list of things that like, hey, this is helpful. It would inform and enrich your bonus episodes to come. Mm. I was extremely dialed in.

I'll just say this. Like stuff that I had not seen when I was like, this seems like it would be relevant. No, 100% we're doing that. Like this is clear, like they are just pulling from these sources. So, uh, yeah, no, that is, that is one luxury is we are not going to have to like two through three episodes in, in a single show. We can go one by one. Exciting. Also, I'm happy to announce we're at more civilized on YouTube.

Wow. Hell yeah. Incredible. Thank you so much. So that's what they'll go. More civilized. Finally, my long play of rebellion will have a place to live. It's true.

Finally, we're going to play the Force Unleashed. So yeah, go ahead. Like and subscribe over on YouTube.com slash at. What was that? The hat symbol? more civilized more civilized all right cool and of course you can support us on patreon.com at patreon.com slash civilized until next time please rate and review us on your podcast platform

or choice and watch this space Thank you.