A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 116: On to Onderon (KOTOR II 07)

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

You can watch Austin play through this section of the game right here. With a ride secured from Mandalore, the Exile and the crew of the Ebon Hawk arrive to a world on the brink of civil war between an ineffectual and inexperienced queen and an authoritarian general, both of whom are vaguely populist. Anyway, that's not what's important. What's important is running between the same two maps four times so that we can solve a murder mystery. Ah, with every new session, this game becomes more and more KOTOR. Next Time: Nar Shaadaa. Focus on all the Side Quests, and end after the Fight with the Red Eclipse Crew on the Ebon Hawk.  Show Notes Kreia & Atton Facts Hosted by Rob Zacny (robzacny.bsky.social) Featuring Alicia Acampora (ali-online.bsky.social), Austin Walker (austinwalker.bsky.social), and Natalie Watson (nataliewatson.bsky.social) Produced by Chia Contreras (cado.bsky.social) Music by Jack de Quidt (notquitereal.bsky.social Cover art by Xeecee (xeecee.bsky.social)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakene, joined by Alia Kampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by your listeners via 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 various other special editions we have done. today we continue our time on Anderon heading to the city of Iziz, the troubled city of Iziz, encountering some history that Patreon subscribers

may be very familiar with. Yeah. And then I'd be interested to hear the versions of these stories that are being told in this game. It's wild. So once again, that's patreon.com slash civilized. if you want to know all these secrets of Izzy's. But Austin, up top, you said you wanted to handle the summary today because you wanted

to give big catch up. I want to do big catch up. I did not write a summary for today's thing, but I think that that'll be fun. I can get us there if you don't have one for that. I do have a general catch up because someone wrote in and said, like, I love the show. I don't have time to watch the let's plays or play the game, which I think is fine because the less plays are like the last one was four and a half hours long. So like between that and the episode, that's like,

six hours of content, seven hours of content. So, uh, but we're like just, hey, let's, let's reset the stage. Also, we're kind of in the second act of the game now, right? So like, let's, here's, here's what's happened. In Knights of the Old Republic too, you play as the Jedi exile, a former general who served under Revin during the Mandalorian War a decade before this game began and years before the events of Cotor won. At the end of that way, wait, wait, hold on one second.

Okay. Okay, yeah, okay, good. I hope that the... Hang on one second. Now I need to know what that is. As a tall boy of some sort. It is pepper and peaches. Ooh.

IPA. IPA. Is that dog want to be let out in the background there? No, he's okay. He just likes to stare at the door? He just does that. He's sitting down. Yeah, he's chilling.

He's chilling. He wants to hear. Yeah, he wants to hear about... I was about to say about Darth Plagius, the Wise. Which is not who we're talking about right now. What if the camera had panned down a little bit more in the Acklight and it revealed that Darth Plagius the Wise had a little dog. Oh, oh my God, he would love that.

Sox would be really. Also probably Darth Plageus would love that too. Maybe he wouldn't be so fucked up if he had a little dog. I don't know. I think so. I don't know. Having gone through like a health scare with my dog, like it is the, just darksided immediately.

like just any sort of question like we have some ambiguous results at the vet's office all right tell me more about this Darth Plagis the wise thank God Anakin didn't have a pet because he would have been just we would have lost him so instantly you don't think that he and Padway

had like a little dog at Padamay's apartment we just never we never met it feels like she would have bought her a little designer dog I see like a little like a bird I see it Padway being like a bird girl bird girlly interesting i don't know i but the thing like imagine how that uh scene with her like handmaiden would have hit if like she's starving in a waterless apartment

somewhere in choruson and padmay is just like pampering her little clashes it would be great it'd be so good she's like giving speeches about like i have learned about the hardships people are facing on corassan there are people who can't afford to give their dogs enriched that approved Mineral backs or snack. Yeah, exactly, exactly. You said that, you said her handmaiden. I was like, what if Padmey had handmaidens like Atres did?

I think, look, cursed. I think on a long enough timeline, you know, it's one of those things where like, oh, Padmay, forever young, so much promise. If she had stuck with Anakin, I think that would have been the natural progression of things would be a... That's kind of my feeling. With a bunch of attending handmaid, this is wild. Yeah.

Okay. You play as the Jedi exile, a former general who served under Revan during the Mandalorian Wars a decade before the game began and years before the events of the Yield Republic won. At the end of that war, after a catastrophic but victorious final battle on the planet Malacor 5, you were exiled from the Jedi, who you will later learn describe you as a wound in the force. Ten years pass, along with your connection to the force.

Cotor 1 happens, and Revin, whether light side or dark side, disappears into the unknown regions of the galaxy. With him gone, the Sith reemerge, with them gone, Lady Raven, the Sith reemerge and begin hunting Jedi, all while you live in the shadows. As the game begins, the exile is unconscious on a ship that is mysterious to them, but familiar to us, the players. It is the Ebenhawk, the ship that Reveninco took from Davik Kang, Crime Lord of the Exchange, in the first game. The ship is repaired by the Astromech Droid T3M4, our buddy, and docked at the nearest port,

a fuel mining depot built into an asteroid called Paragas Station. There, you recover from your wounds, team up with T3, and two other strangers. The crone-like force user Kraya, who is dressed like a Jedi, but whose philosophy seems fairly distinct from that of the orders, and Atten Rand, a smarmy smuggler with a past he carefully hides. You learn from an assassin droid who's hunting you down on behalf of the criminal organization called the Exchange that you are the last known Jedi in the galaxy.

After defeating that droid and escaping the clutches of a scarred Sith lord named Sion, who seems to be Kray's former student, you managed to leave Piraqas, unfortunately destroying it in your wake whether you meant to or not, and you head to the next nearest port, Citadel Station. Citadel hangs above the planet Telos, the former home of Reven's old comrade, Carthor Nasi, which was devastated in the Jedi Civil War, aka the war that Kotor 1 takes place storing. While there, you learn about an ongoing restoration effort, which has been badly threatened

by the destruction of Paragus, since it was the fuel source for the project. This is troubling because it is the first real post-war experiment in ecological restoration, and if it fails, you learn that the Republic may abandon the entire endeavor across the galaxy. While there, your ship is stolen by a mysterious woman with white hair. Eventually, you get a ride down to the planet of Tilos itself, meet up with your old war buddy and loyal engineer Baye O'Dur, and fight your way past mercenaries and some more assassin droids towards your ship, which, it turns out, was stolen by that white-haired woman who is known as the handmaiden, or as one of the handmaidens, the last handmaiden, on behalf of a Jedi

master named Atris, who is living and hiding in a secret. polar temple on the planet Telos. Atress is maybe your ex. Undoubtedly, she's someone who is a deep attachment to the exile, and we learn eventually that she was the person who most wanted to punish you for your disloyalty to the Jedi Council and your loyalty to Revin. As a reminder, Revan and Malik went to war to stop the Mandalrians from conquering the Republic.

You and a handful of other Jedi joined them to do just that, and in the process, many fell to the dark side. you have a big argument with Atris about your reason for joining them in that war or I think you could also just say fuck off I don't want to talk to you I don't remember if any of us did that but in the end you wind up

broadly aligned or at least sharing some information she sends one of her handmaidens the last of the handmaidens the one who stole your ship to you she is a woman from a group of women who look just like her from a warrior

culture called the Achani and she is serving as as servant, warrior, and likely spy on behalf of Atris. Atris tells you that there are some other Jedi out there. In fact, wouldn't you know it? It's just the exact group of Jedi council members who exiled you. And they are all hiding across a series of planets in this sector of the galaxy. One is on Narcadah, the smuggler's moon.

One is on Corabon, the ancient Sith burial world that we visited in Kotor 1. One is on Dantuin, another Kotor 1 world, where the Jedi Council once operated, and one is on Anderan, where we, which, as Rob suggested, we read about in some comics that you can hear us talking about, and we've watched on, on the Clone Wars episodes also, is a planet that has repeatedly been caught up in the Republic's wars and which now finds itself on the edge of a civil conflict of its own, between its naive but well-loved Queen Talia and its autocratic but seemingly effective General Vaklu. When we arrived to Anderan's airspace, we were driven to its moon, ducks,

where a man with a familiar voice in a helmet named Mandelor who has connections to Revin and Clan Ordo is trying to rebuild the Mandalorians to their pre-fall greatness. We do some chores for him and he then brings us to Anderan's single city the walled capital of Isis or Aziz.

I always say Aziz and every NPC says Isis and it doesn't sound real. That's where we are. We get to Isis and we get to Aziz and what we find is a I guess what's our short summary of today's session. They wouldn't have like a follow up on what we do today.

Murder mystery. Murder mystery and a city on the brink of a civil war. That's basically. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Uh, and animals attack you.

Oh yeah. There's a, there's a beast problem. There's a beast. There's too many beasts. Well, there was a beast opportunity. And then there became a beast problem.

That's right. Allie, what are you going to say? Well, it's just the one it's just the one piece I don't understand how that plays out but the other thing is that you could also

be a murder investigation yourself depending on some choices you make because you could be an assassin sort of because somebody wants you to assassinate people okay I think I didn't do this so I'm very curious what happened here yeah there's

at the high level disease which we're all just saying is like four places. It's four screens. I say that because like you go to the same two of them over and over and over again. There is a, it's so funny. There's a space port that you land at, which is where you dock the ship, you go out, you can talk to some people, you can buy some stuff from some merchants, you run into a guy

who is a beast master from the old beastmaster culture that used to be at war with the people of Aziz. It was so important to just have identical facial hair and grooming standard. Like every beast master, you have to just, you have to keep that chin strap. That's right. Yep. There is a central spaceport where you first learned that one of the central conflicts here is that people need spaceport visas to leave this place.

Importantly, there's a blockade that General Vaklu has set up. And, oh, also, by the way, the fight that you have when you get here, you get pushed towards Duxin. That is being reported on the news in a BBC presenter accent as being a republic attack on the planet. So that we'll come back to that. So, yeah, people, there's all sorts of people asking for visas there. There is a lot of tension between different factions inside of the military, the Anderan military. There are royalists who are loyal to the queen. There are people who are loyal to General Vaklou.

Some of them are wearing brown shirts and masks and seem to be secret police. And they're often serving side by side. You'll meet like a captain who's clearly a loyalist and then he has like a guy in a mask right next to him. Those soldiers and secret police are also constantly harassing merchants who might be disloyal. We'll definitely talk about at least one of those. There is a pending riot, constant civil. disorder and speeches in the city square.

Then there's the merchant quarter which is, that is the, is that the merchant quarter. That's the merchant quarter. Right, yes. Then there's the Western Square, which is the dangerous part of town. And there's just bad guys. There's a bunch of thugs there. There's blood.jap on the ground.

That is also where you're going to meet up with Mandelaura's contact here, who sounds like a criminal from a Michael Man movie Dagon Ghent who is a doctor he seems to be like an underworld doctor

who's fallen into trouble and has been arrested for a murder that he may or may not have committed and then there is the canteena where people are playing cards and being assholes it's kind of doing some swoop race

swoop bike racing and more people want some some visas to get out of here and you have to investigate the murder mostly by walking around us in a circle in that room and outside, asking people questions. That's the high level. And also, I guess, on this planet, finally, you do all that shit, just to get our summary done. You're doing all this because Dagon Ghent can get you a contact with the palace where Jedi Master Kavar, one of the missing Jedi masters is, so you can meet up with him and ideally get some answers about what's going on and ideally get some support to fight the Sith lords.

who I didn't mention in the intro except for the one of them. There's three of these Sith lords coming for you, coming to destroy the world or the galaxy or whatever. And you get a very brief meeting with Kavar and it gets broken up.

Very brief. I cannot emphasize you enough how brief this conversation is. And we learned that Anderan is a planet we'll come back to. Unlike the rest of the planets, Andoran is sort of split in two. We've now done the first three-fourths

of Anderan and then we'll come back later on in Kotor. We flee the planet effectively as the civil conflict goes from cold to hot. Yeah, they do really push, like, you can't go back to Isis. You cannot. You'll be able to go back after we finish a few other planets is what happens, if I remember, right. Can you go back to Doxon? It's too hot for you there.

Can you land on Doxon? Okay. Yeah, I want, I recommend it, actually, because if you do, you'll find that, remember how at the end of last episode our exit from Duxan was being attacked by a bunch of Sith assassins. You don't get a chance

when you finish those, when you kill everyone you're immediately like brought into a cutscene and you get off the planet and you can't really do anything. So when you go back to Duxan you can get all the loot from the guys you killed and there's a lot of loot

there. That's good. So I recommend going to Duxon and walking around for a little bit because I promise you I found a lightsaber part that I didn't need but I found a lightsaber crystal too

that I didn't need and ended up buying twice on accident so me at Disney World like actually though I also forgot one thing from the summary

that's very important this is a game about talking to people you were talking to people all the time time, I think I've left off is we, and I don't know who's had what conversations at this point, but whether it is the mysterious assassin who comes to kill you in your, I almost said apartment, in your spaceship apartment, or your mysterious slash evil slash ontologically

good, hard to tell what her deal is, Jedi master, not really a Jedi master, force witch, who could say what Kraya is? I mean, we could say what Kraya is if you got a certain conversation, there is so much talking in this game. And that is often where it is slowest, but also often where it is best. And so we might have some conversations to dig into depending on which ones we got from the members of the Ebenhawk crew. Yeah. I love that like every episode so far ends with, not every episode, but the intermission that is

the Ebenhawk is incredible because it is just like oh shit the game is here the story is here on the Eben Hawk as we're walking around I might be blacking out

during some of the conversations because they're just so insufferable we'll get to that but the HK hater has logged on I just I just I like you know when your friend

does a bit. I do. And you're just like, oh, it was so charming, like the first time because we all he heed and ha-haed like when it first happened. And then your friend, your friend decides that that bit is the bit that they, they must like ride their personality on. And so the bit consumes them. It's like a very, it's a dark thing that happens.

to a friend. Yeah. When the bit just, it, it takes hold almost like a possession of some sorts. And HK has been unfortunately afflicted with this sort of possession. And I just, I cannot, I could not retain any information. I was copying things down. I was writing it down. And then eventually, we'll get to it.

It was just so, it was, this was the lows. of conversation. There are some incredible highs on the Ebenhawk, and this was one of those low lows for me. You know, this is the era of epic bacon, you know. It was so epic bacon. It was so like lulls. It's so lulls.

It's so mid-2000s, like, it really is. We can get to him, but. I wanted to rip off the lensless raybans. that you off of HK's face and smash them on the floor but anyway so

did anyone get visas before heading off to I got her after I got back I get her after yeah did you end up winning that fight Rob because that's our cliffhanger last time was that you

had not gotten to Aziz yet Because you went to the Evan Hawk after Mandela was like, okay, we're ready to go. And you're like, one second. And we just went 0 and 6 versus it was bad. But was that before, sorry, that was before last recording. Then we gave you some tips. We said you can, huge tips. You said you could heal in between rounds.

Duck into that and then Tori and use that free action. Yep, every time. Did that work? Like a charm. So a couple things. I did also. Okay. I, like, there was just one more quest out there in the world.

Uh, I had missed sort of a branch of the forest where you find those scouting parties that the, uh, what's his face is looking for. Yes. So I bagged some of the last XP that was available that tipped, uh, not the whole party, but it did tip the exile over into the next level. And this time I was like, huge. I need to stop speccing out my dudes as like ultimate supports because this whole series loves to throw you into one v ones. And if you're like, I'm. the ultimate like support you're fucked because that requires people to support so i took the um jedi defense one uh which just gives you straight up like armor bonus and so suddenly her hit rate

like collapsed uh like doing attacks on on my dude and then yeah stucking in and like spiking in advance med pack anytime it looked dicey plus the uh last time i leveled up seems to have changed the hit rate on stasis for like across the board but suddenly she was like suddenly she was getting stun locked a ton so like with that extra level under my belt and the trips into the inventory for the free action suddenly it was a much more manageable fight nice and sort of I you know I welcomed her to the team do we want to start there since at this point we've all had that conversation did anybody bring her I guess is a question actually an important one anybody bring her to Izes Was she in the crew for anybody?

Because she's like, she speaks up a lot there. She has a lot to say, but I didn't get a chance to because I didn't get her until I came back. Gotcha. I brought Mandelor and Mad Maiden. I think that's totally fine. I'll tell you what she says when it's important. But do we want to talk about that initial Vsauce conversation? Well, also on the topic of who to bring where.

Yeah. Do you feel like we should be switching out party members to like farm influence in that way? I actually did a deep read on how. influence works before I recorded. So we're going to do Narshaddon next. As well it was relevant. Yeah, no, I think it's a great, this is a great topic of conversation. I, so there's a couple things. One is, um, maxing out influence with certain characters is really beneficial. Um, I'll ask, has anyone completed handmaiden duels at this point? I think I'm the only one. That makes sense. Has anyone completed repairing T3? Probably also no. This is just, I have a skill

heavy build. That stuff's easy. Has anyone, um, has anyone, um, I'm trying to think of other influence things that you can get without. So I'm trying to find one that won't be a spoiler necessarily. I've gotten a lot of information from Crea that were based on influence checks. Right. So you get those cutscenes for Crea. And I think also Crea will give you like, oh, you'll get six more force points or like some sort of, you'll get force sight or stuff like that. Other characters get really big boosts if you max out their influence.

You can They get prestige classes They change their class If you get them maxed out on influence It's not everybody Atten Bayeodor Handmaiden

I think that that's it Is that it Am I forgetting anybody? Oh the disciple We don't have yet The female only Companion who you get on Dantuin He also can get a prestige class

So Mandelor doesn't um hk doesn't t3 doesn't etc but um i guess vsas also doesn't but vsos in each case you'll get like a either a boost for yourself or they will get a new class at the end of their influencing so it's worth it to think about how you're raising influence with them i'm not saying there's no gameplay benefit you also get more story stuff from most but not all of them um some characters get more than others handmaiden gets a ton right um beailder gets basically nothing vsas kind of gets nothing. Visas gets a lot, but you can just talk your way to max influence with her basically immediately. You can max her out right away after you've saved her or beaten her

and, like, said that you're not going to kill her, depending on what your conversations are. And the other thing we're saying, I've said it a bunch, but I'll say it again, you can drop influence with people low, and that's the same as raising it in terms of unlocking their future story stuff. Don't think of it as a meter that needs to fill up. Think of it as the light side, dark side meter, but for your relationship with them. You can happily push it in the opposite direction. You'll know it's working because their, their light side, dark side meter will come to either match yours or be more and more opposite yours, depending on if you're gaining or, quote, unquote, losing influence with them. The way it works, it's a little funny.

Like, remember what Crea was saying about how you have this gift? Right. And it seems like those who follow you, like it totally recontextualized my understanding of influence. It is literal. It is that when you have high influence with people, they will like come closer aligned to where you're at in your dark side, light side meter. But when you lose influence with them,

they become more opposed to you. But you think about it in Craves' vision, that's the same, right? Because it's just pushing them away instead of pulling them forward. You're still playing with the force with their will in that way in Craya's vision.

All right. Which is such a different way to think about influence in these types of games because I think we consider influence to be like I get closer to this character and therefore I get these special treats

of cutscenes or extra lore or whatever. My relationship is stronger and if I don't raise influence then I'm locking myself out of things. And it's such a different way of thinking about what influence in a game like this means. So that was helpful. Yes.

So I have a great, here's the thing that's very funny, is there are characters have things they like and things they don't like that tend to not just be tied to particular actions in like a particular, like, did you blow up Paragas or not. not. Of course, certain characters have things to say when that happens back during Paragas. But there's also just kind of like categories of action. The three categories are per strategy wiki, good actions. And the people who suspect might like that, like that. Beauder likes that. Handmaiden likes good things. T3 likes good things. Vsos likes good things. Atton likes good things. There are psychotic things. I see HK likes psychotic things

Mandelor like psychotic things Some characters we haven't met yet like psychotic things Vsauce like psychotic things Atten like psychotic things And there's cunning actions Vsauce likes cunning actions Kraya likes cunning actions That's it

So cunning actions Come up a lot on It really is. Come up a lot here where you could, for instance, be like, I'm manipulating the situation to my benefit. It's not that I like the general, but, you know, we can gain our own little bonuses by siding with him temporarily or whatever, right?

Or any type of manipulation. Craya likes that. Vsau's likes that. Vsauce likes everything. Aten likes everything or is neutral to cunning. No one dislikes cunning actions. And so given that, you can kind of play around that, basically. I'll send you this, I'll send you an edited version of this,

if you really want. But I don't, what I think is the right thing to do for your first time playing is to think about who you want to gain influence with, keep them with you. There's a complex sort of system on like who's, who gets the influence, who triggers it. But when I say that like they respond to these types of things, what I mean is that like, Vsos has three responses that she'll give when you do something good in front of her, right? And she'll work through first, second, third. There'll be a little cutscene where she says,

huh, I thought such charity had left the galaxy. Dada, da, da, da, da, da, da, whatever. And then she'll say the second one the next time. You'll have, like, a little exchange back and forth, whether it's good or bad. If Craya is there, she'll sometimes, like, chide you. And then if you push back, someone who likes good things might like that you pushed back.

So it's a little complicated. But the key for me is really, you don't actually need that many pluses to max someone out. If you bring Atna with you for half of Narshadah, you'll probably max him out because he likes everything, you know. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If there's a character who you really want to max out, message me and I'll talk to you about the particulars. And I'll tell you if it's worth doing it both mechanically and narratively. Some characters also have things that are going to be like, oh, this is the way you get influence for them, even if they're not in your party a lot.

Mandelaura is going to tell you, in fact, he does after this section, hey, I'm trying to repair the Mandalorians. I'm trying to bring back the Mandalorians. If you ever see any Mandalorians out there, let me talk to them. Hit the pause button and put me in the party and let me talk to them. And in general, much of the game, you can just swap party members around from out in the world. You don't have to come home. Yeah. Part of the reason I was thinking through it, because the wiki that I'm using, the strategywiki.

dot org shoutouts has those sort of callouts and in the like I have to 100% this game like I have to all the achievements I was like is the fact that I'm not even introducing these people to these conversations like holding me back

in some sort of way right the answer is not really I think you're probably going to do fine if people who are watching the let's play can yell at me if I'm being wrong here but like I'm not gaming it and I've maxed out handmaidens I've maxed out Vsauce is. I'm close now to maxing out. Atten. Like, we still have a lot of game left. I think that

the people who are going to be harder to max out are the people we don't have yet. And those tend to be, uh, we'll see, right? The thing is going to happen is right now anybody we have in the party, we have so much time left to max them out if that's what we want. Um, as we get more people, we're going to have to say, okay, let's really focus on maxing this person out as quickly as possible, you know, if that's what you want to do. I've decided like, I'm not maxing out. I'm not going out of my way to max out. Mandelor, Allie, I suspect you will.

Rob, I suspect you might. I got influence with him in a really funny way this time. I'm excited here. I feel like I'm in a good place. What is a psychotic action? Have we seen any? Have we had the opportunity to do them in this case? Yeah, it's the stuff.

I mean, it's, uh, I can just say what I, do you want me to say what I did? So when you have, when you have the guy who's like starting the riot, um, you can like help him incite that. And Mandelaar was like, why did you even do that? And I was like, well, I mean, I don't really care, but this evil, you know, the general guy might help us. And he was like, you know, I didn't really think about it like that. And then I got eight influence.

So I think that he was just like the fact that I would even like sort of stick my nose in it and like, you know, push the edge of what this riot is even though I don't live here and I shouldn't be involved with it is psychotic. Mm-hmm. You know, anytime that there's a guy who you can like. kill just because that's psychotic and VsSS likes this Vsos likes everything man okay well yeah

acting out in the world I'm kind of seeing she's like a reflection of you like she's your biggest stand in some ways is what I'm kind of reading from her this is such a bizarre fucking game dude it's wild to the exile the bonkers the psychosexuality

that is happening in this game is unbelievable. She's also like a weird mirror of Craya and obviously also like a weird mirror of the Darth Nihilis who tortured her. There are weird things where there are moments a lot in this game that like where the exiles positioned

makes the game feel like a vanity project from like an established actor. Right? Like that's kind of how it feels is like so I kind of see myself as like this like natural leader, but also just like the most desirable man

in the galaxy. Here's a list of co-stars. I would suggest, now to be clear, they all need to be comfortable with sex scenes, which I will be directing. Because it's important to the character, really. Like the magnetism of the exile

is just super important to telling the story the way it needs to be told. And that's kind to how it, like, everyone is just like, it's got to be you, exile you're the man every every lady you run into is like i didn't believe the galaxy had anything good or strong and powerful in it and then i met you and i thought we couldn't top the oh like the bonkers intensity of like the handmaiden coming on super strong uh attins like you just got to glow

dude like i can't look at you your aura is so bright and beautiful looks good chance I didn't think we were going to top that. And then visas, like 30 seconds in my very first conversation with this woman ever. My life for yours, master. I would die to keep you alive in the galaxy. My life is nothing next to the importance of keeping you alive in the galaxy. All life in the galaxy depends on the well-being of you.

Listen, she can see some stuff I can't see. I, who am I to disagree with her? Find someone who looks like Vsauce with force vision. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell a woman who sees that what she's seeing is not what she sees. I'm gonna do that. Absolutely not. I'm gonna empower women. I don't know why you guys are being weird about it.

Like she's just, she's kind. She's kind. I guess maybe that threatens you, like, you that she's like warm and generous, but. Did you, uh, did y'all talk to? I mean, I guess actually this may be a wrong question. Yeah, dude. Okay, so, all right, so you go fight VISA. Okay, yeah, the hardest fight in the, the hardest fight in history.

Let me just set it up really quick. By the way. Yes. I just want to counter Rob's hardest fight in the history because I, I ended that fight in three turds with force lightning. That's probably what Darth Nihilis did in her, too, so. Oh, you mean like the dark side. I just felt like she wanted it to be kind of a role play moment. So I was like, I was like, let me.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client Natalie Latson, has, you have heard from the prosecutor describing how poor Vsas was brutally electrocuted by a dark Jedi. But the story my client has to tell is of a little role play gone wrong. That's all it is. We're both happy at the end of it. I don't know. I think it seemed like it went well for us. I'm extremely right. We first met Vsas in a cutscene as a reminder for people aboard a destroyed.

Oh, I got that cutscene. You got that cutscene. Okay, that means VsS is on her way to you. You can get Vs wherever you want now, basically. No, I fought her. Vsazs is in box. I just got it really delayed. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, okay. So it means it didn't bug out. That's what you're partly telling. It's good. Okay. She shows up. Should we just do the inner, the whole. back the even hawk stuff

we just set up the visa stuff so people know who she looks like in their minds because we know the handmaidens all white everything white hair blue eyes perfect skin black lingerie for some reason visa shows up and she is a Sith nun she is in dark red robes

with black vestments and she has a red lightsaber and it's all a gold trim everything it's a perfect outfit and she jumps you and that is Rob the six deaths before you in. And then what happens? Because we have not talked about what this conversation actually is or who she is. We've only talked about her coming to kill people. So you win and she's like, I am bested. I must now serve you. You've destroyed my lightsaber. My strength is yours. Please kill me or, you know. And then

she passes out. Yeah. And she gets sent to the medbay. And, you know, this game means you just put the character model on their back. That's right. He's just sort of like toss them on to a slab. And then Atten's like, oh, this is pretty wild. She's a, not a Mirri Allen. It's a Mirraluca.

Miruluka. Right. It's kind of wild seeing one here because, you know, their whole planet was destroyed. No more information about that from Atten, but they're super rare. And he also explains, because he's, you know, a bit of a fanboy for all things, force, force, for it.

Weird. He's so weird. They have an interesting way of seeing. Not with their eyes. Mm-hmm. They see the four, through the force. And then the headmaidens, like, kick her off the ship. She's a Sith.

Like, you endanger all of us by, by Keith. here on the ship she can't be turned uh this this woman is your enemy uh you don't have to kill her but you got it you got you got to get rid of her and the way i handled this was uh i went to crea next because i always just want to know like what's craya she so at this point vizus is still just laid out on yeah the med bay okay you've not had a big conversation with vizas at this point no i did oh i did okay but and and and and vsas gets out of the med bay kind of no matter what Because during your conversation from Crea, she's up around doing stuff. You're right.

But Crea is like, she's pretty sifted out. But mostly Craya seems really annoyed that the ship is just filling with people, which is a wonderful character beat. I love it. Crea is peevish because at the start of this trip, you, Aten, and Crea all like had your own rooms. You had space to, like, be yourselves aboard the ship. Craya's first thing is, please tell me you're not, you're not picking up Vsus. Like, how many people are you going to cram into the ship? This isn't, this isn't, like, this isn't friends.

Like, I can't take it. Yep. And then what? Craya hates friends. Oh, Cray hates friends. And this is going to be news, because I don't think that, I don't think, I suspect that Allie and Natalie did not get what you're about to say. And then Craya.

like and whatever you do don't she actually say breed with her or is it saying breed problem it will breed problems she says such a union would breed problems i think she may have used the word breed with the handmaiden last time though you might remember oh right because she's doing this a second time this is another swing at that same conversation where she's like don't fuck don't fuck whatever you do don't fuck them it would be bad for us if you did and she doesn't just say that right rob because she doesn't just drop it well she didn't really have much i didn't this conversation didn't continue too much further about her at that moment because what i was my response was uh oh god what so you have one like real prince

charming response which is i just met her i'm not about to run up her loading dock or something like that. No fucking way, dude. Or you can be like that's none of your business. Yeah, I don't like that. Just because I saved her doesn't mean I was going to charge up her loading ramp. Bro, take another swing at that one. That one should not have made it in the game.

Take it back to the writer's room. Take it back. I'm putting it back. So did you not get her long description of what might be? No. Okay, I'll read it to you. I shit. So, wait, how did you get that out of her?

Were you like, that's none of your business? I think I said that's none of your business, basically. I said, my intentions for her and none of your concern. And she says, ah, so then perhaps it was a mistake in my judgment. And then she says, it's good. You've never wondered what lay beneath her robes. If her alabaster skin was as white and unblemished as her face, or if perhaps she bore the scars of slavery. and if that would stir you more.

If perhaps her deference tone would change once you held her by the throat and showed her how far a Jedi can fall. Few are the thoughts that can hide in the shadows of your mind exile and such passions are not strength, but erosion. And you can be like, I have never felt anything like that.

And she's like, no, that I was mistaken. and it's not that similar than the handmade what's why because I kind of figured okay so my thinking was even though the charge up her loading ramp was a terrible line I figure that was so dismissive that like it would get but like the minute you're like that's none of your business that is a that is a tell right like even if it is not someone's business it is like well I'm you know it's like

Lizzie Bennett refusing to sell Catherine to Berg like well I'm not saying I'm not going to fuck Darcy because that might be a lie if things break my way. So you like so apparently yes, that's none of your business. That provokes the like real explicit fanfic that she's writing about you. Dog. Did you read this last time or does she get freaky in the same way with the handmade? Because I remember the neckline. She gets freak. Maybe I read the Vsos line last time too, but now we have a little more context for it. She also has some. like this about about handmaiden

is the thing right okay she also is like don't fuck her it would be really bad if you did yeah it's it's wild I just want to know if we're going to get the same energy

for for whoever the female romance the disciple I guess he is I don't know like are we going to hear about like don't take hold of his lightsaber. Like, I just, I want,

if you're going to come at it with this energy for Vsauce and handmaided, bring it for the disciple. And Vsus is not genderlocked. Y'all have Vsos. That's not a mod thing. Vsos is around, like, so she could have done some shit around getting intimate with Vsos. You know what I mean?

But didn't. Interesting. Okay. For me, she was just like, and you probably also got this conversation as well, but she was like, she's blind because she cannot see, but she could see more than you can. Right, we got that too. You can, like, open up a conversation about Kray's own eyesight, which seems kind of like not, it seems a little bit rude, but you end up asking her the same question, like, why do you

have that hood on your face all the time? Like, what's going on with you? Right. And her, her answer is basically just like, I'm super old. I'm doing better this way. don't worry about it. If I need to fix my eyes, I will. But I see so much.

The way that it's all framed around for, if you're playing a woman, because there's early conversations where she's like, with a man, whatever your intentions, keep them restrained, whether they're mercy or lust. Despite your urges, it would be better to deal with them now, whether you intend slavery or salvation. She's a threat to us. And urges and lust are gone if you're playing a woman, and instead it's intentions. and she asks you to keep your intentions restrained

to deal with your intentions ahead of time instead of your urges, instead of your lust. She uses the word lust outright with a dude. And, you know, I think this game is... So I guess here's a question. I know, Natalie, you've seen the cutscene, the Crea backstory cutscene. Have other people seen the Crea backstory up scene?

Okay. We'll come back to it. I think between that, between Visas talking about her relationship, ship with Darth Nihilis and how some of that stuff was framed. The game is doing a lot of indirect discussion around, or, or, let's say, you know, subtextual sexual assault is all over the primary characters, the primary women of this game, in ways that are, you know, I don't think it should be off limits for storytelling.

And I think we'll have a lot to talk about once y'all get those cutscenes. It is not explicit, but I know, I've still haven't watched Andor, obviously, I'm waiting to do it until we can do it. But I know that that was a conversation in this season of Andor was, does that have a place in Star Wars? It's not here in a direct way, but I do think this is a game that's very interested in power. It's very interested in the way power intertwines with intimacy. I don't know that it necessarily does right by that stuff, but it is taking some swings,

I think broadly. With the VISA stuff, Rob, correct me if I'm wrong here, but like she describes Darth Nylis, I don't know that his name gets used by her here, but this guy comes to her planet and just like devastates it with his power of the force. So it's pretty, like, it's pretty cool, pretty bonkers. It is. So, yes, like, when you go talk to her,

uh, her planet is entire, they are a planet of foreseers. And it's not entirely clear. in the wake of the Jedi Civil War, the Jedi sense that there's something else out there that's like hunting them. There's a darkness. And they can't find it.

They don't know what it is. They know they're in danger, but they can't see it. So they go to the planet of four seers to go figure out what's out there. Yoda should have done this before the clone was. Yeah. Well, maybe he shouldn't because of what happened.

No, he shouldn't have. You're right. is no sooner do they show up than they get an idea of what's out there because just them being on that planet it draws like this eye of Sauron like Darth Nelis and he comes

and kills the planet not with a super weapon not with like an orbital bombardment what Vsas describes is coming to in a world that's become a charnel house of like corpses killed through the force. Yeah.

Wait, Vsau said this deal? Yeah, you can talk to her about this. Yeah. Oh, I got all this from Craya. She's the sole survivor of her planet because when she wakes up, Nielis is there. And then

sort of in keeping with these themes of like assault, violation. He forces her to see, see the galaxy, not as her people see it, but using her abilities to see it the way he sees it, which is a universe of just pure matter, energy, but no people really. It is just, again, like the reduction of all things to matter in energy. And the vision is overwhelming. It destroys her natural, like, sight of, her natural form of connecting with the

force to perceive reality. It is permanently distorted by this vision that Nealus has burdened her with. And then he sort of kept her around. Yeah. He took me for his own, is the quote, which is, again, one of these, like, deeply freighted phrases that, you know, lines up with a lot of... one of our first time seeing her is like right she is just he summons her to his little throne room and then like chokes her out yeah um for like no reason he says nothing um and then she sent

on this mission and she explains like he's been out there for quite some time uh basically gathering like in the darkness of the outer rim, but also like more in this like metaphorical darkness that like he's almost like creature from another plane. Yep. Where like there if like if you were to think of this as like various forms of story like from a spirit realm or Cthulhu like mythos type

but like there because something that Visas also says is that there are beings that live around and among us that none of us can perceive. And what she's describing is almost like, like Dickensian ghosts, like in, um, in, like a Christmas cat, uh, that you were constantly being surrounded by like, uh, you know, shrieking spirits that like the, the, the, the, the, the travel through through the galaxy that nobody else can perceive, but energy is coalescing and connecting around them. They are unaware of it.

And we're unaware of them. Uh, and this is also like one of the, the vision she is now burdened with. But he sort of comes from that realm. that he see, or he's aware of it and he harnesses it. And it's not, what, what he's doing isn't like what previous Sith have done. This is, this is a different, like categorically different. When she tells how her whole planet was killed, the exile is like, well, what you're describing is impossible. Like, you need, like, the only way you can destroy a planet in this world is, is with, like, heavy weapons fire.

Like, there's just not, you can't, the force killed an entire planet that can't happen. Um, you know, in the first game, we saw that like an ancient civilization's tech could be used. Right. But you still needed some sort of technological solution. Nealus is out there and almost just through the like the like the Jedi sort of turning out a little pen light into the darkness. Uh, he. Galactus like comes for them immediately. Yeah.

Uh-huh. And wipes out that planet and the Jedi on it. Yeah. And now he's out there to like eliminate the rest of the Jedi. But also, as she puts it. maybe all life itself that what he desires is like sort of a to wipe out all like sentience and awareness in the galaxy and return it to sort of a clockwork realm of again matter energy but no consciousness we get more from crea here if you if you have creas influence up high enough

Natalie, I think you've had those conversations. Allie, did you learn about this guy from Creight too? Yeah, it's like fascinating the way that Rob and speaks about it because, you know, Kraya's like perspective here is like, what is the lie that she says about like he's a being so powerful that he can't view things in the world as as they are anymore because he's become so attach for that. Yeah, one could not have power of that magnitude that her master possesses and still think and perceive the universe as we do as most of us do. He's different, right? The way that she just, sorry. No, you had. The way that she describes him is almost as if he's like

a Sith vampire. Like he, he, it, what he is brought upon himself is, this curse that he can there is no like if I just do X Y and Z I will be the most powerful person in the galaxy and there will be nothing anyone can do to stop me which I thought was a really interesting way of like of characterizing us a Sith in the sense that like when I think of past you know like great Sith Lords right like Darth I need to get Darth Plagius

off my brain but yeah sure when you think of Revin or any of the being even Sheave right yeah Sheave I've like

Sheave is just like this omnipresent all powerful like in order to unseat him like you have to overcome him in this like incredibly grand

uh like you've like Luke it like does this ultimate sacrifice of love and like for his his father and for his friends and the people that he loves so like but the way that Darth Nihilis is described here is like he he has doomed himself

to to constantly have to to seek out, to feed, literally to feed. He is hunger, right? She said the beginning there's one who's about pain, one who's about betrayal, and one who's about hunger, and he is our hunger, Sith. This is the way that she says it specifically, because you can say to her, like,

and this is kind of what I was thinking as I was playing the exile in this moment, like how can anyone go up against somebody, who has the power to destroy entire planets. Like, how is that possible? How can anyone have that kind of power? And then she says, she, like, kind of scoffs at you, and she's like, power. Like, you consider that a power?

There is no strength in the hunger he possesses. The will behind his power is a primal thing. It devours him as he devours others. His mere presence kills all around him, slowly feeding. him he's already dead it is simply a question of how many he kills before he falls which I loved because it was just like the question is not like stop this person from gaining power of the galaxy it's like stop this person before it's like before he kills too much more you know what I mean like eventually his light will die out right

But you, but to, to, it's like he's like a black hole in the galaxy, in the course. What did Vesas call him without knowing that she was echoing someone else? She calls him a wound in the force, which is what the Jedi Council called you. It's what Atris called you. So, again, lots of mirroring. I think part of the reason this game works so well for me is like, it's not one-to-one mirroring. It's one-to-three mirroring all the time. Vsas is a mirror of you, but is also a mirror of Kraya.

You and Nielis are mirrors, but also you and Sion, who is Kraya's former student are mirrors. Like that stuff, that reflection, that rhyming is like, it's like it's a really good rhyme scheme. You know, it's not just AAB. It's all over the place. We also get something else here from Krayo. You're identifying what she wants to stop. I think this is a Kraya fact. In this conversation with Krea about Darth Nylis, you ask like, how does, how does, how does

do this. And she says it's a technique that is almost as old as the Sith themselves. Wild thing to say. Also, is it a Sith technique? Is it something else? She says it is a means of severing connections between life, the force, and feeding upon the death it causes. It cannot be taught. It can only be gained through instinct through experiencing its effects firsthand. So that means someone used this on him and it turned him into what he is. And then what she ends up saying is we got to stop this thing. There is no future in the empty galaxy

he sees and that is why he must be stopped. The breach must be sealed before his power grows beyond what even we can hope to stop. It has been 20 hours. Kraya has finally said a thing she wants. She wants to stop the death

of all life in the galaxy through the use of this force power which she also explains is the little, it's the same thing the little Sith assassins use when they get more powerful as you level up. She says that it's that same sort of Sith vampiric

drawing on the power of others thing. It's the same, it's a minor version of what his major version of the power is. So it's not just, it's not just him. His devotees are these Sith that are around him are also developing this, maybe by being in his wake,

maybe by being in your wake, it's not necessarily clear. Is the Power, the dark side power that you can get drain force, is that not this? Maybe. Is it a minor version of that? It might be. And I think a big question we're going to have as we go forward, especially with this part of the plot line, is are those things unalike in kind or only unalike in, you know, quantity, right?

Only unlike in scale. Is drain force the same thing he's doing, but he's doing drain force? force level 50 instead of level three, you know? Right, right. Or is he doing something different? So, yeah, this stuff I think fucking hits. I think all of, you know, again, wrapped up in that is the Vsauce at his feet stuff, which is complex and, you know, it could work, it could not work.

I think in parts it really does work. I think it is impossible to say that stories about power aren't also often stories about sexuality and sexual power. I, and also just like this sort of like gendered domination, right? We can get rid of sex specifically, but there's still a gender denomination thing happening. But at the same time, he is not like a cackling, that stuff doesn't feel deployed to be like he's a sicko.

He is not a anything. Oh, he is a hole in the forest. He is a being of raw destruction. So it doesn't feel, it feels odd here. It feels like it's connected to the broader stuff that Rob, you're talking about the almost harem anime-style quality of this game sometimes. But he, as a character and as a threat, does feel pretty unique. And I think that's wild coming from the Mortis hating podcast.

Because he feels like he belongs to Star Wars Mortis. And I think that's part of the thing that I tend to liking about this game a lot, too, is like, here's a swing at some of these cosmic ideas that doesn't feel goofy to me. It feels like he's scary. He's a scary dude. Yeah. Also, like Beas warns us about one other thing, which is that this is not a supervillain team up. Right.

Yes. This is not a master and apprentice situation. This is not a the villains are working together. They all have their own motivations right now for being at war with the Jedi. But as she points out, that is the only thing holding them together too. They are in most ways at cross purposes. but that is being put on hold while they both try to eradicate the remaining Jedi. But you are not up against a monolithic Sith force here.

You're dealing with villains who all have distinct motivations from each other and distinct positions. Now, in fact, again. Cray even says that about Nihilus, that he cares nothing for the Sith. When all the Jedi are dead, he will feed on the galaxy, the Republic, and eventually the Sith as well. So to underline that, Rob, like, this is not, it's not a political alignment of, of, you know, ideologies here. Now, amidst all this, like, Vsas is also, like, but like, you're so important. Like, I'm not going to take you. When you are ready, I can take you to my master, but you're not ready.

I can't, I couldn't possibly, like, start the showdown. You're like level 12 right now. What do you? We can't go yet. I must, I must guard you with my life. I mean, again, we have another good performance here in terms of, it's well. First of all, like the, honestly, I think it even extends to the way they're miced up on it. Like, just the, like, it sounds like some of these performances are captured better than the others.

Yeah. Like, there is more done with, you can hear more done with like, pace of breathing, delivery. There's more like range in. Dynamics, yeah. Yeah. And that all comes through with, like with Crea, that comes through with Vsas as well. And it's a thing that's absent with a lot of the other characters. You know, Atten's sort of being your example, your primary example of like it's all real flat delivery. Here's what I think. One thing Atten does tell you about is, you know, while she's in the med bay, she does bear a lot of prior injuries from these experiences. and yeah like that is sort of teeing up i guess like craya's weird like uh fetish yeah fetish

uh domination uh like you know porn without plot basically uh that she's that she's working on uh and it's that is super weird uh that i'm glad i did not get those lines uh because they they are i know what's going through your head you want to know what's going on under those robes maybe it's cool scars and it's like no no that that ain't it but then that related

that is like so you know Vs people can see through the force like they perceive differently than we do and Cray is like well we can do that you want to learn and so there's two

there's two scenes I'm so glad you got this second scene. Okay. Let's say the first one. I have the second one ready to listen to if we want to. All right. Because I think it's an all-timer. So this is, it's so fucking good. And also like, okay, I'm sitting there, there are many moments where I'm like, okay, is maybe Craya the best character in Star Wars like, but also is this maybe the coolest depiction of force powers? Like, does this bring us

closer to like, oh, why being force sensitive lies closer to madness and darkness than you might think because what she's playing she's like stretch your awareness out we've seen this and this is a standard Jedi training scene like yeah stretch your awareness out but here as the exiles awareness stretches out across the ship you hear the inner monologue of these characters see the handmaiden training going through like katas you see uh bow d'r being like bayodor being like I'm still faithful to your last command, General. It's wild. Serving you to the end.

You hear Atten mechanically playing pazzocans in his head. Because I think this whole sequence is just incredible. I think this is the one that you're talking about. I think it's the second one, actually. And I just think it's because I think it speaks to not just this particular scene, Rob, but what you were just saying about voice work in this game and them being well miced up. Because I think if they're not well-macked up, this stuff sounds like, flat. It's just miserable. So, all right. This is, you're asking, I want you to teach me more

about the force. She says, very well, sit with me. Let me, let me count you in on this, actually, Chia. Can you teach me that the thing that I'm asking here is before, when you taught me to listen, I wish to continue that lesson. Three, two, one, go. Very well, sit with me. you have brushed the surface thoughts of another it is a start calm yourself this time silence your own thoughts keep them still imagine the waters of the room of a thousand fountains each stream suddenly falling silent and still imagine the ice of telos cold and smooth as it gathers upon the plateau now stretch out feel the ship around you strip away the metal and see the souls and minds of those that fill its corridors

with more thoughts and dreams and worries than can fill the space of this ship as my feet walk from the ashes of Qatar I shall not fear for in fear lies death if I up the Dubana gas levels in a carbine that would be enough to punch a hole

even in triple Dura Steele. And we'll need weapons like that if the Republic discovers the cab on Duxin. From the first movement flows the second. Strike, repeat. Circle one's opponent. Repeat. Faster, quicker.

If father had been faster, if only father had been faster. If I was faster, I would no longer be the last of my sisters. But does Atris love him? Jedi do not love. Does Atras hate him? Jedi do not hate. This journey is harder than any she has sent me on.

Switch the face of the plus-1-1-1 card. The totals are 9-10. Switch to the face of the plus-2-2-card. The total is 8-11. Switch. Your command echoes still, General, and I obey, as I did at Malacore. As my feet walk from the ashes of Qatar, switch the face of the plus-1-1 card. I shall not fear. The totals are 9-10. Switch the face of the plus... The commandant to take us still gentle and I obey switch as I did at Malacore. That sound in the background, what is it?

I'm sorry, I think in the recording of this, I'm going, and that's why this game is the goat! It's the goat! Button forward. Not now. Here we go. not now focus on my voice malacore now do you hear me truly hear me i hear you this this is incredible you have taken the first steps on a much longer road exile uh and then you can you can talk more and say well i can't hear the droids and she says well yeah they're they're droids they're just can't be read that way obviously and then she she says, just like the other guy, who is deaf to you. His impulses are cold like a dead

weight. His thoughts are black about Beauder. She goes on to say that he is, you can lie. You could be like, you could say, but I did hear something from Beauder. Or you can say, oh, yeah, that's why I heard nothing from him. Allie is squinting here. Did you not get these options? Well, I didn't I didn't get this part of it The second scene yet Yeah, I saw the first one She says, such is the case with primitive minds It is no matter

It is of no matter And then she says And then you can say There's something also up with Atten's thoughts And she's like, yeah, that's weird, huh? He's always thinking about other stuff He's always thinking about engine sequencers He's memorizing space routes

He's counting the ticking of the power couplings He's playing cards in his head I need to what's cool what's going Or are you watching porn in his head? Or he's watching porn. And other times he will imagine certain base less, certain indignities. Well, so, and it is so clear that because last we saw where she just like invades his mind, starts pulling stuff out. Yep.

Has he started doing this as like he is trained to resist Jedi. What else is he trained in? Like the handmaiden is like he's trained in a Chani forms. Yeah. And he's like, nah, I just know enough to bluff my way through a fight. But he is also, he can't empty his thoughts. he can just make sure that it is a like endless loop of inanity. Yeah.

He is always keeping them occupied. Did you talk to Atten? Tell us what happens. You talk to him about this? So after you have this vision, you can go talk to Atten and you can just confront him and say, hey, you play him Pazok in your head again? And there's this, there's this. crazy thing that

the thing that shifts here for me is that I finally understand that Atten is not a moron and like there is like we're done pretending

almost like there is still a level of pretending but the idea that like he knows I am I am I have the ability to do things like the Jedi can. I was a former Jedi, whatever.

So to continue the conversation, he says, yeah, it passes the time. It's better than listing off engine sequencers, memorizing hypers, he just repeats back to you exactly what Korea just said. And if you have, this is kind of a cute thing, but if you have enough repair, you can be like, there aren't any ticks in the power coupling.

It's fixed. And he's like, of course it's fixed. That's why you should count the ticking and the power cup leg. And there's this moment where you have to realize that he's like playing a game with you, but not

in a silly way, but in a way that's like a self preservation on his part. And so he says to you after a beat, he's like, let me show you why I play Pazok. And you're, you can

and be like, I don't want to fucking play Pazok. And he's like, no, we're going to play Pazok. So you want to play or not? And if you're a woman, you can say, this better not be using Narshadal rules. And he's like, no, our clothes are going to stay on. So like, shall we, shall we give it a go? And then you can play Pazok with him, which, by the way, I won. No help from Austin.

There we go. I won a game of Pazok. I get it now. so at the end of the game he's like good match so what are you thinking about and you're like well obviously I'm thinking about Pizak we just played Pizak and he's like

yeah that's why I play Pizak in my head because if you don't you've left the door open and anyone can walk right in and then you can say to him Atten I accessed your mind before with Craya's health

and I chose to say this to him because I feel like my exile and I have had a pretty antagonistic relationship so far, but we've been to a bunch of planets now. We've seen some shit. This was like the moment where like I just dropped the gloves and I was real with him. And I was like, listen, yeah, I went into your brain. I'm so sorry.

And he was like, of course you did. You're a Jedi. And Jedi's light or dark, they do it more often than you think. but I've never heard one say sorry before that's a new house rule so you can say to him so you play Pizak to shield your thoughts and he says no I play Pizak

in my head but while I'm doing that it's a lot harder for someone to walk in and then you can say to him well can you train me to do this can you like help me learn how to block my thoughts and he's like no I can only teach you how to play Pazok and it's just this

it's really good because it's like it's about it's like it's like a it's like the first real moment I've had with Atten but it's couched in this banter but it's also couched in something that feels like a wound so it's like there's like this context of like him having been violated honestly by a Jedi in some way where like some like what were his thoughts were accessed or like something was kind of like his privacy was taken from him in some way he was violated in some way by a Jedi and he like finally levels with you in the way that he can which is like still playing this character of being you know the the kind of a little

bit slimy pizzok guy but um i i this is like the first moment that i truly loved with that And because he was like, now you understand, you can say, I can only teach you how to play Pazac. He says, I can only teach you how to play Pazok. And you're like, all right, I want to learn to play Pazok. And he's like, all right, I'm dealing. And then he says, like, if you're ever fighting someone who has power over you, whether light or dark, play Pazok, start listing hyperspace routes, recite engine sequencers. And when they try to use their powers on you, suddenly it's not as easy as they thought. because you'll be right here with me playing Pazok

where they can't reach you. Damn. He didn't say that to me. So, and then you get the little beat. It's like Atten has taught you how to play Pizzoch in your head as a way of resisting mental domination. You've gained a permanent plus one to your willpower saves. Imagine if Atten were played by, like,

it was a Patrick Jane situation. 100% Rob. Because that is the mentalist. Like imagine, imagine that being delivered. I know. And if every Jedi attempts to violate your mind, like mine was violated, just think of the two of us sitting right here playing cards. Playing cards. Boom, boom.

Boom. That's my heart beating out of my chest. Yeah. Well, and if you're a dude and you say this to him, he says about the, you know, Jedi, you know, light or dark trying to get in your mind. He says, Jedi do it all the time. And when they walk in the dark places of your mind, they'll use it to hold you by the throat. And it's, again, Natalie, to emphasize what you're saying, like, he has some trauma. through, so he has dealt with some stuff in one direction or another. And he doesn't say

Sith. He doesn't say Dark Jedi. He doesn't say Force user. He says Jedi, right? So what, what, what they do to you, my boy? What'd they do? What happened to you? I mean, it's, I need the low job. I'm obsessed with him. Like, just, like, just like immediately being able to recognize in that scene that he's protecting himself and, like, that being the, like, second tick on this, what the hell's going on with Aton Clock after the cry of stuff is like

they're cooking to be you strange man like he's getting he's meow meo set us to be now like he's like I just sort of shake him it's juvenile but also like the

basically Rick rolling Jedi with like hardcore porn that he's thought of just like ah nope got your ass didn't want to see that

did you? No wonder Craya has all these thoughts. She keeps trying to read Atten's mind and Atten's projecting them. Oh my God. And can really go back to that. Crea, not being able to read Bayo Derr, what's happening?

Is his loyalty too strong? Is it that she dismisses him as? If you tell her that you can read him, she's like, oh, that's interesting. Huh. Funny. She's not happy. I bet.

She doesn't find it. She does not find an interesting. fact, it does not arouse curiosity. The immediate reaction feels like resentment. Interesting. Whoa, someone else has a special little connection with you that I'm not allowed access to. You can also see parts of the world that I can't see.

Oh, it's good. Better to fuck him. Right. I mean, like, literally, this is the thing. Like, I think a lot of the psychosexual stuff here is psychosexual and not just sexual. Because what it is is about relationships and about power and about intimacy of all sorts, you know, this game doesn't have a sex scene in it. We're not building to some great scene, you know what I mean? Like, or bad scene. I don't, as far as I remember, there might be a

fate, there might be a fade to black, but I don't remember one with any related character. There are, there are, uh, open cries of affection that we're clearly building towards, but there's not, it doesn't like cash out in anything looter than the handmade in their black lingerie. As far as my memory is, maybe I'm wrong about this, but it's not that. It's not before we go fight the big fight, go talk, go to talk to all your crew members and get the sex scene. I don't, I don't remember that anyway. Maybe I'm wrong. I'll have to eat crow in six weeks or whatever.

It's totally possible. But I do think that the game is really interested in jealousy. I think it's really interested in lust. I think it's really interested in affection of all sorts, including you and your bro from the war. And you have a connection that Cray can't break. Cray can't get in there and wedge herself in between you and Beauder. Um, do I wish Bill Adder was better, had had more writing and, like, had more scenes and had as much attention as, as Atten did. Absolutely. But what a nice, small little illustration of a connection that, that is out of her reach. I just, it's so good.

I remember, like, years ago reading a piece about, like, uh, just, I remember it was like a thing linked off AL daily. It was like a somewhat like right leaning thing that, uh, the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Uh, but it. It tends to be a good, like, journal of like, here's cool articles from around the, around the web. But there's a piece written basically about, like, look, we pretend that, like, mentor-mente relationships are, like, purely professional. But there's an intimacy there, basically, that, like, you can't deny. And actually, it's dangerous to deny that that intimacy is there because it's very real. And, like, the excitement of sharing knowledge, learning knowledge, from someone, like, can be exciting in a way that is, like, parallel to the erotic. And that, like, you know, that is why there need to be guardrails on these things.

And if it wasn't that, we wouldn't need the guardrails. Right. But you cannot pretend that, like, at the most advanced, like, levels of education, a lot of your, like, really, in many ways, your best, your ideal, like, mentor-mentee relationships do have a level of intimacy. The worst ones actually are the least intimate, uh, frequently where it's like, your mentor doesn't give a shit about you. There's no offense.

It's like, go grade my papers. Yeah. Uh, but the best ones are like, uh, they take on different casts, uh, like, you know, they can become like an extension of your family, almost. Are you an extension of theirs? And that's kind of what's happening with like, Crea seeming like a jealous surrogate. Uh-huh.

mom mentor that all the things you need to learn I am here to teach no one is good enough for you we have a special connection like just just trust

what I'm telling you I'm really glad that Cotor is like pushing beyond the idea of attachment as just romantic attachment. I mean, I think that's obviously here and

it's like it is very sexualized but I think with specifically with Craya the fact that the mentor apprentice relationship is like one of the most

prevalent relationships in Star Wars and not often do we see a perversion of that relationship that isn't explicitly

the master or the apprentice just went dark-sighted and went evil mode. And instead, like, the idea that the push and pull between that Crea lies in this area of ambiguity between light

and dark and doesn't subscribe herself to the Jedi or the Sith in terms of, you know, dogmas or teachings or things like that. But there is this intensity behind her attachment to you, not just emotionally and mentally, but physically, because you are quite literally bonded. If something happens to either of you, the other will feel it. it's it's really really cool and also I think speaks to what you said earlier Austin about this being a game very interested in power dynamic and who holds power

and what does it mean to be a leader of a group of people of a movement of an army, what have you, what does influence mean? How can influence be corrupted? How can it be manipulated, et cetera? I think like the Creia exile relationship is like the microcosm of the microcosm that is the exile versus everyone. Versus everybody, yeah, versus the Jedi Council versus Zion and Nialis versus Atris, you know. everything um it's worth saying you know i i have flagged hard that there is some like libertarian thought here in this game i flagged the we've talked about objectivism here it's probably worth

saying that like i think a lot of this stuff i can't talk about particular influences on this team um uh but we're talking a lot about psychoanalytic thinking here um we're talking about power dynamics and eroticism and libidinal energies and all of that stuff and you know i suspect most people have had the very uh pop cultural relationship with Freud, which is that we live in the kind of like the world in which Freud is dismissed as a weirdo because he thinks everything is reducible down to sex and penis envy and all of that, which I think is like a, I think is a shortcut to saying we have come a long way from Freud, but as often misses the fact that there's a whole history of psychoanalysis

that flows from Freudian thinking and also in response to and in critical conversation with Freud. And so I think if you look at people like Lacan and Leotard, you will end up with a lot to say about sexual energy, sexual and libidinal power in relationships. I think a lot of that is at work here. I think a lot of this is influenced either, you know, I don't know if it's directly influenced by any of these French theorists, right? But I think they provide a really useful lens for thinking about those sorts of relationships. And I think that it goes beyond a lot of, um, I think what's happening here is, is, uh, suggests it taking seriously of human relationships in a way that Cotor 1 simply doesn't. Um, and at the same time, and we can talk

more about this maybe in the next episode, um, but I think this game takes Cotor 1 seriously too. And that's one of the reasons why it works so well for me. There is so much. So, I'm a sucker for any kind of story that is like basically in so many words, it's a, in a weird way, the whole thing is like a mystery, a murder mystery about the past. Yeah.

Like one of my favorite movies, like I swear to God, like maybe like this is made my like top 10 movies of all time is a movie called Lone Star. It's a John Sayles film about a, a body is unearthed in a Texas border town that is closely connected to sort of The founding myth of this town's modern era, the night of a big showdown between a young, righteous deputy and a corrupt evil sheriff and all the good that flowed from that night. And at the start of the movie, one of the bodies from that night resurfaces.

And the current sheriff just starts tugging at the threats. And what it turns into is a story about like, you know, it's a movie about America in, in, in so many words, but the entire thing is just shot through with like everyone's life, a structure on this sort of web of lies and omissions about like what, like what the past is. What do we agree on? What don't we? And like there are moments where this has that going. It's constantly a thing I appreciate is that it's not like, oh, where'd Revin go and

like we're just moving out from the Jedi Civil War. We haven't even moved on from what responsibility the Jedi have in all this. This is shot through the entire Anderon section, which we can get to, I think, now, because it comes up for naturally. When you go to, you know, AISIS, it is, there is a tension, basically the reason this whole thing is, like, on the cusp of a civil war is that there is a ruling queen who wants to keep Anderan in the Republic fold. And when you make planet fall there, you see that it sure looks like she's being invited. by, uh, bro, uh, a Jedi, a guy in Jedi robes. And she is in danger of being overthrown by this general Vickla, who I said Vaklu, Vaclu. Vaclu. Yeah. And this guy is a hero of the war against the Mandalrians, uh, although crucially Mandelore is like, they didn't do shit.

Like, like the, there are no Anderonian, there's no. There's no. Andon heroes of the Mandalor, like we successfully beat their asses and occupied them. And then, and then Revan showed up and kicked their asses. Yeah. Without that guy, bro. But this guy has emerged as like a patriotic hero of the war with the Mandalorians because on Duran, like everyone wants their myth, right? This is kind of a, the contributions of the French resistance, let us say, after World War

two were, they were real, and the French resistance were, they were very brave people, but like the contributions tend to be overstated, in part because it was a way to sort of move past Vichy, French complicity in the Holocaust, collaboration. Right, you've decreed a new national identity that wasn't the Vichy government and the, the kind of kneeling to Nazi power, right? Right. And yeah, so sort of restores this idea of national honor, national pride. As Americans, we wouldn't know anything about creating mythical self-identity.

Just to be clear, we would never do anything like that. But this general is like sort of the, I was the one who like fought the Mandalorians on Anderon. And Mandalor is like, no, they didn't. They didn't do shit. Like it was Revin and the Jedi showing up that the change things here. But the other thing that the reason that the queen is getting fucking rolled beyond just being like the embodiment, sort of a rudderless liberalism and commitment to a kind of a shitty status quo is that the general does have a convincing historical narrative, one that like various characters

throughout have kind of echoed as well. What if the Jedi done but bring disaster wherever they go? To a degree, you could say Visa story also highlights the same thing. The Jedi come looking for answers. And they bring the darkness to them. They light the fucking torch. Yep. And And Duran have had a similar experience where they have a founding myth of like the, the peace that was brokered in their ancient civil war.

But since, but since they joined the Republic, it's been one thing after another. They weren't protected from the Mandalrians. And then the Jedi showed up and the Jedi promptly like went dark side as well. Yep. And meanwhile, you know, they pay high taxes. They're, you know, contributing to rebuilding the guys. galaxy after this this war that was caused by the Jedi it's their beasts that are being brought to telos and as one of them point out you know one there wouldn't have been a Jedi civil war if

there weren't dark Jedi meaning that Jedi are falling to the Sith so that doesn't that kind of just loop back to it being a Jedi problem to begin with and actually if we take into the prehistory of Ander like our ancient history a lot of this shit that's happened on Ander on happened have happened to have happened on Ex-Arcun. Oh, yeah. Now, okay, now, well, wait a second, because we do know that they were fucking around with some dark side shit even before X-Arcun showed up. But they have now a competing narrative where the Jedi, like, there's a degree of, like,

there's a protocols of the elders of Zion type quality of this where, like, anything that's happened, did you know there was a Jedi behind it? General Vaklu or whatever fuck is just wants to, just wants to get the Jedi out and wants to make Anderon independent. I will say, Rob, I think you have done a better job than any MPC on this planet has done of making this case. This is the case on paper. The case you're making on paper is fascinating.

Like, oh my God, I said this like eight times during the let's play where I was like, this is the first conversation we ever had about the Clone Wars. This is Uncle Ono on Rodea and us going like, well, what the fuck did the Republic do for them lately? Like, the Republic, they don't have food? They don't have food and the Republic can't get rid of the pirates that are... Padme's little dog that she didn't get around to bond, but that thing would have had fucking food before the roadians.

100%. So, like, I really want the version of this story to be here. And I think it is on paper. But I think, unfortunately, what we get a lot of... Well, it's delivered stupidly. It's delivered so stupidly. The big riot thing in the middle of the public square. And then...

That can't be your shooter. That can't be your shooter. That you can't have pawned on be your shooter. There is an MPC that I don't know anything. about, I have to ask you all about, because I didn't go down that route. And I think she just closed off to me. The woman in the public square, if you side with Vaklu gives you quests and stuff, I guess. Yes.

I didn't get any of those. So I'm curious to hear what she does. But we get the worst shooter ever who's just like, the republic sucks. We should storm the palace. Let us in. We get out of here. We're done with the queen, which is already confused because the people are supposed to love the queen. The military and the elite are supposed to love Vaklu.

or told that over and over again. But it's actually a populist uprising in the game. So that's very, it's confused and weird. And then on top of that, it's all hinges on, the Republic finally attacked us. And you're like, no, they fucking didn't. I was in space and they shot me. And so I wish there'd been a little bit of cover given for Vaklu's side

so that you could buy into it a little bit. And I actually think the best place for it. And this actually, I was talking to Keith Carberry, friends at the table and run buttons Keith Carberry. And we were talking about how sick. would be if they played Kovar, the Jedi, a little more as a worm tongue in the queen's ear. Because a thing that we do hear about her, and Vsas actually is the one who says this. Vesos is a Vaklu girlie.

Vesos is like, Vaklu's strong and capable and he's willing to take risks. The queen is a reed in the wind, too frail to stay in place. She'll be blown in every direction and ultimately to no advantage for herself or her people. And I wish we'd gotten Kavar, the Jedi master who's whispering in her ear, as being like just a little seedier, a little more like he's the real power behind the throne at this point. And you can't make that reading. But like, it doesn't do it enough for you. I wish it did it a little bit more for you, at least through the pathway I played through. But again, I didn't play the Vaklu Path.

So maybe that lady, what's her name? What's that lady in the merchant quarter? Well, there's the Swoop Lady. in the canteen. Okay, there's a swoop lady who's like, politically the capital S-s-shrouper. Are you going to be part of the struggle?

Are you like, okay, she's like telling you you need to read theory at a certain point. It's wild. I love her. Kind of, but also she's just like a UFC dumbass. You're right. But she's a UFC dumbass

who's the champion swoop racer until you get there and kick her ass. Well, I mean, look, the best UFC fighters are often UFC dumb asses to him. You're right. You're right. Is it?

True. True. Yeah. The woman I'm talking about is, um... Anda. The woman who, who conscripts you to... She would not talk to me. She refused to talk to me.

Really? So, because you sided with the Anderan police? I... Okay, whoa. When did I side with the police? The... Auderon... Did you stop the riot, like, immediately?

Did I... Well, she never talked to me before that she never talked to me after that she never talked to me the first time i deescalated it she didn't talk to me the second time i deescalated it i wonder what it was that oh well did you have the conversation between the de veronian and the twilight first and i think that that's probably what no because i talked to her first and she didn't talk to me at that point and then i went over them and talk to them and maybe i think you have two opportunities if you like and pandar was not his name his name is panlar

So excuse me, if you, if you like kind of let Pondlar, like, get his piece in, but then you kind of quiet things down, or you engage in the Twylic-Devoronian conversation and you don't side with the queen. I see. I think it opens up a conversation with her. where she says, like, I've heard a rumor that you don't fully agree with the queen and her supporters. I see. And then you started doing dirt for her?

You do, you, mm-hmm. Okay. You, she asked you. Rob, did you also not do this? So, Allie and Natalie. No, I didn't do it. None of these people are. Oh, my God.

Allie and I definitely became a little evil. So, um. It's normal stuff, you know. We just did normal stuff. First of all, I went for the nonviolence first, is what I'll say. top but I also need to I'm in a position where I need to be maximizing my dark side points so let's just also put that out there okay so anda asks you she tells you that she's a strong supporter of general Vaklu she talks about the merchant quarter being this like critical zone

and and that like we we need to gain access to the merchant quarter um Um, in, in order to, like, take it over with troops or like, we need to have more like ears. She specifically says the merchant quarter is an important area, not only financially, but strategically. Okay, she wants to put troops there. Yeah, she wants to put some of her, her boys there. So. I can't emphasize the degree to which the merchant quarter is like an underwhelming farmer's market. It's so nothing.

It does have the best merchant ever in Star Wars, though. Uh, yeah, yeah, he's... We'll get to him briefly. Um, so she asks you to take out three captains. There is Captain Jalisi, who's at the Starport. Like murder? Well, no, no, she just says, you can't attack them directly. You can't go up and kill them.

Okay, okay, okay. Um, you just have to remove them from command. Okay. And she gives you, like, hints. Like, you know, you, you have the option to kill them throughout. that. But you can do the like dialogue options to ask about each of them and she can like, well this guy works

over here and you know has been, is getting close to getting court-martialed. So like what if he just got court-martialed you know? Like it's situations like this where she's what's up? Does this intersect with the main plot guys? It does. Interesting. Okay. Specifically

Rikin is one of them. And Rikin is the one that you have to report your murder findings to. So something happens with specifically. Okay. But there's Gillesie who is like, he's the new guy on the block. He's the most junior captain.

He's like the guy you first walk in here? Yeah, but when I find him, he's hanging out in the canteena because he's like, I, he's like, I fucking hated here. He's like, being a captain sucks ass. The last person who I had my job, like, got killed. And it just, it sucks here. I hate it. Then there's Rikin, who you meet kind of when you first walk into the merchant area.

Because he's standing towards the front next to a couple of the V's. Anti-aircraft Tower gun thing, right? Yes, he's in front of that. And I liked Rikin when I first talked to him. He had like a great voice. He sounded like, I liked him. so it was unfortunate what happened to him. But he's,

and lets you know that he's like a huge critic of General Vaklu and like he keeps getting in trouble for basically speaking his opinion. We can't have that. No, absolutely not. The last guy is Bostuko who's like an old guy. He's like, he's, he's, he's been in the, service for years

and years. He loves the queen. He's a ride or die for the queen. But he he doesn't know how to like navigate the sort of fluctuating political

situation. Right. He can't keep it yet because he's an old school guy. He's somewhat like oh Vaklu's got some points but he like he's just he's so queen-pilled that he can't let himself go. Many such cases. Yeah. So

you have two options in how you can handle him as well. So for every task you complete, you get 2,500 credits. Bro! It's great. I put real money down. I know, I need for money, though. I have like no money. What are you taught you, you got 7,500?

What are you spending? Where are you shopping? I have like $20,000 right now, but like there's like some expensive stuff out there. I'm like trying to find where the grind is. Guess what, Ali, I just discovered a money hack. Okay, please. Moments ago. Called doing evil? No, moments ago in doing some handmade and Googling.

Oh, they fix that. There is a. The robe? No. The robe fixed. They fixed it in the content restoration mod. God damn it. I was giving up to start.

You know how she strips to do her little duel? You know how she's naked and you can be like, babe, can you put on some clothes? I did this. And she's like, hell, nah. Put on your mom's clothes on, please. In the original release of this game, you could then take them and sell them. And then the next time you dueled with her, you could be like, babe, I sent to put on some clothes. And she'll put it back on.

She'll generate a new one. They fixed that. And you can sell it for like 2,200 credits. That's right. Oh, I, a real sidebar, don't get finesse. Don't, I guess it actually comes from a cutscene now I think about it. Don't spend, if you ever have a chance to spend points on finesse lightsabers, don't do it. It's the one that you use decks for your lightsaber combat.

It doesn't work. It's hard-coded in the game to not work. They couldn't fix it with the mod. But weapon finesse, just regular melee weapon finesse, does work on lightsaber even though it says it doesn't. I think I did it. No, I don't think you, for your own. character just comes through a cutscene with Crea, but I think you can give it to other characters, and so just don't do it anyway. Oh, okay. So unfortunately, Natalie, the buggy

you found has been eradicated. That's so tragic because I literally, I'm sitting on my other screen. I've got her with her clothes off. Y'all could get good with Pazakhs. Y'all could go try to clean some wallets. I did make a lot of money off the swoops this time, right. pay you sometimes. Is the swoops paying out? The swoops is paying out. I didn't even touch any of this up. I didn't want to lose any of my money.

I only want to maximize. Yeah. Just save before. There's a quick save in this game. I know. No, I will. And then I'll, yeah. But that's why I didn't want to do it first.

I just want to make sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got you. Anyway. So, I can run you through the three guys. What happens? So, first guy is Captain Gillesie. He, uh, he is the guy that replaced Captain Sullyo.

who was the woman that was killed. This is the murder you're investigating. So there are a couple ways in which you can deal with him. Basically, these three things are sort of persuade checks. You can persuade each one of them if you know what to do and you have the right information. So for Captain Gillessee, he tells you, you know, I've got a wife and dog.

I feel like I'm up next I just want to get out of here this job sucks and you can try and push him towards that and be like yeah that sounds like a good idea you really should think of your family and it'll fail because he's like

I'm just really torn I don't know sometimes I feel like there are good days sometimes I think I'm a fool to be here and then you're given like a couple different persuade options and one of those persuade options is to threaten him and say, like, you should leave Isis quickly.

If you don't, which I felt like, to me, I'm not making the threat. I'm saying that out there, there are people who are after captains. You're not saying you're going to do nothing. You're just saying something might get done. I'm saying there's a threat on you. There's a target. And if I were you, I would go. And he was like, if you're working with who I think you are, I'll leave right now.

I'm out of here. And I was like, all right, see ya. So that took care of Captain Jalisi for me. Did you do another way, Allie, to get rid of him? I think I passed the persuade check where I didn't have to threaten him for him to go. I just, I suggested the first time. And he's like, yeah, I don't really know. And then I like, I leveled up and then talk to him again.

And he was like, yeah, I think I got. got to get out of here. You look like you're like stronger now, so I should, yeah, I'll trust you more. For me, this was my dark side points farm. Oh, I'm mad. These three, but I also was trying to get some handmade in points. So I was balancing, but I was just trying to avoid any, any light side points. I see.

So the next guy is Captain, what's his name, the old guy. Um, there are two ways you can go about that. You can either, um, oh, Bastucco. You can use, I love that name because it feels like, it's so sopranos to me. It's so, it's so, or like, uh, like, NYPD Blue Lieutenant, you know, Lieutenant Bustucco, you know. It's a guy that has been in that job for fucking years. Or he tells you that he, even if you're not going on a quest, you can talk to him and he got demoted, right? He used to be up on the wall and now he's on the sky ramp.

He guards the sky ramp, which I think is, that's a, that's a brutal demotion, man. You know, the Rutgers love their wall, like all authoritarian societies. They love their wall. Yeah. He, uh, he's, he's, he's destroyed over this. It really is, uh, it's a sad moment. Is that the way that you like push him to? So what you can do is, you can do is you can have.

have a conversation with him where you basically say there's two things the evil way is anda gives you a security card and you can rig the cameras by him to blow him and everyone else up there which gets to like 10 dark side points but I was like I'm not that guy I'm not that guy I'm not going to just kill a guy you did that but I got locked out of the other option I got to a point of the conversation where I thought we were like on the same page but it worked so I had to go I had to go the other route

it just says what it is okay fair enough You can't finish the quest You can't not finish the quest You can't not finish the quest Yeah we have someone right in who was like Austin you talk about role playing a lot But then sometimes you say stuff like

I'm not dragging this person I think this is very funny But sometimes you say stuff like It's better for me to let them summon 10 droids so I can kill them for XP rather than peacefully shut them down and only get, you know, five XP in the console. And you're right.

Gaming, buddy. And you're right to say it. That's right. The designer should have ironed that inconsistency out. If it was another year, they would have gotten that one. They would have gotten double the XP for the peaceful option, for sure.

So what you can do instead of blowing them all up is you can go talk to Captain Pustuko, and if you have force, persuade you can force persuade him to tell you his his real feelings um so he tells you like i feel like i'm being looked over like they're they're putting me out to pasture i don't know what the fuck is going on and um if you if you have um effect mind then you can say you know if you're that unhappy, you should just request to be reassigned. And he's like, I can't do

that, I can't do that. He's very resistant to all the persuading. But then you can force persuade and said, no, no, you should request reassignment. And he's like, yeah, I should request reassignment. So you can get him out of there. And then

the last guy, oh, sorry. Well, just for that guy, I mean, like, I got up to that conversation at a point with him where I was like, you should really request that you should go. And every time I talk to him, again, he was like, thanks for having that talk with me. I really helped. Get the fuck out of here, man.

You helped him. You actually went the wrong way. He was like, that really helped me put things in perspective. That meant a lot to me. I just had to get it off my chest. Like, no, tell your supervisor you have to get out of your chest. Like that. So funny.

So the last guy is Rikin. And listen, I knew that Rikin, I knew that Rikin, I need. to be able to report to Rikin my findings on the mystery. Meanwhile, the mystery is going on in the background. We'll get into that in a second. I'm doing investigating as I'm going through and disposing of all of these captains. But I knew Rikin, I had to have a conversation about Rikin

and I had to put the doctor right. I had to clear his name. So unfortunately, what that meant was that I couldn't discharge him. couldn't discharge him, because if I discharged him, then I would lose the opportunity to gain some dark side points, essentially, later down the line. I see. You're making an investment. I see. Yes. So I, you know, I, the problem is if you, if you complete the mystery quest and you solve the murder,

Reichen will leave his post and you can no longer, you're locked out of persuading him. Interesting. Okay. So if you don't do that, you can persuade him to basically be like, you know,

I forget what exactly the conversation is because I didn't do it, but it's essentially like you don't you're not fitting in here. Or I think you can kind of get him to actually this is what happens you can get him to like speak out his opinion a couple more times and his like supervising officer is like right next to him and is like all right that's it

rikin you're off you're off the unit you're off that guy is because that's the guy next him is one of the brown shirts with the mask and it's like he's basically been assigned uh uh you know underneath like a secret police security guard who's waiting to report on him for being too much of a royalist, right, for speaking out against Vaklu too much, for being disloyal. That's the vibe I got anyway. Exactly.

It's a little weird because I thought, like, when you do the, like, investigation stuff with him, his actual direct supervisor shows up to, like, chew him out for that. So I was like, oh, I'm just going to go back to him and I'm going to finish the thing. But instead I learned that I was, like,

locked out of it. That sucks. Yeah. So you both, neither have to finish this quest line. No, no, no. That's not true. Oh, you just did what? One more time?

He starts patrolling. He goes over to the Western Square. There's a lot of danger. That's dangerous over there. It's dangerous out there in the Western Square. There's trash everywhere. Blood.JPEGs on the floor. There's that droid who's selling stuff.

There's that freaky-ass droid. Freaky ass droid. Stay the ass inside. So basically, when you finish the doctor quest out, if you haven't done anything with Reichen yet, you will get like a brief cutscene where it's like Reikin's here and he's patrolling and maybe if you catch him just right, you can dispose of him without anyone's seeing. And the way to maximize this situation, as I understand it, is to kill Rikin in front of one of the Beast Riders. Oh, my God. And then the Beast Rider comes over and is like, yo, what the fuck are you doing? You got scolded by the Beast Rider?

I sure did. And which, by the way, can we just say that the Beast writers did not get the chance to really, to ride the beast, so to speak, in terms of just, they were just like, it felt like it was like an Easter egg situation. The consequences for the galaxy are greater than you can imagine. They would read a lot of trouble exile if you rode the beast. Listen, all I'm saying is that it felt more like an Easter egg situation. Like, I was excited to get into some of the beast.

Yeah, we read the comics. I was like, let's talk about it. They talk about it. They're like, we built this fucking wall to keep the Beast writers out. And they're here selling their Beast anyway. And I was like, oh my God, like, I want to be with those guys. I want to side with the Beast Writers. Turns out they suck ass.

But we'll get to that. Anyway, so the Beast writer, one of the Beast Writers comes over and it's like, yo, like, why are you killing this guy? And you could just be like, you didn't see anything. You don't know who killed this man. force persuade and he's like I don't I didn't see anything I don't know who killed that man so you get a little XP I see you can go report it into anda she gives you lots of credits that's the end of that it's just credit it doesn't like change I guess we'll get there

well what it does do it locks you into having to side with general Vaklu when you leave Isis okay I'm very curious about that stuff because that's not what was not on the table for me at all Yeah, you do not get a choice in terms of whether you side with the queen or General Vaklu. It's just like, I know you fuck with Vaklu because you out here killing fools for him. Like, that's your man. Walk with him. And, yeah. So that's, that was.

Can we, I think this was more interesting than if we'd gone deep on the Dr. Kill situation. Dr. Kill. Oh, it's just mind-numbing. It's so bad, man. It's just like, it's, it's just having to like, like, pull out one hair of information at a time from like 20 different people. Yeah, the canteen is like a circle with three. It's like a hub and there's kind of like three wings off the hub. And the circle has three MPCs in it.

And then each hub has one MPC basically who cares about the shit. And it's literally. And there's like four guys in front of every NPCs. So you can't even just. like walk up to them because you have to like maneuver around them to try and like get in front to be able to initiate a conversation with help they've done not this team but the kotor one has the manon stuff where there's the guy who's like being uh it's jolly is it jolly's friend it's somebody's friend remember this and you're like oh okay did he really do it and he's like caught up in some

shit and there's like some film noir infidelity stuff happening and there's like oh a jeta a disgrace should I master fucking a SIF. That's right, right. And so like, I came into this being like, oh, right. Ooh, cool mystery time. This is the most linear, single solution, boring ass thing we've ever done in one of these games. And the fact that it's so linear, like, it has that, like, really bad Phoenix Wright effect. It does. You get, you can easily get the evidence yourself, but you have to, the game has to let you know that you can go to get the evidence. Like, you walk into this area and the first thing that you see is a, a big blood splatter and a broken droid next to it.

And when you see it the first time, you're just like, oh, trash here. So much trash. You can't even comment on it. It drives you crazy. And then you have to talk to like three or four different people before you can be like, there's some blood outside. That's so strange. I should go look at that blood.

Like, what the fuck? It's wild. At least load it in after the fact. I don't know. Make it happen. happen after you walk in the canteena the first time or something. I don't know. I don't know. Or hide the canteena and not at the front door of the area. Or have it there and have me go, that's weird. I'll have to remember this. And then when in dialogue, the guy goes, yeah,

it happened outside. Have your character go like, that must have been the blood we saw. That's all I, that would be fine. It wouldn't be ideal because I'd have to load outside and go over and walk over and see it. It's this is, this is like, imagine if Roshima, was about talking to like the four worst fucking dudes on the planet, just the four was tedious guys. And all their stories aren't stories. They're incomplete observations. And it's like every step is like, why did he kill Captain Suleo? And you got talked to everyone. And then finally one of them was like, well, actually, they were good friends. They were just razzing each other. So there's not like they had motive because it was razzing. And it. And, it's,

It's, you go to the cops and it's like, I haven't done good authority. It was razzing. And they're like, okay, well, that does take away motive. But, like, still, we need to know more. And here's the fucked thing. There's a right. So you do all the reporting.

You go, you get the, you find that, you realize that, okay, he gets shot from, or she gets shot from a direction that the guy was not at because the guy was over to the left and not the right. It's like JFK. And they were besties. Yep, you get that they were besties. Yeah, it's, it's all that shit. And then when you go to turn.

this in, when you go to like complete this mission, there is, you get interviewed by the guy's boss and there is a right to answer. You have to say it. You have to deliver the dialogue right to get the maximum XP out of that conversation. Yeah, remember the sheep herder situation from Kotor 1? Oh, I've forgotten about this. This is that. You're right. This is that. It is. And so yeah, you have to go through and be like, okay, the he's, you know, he couldn't have done it. And, because he was to the left in his office or, you know, whatever. There are wrong answers there. And they're like...

I got them all, thankfully. I would feel like shit if I didn't. But it's like none of the mystery lines up such that it's like, I'm not leaning off the edge of my seat paying close attention, you know? It's just huge whiff, I think. And then you fight the Beastmasters right at the end in the canteen? Is that true? Am I making this up?

The Beastmaster lady shows up. The final step is like... like I have the holidists right from the droids had and it's like well can I buy them and she's like ha ha you have cash then we'll just kill you and you fight there's a lot of just and then like I I will say since the end of the the mandoloring camp till now there's a whole lot of like and then 50 dudes show up uh huh yeah thankfully yeah you go ahead well that was weird for me because I chose one of the like I was like because she's like you better not come in here. And I was like, don't say that to me. And then we just

immediately started fighting. And I was like, was there a bunch of context of this conversation that I lost because I vaguely threatened her trying to be darksided? No. You could literally be like, I was hoping I could buy it from you. And she's like, that means you have a wallet.

Get them. Fuck you. Kill it. Wild. These are the places where you could really feel like they put so much time and effort into the Eben Hawks scenes. And they're like, oh shit. We have to have a murder of on the planet? I really feel like this planet shows the time, like, constraints on this game so much.

Because, like, what I was saying before with, like, the beast thing, like, the first conversation that you have in this, like, there's this, like, interruption cutscene where you're having this force power about this beast. And then this guy's complain saying all these things. And Cray is like, oh, the beast, no, the ills of society. That's why they're all stressed. And you're like, oh, man. And, like, I was thinking of the, the Cotaur one thing when, like, you took the little guys onto the ship.

And I thought this was going to be, like, on the deep planet plot line. Now it's going to be, like, beast hurting. But instead, one guy breaks out and he tags you. And then the, like, what a guy, a beast. And then the guy who was, like, training that piece is like, wow, damn, those beasts really are strong. And then that's it. Like, you can extort him for money if you'd like to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can do that.

But there's no, there's no, like, you know, I feel like. They suggest stuff was coded in there. Right. It suggests the beasts are all going to break out across the city. Or that, you know, there's some reason that you should be invested in the plight of the beast because you're going to do something about it. It felt like there's like a square footage thing happening in development where like we have to have a fight right now.

Like, and then it does those things just keep happening even though they like aren't satisfying. And yeah. I think part of it's also, go ahead. I was going to say it's doubly. weird when this is coming right after you get beast trick. And so I, I, like, you just, you just got beast trick on Duxon. And I imagine, like, I interacted with every beast. I was like, surely I will have the ability to do something with communing with beasts because I

just had this whole moment about a Narshadah thing where you have to deal with two cath hounds. And I'm like, I have beast trick. I learned it on the, the jungle moon of Duxon. Let me use beast trick. I don't want to go get Juma juice for the cat hounds. Anyway, it's so stupid. Well, and actually speaking of Narshadah just a little bit, I think part of what happened here is,

as we get further into the story, one of the things that becomes clear is there is a meta-narrative happening around or a larger macro-nacarrative happening around the restoration of telos. That's why I hit it so heavy on my introduction today. as a stand-in for the restoration of the Republic post-revenous to the Jedi Civil War and the Mandalorian Wars, can we restore Tilos? And it feels like each planet is part of the conversation

of restoring Tilos and also just kind of recovering post-Jedi civil war because we know Piraugas had the fuel, and it doesn't anymore. We know that the beasts of Duxin and Anderan are what are being used by the athorians to try to repopulate Tien. You'll learn that Narshadah is a big part of where the refugees have gone post-war. And so it feels like there was a whiteboard that was like, we really want to emphasize.

The war had a real cost. It's really like, and to fix it, we're going to need the animals from Anderan. We're going to need the fuel from Piraugas. There's some other fuel stuff on Marchada. It's this kind of like, nothing is localized. There are problems that are bigger than a single screen on a single planet. And then they like built out Anderan and we're like, fuck we forgot the beasts we gotta remind people that the beasts come from on d'eron we gotta put the

beast masters in and then they're just here and there's that one scene and that's it and so yeah i think that that part of it is a real bummer uh for sure um but then you you turn the you go you go the guy's free you meet him he has a wild accent uh and i was reminded by someone uh i think on the youtube comments or maybe it was on on blue sky we've met this guy before maybe this was also Keith. Have we? Not in this game. This is dead-eyed Duncan.

Did you tell you this? Nartis corn. Okay, yeah. This is Dead Eye Duncan, the first duelist you fight on, on Terrace in the beginning of Cotor 1, the guy who's like an old dude who's like a shithead. It's the same voice actor. It's the same guy. So shout outs.

It's not, I don't think it's literally Dead Eye Duncan, but he's like just doing that character again. I like to believe he's Dead Eye Duncan. I like to believe Dead Eye Duncan left Terrible. after you beat him in the duel before it got blown up and took on and, like, learned to be a doctor and moved to Anderon. They do say he's a bad doctor. They do say that. Multiple times.

They do say that. Even his friends are like, I don't really fuck with him, but I fuck with him. Yeah, the big thing you learn from him is that he drinks a lot. He drinks a lot. And that he shit talks, Suleo a lot. And they say slurs to each other, basically. But it's cool because they're besties. They're boys.

Yeah. It's out of love. It's so funny. And also just briefly, I do want to shout out the incredible acted by Robin acting Downs merchant in the merchant quarter who is like worried about the cop next to him. He's judging whether he's loyal or not. Whose voice is so funny. So. And one other final important detail.

Do you all, do you all remember Nico from the canteen? Yeah Did y'all notice anything weird about Nico Visually? Like extremely model-takes He looks like really good Like his face model looks like His face is like

Like way more high-deaf than anyone else I did notice this And I was like what the fuck is good with that That's a fan He won a contest to get put in the game Uh-huh Yeah which is i thought it was like it was like is this like the kickstarter guy like is this like the

hundred k tier uh-huh it's so funny uh and there is you know i'm not gonna get too deep into it but on the obsidian forms back then uh there's like he shows up on the forms the artist shows up on the forms. Someone asks him, like, basically, like, are you okay with the fact that they made you suck shit in this game that you were like, you're constantly being insulted and derided? Just, it's good. It's good. It's funny.

Anyway. That's so funny. What's the end of this? I know we have a heart out that we're rapidly approaching. So, yeah. So he gets you in. He gets a message into the palace to bring the Jedi out. and it's like didn't expect to see you hear exile and you know a few different ways you can you can be like I didn't think you'd ever turn on me he's like well you have to understand it was a crazy time but I think you deserve an explanation and then Rocklu's thugs show up and it's like again just 20 minutes of just like stun locking dudes beating him down and so we have to leave the plan we have to we better get off this planet because things have gone bad here so

we'll deal with this Jedi situation later. Yep. Yeah, he doesn't really give you any. You get the vibe that he, that he's kind of like, well, I didn't, I didn't really want, you know, you and me are friends, but things were just happening so fast, you know?

So maybe we'll get more of that when we get back to him later, but. Then you have a lengthy conversation with Colonel Tobin. I forgot about that, where he's the one who attacked you in the sky. Yeah, wait, but if you're on Vaklu's side, what's that? Yeah, there's an explanation for this.

It's, uh, so you, you, you, you, you fight, uh, a bunch of people in the canteen or whatever, and then Colonel Tobin walks in and it's like, no, stop the fighting. Um, anyway, sorry we had to do that, friend. And you're like, I'm curious why you ordered your men to attack me when I've, been doing favors for Vaclou. And he's like, ah, we got to maintain appearances. Anyway, I promise you, we got a gift for you on the way. But we have some really, really terrible people that we're friends with that fucking hate you.

So basically, we love, we're homies with the Sith, but the Sith, but General Vaklu feels like you could be an even more bestie than the Sith. So can we do a little bit of something about that? Right. But why do you have to get off the planet at that point? Is because the Sith are coming? It's so stupid.

Because he's like, well, we have to keep up appearances. So you're going to leave here and like all my guys are going to try to kill you. And like you should kill them. But like where this deal is stand up. We're going to be cool. Even Candorous is in the back is like, well, I don't know about this guy, but, you know, he doesn't lie to people. So if he's turning on the Sith, he's got it, you know, he's really doing it.

And it's like, what the, but he's setting all his people to death just because. That's wild. It's very silly. And then, yeah, you have to just walk and fight through the rest of the fight. So it's the same way. He's basic, yeah, you have to walk and fight your way out. And he's like, we need the Sith to do like four more things for us. And then we'll send you a message.

And when we send you that message, let's link that's so it's so silly but I'm locked in with them that's that's oomfy I'm excited to see how that goes I'm curious actually if it'll stick like that

you know or if it'll you'll have another opportunity to betray them or who knows I mean it seems like you're both going dark side so I mean what do we know we'll see yeah yeah I'm making my way down the down the

I feel like whenever I do I'm gonna make my way dark side I'm kind of stuck in the middle like I get a dark side shift and then like the dark side thing is like too stupid to actually say out loud despite it's just being a video game and I'm right there in the

just like square in the middle this game constantly has the things that are like it's a it's a 12 sentence word and the first six sentences or six uh uh i said 12 sentence word jesus christ it's a 12 word sentence and the first six words are like that'd be a really cool dark side response and then the back six are like and that's why i'm going to suck your soul out and like okay buddy whoa okay i just want to see everyone die and supper yeah exactly even softballs feel like they lock you into like i am going to be up front with you you i started that riot by accident i started like i got the person to go down i talked to those two guys

and i was like yeah that guy lies all the time like i would go with the queen like you should trust your politicians and then i walked back to the riot and i was just i just like lately i just you know put some thoughts in this guy's head i was just like yeah the queen should listen to her people that is true yeah and then you know people get to yelling and then suddenly 20 people run and I'm like killing civilians. Whoa. You know what just is what it is. And then no one reacts to it.

Like you don't go back to the gun guy and he's not like, I'm not going to sell to you because you started a riot. Like kind of no one gives shit. Although the news update does continue where they're like, there was a riot in the town square and there was an offworlder involved. The new stuff is so funny to me actually. I love that I love that accent being deployed here. I don't remember the particular thing But there's something in there where she says a word I've never heard said in Star Wars

The way she says it You know what I mean? Like with that very particular Again BBC UK presenter voice It's just it's so good It's a little bit Oh you also get to decide Who gets to your letters of transit

Casablanca style I forgot about this Oh yeah the visas Obviously you give them to the mom with the kids Yep uh huh But then do you give them to the humble starship captain who just can't get off this planet or to the two dirt bags who want to sell you uh to to get them in exchange for for money or uh or goods there's a lady who's like i have a rare

lightsaber crystal and i was like i do like rare lightsaber crystals and boy was that a bill of goods uh yeah that thing's good but you literally can't use it if you're light side uh-huh so well i was reading there's like a way that you can do it you can like offside the dark sided with it with like one of your own crystals, but that I didn't look into it because it's spoilers. But yeah. Oh, it's like a polarity thing. You just load a sufficiently light side crystal in there. There's like a

super crystal that you can load anything with alongside it basically, yeah. Yeah. Anybody don't have to reload that save and go. There's also. Well, you could also switch out her money. She's like, weirdly like fair about it despite her being evil. And be like, I change my mind. I want money and said. And she's like,

okay. Well, she is from the exchange. So maybe she likes to exchange things. Yeah, she does have the sword instead. Yeah, you can do the sword. There's also the guy who's clearly a Republic spy who's here. Yeah, fuck that guy. Oh, yeah, he stopped talking to me. He disappeared.

Oh, because you were interesting. Huh. He was like, well, what do you think of the Republic? And I was like, well, it's kind of not shit. And he was like, okay. I say, bye. Every time I interacted with him, he was like, it did not even give me a dialogue trait. It was just like, what's up?

Like it just, like, it was just a BZ. Yeah. That's so funny. That sword she has is pretty good. If you, if you're doing a non-lisaber type, you know, thing. But, yeah, that other crystal is pretty good. But, yeah, you can get some other crystals later that do let, let you use it. So, yeah.

So we've reached our point at time. We're going to get back on the Ebb and Hawk. Probably the next episode, you're hearing other three hours of us talking about conversations we've had on the Ebbin Hawk. And then trying to squeeze the entire. next section of the game into like 45 minutes or an hour. Where is the next question? I have a question which is like how much at this point other Evan Hawke stuff do we have lined up?

No one here got the big Kraya cutscene that Natalie and I are desperate to talk about, I think. Dying to talk about it. Please ask her about the Jedi and Sith and please ask her about Revin. Oh my God, the Revin shit. I forgot about that. I'm dying to talk about it. Yeah. I forgot about that stuff.

And is that also, Natalie, is that also the T3? Does that get you to the T3 recording with Revin? I got to that so, so it's not dependent. I got the T3 Mando. That's the one I'm talking about.

The T3 Revin Mando video. I got that. Yeah, I did get that. Yeah. Okay. And then Beodor has a question for you. Okay. So, okay, we have some stuff to talk about.

I think maybe it'll be a shorter Abbott-Hawk thing next time. Because we have big stuff this time. And yeah, Shadah. Hey, which two harem members won't talk to you if, or which one won't talk to you if you preferring the other one? Handmaiden will cut you off in a way that will be very clear if you get 30 influence points with Vsas more than her.

So it's not total. You can max both of them out, but you just have to make sure. So you just have to, you have to make sure that they both feel seen. That's exactly right. You, that you will know you're nearing. I can do that. You learn you're nearing that break point, sort of, if they have a conversation about their mutual affection for you and about whether they hate each other or not, after which point you can also talk to HK and be like, what is love? And HK will tell you his definition of love.

It's not good. Buckle up, Natalie. No. I'm so glad we didn't even talk about HK today. We can talk about that in the future. There's nothing to say. There's not much to say. He doesn't have, I mean, he's going to have some stuff going on later.

He's clearly what the things they're building towards is like he doesn't like that there's other HK units. And we ran into some more of those. It's not even worth talking about. But yeah, so, so I would just make saves before you ever do any deep dives with the Vsau's, like conversation tree. Because you might, she is so easy to max out. Like you can max her out just on the ship. You don't need to even bring her anywhere to max her out. So I think you need to wait to ask her about.

her sight until you have that's right that's right really high influence that's right yes because you can lock yourself out of something with when you ask her about her seeing that's right yeah and it's like what you're locking stuff out of isn't super important or anything so it's okay if you've already done this it's not a big deal but you can't but it isn't that is true um so yeah and anyway handmaiden wise try to win those duels i know it's hard Don't forget you, you can drop. I won one. While we were recording.

Okay. I just, it just happened. It just, my computer was going. I see, I see. She was naked. Things happening. Don't look crayon. It wasn't me.

Yeah. Master Flurry saved me. Master Flurry is so good. Everyone should be building towards Master Flurry. Yeah. So, so you should try to push the handmade and stuff. That would be a good goal. If you could do it, win all three handmaiden things.

And talk to her about what it would mean if she maybe, you taught her some things, maybe, not sexual. Why does everything about your interactions with, because that's what they're doing. Cursed, cursed energy. But you, this is 2004. Yeah. We're going to play through Narshadah. I don't think we're not going to put through all of Narshadah. Narshadda is interesting.

I don't have to give you all some tips before we wrap up. Narshada has a number of zones. You land in like the landing area. area, the landing pad, refugee landing pad, and then that moves you into a sort of like a hub, a squared off hub with three other doorways you can kind of go into. There are, there's the docks, the entertainment promenade, and the refugee quad. What I'm doing on the let's play is I went through that main first one. I did everything you can do there.

My big advice to this is generally speaking, try to do everything you can do in a given zone before you move to the next zone. They're generally self-contained quests. So it'll be like, talk to the droid guy, and there's a guy in the droid place who wants you to go get something from a different droid guy. Or he's a droid in a swoop bike mechanic shop.

You talk to him, and he sends you to a droid dealer, go do that quest. And similarly, with all of these kind of quests that are all inside of their own zone. There's a couple of things that take you to other zones, but focus on the ones that you can just clear out right away. Then I went to the entertainment promenade, which is like the canteena and some Pazococ.

stuff. And then from there, there's a way to go right from there that will bring you to the docks. You'll talk to a guy in the canteena who will ask you if you know anyone who knows how to dance. And from there, you'll end up in the docks. I believe it's the docks, yes. And then I cleared out all the quest in the docks. And that's about where I stopped. I might push a little further into the fourth place called the Refugee Quad. I don't have the exact place. I think we should stop. It's a big planet. I would say try to get through as much intro stuff and as much side stuff in those zones as you can. Eventually, the main plot will kind of catch up to you and you'll get pulled into a situation where you have to go deal

with some stuff with your ship. Excuse me, with your ship. And I think maybe that's the point at which we should maybe aim to stop if you can get there. But my guess, guess is we might not all get there. So I'm like trying to give a soft definition of this place for the first time through. Try to get through as much as you can have the side stuff in the refugee quad, sorry, the refugee landing pad, the docks, the entertainment promenade, and then the refugee quad. The place where it all starts to like pick up steam, you'll have to go back to the landing pad and try to get your ship back from some people basically or like defend your ship from some people.

And that's the point at which I think we should probably stop. There's kind of a lot after that, if I remember, right, but I haven't, but it's all linear after that. So it might be that we need three episodes for Narshadah, but get as, put as much time as you can in getting there and doing all the side stuff. That's my advice. And remember, everything's generally in the zone that it starts in. There's like one or two exceptions for that, but it should be pretty clear.

I know that it's got a little messy, but that's the best I can do, you know, I've been recording for a while. I don't have a clear stop point. I'm excited. Get ready for new party members. New party members on Arsadah. And choices. Choices loom.

Who else can be super into the exile? Let's find out. God, if only you knew. God. Well, with that, we reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age. Our show is, this is going to be produced by Chia, right? I believe so. Should be.

All right. We should check. I never know when Jen Khan travel. Oh, I didn't know. Was she at Jen Con? She was at Jen Con? She'll probably be back. This episode might come out a day or too late, I guess.

But we'll see. Either way, it's supported by our listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. So yes, next episode, we are heading to Narshadah. Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And remember, don't you sleep with that girl? Don't you sleep with that woman? She's not good enough for you, exile. Fate of the Galaxy.

depends on you maintaining a purity score that is sufficiently high I made this promise I made this promise ring for you, exile. Plus one to will say we'll have a party. I can't stop thinking of Kraya showing up in white to her son-in-law's sweating. 100%.

100% the vibe. It's fucked up, man. I can't stop.