A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 118: Nar Shaddaa Pt. 2 (KOTOR II 09)

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

We bring Nar Shaddaa to a close as our Exiles fight their way through a secret criminal HQ before being whisked away to the cloaked ship of the mysterious Exchange leader, Goto. Then, after some real table top dungeon crawl hijinks, we come face to face with the first of our missing Jedi... Next Time: Dantooine, Pt. 1 (We haven't figured out a stopping point yet! We'll announce on Bluesky later this week!) Show Notes 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 Zakeney, joined by Ali Akpura, 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 other various special editions this week, where we left off. on Narshada with Hanhar, the pissed-off wookie, who was trapped in a toxic life debt, with Mira Dage, I guess you can say, like the fake Mari-Jade. Yeah, we don't get a last name for her, I think, ever. I think everybody else gets a last name, but I don't think she has one.

She's just that girl. Yeah, she's just that girl. She's just that girl. So they were, they were trapped in a fighting pit. Only one may leave. This is Hanhar's, you know, final, final way to escape, depending on how your choices have played out. You'll either be helping Mira win that fight or you'll be helping presumably Hanhar be, you know, finally, finally liberate himself in the Sith way. Either way.

then there's a whole lot oh boy there's a whole lot of slogging through what's his name viscous yeah wait is it viscous or is viscous or is viscous the one the other one what's the one in the

because there's two corin exchange guys yeah but there's two we already dealt with one of them what's the one that's in the refugee quarter called that's not visquist no no no no the refugee guy is that is

Sasquish Oh okay Right Fuck you That's not real Sasquish No it is not No I'm literally

It's the overseer It's Saquish It's there's no second As it's just Saquish Not Sasquatch His name is Zalimar I was literally

I'm looking at the word And reading it And going Sasquatch The heart wants what it wants You wanted there to be a Sasquatch guy I get it I do

I'm really interested in Sasquatch So we're going to find out While you're going to find out While you Austin made an ominous suggestion that you just You just stockpile Medpacks

Because maybe you won't be yourself After this fight Viskwis is like Huh. I really thought this fight to the death would result in the person I wanted to see killed actually being killed. I'm kind of surprised that didn't work out. Oh, well, guards. Wait, so for you, Viskwis wanted Hanhar killed?

No. No. Mira. He just anticipated Hanhar would kill Mira and was like, damn, Mirr got hands. Yeah, it's the same setup, I suspect, right? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the same setup. And then whoever you're playing,

Just has to fight their way through, Viscis' maze-like hidden base underneath the bar that you had to fight through 10 minutes earlier. Slaughtering into you beasts who, remember, were the victims of a galactic republic. They're responsible for their choices since then. I guess so. Nobody made them taking on this job as mercenaries. Yeah, I guess, you know, fair enough. So that fight goes on for ages

And here we get another taste of a thing that boy They return to a lot in Arshada You just got to find the you got to fight your way through this And find the right panels and control interfaces To unlock the door so the plot can advance you You fight your way through you unlock the door So the Jedi exile can finally get in And then you have yet another scene

Where Viscis is like this aha Everything is as I have foreseen it. This is exactly the trap I thought you would fall into. You will never resist my toxic gas. But O'Contraire, he doesn't know. There's a cutscene just 10 minutes earlier that's like here have Jedi air filtration. That's right. Powers active.

So the exiles completely unfazed. Somewhere in this, cut two, your crew of homies fighting the way through, through Narshadah to help out. That's new, by the way. The TSLCRM added to that because I guess the devs or the modders thought what Narshad needs is more fighting as not yourself. That's so funny. It's so funny.

Now, like, I get it because it's the homies. It's kind of cool to see the homies go to bat for you, but like, it's so wild. What do you think about it? You're investing all this time into like who, What armor should I give Beauder? What skills am I giving at? And you are investing a lot of time and energy into building your party. I do get why, you know, you get an opportunity to actually get to go play with the toys and do something with them outside of them just being like accessories to the exile.

But, uh... Problem is this is a co-tore D&D game and the toys aren't fun. toys are dubiously fun. I will say for me the toys are pretty fun because this was the scene where I got to have three Jedi kick fucking gand ass and like it was the first time I got to like really use them as Jedi because I'd upgraded them. It was Crea and then it was Beauder and Atten and like, oh, they all have lightsabers now. They are just crushing.

You made Beauder and Atten Jedi? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought I said that last time. You can make your guys. Jedi? You've already done it with the handmaiden, haven't you? Natalie? Yeah, I did it with the handmaiden, but I'm just, I'm just, I'm just saying your choice to do that.

I'm just, I want to know more about, about, about, I'm the last Jedi. Well, or are you doing the thing, Atris couldn't, Rob? Are you doing the thing that, that your ex doesn't have in her, which is actually teaching people things? You know, I'm just hanging out. Okay, well, then maybe your whole situation is just hanging out and being like, you seem like, you like blasters so I'll give you more blaster powers I really had a I've been ended I ended that nine hour long LP episode which people should go watch shout out to generations by the way thank you the next one's much shorter than that which is

very funny I think it's probably the longest one will have by far I think that this is the longest chunk we probably have to play in one sitting last time but in that thing I recorded it over like five days of recording and in the first episode I'm like you know and when Atten gets the prestige class I think I'm just going to keep him on blasters like a Jedi with Blasters is so fun. I'm like, by day four, when I was recording, I was like, I gotta get this guy some fucking lightsabers. They're so good.

He's such a good melee character. So, yeah, he tore it through some shit, which was nice. And much more fun than. Right. Yeah, well. I forgot the Cotor. Ranged weapons just aren't it in this game. Like, everything is,

everything is tuned to, like, getting someone's grill and just wreck their shit. The upgrades you can get on gun or on, on lightsabers. so strong it's so hard not to commit to that decision like it's just so hard to resist it I'm sure that you can get a ranged character to be pretty good especially in a team where they have some tanking or whatever but it's so hard for me to imagine because I'm trying that I'm on easy now remember because I had enough of this bullshit yeah and like oh I'm going to

specialize this person in blasters not blaster rifles blasters blasters which is the right call. There are no blasters that scale enough to be anything more than, yeah, you can spam status effects on people a little bit or like hit him with special damage, but really, who gives a shit? Yeah. Like, it's like, ooh, over here, I'm like doing stun damage this person. And like everyone else is just like chopping people into like doing a fine mince with lightsabers, like Gander's like gan heads like soaring through the air. Yeah. And poor Miris like, who that guy felt that one. He wrung his bell a little bit. Yeah, that's

that's right. Yeah. So so the crew is hanging out. This case is like damn, this plan, this plan didn't work. Oh well, I will call in yet more of these Ubees because here's the plan. I'm going to

use you. Is this microphone on? Let me talk closer to it. Exile, I'm going to use you to get close to Goto. And, And I'm going to kill him and you, usurp him, uh, as is my right. Ubis take him into custody. And then they all close on viscous because they had, they were streaming this whole thing to

go to that's right. And go and go and go to's like put him to death. And my exile was like, excuse me. If anyone's going to kill viscous, it's me. I got a dark side point, but really I kind of felt like it was a like it's like a commission for a salesperson? Yeah. Really?

It's like, I eat what I kill. It's professional. Yeah, it's professional, like, commitment to finishing the job. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, you, you just killed like 80 guys for,

for 20 minutes. 80 might be low ball in it. Honestly. There's so many. There are so many guys. So many guys that you can kill. The bar back to back with this underground place is wild. Like, you know what?

You're the general. You know what I mean? Baildair is right. You are the general. You are not the Jedi IMO. I yeah. You, uh, I mean, it obviously wasn't a problem for me. Um, oh, right, sure. Dark side. The exile hearing Anakin's hand people like tearful confession. Those are rookie numbers. That's right. Wait till you hear about Hanhar. Wait, oh, wait till you hear about Hanar. Oh, right.

so now the exile is taken into custody it's kind of another annoying thing about this chapter is like everything is kind of undone the exile is taken in a custody and whisked up to go to's spaceship more bounty hunters are like ah this is finally our chance to pursue him uh etc now we have to figure out now that now the crew has to get access to go toes cleverly has a hidden ship T3, you're up. Droid adventure sequence through a, through Java, not through Chabas. Jabba went through the rebels, uh, space portals, the fucking, what was the, was that place called? The world between worlds.

The world between worlds. They almost said the road between roads, uh, and wound up here. Can you imagine, imagine if, if Ezra was walking through the world between worlds and Krea came out? Oh my God. I was imagining a world in which, in which, like, Ezra's like, I'm Jabba to Crea. And then, and then, and then Jabba's there and it's like, no, I'm literally Jabba. I'm literally Jabba. We's a Jabba literal.

Yeah. Literally. I can't imagine. No, it's too cruel. To think about Crea and Ezra. Anyone from rebels, Inter, encountering Crea. Mm-hmm. it is like it is like satan entering the garden of me it is it really is like it's like when eve

is like oh this guy's so nice wow everything says makes so much sense crea whispering into canaan's ear about how he feels about hera is just evil just truly you know do you think we don't see how you look at each other you know just like oh just like oh just like Crea is like a, like, we need containment for Craya. Like, we need to lock her in a vacuum. She cannot be, she has to go in the crystal, literally. Like, if I were to imagine anyone else talking to Craya other than the exile, we'd be fucked. Yeah.

The universe would be fucked. Like, there's no coming back from an encounter with Crea. You just, you just don't come back for that. It alters you. molecularly midi chlorinolularly yeah mm-hmm

anyway like Hera just like the minute the hatch is shot turning to Canaan get her the fuck

that's right off my ship but you don't understand Hera this could be our chance she's just all the way in Canaan's head it's a nightmare

she like reminds Canaan of his old master in ways that Crayan knows she's pulling on So good. Yeah. So T3 has to go through a whole little really slapped together sequence that feels very much like we need three rooms attached to this level. And you're just going to go through them.

You're going to have a little encounter with two competitive, like two droids who don't like each other. You're going to do a little puzzle and you're going to get access to the codes that Goto's been using to. like eavesdrop on on hut spaceship traffic through here which is always carrying out his blockade and then T3 T3 has to solo a big couple big fights I guess fucking HK droids T3 versus like three HK droids is a wild fight I hope you I hope you stocked up on little ions taser things that you can attach to them because you'll burn them through those and then it is off to it is it is is off to space to go to go rescue the exile you got to choose though who is going to be your

away team for the go toe mission but one last thing we'll talk about this later but crea uh is seen going into the fighting pit and saving hanhar from the brink of death uh or i i assume it's bera from the brink of death if it goes the other way i don't think so no i think this is just a way to keep hanhar alive okay i think we'll talk about it Yeah, we'll talk about it. Crea is in rare form when she goes and talks to Hanhar. It is some prime Crea. You know what?

It's like I hope Atten finds out about this. So he realizes it's not just him. That's right. It's like, no, man, she doesn't hate you. That's how she is with everybody. She's like this with everyone. This is just, this is, it's sort of like, she's Boston mean. You know, it's like maybe she's trying to be helpful.

you know that's really hard really hard to tell uh yeah so you so the exile is a big conversation with uh go to it is interesting goto sort of if we if we have a filed off uh mara jade goto is maybe uh riseless talent card who is a little planning that he just wants to the republic must not fall so it's bad for business. He wants, he wants the status quo to rain. All the Sith Jedi business is no good. So he needs you to, to help stabilize things one way or the other. And then your buddies board the ship and we are back to it. Just fighting our way through room after room after room punching codes in the computer terminals until you unlock the way off the ship. You get back with the exile. It's a whole lot of fighting through the ship. The

bounty hunters arrive on it after, after you bring down the, the stealth field that is hiding Goto's ship. You make your escape. The ship is destroyed. It appears Goto somehow escaped. He wasn't really there. He's, he's very elusive character. And then you go and you have your confrontation with, uh, which Jedi is this? Zez Kyle.

Yeah. The biker Jedi. Yeah, the biker Jedi. Yeah, the Hulk Hogan Jedi. Hey, brother. Yeah. Hey, brother. You inspire me to be a Jedi.

So you've returned from Exile. That's right. That'll work for me, brother. Many Jedi secrets are revealed. He has buyer's remorse in the wake of the council meeting that they've exiled you. We learn more about the exile and how things played out there. And then where he, where at least he currently stands on, are the Jedi in that good? How should we play it from here?

But be careful. You're always just one click away from triggering a fight in this sequence. And then you have to replay the conversation if you mean to be saying, all right, so what should we do now? But instead, you click on, my name is Inigo Montoya. And then you're trapped in a fight. So be careful about that. If you don't fight him to the death, he's like, I will go off to Dantuin. And we will begin rallying the troops

To fight this encroaching darkness That's the episode And then there's like a bunch of Chit Chat on the Ebenhawk Yeah, we'll see who's got what this time, I guess You can show me the cutscene Wait, you haven't seen the cuts Oh right, because you're right, that's what we said

We had said right If you hadn't gotten to the creosine That's right We are secrets will be revealed today. Secrets revealed. Jedi secrets revealed. Who will live? Who will die?

Who will fall? Who will fall? Yep. You know? Craying looming over every character. I think that's one of the lines in the cutscene. So we'll get there. So, uh,

Hanhar and Mira. Yeah. That fight. Again, I, I enjoy the sense of the toxic, wookie life debt where it seems like Mira has basically

like what if you saved someone who's like pure evil and malevolence? Right. Do we now know enough to talk about what happened between them? I remember what happened. I don't quite remember if it comes up in the conversations right after this. I didn't really do a deep dive with Mira

right after. I just, I know what happened and so I have to be a little coy in terms of revealing stuff that no one, you know what I mean? But last time, were you, what do you? Yeah, go ahead, Allie. I failed every influence check with her, but I did do like a quick check-in. Yeah. And the only thing that she said to me was she decided not to kill him.

And it was the worst mistakes that she ever made. Right. So, assuming from that, there was a situation where she sacrificed him and that was like the trigger effect for the life debt. Or she saved him instead of. Right. Right, yeah. Does everyone have clarity on what their relationship was before that? If not, I'm not going to say shit.

No, I don't know. I believe I do, but we should probably wait until Allie and... Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Rob gets to know Mirra a little bit better. Which I guess really quick, Allie, you wound up with Mira. I did end up with Mira. Interesting, okay. I'm considering replaying Narshada to go darksided.

Interesting. But all of the conversations that I, like, the fences, that I'm able to do by continuing to be like I am not a Jedi stop calling me a Jedi is like a more interesting

emergent gameplay than doing the dark-sided stuff I think you should play it out and then we can have that perspective at the end of the game you know you should play it out you know when I was playing the when I hit the prestige class

conversation which I'm curious if anyone else has hit that yet the way that that goes for if you end up being light-sided is this sort of conversation about like, oh, you know, it's sort of tied to the two things that have to happen to get it. You have to be in the top 25% or the bottom 25% of your morality meter, and you need to have gotten visas on the ship. And part of that is because the way the conversation is framed is you say

something like, or you approach Kraya, and the first thing she says is like, ah, you have felt it. And it's an echo in the force is what you feel. And that echo. is tied to Nylis, Vesas' previous master, the guy who destroyed the Miroluka planet. And so it's around that. And then that conversation ends up being kind of about like, okay, like, it's time to commit, man. And when I hit that conversation, that's the point at which I was like, oh, my character is like going to start calling himself a Jedi again. He's like, I'm taking up this mantle again. I had that sense of, Rob, you've talked a lot about when the game was really clicking, there's a lot of expressivity in the, in the conversation.

options. And that felt like one where I was like, oh, like this actually really feels like a moment where my character has moved from fence sitting to commitment to this way. And I'm curious, Allie, if maybe not that scene, but you'll hit a scene eventually that does feel like a moment to commit to either being or not being, you know, or being Jedi or being Sith. And if you don't, then that's also fascinating to me. And I'm curious how the game will hit because I can tell you, I don't think that there's like a gray ending to this game. You know what I mean? You're going to keep getting funneled into the light side stuff and just not be light side

coded. But I don't know. We'll see. The area I'll say is this. Mere is unhittable out of the box. Interesting. She, like, Hanhart could not lay a glove on her. She, like, she was, um, there were, there were two things.

One, like, the hits weren't getting through. Two, her starter jacket. has like some pretty decent damage resistance to melee and so I had to check the combat log. He was landing hits and registering like damage but it was getting like

canceled. Interesting. So I was going to say because let me tell you you know who can fucking hit her the UBs. That's true, but they had a lower thing. They still, yeah I think it was and thank God I'm like I'm so glad.

I just didn't even try to play like this. It was a chore on easy. Yeah. But Mira, Mirr seems very elusive out of the box, especially if you like up her dexterity. And then the gear she has makes her extra elusive. And if she,

if you give her the close combat specialist thing because she sort of meant to work with blasters out of the box, uh, You know, the fights aren't take forever because all she's got is blasters. She's not doing good damage, but she's survivable. Yeah. Yeah. So she can kind of like, in a weird way, she's super tanky, but mostly because like most hits and most damage don't get through.

I still, because there's so many of these fucking new bees, I still had to burn through loads of shields. Yeah. And a ton of bedbacks. And the nice thing is she's got so many skill points. that her treat wounds is just ridiculous. So it was like could let her get all the way to empty, basically, and then tanker up in advance med pack. And it was like, all right, back in it.

But it was a lot. A lot of fighting down there for her. The thing that I wish I had done in that big open area was set more minds, because when you fight Hanhar with her, you were just told she can run through mines without setting them off. And that's how I beat Hanhar was just like, like, wait, fuck it. I'll just run through the minds

and he'll chase me and step on those things and that'll be that. Natalie, I'm curious how the Hanhar fight goes from Hanhar's perspective because you play as him in that, right? Yeah. It goes pretty well for me for Hanhar. I mean...

Big melee guy. Well, as soon as I assumed control of him, it was like, level up time, level up time. And I had like, I don't know, 15 levels to give him. and I immediately raised his Flurry to Max Flurry. I raised his toughness, and I raised his two-handed fighting weapon all the way. And then I just dumped everything into, like, strength and constitution or fortitude.

I forget what is the one. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, you got it. so he was just like he was just so strong so you like Mira could not do a dent of damage on him honestly throughout the entire section I don't think I drop below like 90% health I never had to use a heel on Hanhar I like sometimes I drop into the the wookie rage he has a special ability his special abilities he gets really angry and

And it raises his strength. Problematic, I'm a... I would agree. I would agree. But then, you know, I... There's some story, some story, backstory that I'm like, oh, maybe he, maybe this guy does, you know, kind of see red, so to speak, in various ways. It's wild. It's basically, I guess, Rob, it's sort of a, like, berserker rage from 3-5 or from, like, that type of D&D. where you can,

do you activate it or is it just, is it just, you activate it, yeah, okay. So, yeah, it's in like where your Jedi support slot would be if you were playing as the exile. Yeah, you'd basically trade some defense score to get bonus strength and bonus HP and bonus fortitude and will saves

and eventually bonus attacks per round. At the highest level, he's getting another two attacks per round from that, which is just unbelievable. because he's already, it's like the only way, he's the only melee character who can truly compete with a Jedi in terms of attacks per round. And then he also has wookie toughness, which straight up gives you, by the top level of it, minus eight damage suffered every attack that hits. And then an additional minus 10% on top of that.

So he is just like the tankiest dude there fucking is, basically. So, and it's like, you can still do shields and stuff after that if you want. You know what I mean? Like it's still brutal. here's the thing though I think like Mira might be a permanent party

member Wow Yeah like she has Do I have to choose between security Computers She's got everything She's like It's like what if T3

Were a tank And it's like great Now I don't even have to bring T3 On that I think Because she's utility Yeah but does Hanhar have Does Hanhar have have all those skills.

He does he does have a lot of those skills, huh? He doesn't have security. Yeah, he does. He just got absolutely, like, ridiculous. He's really high computer. Yeah. They're the same class. I'm looking right now.

They have all, the computer use demolitions, awareness, repair, treat injury. They don't have stealth or security, but I'm guessing y'all all have security because it's annoying not to have it. If I could go back in time and tell everybody one thing, it would be to disregard all of the common,

uh, recommended start as a consular, then become a Jedi weapon master or whatever with your prestige class and just tell us it would be a Sentinel which is the class I've been playing which has like a billions with with like a decent intelligence score and you end up with just like a billion skill points and there's just so much in this game to interact with with awareness or repair or everything else and it's like I get why people recommend Consular because this is the point of the game that you're all hitting where you can start just like lightning lightning down people for storming

people. And even if you're light-sided or, you know, it's not that expensive force point-wise. You can still do it if you want to. And it's so powerful. But in terms of engaging with what the game has, I just, having skills is so important, you know? Yeah. So the, I'll say this. Like, when we start playing this, I've been playing a bunch of Dea X, uh, mankind divided. Yeah. And like a Star Wars immersive sim actually makes a ridiculous amount of sense because like there's so many different like ways that like literally I was sitting in there

like Adam Jensen in that game is basically like can be specked out like a Jedi but what does that mean he could be a jumpy Jedi or it could be like a persuasive like you know deceptive Jedi all this but like I wish there are a more interesting system too like you have all this

all these skills where it's like I can you know I can hack in I can turn these droids over to my side using my repair but the game affords you such lackluster opportunities to do that uh that they don't it doesn't feel like I guess I'm glad that I'm spared buyers remorse for not being able to do a ton of that stuff but it doesn't feel like the game is like sufficiently rewarding you for having those. skills. And then a lot of places where it seems like they should be useful, well, they're just hard loss. You're, you're, you're hacking skills. You haven't even activate against these terminals because, like, you have to explore the whole dungeon. It is literally go find the red key. And that's how, that's how it's going to be. So, like, it's cool to have Mary show up and just be like, I'm going to have basically all the skills you need in the game just on my back. And, you know, then I'm, I'm pretty decent in combat, or at least reasonable. tanky but I wish that there was something interesting to do with all those like

rogue and hacker skills that exist and there just isn't yeah the stuff that that happens is almost all dialogue driven where it's things like the can you repair the bike uh and you need the repair or the hacking skill for it's almost not it's almost never systemsy stuff where you're interacting with. Like in contrast to Kotor 1, where I felt like every dungeon, the thing that you did was you went to the terminal and you hacked in and then you hit the overload the energy thing, which you could do in the tunnels dungeon, I guess, and the like Beast Pit Dungeon. There is a place where you can do that.

But it does not feel like interesting. It does not feel, you don't feel clever when you like, oh, I've hacked into the armory and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. None of that stuff really cashes out in anything meaningful. The place that it mostly comes up is conversations and it is stuff. like, you know, I think one of the things I told you I was like, try to get a high awareness score before you talk to Zez Kyle, because there's a huge bit of, there's a huge thing he says that you can only access if you pass an awareness check.

I don't even think you get the option if you don't have the awareness there, which I'll read it. Yeah, so I'll read that later. And it's like, oh, here's the character work about this guy. It's all locked behind this awareness score. And there's stuff like that, kind of all over the place. If you remember going back to the atras stuff, that also had that sort of stuff where it was like high awareness, high intelligence, or persuade in places, stuff like that. And sometimes

that stuff does trigger from security or repair or treat injury. But it's, it's, I don't think they do a great job of calling it out, you know? And it's the special thing is, Rob, if you don't have the skill for it, they don't show up in the dialogue. It's not like there, but grayed out. So you're never being told, oh, if I had repair, I'd get this option, right? Which is a design choice. You can make that decision to make someone not feel like they should load their save and, you know, level up a different way or go grind or whatever. But, like, it does, I think, it does change, I think, the relationship with what it feels like the opportunity space is. You play a fallout game or whatever where it says, oh, you need to have perception seven for this or heavy guns, three, you know, 13 or whatever. It's, I don't know how the stats working that fucking game.

But, you know, you go, oh, shit, okay, this quest would have rewarded me if I had put points into medicine, you know, or whatever, science. And I didn't. So, yeah, it's interesting. I think it's better for it to leave it out, honestly, because I think if I was being presented with everything that I was missing out on constantly, it would be, it would incite me to want to reload and rese- Because I used to do that all the time in fallout. Like I would just like, okay, I'm going to go to like 15 saves ago and like make sure that I changed my stats or make sure that I have like, you know, the level, my stat levels at a certain point by the time I get to this town, whatever.

I think it's better for it because I think largely the information that you get is not like game change. like there are things that I think add a lot of depth and flavor to certain conversations and it's like it's a nice to have when you do get it but ultimately none of the thing that I've realized about this game is that in in thinking about the way that it does branching narrative and I mean I don't even really think it does branching narrative it's not really branching yeah it's not really branching but it has this illusion of it because or it's at least its systems gesture towards it in the when we're looking back at playing at the legacy of games that came after this game so for example like in cotor we've talked a lot about this with the with in cotor too with the relationships that influence does not necessarily lock you out of uh you know end game conversations or uh you know big cutscenes with characters, big character moments, that actually influence, whether it's, you know,

very high or very low, still has an impact because it's taking influence quite literally in that you are either pushing people away or bringing them closer to you. But you're still developing relationships with them because you're on a fucking ship together, traveling the galaxy, doing battles. It's not like this person is going to be in your party

and you're not going to have a relationship with them even if you dislike each other. Like that's still a type of relationship. And when it comes to the stats and things like that, I always think about, oh, I want to be, you know, this kind of build because I want to be able to go down this path. And it's like the path isn't closing itself to you. It's just going to take on a different flavor throughout.

And I really appreciate that Cotor 2 is kind of more of like a vibes-based, narrative structure rather than a branching lock yourself out of this or that make the choice what will you choose I mean the choice is light or dark

really and I think I do think part of the thing that some other games that come after this and even some that come before you think about Balder's Gate

you think about planescape torment Cotor 2 is a game about going to find four Jedi right and what do you do along the way generally seems to be very small stakes. And then the one big stakes choice that we get to, like the one you get here, is do you

talk to the Jedi or do you kill the Jedi? And that structurally is not that different from like the Mass Effect games, right? Where it's like, oh, you've come to the Rakhine queen, you've come to this planet and there's an ancient alien queen here, like an alien bug queen who is. And her hive is killing a bunch of people. Do you save the ancient alien bug queen and launch her out into space where she can maybe try to find peace? Or do you kill her to keep people safe because that seems like it's the only option? And then the next planet you go to, unless you go to the one that has a different ancient alien, unless you go to choose hope.

And if you go to another different main planet, you get a slightly different, you get a different main conflict, right? Oh, which of these two crew members are you going to sacrifice? Or are you going to keep this potential cure for this, for this, you know, plague, this man-made plague that has been killing the species for a long time? Hasn't been killing the species. It has been preventing them from, you're right. They killed them naturally. And then what they did was they kept them from reproducing. Sorry, are you going to keep this.

Morton makes good points. Are you going to keep this genetic castration plague active? Are you going to save the cure? And so, but they're different things, even though structurally they're similar in there. Okay, I'm going to do the planet. And at the end of the planet, I'm going to have a big choice to make. The other thing, of course, is like those later games introduced the promise of the franchise in a different way. You know, Cotor 1, outside of is Revin light-sided or dark-sided and is Revin a man or a woman,

there's no, there's no Cotor 1 choices that have haunted us into Cotor 2, right? No one here is like, oh, shit, because we, because, you know, remember in my Cotor 1 Darkside play-through, I destroyed all of the Colto in Monon. And I'm not like loading into this game and my med pack prices are higher. You know what I mean? That choice is completely quarantined to that game. And so one of the things that I think the kind of biower style RPG moving into the kind of 360 era, the mass effects, the Dragon Ages, et cetera, one of the things that that sort of

promised and got everyone hooked and introduced a sense that there was supposed to be this bigger sort of connective outcome tracing and then branching stories is like, oh, I saved the Rackney Queen in game one. So in game three, she can come back and help me. And that, right, Rob is making that eh hand. But in game one, that's what it felt like, right? And so it felt like a big branch because you didn't. understand yet that what was going to happen was

the Rackney Queen was going to be worth 70 unity points in three-day war score, sorry, war score points. And you get like a text message like, yes. Hey, you might have a little insectoid friend out here or two

billion. Yes. Winky face. It's your old buddy from that planet. I've looked it up and it is 100 war assets is what you get to your military strength. Goofy. So, you know, that is, um, that is, that is one of those things that's like, but it really felt branching in that way. One, because it didn't just feel like a repeated

thing. Two, because it seemed, and inside of some of those games are also quest chains that seem like, oh, because I made this choice at hour five, now I have this choice available to me an hour 40 or something. I mean, I think the closest, one of the closest comparisons here is definitely Dragon H2. I keep saying this over and over again. That's the game that has the exact, like, influence setup that this game has where you can either push people to be, you know, friends or rivals where you're both of those mean increased influence, increased scenes with them, etc. But there was more of a sense of like, ah, because I opened up, because I did this in this quest early on, later on, this option is just like not available to me. I'm

on a sort of quest line for these characters. And the other thing here is just like, there aren't really character quests, which is one of the big things that, you know, there are a few. And Cotaur 1 had stuff like Bastille's mom and dad. And, you know, there's a little bit of that here. We know Mandelor is trying to reunite the Mandalorians, obviously. And clearly, Mirren Hanhar have a thing that will probably resolve later for blight-sided people. But, like, there isn't that sense of, you know, like you said, you mentioned Morden for

Mass Effect earlier, Rob. Morden, there's no Morden equivalent. We're over the course of a couple of games, you're going to, like, work through Morden's guilt through the connection of da-da-da-da. like you're going to get some conversations about everybody again like i'm basically done with everything we can do with vs us until the the big you know act three stuff happens with her in the main plot but like there's not i'm not going around with these characters to do their special things um and i think that's part of why those games felt so big um master act too when you recruit

a character you make a choice about how like what spec they are you remember and they're how are relationships that unfold aboard the ship like totally you're pilot will at one point be like, I want to fuck the ship. And then you'll turn around. And it's like great news. I turn the ship into a hot metal lady for the fucking. Wait. And it's like, that's great joke.

Yeah. I'm so happy. Natalie. This is disability representation. Yeah. Also, he's disabled. This is, he has like, yeah. I, I do.

Um, uh, okay. Yeah. No, I was going to say. For all we can, we can measure Cotor 2 against Mass Effect, your companions making relationships without you is not a strike against it. Like, Cotor is very much invested in that, at least. Yeah.

You know, for some of these characters, I wish that I did have like a little character mission, but, you know, that was just not the reality of their time line. I would have, they had another year. Maybe they would have done that, but they just don't. And also just like it wasn't the expectation quite yet. I mean, again, in the PC version of these games, those characters tend to have stuff like that, but not as the cinematic turn hadn't hit for video games quite yet, where it was like, ah, yes, we're going to think about this as this character is going to get their own chapters, their own acts, their own scenes in that way for this style of RPG and not other games, of course, did this. You know, the JRP was doing this sort of stuff in the fucking, you know, Sega Saturn era where it was like, oh, I'm in this new town and this town. is really just about this NPC

or this companion, this party member. So it's not like there isn't precedent, to be clear, but inside of the computer RPG and specifically the console, the Western console RPG, variation of the computer RPG that we're now playing, there just wasn't a lot of it. So, anyway.

Other thing, I'll just say, it's amazing how long saving throws stuck around with, like, just things that go back to D&D, second edition, and such and the whole like pass fail

model of everything this game gives out some mirror's cool new thing is a wrist rocket launcher that serves a grenade launcher kind of feels like you're just throwing them but also

she gets darts when those darts hit they're pretty cool but they don't hit that's right and the game rations them out like they are

like precious rubies and so you're like this is this is written a little overwhelmed here. Fire the paralysis dart. Let's even these odds. Nope, that didn't do shit. Okay, fire a second paralysis dart.

Let's even the, okay, what's going? What's this guy's constitution score? It's, well, so yeah, so maybe to make this a little clear because I think if people have not played these games and don't have any sort of, any sort of understanding of how this stuff works, right? Because why would you? Nothing works this way in video games anymore, but partly because of Mass Effect one and partly because of Morowind,

the console players did not like the idea that they saw they lined up the shot and pulled the trigger and it missed because a dice roll said it missed, right? And like, the difference between Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 was about destroying that vision of what a computer RPG

or a Western RPG looks like and be like, no, if you pull the trigger when the fucking reticle is on the enemy's head, the head goes pop like every time. And so instead of percentage chances inside of that particular model, you started shifting towards this other thing. So let me just say how how this, obviously there's so exceptions to that, but you know what I mean. In order for, so Mira is,

has like you said, Rob, this kind of wrist rocket launcher thing, but she's not the only one who has this sort of thing. You know, if you use a stun grenade, let's say, maybe that's a good comparison piece, because everybody can use that, which means even Han Har can use this. When you when you throw a grenade like that, what happens is, or you do a critical attack, critical strike is also like this. You have to roll to hit, right? So you're already rolling dice. You're rolling dice as you did I hit them.

After you hit them, all of these different pieces of equipment that can do like stun, have a percentage chance to potentially stun someone. So you'll see something that says like, oh, this has 20%, a 20% chance to stun or something like that. If you then roll within that 20%, then it causes a save, a saving

throw to be triggered. The enemy who's been hit by the thing has to then roll dice using a score they have, either a fortitude save, a will save, or a reflex save number. So D20 plus whatever that bonus is. And that

if that's under the will save or under the save difficulty, then the stun can maybe happen. And in certain cases, it's like if they miss, well, you still get a partial. You still get, you know, instead of a stun, you get slow. Instead of giving full damage,

you get half damage, you know. And I think generally speaking, the items that you'd use with that stuff, the darts and stuff, at least have, those tend to not have that first percentage chance that things like lightsaber crystals that do stun have.

They just will force the role. But, like, it sucks to fire off one of your three paralysis darts and nothing happens. You know, I think today, maybe what would happen would be you would roll to see how long the paralysis is, right? But it would happen to some degree. You would get some effect in a mainstream game. Again, there's always exceptions. There's lots of really crunchy tabletop-inspired computer RPGs that still have that sort of

percentage chance stuff happening. But it's so contingent on luck. even like I think games gotten better about telegraphing like this character is going to be resistant to these types of things like they will have the character model have body armor on it that like indicates like man like just in your head it's going to get through that and it'll be very high resistance thing or like so you'll have things like that but here it is just things go behind the curtain and there's just always a chance the the the the dice rolls go against you, but it does mean that at every turn, you're kind of like, especially because the game has this upgrade system, which is also about, like, throw these different effects and, like, possibilities and all these weapons. And kind of the message you start getting is, like, if it's get true, you're saving throw, I don't want it. Just give me straight damage bonuses. I, so my character build, the prestige class I went to is Jedi Watchman, Jedi Watchman,

Jedi Watchman and set the assassin, both get a move called Sneak Attack. Atten has this because Atten's a scoundrel. So sneak attack says you do double damage when you hit someone who can't defend. So that can be either you initiated combat against them, you're in stealth, you're behind them, or importantly, they're stunned, right? And so if they are stunned or knocked down, you automatically get that sneak attack to go on them. And so I was like, yes, okay. I'm going to build a whole team with lightsabers that have a crystal in them that causes a stun chance every time you hit. The Bondar crystal. That's right. You have. understand this. I had them in for hours. I think it propped twice total. And so I'm just done with

that build now. And instead, what I did find out, though, was I've realized that I, with my build at least, you know, I've said a lot that Flurry, Master Flurry and Master Speed and all that are like the most important best attacks in the game. And they're generally super good, especially against people who don't have a lot of HP. But the critical strike or the precision shot option, at high levels have a huge chance of getting a stun. And so now in any fight that will take me more than one round, I open with that. And then my next attacks all count as sneak attacks. It's not just the first one.

So if I hit critical strike, stun them, then I do a flurry after that. That's like four attacks that all count as double damage. And so let me tell you. They're done. It's done. The game's open. You know what I mean? There's no one outside of people who are going to use shields or, you know, somehow

magically make melee stuff impossible. It's just done. So, like, going through these dungeons with the exile is not a big deal at this point. Going through the one with Mira was a little harder for me. I did have to, I did have to cheese it a little bit where I was doing stuff like shooting one guy and then running away so that the other two ignored, somehow just gave up. We would just give up and the other guy would chase me. I'm like, one-on-one, I got this, you know, so.

Did no one just take Mira to the exit immediately? Was that not There was a couple of things My hot tip from last episode? So I'd already recorded So no, I couldn't do that Because I'd already done it, right? Allie listens to women, okay

Even when I'd done it I think there was something specific I wanted to get with Mira in that space before like set up with Mira before I handed off to the Jedi exile I don't remember what it was exactly or maybe I'm thinking of the other way around

which is like, oh, once I realized I could do it, I think I did it so that I didn't, I think just have to replay the section like three times because of, specifically because I think I bashed a place, a thing open, and then realized later that once the exile got there, I could just open, I could just security check it. So I just have to load that save. And I did something else stupid. I don't quite remember. Oh, it's just like, sometimes this game will be like, oh, you've touched a door.

Well, now you're not playing as this character anymore. And I was like, well, fuck, I wasn't done playing as this character yet. Right. So, yeah. Anyway. You kill some of Ubeas. That's kind of the big. Just tons of these dudes.

And then... I wish there was one encounter with an Ubease who would talk to you and be like, fuck you, Jedi. What if you could talk to the Ubease? Now, that would be something. It really feels like... They're just mobs.

Like, it feels like there's all this lead-up to it, especially because, Han Har is like, bro, visquist, why are you going to give, give this job to the Ubees? Like, I can, I can sense how much they hate Jedi. It's going to distract them from getting the job done. Well, he was right. You know? You know, Hanhar had some points.

Hanhar had some points on that one. Maybe sometimes you should listen to Hanhar. We'll see if that is a sustainable perspective to have. but at least in that moment Visquist could have taken one from Hanhar on that one but in that I was waiting for like the Ubi's final boss that was going to be like

you, I knew you from blah blah blah and instead you just this whole section ends with walking into Visquist getting cut down by the Ubees and then you get teleported away it reeks of okay we built the dungeon in Greybox we have it here you fight these guys what give it some flavor writer writer do something in the parlance

like go back through this level do some punch up narrative punch up give anything to this because right now they're just mercenaries can we put like four lines in that give them anything and a writer said yeah yeah give me three days and then did it did some research and then wrote this thing up and then that was that but did not build anything you know even the Syracco gang has more going on than these guys somehow. They talk at least. These guys don't talk.

They don't say anything. They just get got. That's because if we spoke, it would be too troubling to our conception of the Jedi. I'll bet you know what? I'll have tons of stuff was written and then Luke was killed. It was like you can't you can't say these things about the Jedi. God.

I do have to credit this section with giving me an opportunity for one of the best. screen caps I've ever taken of of Krea where Kraya pulls up and does she knock out Mira for you guys or what or does she confront so she peels Hanhar off the floor she like revives him because she's dang right awesome can you pull this because this is I do not want to this is audio we might want because this is like crea in like yeah maximum menacing mode she's so fucking and there's things being shaded in now about Hanhar in this exchange uh that yeah let me make his

backstory maybe a little more complicated oh unsettling than then then then we knew i'm scrolling i'm scrolling i'm scrolling would you believe that most of this video is me in menus this is before or after when is when exactly does this happen is it before after the T3 bit? I think so. It's before. Is it? I'm getting a lot of messages.

Many people are typing. Many people are typing. I think it must be after. It means I'm actually maybe looking at the wrong. Yeah, I found it. I found it. It's a weird timing. It's after Atten and Mira talk,

which I guess does that not happen for you, Natalie? Because of a hand hire. After you get captured. So after you get captured. captured by Godo, Mira and Atentok, and she's like, my name's Mira. I've been watching your Jedi friend. You've Gotto's attention. We got to go get your boy back, et cetera. So, okay, I'm going to now make this big and I will screen share. And actually, I should say Chia, I might have to send you this clip because I think my backup is not recording desktop audio

correctly. So just get ready for that. Also ping me and I'll find it. I'm telling you to tell me that it is at 242.35 in my recording from August 7th. All right. Screen share. Actually, I'm going to put this over here. Okay. Let me jump ahead just a step. Actually, let me go back a little bit. Let me line this up. You can disregard anything that's playing and I'll do a count in when it's time. oh fact do i have to change the track i do uh audio audio track three no audio track two yeah okay all right so three two one go That's good. The body's on the ground. Biskis.

Oh, look, it's Sasquatch. That's right. Strange sound. Awaken, beast. Oh, it's wild. Oh, you know what? Just wait. What have you done? I have saved your life, Beast. That makes it mine.

She everlessly blocks him and brings him to his knees. Neal. Why, why do you do this? Why do you not let me die? Yes. Because I need you to hunt, Beast. This prey is something you have chased all. your life. You are born and bred to it, like no predator before you. You want me to hunt the human Jedi, the exile, and kill him?

No, that you shall not do. You will not bring harm to the exile, and if you do beast, I shall break you. The screams of your tribe of primitives, the scene of lying, blinded with the huntresses blaster at your skull, I shall make it so that is all you hear and see for the rest of your days. Even your madness will not save you if you bring harm to the exile. know this. Kill me. I cannot bear the weight of another life debt. Kill me or I swear I shall kill you.

Oh, the life debts of your people, the life debt you have twisted with your hate, I felt it within you. I shall promise you this beast. Unlike the red-maned huntress, as long as you are loyal, I shall never show you mercy. No pity. But most of all, I promise you an end to your debt. her, pursue her, kill her, and ending her life will end your debt to me. The pain will pass. I was able to heal some of the wounds, but the rest must remain.

You will need that pain when you travel, and it will give you strength for the hunt to come. Where can I find to Mira? I will tell you where you must go. If you survive that place, then she will come to you. But first, I must prepare you for what is to come. So did you just not get that? No, so what happened, I did get that. She does confront Hanhar, but she, oh, right, okay, this is what happens.

When Hanhar is trying to escape from the, like the emergency tunnel, Zezkyl appears and is like, what's up? And Hanhar is like, what are you, like, I thought I smelled a human here. Like, are you waiting for visquist because he's too late? And then Zezkyel uses like the force on Hanhar and, and pushes him into like the pit, I guess. And then behind Zezkiel, Kraya appears behind. This is the screenshot that I've put in. Is Kraya appearing behind ZazKL who uses force choke and, like, knocks Zezkiel out?

That's great. And then, and then Kraya goes to go confront Hanhar. And instead of her saying, you need to go chase mirror for the rest of your life, she says when Hanhart asks her why do you do this why do you not let me die she says because there is something to be learned of strength beast

even within your empty shell and it will be needed in the times ahead Hanhar says you want me to hunt the human Jedi and then she says no that that you shall not do etc so the text is the same basically that's the same but instead of saying

you need to go find Mira she says all it requires that is that you immerse yourself in another lie beast the exile you shall be her servant until I call upon you do this thing and I shall grant your desire I see so she is setting up Hanhar for you as a false ally but she she's like I'm sick of the exile getting all his friends on the Evan Hawk I'll have my own secret friend Yeah, basically, basically. And also, you got to kill another potential girlfriend. I mean, that's, yeah, it is to kill a girlfriend if it's, if Mira's alive. Yeah.

Well, Mir is very dead for in my world. I don't think Mira's coming back as far as I know. There was no like, hey, Mira, wake up. She's, she's done so. I was surprised Korea didn't say like, like Rez Mira and say, I need you to make sure he doesn't get another girlfriend. Distract him from the other two. You're not good for him.

Yeah, they're not good for him. That's right. It's just wild to me because when you ask Crea, like, hey, why, what's up with the wookie being on with us now? What you ask her is, hey, why is this psychotic wookie on board? Like, why is this, like, insane guy here? And she's just like, you can, you could learn a thing or two from him. Wayne grow?

He's fine. Like, Waingrove, who I was just calling a primitive, you know? Oh, yeah, yeah. This all seemed like, it is such a well-delivered sequence, the contempt, the cruelty. Yeah. This is, like, this hits harder than, like, Palpatine waking up Anakin at the end of that movie. This is just a, your soul belongs to this person now. But there's even here, there's that like a little bit of seduction, right?

Where it's like, yes, everyone has like mistreated you. You've been shackled by the life debt. Mirror hasn't released you. And I'm going to use you too. But here's the difference at the end of this. I will let you have your vengeance. And I'll release you from this torment. And it's like she promises at least an end of the suffering.

And just that one little, that one little tie of loyalty, she was putting around him. but the other thing she refers to is like she paints a picture of him lying on the ground of the slaughtered tribe around him with a gun to his head uh as a thing just sort of burned into his memory and he says the huntress's weapon the hunter's gun uh does he does she mean mirror like did mira take a job on kishik that like she spared him during a mass because the the The rap on him was like maybe he massacred his own people. But the thing that Crea seems to suggest is maybe that that isn't what happened or that he was coming out of his berserker Hayes and Mirriss spared him from basically ending his life. So he didn't have to confront what he'd done.

Sort of a shutter island scenario. Right. Yeah, of course. Yes. I, um, I, yeah, I'm, I'm, I, I, there's stuff here I remember. There's stuff here I don't fully remember. I remember what their relationship is. I remember how the, the, I remember the moment of life dead, but I don't remember many of the, the circumstances around it. So I'll be, I'm excited to learn that stuff again and see, see if mirror ends up being more than what she seems

like, you know. The cray promises to trap him in that memory forever. Yeah, that's wild. If she, he will, he'll never die. He will just live in that memory for all time and he can't even go insane enough to move beyond the pain. That's not going to, he will not have

that refuge. It is wild. I will just say that I have maxed out my influence with Hanhar so I've, we've chatted about, you know, life before the Ebenhawk, life before mirror.

maybe when we get a big mirror update we'll also do a big and her update we should we should compare notes speaking of being stuck in a memory though maybe this is the moment to show Rob the cutscene

while we're talking about Cray effects does that good All you've seen the cutscene you know what we're talking about I'm going to set it up I'm going to disappear again for a second I'm going to screen share again

hopefully it works better this time okay I'm screen sharing you can go to her, as you know, and say, hey, yeah, I got some questions. I need some answers. And she says, yeah, go ahead and ask. And you can say, Kraya, what are you? A Jedi, a Sith, and a loving mom. That's right, a loving mom.

She, of course, says, does it matter? Of course it does. Such titles allow you to break the galaxy into light and dark, categorize it. Perhaps I'm neither, and I hold both as just what they are. pieces of a whole know that I'm your teacher and that is enough. And you can try to push on her at the beginning of the game and say, I want some real answers. And if you don't have enough influence, she's like, what are you going to do? Or what? Will you hurt me, kill me? You would only be inflicting harm on yourself. Perhaps you will keep me here on this ship prisoner unable to

leave. And you better. I'm going to come back. I'm going to talk to you later. So if you either have intelligence 14 or wisdom 18 or you have influence that's in the final 10% or either 89 or higher or 11 or lower basically you can you can push and say hey I want real answers and I'm going to start I'm going to read through what is just her talking to you and then there's a section that is a cutscene I'll hit play on that and then when it's over I'll read the rest to y'all she says what do you wish to hear that I once believe in the code of the Jedi, that I felt the call of the Sith, that perhaps once I held the galaxy by its throat, that for every good work that I did, I brought equal harm upon the galaxy,

that perhaps what the greatest of the Sith lords knew of evil they learned from me, what would it matter now? There is only so much comfort in knowing such things, and it is not who I am now. And you can say, I still want to hear the story, basically. And then this place. A real strange looking place. Mm-hmm. There are dark places in the galaxy where few tread, ancient centers of learning, of knowledge, but I did not walk alone. To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best.

Uh, looks like the Sith lords are walking up to her. Uh-huh. But my will was not long. There were disagreements. Ambition. Lightsaber's out. I hunger for power. Sith Kraya, very clearly.

There are techniques within the force, against which there is no difference. Reaching for her saber with the force. Sion standing over her. I was cast down, strict of my power, exiled. I suffered in dignities and fell into darkness. And she continues, if you're dark-sided, take what strength you may steal from me, and that is all I need you to be.

Or that is all I need be to you. And if you're not dark-sighted, it says, learn from me. my mistakes, and use that knowledge to become greater than I. That is all I ask of you, and that is all I desire. And in both cases, says, in you, all my hopes rest for the future, for the force. And you can say that is not sufficient. And she says, if it means so much to you, then I swear to you upon my life, upon our lives, that when your training is complete, I will answer everything. There shall be no more shadows between us, only truth that exists

between master and apprentice. 1000 XP, heard Kraya's story. So, initial thoughts? Yeah, Rob, what's up? You haven't seen this before. They just beat the shit out of her.

They just beat the shit out of her, man. Also, like, yet and not, like, this is the other one, Rob. Creepy fucked up violence toward women, And then, like, I suffer indignities. With, with parenthetical. Yes. With Nihilis again, right?

Who, the similar language is used around with Vsos. I said this a few episodes ago that I think this game is coded. Well, we've talked a lot about the psychosexual stuff throughout it, but especially around sexual violence being implied. You know, there's a lot there. I don't know. There sure is. You know, I don't know that it is, it is certainly not dealt with carefully.

necessarily, but it's also not, it could be a lot worse in terms of shock value and thinking about the era that this game came out. And I think it's simply there because I think this is a writing team that was interested in reminding us that evil has that in it in ways, but I don't know. I would not stand here and defend those choices or those implications necessarily, but I do think it's pretty common inside of the genre outside of Star Wars, you know. Al, you look like you have a thought. No, I mean, I, yeah, I, in terms of, the scene was so shocking.

Yeah. You just get it. It's not like it's. You just get it. Yeah. Like, it's just a conversation and then it cuts to that like vision of like a space that looks like a claw. Yeah, that's what it looks like.

Like a monster's like a maw. Yeah. Like it's so immediately like engaging and shocking. And then like cray in all black with the black lipstick and like the white face. Sith. Craya is here. Right. And we know the name of the same.

And then just got picked up by the throat and just like ragdolled. It is kind of absurd. It's a little. I mean is like I think it is such a heightened. moment and it's there is a there's a version that's where i can defend it right where it's like but ultimately like uh even like the the hints of overtones of sexual assault type stuff is like nihilus is actually not that interesting right he is just it's just a violent asshole etc but ultimately it's just like the we're in the evil club for evil people thing and what do they do

They kind of just throw this character model around and just, like, just beat the shit out of them. And it's like, it isn't really the most compelling, it's not the most interesting betrayal. No, she's talking around what it is. And she's not actually describing what it is to the exile, right? We are seeing this. But I don't think our exile has, knows this stuff, right? Well, I don't have like the whole shared mind link patina. Yeah, exactly, right?

I don't know. I wonder, to me. I found it interesting that instead of what she says is that there are techniques within the force against which there are no defense. And we could have had a animation in which Darth Sion is reaching out and Kraya is being affected by an invisible power that takes over her. Rise of Skywalker finale stuff where they're like, I'm using the force against you. Or even like we saw a part of this with Hanhar a second ago where like his body gets like stuck not being able to attack her. You know what though?

It turns out if you go sufficiently dark side like and you level enough times, you unlock force ass whipping. And it's just nobody can stop you. You just can like administer an ass whipping. And it's like, God damn, I can't, I can't fight this guy. and they just start like rag-dolling you around the level. But I think there's something really sinister here. And I don't know if I, again, I kind of fall in line with you, Austin, in the sense of like, I don't know if I would defend it, but the choice to have this extremely physical character

who's like very much defined by his physicality, right? like we're he we see his body his body is cracked and scarred in like nearly deteriorating and yet he is so strong and the fact that the way in which he overpowers crea who is like seemingly and then was his master was immensely powerful in in the force is trained in ways of the Sith and the fact that he's able to overpower her

at least visibly from a visual standpoint physically is really jarring because it's almost as if like

the force can't what she literally says this that there is no defense there are things in which there is no defense

but the fact that it's I don't know there's something there's something really chewy here that I don't really know how to parse because I think like the bad reading

of it is that oh a woman it doesn't matter how powerful a woman is in like in these other ways she can still be dominated physically because like a man just has that over her has like his physical

His physicality can win over, like, a woman's kind of fragility, especially an older woman. Like, she's clearly an older woman here still. And that with the combination of exiled, I suffered, pause, indignities is distressing. It's, like, that's not the read I want to give this, but it's there. Like, that read is there. Well, and this is, like, this game's starting from inside a hole. where, like, where we first see, uh, uh, nihilus is him like choking out visus in a way that is like,

like both out of the blue and also like definitely like sexualized in a weird way that like he just uses her that way. And she's like master, like master I'm, you know, grateful for, for you doing this. And if that's not clear enough, then that cursed dialogue that Austin shared the other week where Cray is like, maybe you just want to like use this woman yourself. And it's so like the game has so little like that there is a preoccupation with like physical domination. and violence toward women as an expression of one's power as a as a dark Jedi that yeah when when you see this it's the game is is again like consistent sense of the game is like on some level titillated by this yeah I think that's the thing that sorry go ahead well I was just going to say let's not forget we just had a cutscene last episode

where Hanhar has mirror by the throat up against it over the in the docks area. The dots, the pit. This is a recurring thing that we keep seeing where like physicality dominates whatever skill, whether that be forced skill, your fucking dexterity, it doesn't matter. Like physicality kind of overrules all and especially in like a male versus. A woman can always be reduced to a. canvas for like male violence at any moment in in this in this game yeah now the thing you know if i had to issue i think there are things that are interesting about this that are uh understood

best inside of the context of both star wars and 2004 video games one is i think the animation of her getting her shit kicked in is really effective because it looks like nothing else in the game the common animations are cool but they're not this you know the i think the closest comp visually to the amount of strength he has here from this, the kind of era is the way Agent Smith man handles characters in the early Matrix movies, where he's just like picking people up and shoving them into the wall and beating the shit out of Neo, which again, I'm not saying to distract from, I wasn't raised to begin with, the kind of sexual violence overtones here. The second thing is I think in some ways I can understand this recurring theme

inside of this game as pushing on something latent or actually apparent in Star Wars that I think we all kind of like think around when we think about Star Wars. But like Star Wars, a new hope is filled with Leah being tied up and interrogated by the big interrogation droid and the massive figure of Darth Vader. Return of the Jedi has her in the slave Leah costume, which is a costume that then lived on in pop culture and especially in nerd culture for decades as like a pure object of It appears here. Oh, that's what I mean, right? So my point being that I think in a real way, this is a game that's already invested deeply into agency.

It understands and is interested in the restriction of and the stripping of agency. This is the story of the exile as it's told to us by Crea right away. They took this from you, though now, of course, you hear her saying that she was exiled, right? And we, I guess, can probably say, at some point between this and now, seems to have lost some of her fucking Jedi power and her Sith power, right? But that stripping of power recurs again and again. And I think that there is the, I can imagine the writer's room that says, well, you know, all of this stuff around stripping power away and dominance has an analog in other stories. And we tell that story in other modes. We never get to tell it in Star Wars.

We never use that language in Star Wars, even though we have these, like, terrible super bad Sith characters. But like the great terrible agency, you know, stripping of agency that actually affects people in real life is often around sexual violence. And I don't know that that's, again, it's not explicit. I think it's very clear that explicitly the thing that is happening is Nialis is using the force to strip people of power and to strip people of agents. and their own authority. He's forcing people into a service like Visas, and he's pulling power from Crea. He's stripping, oh, he's feeding on Crea's power in the way that he feeds on planets. But that stuff is coded, you know, in the language, again, around these terms that often get used, especially in pulp stories around sexual violence. Like, that's just to be really clear to people

who don't have any background in this stuff. Like, we're not just pulling this out of our ass. This reflects a huge assortment of a history, a legacy of, how sexual violence is depicted in genre stories and even outside of them. Things like suffering in dignities is like all over literature as a way of talking about this. But I do think that that's like where it comes from and how you end up here is by saying like, oh yeah, this is a game about the removal of agency. Here's language we can use. Again, I don't, I do think it's meant to be both, it's meant to be shocking and then ends up also

seeming like, oh, they thought it was a little titillating. This, I think, less than the Vsau stuff and even maybe the mirror stuff. Like, I don't think that this is shot as, it's shot as, look at the power of these evil guys. It's classic. Also, the fact that Kray is the person delivering that line, that is not, now it's like, okay, the game doesn't, that is not the game talking to an extent. That is also Kraya, who, like, that's, like, that's, like, constantly reminds me, this character, cousin Johnny and justified. In the first season, he ends up getting shot and the next several seasons, these are covered. from like spinal damage from being shot because like one moment he sort of turns against

his crime family and and tries to sort of walk the line and ends up you know ends up hurt for it and later he tries to use that against you know Marshall Givens and the other good guys being like hey like I spent like years in a fucking wheelchair because I tried to help you help you guys out and I got shot for my trouble and you know Timothy Oliphon character to him is like, you got shot because you hang out with criminals. And there is more truth in that. That is a closer, that is closer to fact than my cousin Johnny's like, wo is me, like, look what was done to me.

Look what I've suffered. And it was this entire thing happened because like you weren't so deep that when you finally were like, whoa, hold up. The sort of people you surround yourself just immediately committed like grievous bodily harm to you without a second thought. And there's a little bit of that here where it's like, damn, that's, that's rough, Craya. What were you doing in the fucking claw room? Why are you meeting your buddies in the claw room?

With Mr. Scar and Galactus. Like, why are you hanging with these folks? Oh, damn. And you trained at least one of them? I don't we know. You got your shit tossed? Damn, who could have seen that coming?

Oh, science. So for her to turn around and be like, maybe exile you would love to just like, abuse this poor victim and everything. And it's like, oh, because Crea is someone who is deep in, like, she was one of them. And she's kind of working,

working her way on you, being this fucking worm tongue. To what end is not entirely clear, but just that continuous, like, putting of ideas and trying to put ideas in your head and trying to like push. One of the things I said early was like,

So one of the things that rubbed me wrong about Crea is that she's doing a lot of cold read suggestion shit that is deliver such confidence. It can make someone believe like, damn, maybe I do. Maybe that is secretly like my motivation in all this. But if you think about it again, you're sort of, you know, firmer in your principles. You're like, no, this is the thing that says a lot about you has nothing to do with me. so I will say some of the stuff that had me going this game is pretty weird about this

Kraya in particular is weird about it and some of that is coming into focus both on like what she has been through but also the type of person who ends up going to the claw room and getting wrecked by her frenemies that's just this stuff yeah that's just sit stuff I don't know Ellie

I feel like I don't have a lot of grace to extend to the writers here with this sort of like repeated gendered violence stuff, especially now that I've spoken to Atten about his secret. Oh, interesting. Oh, weird that reveal ends up being in the end. And, you know, I just like, you know, I don't want to, it feels almost too insulting to say that it is like a lack of. of imagination amongst the the um the writer's room to say like oh there's there's something that's you know the there's a power beyond anything and it's me getting pushed into a wall and beaten up you know anything like there's like there's more there could be more work there and villainizing these characters that like see what the scope of the force is you know like the the camera is not

Sion's face. It is not on his fist. It is, you know, it's briefly, or Sion, not, um, Nylos. No, Nylis. Yeah, yeah. Nylon's face as he's doing this. It's, it's briefly on Sion sort of watching this, but it's, you know. Other way around. Sion's the scarred guy. You had it right the first time. Okay. I had it right the first time. Okay. Yeah. But either way, like, you know, the focus is on Kran's body and what's happening to her and not, you know, the violence or the power or the you know the the the the sort of joy of like betraying your your mentor you know and that is another like theme that the game could be working in and that you know instead they kind of turned left with it you know what I mean so yeah and it is like impossibly important to say Chris

Avaloon the lead writer of this game faced sexual misconduct and harassment allegations in 2020 that eventually led to a libel lawsuit and a retraction of those claims, but you can read the claims for yourself, and you can read, you know, this is like, oh, at conventions, he did some things that crossed some lines in a big way. That's the, those are what the allegations were. They are available to, to read. And again, you can and should read that. And it's inside of, it is impossible to watch these scenes and to think about the sexual violence recurring throughout this game without me thinking about those allegations is the thing I would say right and it's not just this game like you know that's a it's a

recurring thing in in the world of avalones games and I'm not someone who's like and you should never make a game or a story about sexual violence or about gendered violence I'm not someone who is like this should be verboten but it is like you know did it succeed at something? Did it actually move the needle? I guess, yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm kind of, like, it's already been set up.

It's been set up like five times this, this sort of power dynamic, the idea that, you know, presenting these kind of like gendered, violent situations. Like, we've seen this scene now several times in different ways between Mir and Hanhar, between Crea and Darth Scion, between Vsos and Darth Nihilis.

I'm waiting for what you're going to do with it. Because so far, the only thing that we've seen someone do with it is Crea manipulating more people. Like, she, you know, taking Hanhart into another, in your guys' case, into another life debt by saving his life. And, you know, manipulating Atten through. Manipulating Atten. It's interesting that she doesn't talk to any of, like, the women, really. Like, she doesn't confront them and try to manipulate them. Like, she leaves that sort of up to you.

Yeah, it's a real... We got in the cutscene of her being like, you keep your should of hands off my exile. Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out because she... I was going to say, oh, maybe it's because they're romance options, but Atten is a romanceable character, and he's all the way in, you know,

and I mean, not all the way in her pocket, but she's been manipulating him for a long time now. So I don't know. I don't know if it's... I don't know what the deal is there, because also she doesn't have access to Beauder because he's, I mean, according to her, because he's a Zabrak, she doesn't have as much sway with him. Yeah, well. But to me, Beauder is one of the only characters that has a previous existing relationship with the exile. Like, they knew each other before.

So maybe it's just that, you know, they already have an established relationship and she's not able to kind of mold that. I wonder, I mean, if I'm thinking about the world in which the assumed player is a syshet man, maybe something does make sense with Crea leaving you to be the one to manipulate the handmaiden in Vsauce instead of, because then Atten wouldn't be an option in that sense. Like maybe there's something there. and if we're ignoring, like, the idea that a, you know, a woman with other interests would play this, or, like, what happens when you play as a woman exhal?

It's not like Atten stuff doesn't happen for the men, though. You know what I mean? No, but I'm just saying why not the handmade, why does she not talk to the Handmaiden and Vsau? Because you can make Atten, a Jedi. You can make Handmaid in a Jedi. You can make Visas. I'm presuming a Jedi eventually, maybe, I don't know.

You can make Beauder a Jedi. She's already one. She starts as one. Oh, right, right, right. Yeah, she's already. You can make Beauder a Jedi. But Beauder, and like, I don't know. I'm just kind of sensing or seeing maybe an illusion of a pattern.

But the idea that the only, the two romancible female characters, I'm assuming that Crea is not going to be having chats with Mira. it's interesting that she could you imagine yeah it's interesting that she's not having conversations with them yeah she's also I if she's having you know what she you're right

because she talks to mandolore when they first remember she like shows up to mandolore and she's like everything's you know according to plan yeah so yeah oh yeah like he's also in her pocket I forgot about that I keep thinking that maybe we are reading into that more that maybe that was just about the ship

because I don't know that that ever comes back but maybe I'm wrong maybe it will come back I'm making sure I'm not disappointed by the lack of a big mandolore plot. Well, I just can't imagine that Crea would be down for mandol-like, why are we all good with Mandelor like building back up the Mandalians? This I have an answer for it. This I have an answer for it. It's part of the Revan stuff.

But I don't know. We'll get that. You know, Revin left to go confront something. Right. Right. Something is coming. And so the Mandalorians are supposed to be a bulwark against that. And I think that's something that Kraya is even broadly familiar with based on some conversations. But I don't think this takes away from the thing that you're saying, right?

Which is like, yeah, we don't get many Krea Handmaiden or Krea Vsas conversations at all, basically. I don't think we're going to get any mirror ones. I don't think we're getting, you know, I know that that's an incoming character. I'm not sure. Actually, there is one Kraya. a Vsos conversation. When the lightsaber training happens, you might remember, which is like also, did you all do that scene with?

No, because we hadn't recruited her yet, remember? She hadn't, we already got our lightsabers before. No, this is a different, sorry, this is a different thing. You can go, you can go to Kraya and be like, hey, I want to practice my lightsaber. And she'll go set up a sparring match with you and Vsos. This is not, yeah, this is, this is, I've never had that as an option. Yeah, I forget the exact, what the exact. line is, but you can go train and it gives you, you know, it's one of the things that gives

you like an extra five or ten force points. But there is that scene with both of them in it. And it is, it is, it is rancid again. It is very much, it is, it is, it is Craya using Vsas as a mechanism to train you about the force again, right? Literally it's one of those fights that you can bring, Creus is like, whatever you do, don't use the force. And then you can be like, you can still use the force, right? You can still like decide to do it. And if you do, uh, she's like, why did use the force. I said not to use the force or whatever. And you can be like, uh, against our real enemies. There's no rules. I'm going to use the force. Like, and she's, ah, then you've learned, you've learned everything you're supposed to have learned from this scene, basically. A plus.

Exactly. Yeah. And Vsas is just kind of a mechanism by which she's, she's deploying Vsas as a tool to train you. Right. Right. This is really men abuse people like this, women abuse people like this. Right. That's what I was kind of what I was all the way wrapping around to, which is that the only example of us seeing someone do something after like being kind of the subject of abuse is continuing to abuse other people. Han Har is an example of that. We'll get more into it as we get into his backstory. But Hanar is the worst example of that. And there's like zero redeeming qualities there. But, yeah, I, like, I, I, I'm, I want to see something other than an, a survivor of

abuse ends up perpetrating more abuse in some other dynamic. Yeah, you might not be seeing that because of being dark-sighted, but. Right, naturally. Because V-Saz is showing up just being like, I've basically been held hostage and forced to serve this guy, and now, like, I'll do anything. not go back. I'm going to train you up to fight this guy. But it's pretty passive.

It's not like... Yeah. This is the story. You're describing the story of the Jedi exile who was, who did something justifiable, was punished for it. And then the entire arc of this game is them going to confront the people who did that to them while... That's true.

And being able to forgive them for it and being able to at the same time start to build a new sect of Jedi in their own right um in a and and saying like well what's that look like um training atin training bayouder training and in each case we can talk about the attin stuff uh uh if we want to because that scene is wild though i guess i guess here's a thing i didn't get the second part to it i got the first half of okay we'll wait yeah i didn't get the second half i know i guess i just realized like i am the i because i'm dark

side and I am the abuse that's why I keep seeing fucking terrible things happen because I'm terrible I'm evil and I'm doing the evil out there so I'm like why is nobody like rising above this and and trying to break the cycle and it's because I'm fucking dark side black dynamite uh I I'm curious to see how that because I actually think if this game is any good at any of this it needs to be able to both tell a story about someone who was, you know, hurt, get over that hurt to help people, and tell a compelling story about the person who doesn't do that. And I'm curious as you go through Darksided, if any of that actually hits or if it is just cartoonish all the way down. I know it's going to be evil. Like, ha, ha, ha, what a manipulator.

Just like Crea, I get to become the big manipulator. But I don't, but I'm curious if it actually has anything to say about any of that stuff or if it's just. just not yeah there's like a couple things in Hanhar's in how you can respond to what Hanhar tells you well I'll I'll keep an eye on on that but I'm I'm not holding my breath yeah yeah what I'll say um does anybody since we're talking about Crea has anyone been able to ask Crea um about her relationship to Revin yeah I'm basically done with all the Crea stuff at this point. No. So I'll wait. We can come back on Revan.

You know, there's lots of time left to get Crea influence. And we've gone long on Crea today, probably. So let's wrap up around on the Reven stuff. Let's dig in to the rich text that is Goetow. That's right. I'm saying, I have to add to our craya facts. Was a Sith

got wrecked by Cyon and Nihilis in the big claw room. I can't believe I got out there. I guess was a Sith and a Jedi. Right? yeah yeah and i do want to say now that we reveal this i want to say that my my theory for why she can't be poisoned is because she has experienced a death i think that she is i think she is a

dead i love that physically i kind of believe that too i think she's dead i think she's like a zombie not a zombie but i think she's like a dead a dead person i mean here's a thing what she was all palpatined up in that cutscene could Palpatine have become less Palpatine at some point she just looks like a lady now well you think it's the force you think that's

you think she's cast a force spell on her I think it's a stretch to say that she looks like a lady now especially when she's always covering half of her face her skin color is not hex code white anymore so is like well I mean

the exile can go from being fucking looking fucking wild and then you you make 10 light side decisions and you and you become like normal again and people react to you like as I'm walking around being darksided by the way like Atten was like whoa what the fuck happened to you like word yes he was like what have you wait I have to find this uh uh that's so funny at and says to me um shit there's like one time where you can uh uh When you approach him, it happens like the first time you talk to someone sometimes when you're walking around the Ebenhawk, they'll just react to the change in the way you look.

And it also gets progressive, it's progressive based on how much more dark-sided you've gotten. So if you go, if you talk to Atten, I've had Atten remark on my appearance and I believe, one other person did but I'm not remembering right now I see these now because we've seen the I've seen the other side when you talk to people

there's lots of talking to people when you're turning light-sided where they go like I don't know what it is about you bro but you're looking you're looking good it's like do you have an unlaw later

I'm the opposite of that happening yes I see you're pregnant with virtue that's basically what they all say to you. Have you found these? Natalie, I found them. You know, do you want to link them to you? It's not loading for me for some reason. Yeah, here it is. He's having a fit

against us right now. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, here we go. Oh, yeah, here's Atten. Etton said to me, look, I know we've been through some rough times so far, but you need to stop letting it get to you. And you can be like, I'm fine, or do my features trouble you? No.

If someone says if someone says if we do my features trouble you, they are dark-sided. They are, they are going,

they're going crone mode. Get off the ship. That's right. And he's like, well, the signs are starting to show.

You don't look like you've slept in a year, in weeks or a year. Great. And then if you go harder on, oh my God, I'm seeing the light side.

This is ridiculous. He, him saying, you know, I noticed a glow before, but Now it's bright around you. You've come a long way since progress. That's ridiculous.

Yeah, then he'll say to you, look, I didn't want to say anything, but you forced my hand. I've heard about the force and what it does to people who can't control it or themselves. And it shows in everything you do and in your face. Yeah. And then you can, if you're. a girl in that conversation continues you can say because he starts blaming craya and he's like that witch is like is manipulating you is dragging you into her kind of into her bullshit and you can be like

she has no influence over me she's my creature not the other way around and and he goes well you're getting creases you're starting to get some creases almost thought you were that old witch for a second That's so funny Bitch, buy me some mortiser Then, I don't know, do something about it I'd just be like Yeah, I'm sorry I thought I'd try something

I'm just trying something out Can you be supportive Beale Durr has a similar thing actually Apparently and it's the same he does the same thing Which is like you can't hide it Just look at your face I saw other Jedi who looked like you during after the war it's that woman You have to get away from her

She'll destroy you wild Bayo she's the best voice actor on the ship I can't quit her maybe Bayo Der hates her because of that Bayalder's like I was supposed to be the most distinctive voice in this game I'm so close to being an Alzheimer's

they wouldn't let me talk I miss him they book me bad general they won't people in the people in the stands come with push Bayo Der signs but they won't do it they keep putting me in squash matches against John Cina.

Seriously. He's so good. I won't even give you the dignity of death beast. I mean, sure I'll get you a shield. I, you know, okay, so I've already said that you can make Baye-Dur a Jedi and I won't go into all the particulars there, but when we get there, I will say, I do think that they stick the landing on that process. I think that they do

Bayarder really is a fully formed character who has a really clear specific like idea at the heart of who he is and I think it actually talks a lot to Natalie what you were just saying about cycles of abuse cycles of violence cycles of anger and I really love the way that it works with Bayauder

at the kind of height of that though again I don't know the dark side version of I don't know what happens if you make him a dark Jedi so I'll do my best Yeah, I mean, while we're having a Bayo minute, I was like, the last time we played, I was really upset that he does not acknowledge the Mandelor because that feels like such a huge part of his character. So the fact that the cutscene finally came, but it was a little delayed was like a, like a, oh, thank God, sort of moment. And I also want to say, for what Rob was saying about Mira at the top of the show, that's Beio for me. like I took him and Kreia

into the droid factory that we were going through and he took care of everything like she was I mean destroyed droid is really what got me through that but to have him there with like the melee on point with the region with the remote

that can heal him too with all his security stuff like the reason I bought him is because with the remote I was like okay it's like I'm cheating and getting three characters and then you know Kraya's like crazy the fours. So it's like I have a full party even though I didn't. But it felt like going through

it. It went really fast. And now that we're posted this stuff, that remote gets some upgrades. I don't know if that's happened for y'all yet. Indeed. Yeah. That sounds very funny. We'll get there, I guess. So, where are we? We finally meet the man behind the curtain. He's still behind the curtain, but you meet Gotow aboard his, aboard his ship. And he explains that he needs help because he has he's always just keeping an eye on just what's happening in the galaxy and he is foreseen this is some real foundation

type type shit psycho history big picture yeah 100% the Republic will collapse within a month the the destruction of paragus and you know in the wake of the Jedi Civil War

of set events in motion that are culminate in the collapse of the Republic not because the Sith of one or the Jedi of one or any of that is just the Republic cannot sustain itself. It doesn't have the infrastructure unless we sort of bring these conflicts to a close. And he needs your help to do it. And you can ask him like, what's your motivation and all this? And he's like, well, I just, I consider myself a patriot. I couldn't serve in any of the wars,

but I can help this way. Now, mind you, I don't care who wins, Sith or Jedi. I just want the Republic to stand mostly seems pretty transparently because the status quo is very profitable that like the galaxy needs just this level of like organization and consolidation for him to thrive yeah I guess importantly he doesn't want he would not be happy with Cyan and Nihilis winning because they're not like the other Sith they're not like the Sith Empire that Revin built they are destruction you know um uh it's it's you know uh them if they win the republic the galaxy will fall more than the republic will fall right like whereas it seems like even if you're a bad guy if you win you're not destroying everything you know um yeah he didn't mind reven he he was he was he was

fucking with reven's vibe for sure i i think it's interesting that one of the things that he calls out that the Republic needs is like that's he he says like I don't care if it's the Jedi or the Sith but the Republic needs that sort of like religious base behind it to have these sort of like arguments basically or this sort of like social standing to sort of make things rotate the way that they should it's funny right because it's almost like a uh a reflection of Han Han's like hokey religion stuff in a new hope where he's like listen kid like all that stuff, that's just a waste of time. But like, go to it was like, no, actually, those things serve a social function. I don't have to believe in any of it, you know, but like, there's a

power at work here that is actually useful to keeping society functioning such that I can skim off the top. My highlight is definitely the bit where he's like, you could say I'm something of a patriot, which is just so, and he's like, well, I wasn't able to serve in either of the wars. Um, but I'm willing to serve you now. I'm really, you know, you're going to, we're going to work together on this one, you know, uh, too, too, too young for World War II, too freaked out for Vietnam. Um, that's right. Yeah. Now this time I'm, I'm in.

Um, also I have to note it because if I don't note it, someone will, does anyone pick up the little Revenge of the Sith reference in this intro when they, when you first meet him? I'm pretty sure that's what it is. It would be very funny if it wasn't, actually. Did the dates work out? I'm expecting someone taller. That's exactly it. Though I guess that might not be a reference because Rendez the Sift is 2005. Yeah, but it's a new hope.

It's a new hope reference. Aren't you a little short for a storm, right? Which is exactly what Grievous is referencing or what they're referencing. Right. Of course, of course, of course. So, yeah. But I just don't find a lot of interesting stuff with Gotow, honestly. Like this whole man behind the curtain pulling the strings.

I just don't You don't like crime Wizard of Oz? Yeah, not really, no. Like his whole like we You know The Republic must stand so business can continue to function Like yeah, I get it

But he's sort of unsatisfied Like He's been built up so much as like a mysterious crime lord And now it's just kind of like, um, we're, we're miles off like Kaiser Sozay here in, in a lot of ways. This is closer to like a Mike Croft Holmes type character where it's like, ah, it's me behind the curtain, making sure events play out the, the way that is, uh, most stable, most, most prosperous. Um, and then you just have to like fuck up his shit.

He feels a little bit like the author's voice sneaking in and being like, we need a, we need a place for someone to talk to say out loud some of the things that we think are interesting about the setting and about the first game i think i said the patriot line is my favorite but i actually think my favorite thing is that whether or not you have a light side or dark side revin go to was like a lot of people don't understand this but the sith actually won that war um like yeah revin saved the day in the end or whatever but he left and he didn't help prepare the republic or and that's he said he said that basically with both in both directions if you've if you've If you have Lightside Revin, he says, rather than remain and help solidify the Republic,

however Revan chose to leave known space, a frustrating turn of events as a rallying figurehead could have done much to restore order. And he says basically the same thing if it's Darkside, because he says, instead of staying and continuing his campaign against the Republic, he left. But the thing that he kind of underscores is that, like, listen, man, like a war isn't the, who wins the big final battle. Like, the results of the war are what happens in the reconstruction efforts afterwards. And can it sustain?

And like the picture he pays to the Republic is like, we hit an iceberg. We've been sinking since then. And this current conflict is like doing us in. We're not able to keep kind of getting the water out there. We can't keep, you know, keeping the water out. And so we're going to sink. But I do that that's conceptually really cool. But, you know, I think I'm generally with you.

He's an interesting, he has some interesting stuff kind of on paper. He makes an interesting point. I think the way he phrased that, too. because I think it's the little ambiguous what he means. I don't think he means the Sith won the Jedi Civil War necessarily. It is that the Sith beat the Mandal War. No, he says, he says it. He literally says the Sith won the Jedi Civil War.

Yeah, but then. I know what you're saying. I mean, I guess the Jedi did pretty much get wiped out. Right. But then Revan fucks off. Yeah. I think what he's saying is that like, And this kind of reflects the reality of the games.

What Sith planets did we see in Cotor? Corribon. Yeah. Corribon gets washed. But like, we don't go to Sith space and we don't see Sith planets get destroyed. Fucking Republic planets got destroyed. And like this whole game is about the precarious network that the Republic has existed in with all this interlocking kind of globalized vision of of a republic that's like, okay, well, we need all of these different parts to function right.

And when they're all working right, like, they act as a buffer that can, like, boost everybody. But, like, oh, no, like, you can't get the fuel from Piraigas, and now we can't get the backup fuel from Narshadah, and the animal situation on Duxin and Anderan needs to be right so that we can get them to, uh, to, uh, one of your, Tilos to repair that that part. And if Tilos fails, then this is kind of the poster child restoration, uh, project. And the whole thing is fuck. These are all just going to give up, you know. And I think that that is one of the big ideas of this game is the sort of like fragility of kind of, in real life, kind of global society, the kind of post-war society, frankly, the neoliberal

vision of what the global community is supposed to look like. And I think that's fascinating. He just kind of has to be the one, his job is to say all that. And then, like you said, be a kind of Kaiser Sozee crime lord figure. And he does the first part really well. I don't know that he's doing the second part as well. Also, his fancy yacht is kind of nothing. It's like not that nice. Like, I don't know.

The teal of the yellow kind of worked for me. What I will say about this dungeon is that if it was the dungeon at the end of Narcadha instead of dungeon number three, it probably would have hit pretty good. I think the concept of like going around and getting, you go around and there's all these computers all over the place and you can find like programs to upload to the computers that do stuff like, oh, I got the power on. I got the overload. I got the deactivate programs. Then you get different keys that let you access like the droids or the mine fields or other parts of it. And they're sort of like, oh, I got this thing and I can use this. It's like, that's a concept for a dungeon. They actually had it that's not just run around. kill 70 dudes. But in practice, it's still pretty much run around and kill 70. And you just killed

140 other dudes. So it's like you get to the end. And you're like, all right, disable the cloaking shield. Time to blow this pop stand. The level is repopulated the dudes. New dudes. All the bounty hunters have arrived from the planet. So now they're here. So you have to fight back through the level fighting these dudes.

And it's like, I'm just ready for this stuff to be. Oh, hey, just I didn't kill the tweet like twins. Pro. The delicious XP, though. Delicious XP, it's again. Again, for me, I am, and you can watch it happen. I am brain off.

I'm slashing through dudes and having a good time. In fact, I almost beat this dungeon without rescuing the exile because I did that thing. You know that thing when you're playing an RPG and you have a map like this? You're like, okay, I'm going to do everything except for the priority path, the main path. I thought that the place where the exile was, would be where the final go-to confrontation was. And so I was like, we'll go do everything else first. I did like 70% of everything else.

And I was like, I should save and just go check to make sure that I'm. So I, like, let me tell you, Cray and Atten got to work on this ship. They really did some work on those droids. I brought, I brought handmade and V-Soss out. I just thought the girls could use a little, a girly, a girly dungeon together. Yeah, a girly dungeon together, yeah, uh-huh. Which what deeply annoyed me was, like, trying to get them to talk to each other, they just go, yes, yes? Yeah, no.

Yeah, like, it's just there's no chatter between them. It's so disappointing we're trying to get two friend groups, like, to sort of coalesce. And, you know, I think, yeah, I think we all have so much in common. And there's just no chemistry. It's frustrating. Yeah. That's why I don't try. But I did have one incredible realization, which I did reveal to you all when I was playing this section as Vsauce, which is Vsauce has, as we know, the ability of foresight.

You know, this game throws a lot of words at you sometimes and tells you, hey, this character has X, Y, and Z ability. that means blah blah blah blah and you know I'm not retaining that information 90% of the time because mostly it's not really that useful or it's just happening in a way that is pretty invisible to um how I play like the kind of crea force bond thing I'm not really thinking about oh yeah every time crea casts something I'm getting it too because also they are party wide casts usually so It's kind of like, I get that it's happening, but it's not really coalescing for me in my brain. So I just, you know, removed that information from my brain as soon as I got it, that Vsau says foresight. But what I didn't realize until I accidentally hit the caps lock key on my keyboard while I was standing in front of a room, the room before the exile, where you rescue the exile, there are like 50, they're not,

50 droids. There's like, there's like eight, uh, turret droids and like five big guys, big guy droids. And I knew, I, I, I, shit. It's like the Carl Anthony towns of droids. Damn. Damn. Um, well, I unfortunately neither, like both Vsauce and handmade and don't have very high wisdom. So disabled droid wasn't taking me very far because their wisdom wasn't very high. So I tried to do it like just like go in there and kill everybody and it was not a great situation. I will say that. Not everything's so easy for me. So instead I was like what I'm going to do is use these cool consoles and do the thing where I like change the droids behavior programming

and make them shoot each other. As I was standing in front of the door, you can hear like, ww, wop, pow, pout, pw, wot, wot. And I accidentally hit the caps lock key on my keyboard, and I, and whoa, I'm in first person, and it's gray scale,

and I can see through the door onto the other side of what these droids are doing to each other, and they're walking around and shooting each other, And then, like, falling over, I was just like, whoa. So anyway, VsSOS can teach the exile disability. And I do, I think it, you have to, like, hit the button. Like, Vsau always has foresight, no matter what. Right, right.

But for the exile, you have to cast foresight in order for it to work. and then you go into first person and you can see through and with the difference with the exile is that you can also see people's affinity to the light side or dark side so people will be like glowing blue or glowing red

and that will teach you sometimes when I was walking around Telos that's what there were just random dudes standing outside the canteen of blue dudes and red dudes and I was like oh shit I was hoping that what happened, I went, because in, in the refugee sector, or the quad or whatever,

I was like, oh, I should see, like, what's up with these, everybody was just nothing. It was flat, colorless, white, yeah. Including, like, Sasquatch, you know? Like, I was like, really? This dude's neutral? Okay, if you say so.

Seems like in your kidnapping children. Yeah. Yeah. They forgot to put that on, turn the button on for that. Yeah. I don't know why it would be on in telos of all. all places, a place that we go to at the very beginning of the game and presumably don't really go back to.

The only reason I went back was I dropped off the fuel. Right. Kidnaping children is a Jedi thing to do. I don't think that that's, that, that's, that, does not move the leader. Yeah. When he found out that he, that that, that Sackash steals the kid, your kid, the exodus goes like, well, did she have force powers? Like, did she have determined to chlorine account?

Yeah, what's their bit of course? Because, like, maybe it's on the up and up, lady. Maybe it was for the kids good, okay? They're special kids. They need special school in training. I maybe said this before, but maybe that's who I most want to see talk to Kraya is Quigon Jin. Oh, yeah.

I need the Quiguan Krea crossover. Yes, yes, yes. Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. Anyway, yeah, you fight your way through this stuff. Fight your way back. You fight your way back.

You get on the ship. It gets blown. It gets blown up. It gets blown up. Go back to our Shadah. All right. Meet Hulk Hogan Jedi. Meet Hulk Hogan Jedi.

Who? I asked to make sure, did everybody talk? I mean, I know that Natalie, you killed him, presumably. I actually didn't kill him. Interesting. I, which kind of fucked me over when I was doing a light side, dark side dance later. I did not kill him because at the end of that conversation, I told him, better that you live with your decisions and have to live in that suffering of dealing with

the knowledge that you've made the decisions you've made than to free you by killing you. I wasn't actually sure that you could, because when you first talked to him, did he say the bit that was like, well, you're dark side and I can tell. Yeah, he said that to me. Yeah. I can sense your dark side energies, brother. Uh, I, it's, it's an interesting, I'm surprised that you could eject from killing him. I thought that once you were darksided there, that you're locked in.

That's good. I'm glad that you, you know, you're not locked in. Yeah. Yeah, I think that dialogue choice is so much more interesting, but I don't think that you get dark side points for it. I left that conversation like neutral with this. Yeah, I think that's neutral. Yeah, no, it's neutral, which annoyed me, but I, I wanted to see.

What's darksided about telling someone who. has like done deep wrong to you i'm not going to kill you you should sit with this it feels like if you killed him cray it would be like why did you do that you could use him later like that's why i didn't do it i yeah what you that i was kind of going in that i was like surely having him on dantuin i can just kill everyone at the same time at some point um but i agree the the thing that you say specifically to him he'll ask you at the end of this conversation do you wish to battle to do battle now i have nothing more to say. Right.

And then I said, no, letting you live seems more punishment, and it will serve as a lesson to other Jedi, perhaps weaken them with your doubts. Okay. So to me, I was like, that's giving a little, you know, at least anti-establishment, but also kind of, you know, dark-sided. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about what actually happens here, right? Which is that like, if you, when you first show up, no, I don't know what, he's like,

hey, I guess you're back. Funny, you know, I actually don't know if this is the dark side one, but at least for the neutral or light side, he says like, you know, Kavar thought you would come back. He was pretty sure you would. And you can be like, well, why did Kavar think that? And he's, and he's like, well, Kavar is the only one of us who had served in war. And so he kind of felt like he had an understanding for you and understood that you could be the key that we need. As a reminder, Kavar is what we saw with Talia on Anderon, which is interesting because it It means that, like, they deferred our conversation with the one person who believed that we would come back, which I think is a fun structural choice. And then he says, like, you know, Kavar felt that you had a connection with the places that were touched by the war.

And, you know, he thought that he could go to all of those places and try to figure out what's going on with you, which is interesting. And then you can get, you can start getting more information. Where are all the Jedi? And he's like, well, you know, they all got scattered. A lot of them got hunted down. We were targeted through the force. Whenever we get together, we get targeted. And the thing that happened on Qatar, then we were a Luca home world happened.

And so after that happened, we were like, we got to get all over the place. We can't be all grouped up together. It was like we were playing X-com and we put everybody behind the same cover and they threw a grenade in there, buddy. So we had to split up. And you're like, okay, cool. And then you could be like, so, yeah, I ran into Atris. And he's like, you ran on the Atris. And you're like, Tilos.

And she's like, that's, I thought, I thought she was on guitar. I thought she died on guitar. That's weird. And he's like, yeah, that is weird. She has all of the other Jedi teachings. It's good. She survived, I guess. And then you could be like, well, wait a second.

Why didn't you go to guitar? When everyone were going to call to guitar, why didn't you go to guitar? And he's like, well, I had, I had stuff to do around here. I had stuff to do around the way. You know, I couldn't, I was on Narshadah doing the thing. And then you're like, oh, were you doing like Jedi stuff? And he's like, uh, no, I was hiding mostly. Um, and you know, again, he can give you more info on the stuff that was happening

with the Jedi being killed. I don't know there's like a lot there that we haven't already gotten through talking to visas and stuff like that. Um, as a reminder, you could have come here and gotten this before getting Vsos, actually, if this was your first planet and you hadn't gotten the Nihilus cut scene and stuff like that. Um, and, and so he's like, he does all this. stuff that's around like, oh, hey, we had to hide, we had to do this. And eventually his

big turnaround is like, I realize now, if you're white-sided, that I've been a coward and it's time for me to step out of the shadows. And he also is the first person to say, hey, yeah, maybe we fucked up with you, actually. You know, the specific exchange is, I need to know why you cast me out of the order. And he says, we told you. It was because you followed Reven to war. but you ask because you were not certain of that answer, nor were we. The day we cast you out, that is the moment I decided to leave the order, because I do not believe that we truly face the reasons you were exiled, and if we do not examine such truths, then we are already lost.

I think it was because we were afraid. It is a difficult, it is a difficult thing to live one's life with the force, to see a vision of what it would be like to be severed from it. it is more frightening than you know. And you can say, well, why are you on Narshadah? And he says, I thought perhaps that here upon the smuggler's moon, I might find some evidence of the threat that we faced. The bounties on the Jedi in the disappearance.

I did not believe the two were connected, but there was a chance. And the strong currents of life here on Narshadah make perceiving the force user difficult. I could use it to cloak my movements and watch without being discovered. And we should note, because we even really said this, but all throughout Narshad, there's all this conversation around like there's so many people here there's so many vibes that it's easy to get lost in them and it's also easy to feel them so there's this kind of like we talked about getting high with the racer and looking out on the the kind of like space lanes that's what he was talking about that's what he was talking about and it's kind

of like both hide you end it it cloaks you but you also feel connected to everything and everything at this point is like the vibes are bad and everything's been going bad you can push on him here. And this is Awareness 21. This was the thing that I was like, I hope everybody gets to Awareness 21, because you can say, that's not the only reason. You came here to hide. And he says, no, you're right. That is not the whole truth. It's difficult to detect a force user on Narcadah, and I knew it. This threat we face, it leaves wounds in the force when it strikes. It leaves nothing. And you say, and you were afraid. And he says, to live life without the force, to vanish and die and leave only an echo, it was terrifying.

to be connected to all life around you and then have it stripped, I can only imagine what it must have been like for you. But even imagining can't compare with the truth. But there is more to that. Onar Shadal, one cannot escape what was left from the Jedi Civil War. From the failure of the masters, from our failure to properly trained Jedi, came disaster. And I wondered if perhaps the teachings of the Jedi had been our failing all along.

I'll say that again. I'd wondered if perhaps the teaching, of the Jedi had been our failing all long. There have been so many failures by teachers who believed in the code with all their being. Master Arka failed Ulik, as Master Boss failed Ex-Arcun, as Kay and Jarre and the others of the council failed Revin, and Malik. For all the acts we do to preserve the galaxy from such an arrogance that all we do is right and just, I wonder if there is a counter-effect that is created that strikes back at us. Ex-Arcun, Ulaq Caldra. Roma, Malik, Revin, you, all Jedi, there is something wrong in the force, a wound, a sound

that is growing like a scream. You can hear an echo on Narcadha, sometimes when the moon is in on orbit. It is a frightening thing to feel that perhaps being connected to all life is not enlightenment at all, but simply another doom. And I think that maybe, perhaps, to forsake the force as you did, to cut loose our bonds, may not be the wrong thing to do. You taught me something important in the council chamber long ago, exile, and it stayed with me all those years.

You were right to do what you did, everything you did. And you could say, why did you cut me off from the force? Which is interesting, because he just said something different. He did not say, we cut you off from the force. And he says, is that what you think we did? We did no such thing. But it is a technique that has been used as punishment in the past. Yes, it is a rare sentence.

And to my knowledge, it's only been done once at a moment where, a Jedi discipline, where a Jedi discipline had failed. What caused your loss, I fear, was different. I'm not sure I understand it. We did not understand it fully then, and only recently do I feel we may have become enlightened. The other masters may have more knowledge of this, but I do not. And I do not know if they even live. Does it matter?

It seems your power has returned. Perhaps the loss was not a loss at all. And you can say, well, at the trial, you guys all said something happened to me. What was it? And he goes like, oh, yeah, you found the records. You found the camera feeds that we'd set up. Good. Sometimes I found, I think that it's good that people find these secrets, but I don't know.

I don't have any answers. We promised we would never speak of it. And, you know, I made these promises to some people that I can't do it. Kavar and I were friends. You know, maybe if we all get together in the same place, we'll tell you the truth. And then there's some other stuff. But that's the big stuff, you know. Oh, hang on.

I want to. The part where you're like, surely the stuff. fact that Revin came back to the light. Oh, right. Gives you some hope. And he's like, that gives me no hope. That's right. Like Revin didn't choose to come back to the light.

What the council did is something they remain uncomfortable with. And Revin's choices were not his own. Yes, right. Yes, I forgot about that bit. That's extremely. Yeah, it provides no comfort at all for reasons, but I still must keep secret. Suffice to say redemption was not Revin's choice. And I've never believed those.

of the council who attempt to console themselves, otherwise, for the crime they committed. And then you could be like, do you know how to use a lightsaber good? And he's like, I do. Let me hook you up. He's a good form. Yeah, exactly. I also want to call out that just a small detail. When he's talking about the teachers who believed in the code and failed, he says,

Kay, who's the handmaiden's mom. That's right, Aaron Kay. So Aaron Kay failed Revin. It sure did. Interesting. That's T. I will say that there is some Aaron K stuff that we will have to arrive at on our own. Okay.

There is some stuff that I think a lot of people believe about Aaron K that the game never says outright. Okay. So start theorizing, is what I would say. So I had a different beginning of this conversation. but the rest of it was all the same. So if there's anything we want to kind of go through with the details here before I introduce

the dark-sided version of this conversation. I mean, I do think it's interesting that Zezkyel, like, the fact that it was when the decision was made to exile the general from

the order is the same that he walked away from the order. Yeah. Like he clearly has issues with, like, doubts and issue and, and, uh, a lack of security in the decisions that have been made. Um, the idea that, you know, maybe the galaxy would be a better place if there were less Jedi secrets is fascinating because I think Jedi knowledge is so heavily protected. and like a gate kept from those who are not, you know, worthy enough to behold such Jedi knowledge.

Like, you don't, there's no, I'm imagining that you don't really have Jedi 101 in your regular elementary school class in on Corrassan. Like, I imagine that you're not, I wonder to what extent people are being taught about the Jedi and how much. of it is just like hearsay and legend and, you know, uh, don't we get a moment here on Narshadat some point? I remember in the let's play, but I don't remember where it was, where they did the, the Clone Wars thing where remember that in the episode of Clone Wars, the guy was like, yeah, Jedi came in here at the red lightsaber and Obi-Wan and Anakin or Anakin and Asoka are like, uh, that doesn't sound like a Jedi. I think I was like, listen, man, all I know is he was thrown shit around with his mind and had a lightsaber.

I think there's something like that here And it might be about It might have only been a dark side Reven thing Where someone refers to Reven to me as a Jedi Even though he was not a Jedi I forget exactly what it was But it was something like that

That happens to your point Natalie Like I don't know how much people know About the Jedi or about the force Or about any of that stuff, you know And yeah I think you're right Deskiel being like no more secrets Is fun It's a fun position

And the other thing You know I kind of skim past the very last But I don't want to read the whole thing Because I was reading for so long But he says very clearly, like, you were an opportunity for us to come to grips with our own failings. And we fucking skipped that bit. Well, especially because it recast the exile. Right.

He was like, you're the only one who came back to face judgment, which they haven't explicitly expressed here. So it seems like kind of what happens is that Revin, Malik, everyone, they go off on their crusade to go fight the Mandalorians. They defeat the Mandalorians at Malacor. That's right. and the exile returns heeding the, hearing, heating the council is called

come face judgment for what you did. That's right. Breaking, breaking ranks and going to confront the Mandalorians. The exile alone among the, the Jedi who fall to the Sith, returns to the order

to be judged. And they bring the hammer down on him. None of the others do. They just go full Sith. Yep. And begin storming across the, uh, republic.

And yeah, what, what he gets at here is, you're the only, did the right thing. We weren't, he's not confident that the council did the right thing by sitting on its hands, letting the Mandalorians run rampant. The fact that so many Jedi did join that war effort should have given them pause. And then they refused to reckon with, well, why did so many of our best forsake our instructions and go join this fight? And instead of doing that.

sort of came to express that and account for themselves, they exiled. They didn't want to hear it. And that's, and he says that's why the Jedi scattered is because like deep down, we kind of knew that how we dealt with you on top of how we failed to deal with the Mandalorians suggested that there was something wrong with the Jedi order. Like the Jedi order was not able to do what needed to be done with the Mandalorians. And then when we had our one chance to potentially, potentially say, you know, this is a very classic thing, right? Like, hey, what you did was wrong, but I'm Yoda. I'm going to slap you on the wrist and tell you to go do some library work and reintegrate you into the order or give you some sort of like symbolic punishment,

but work to mend these two sides. You could be our symbol that we mean it when we say come home. Like, we put the hammer down on you, like you said, because we couldn't confront that what you did was maybe not a betrayal of our teachings, but an outgrowth of our teachings and of our order. And that that didn't just break for Zezkyel, he says, but he says, like, that's why many scattered why many in the Republic do not trust us, like, and why we don't trust ourselves. Like, that's how big of a deal it was that the great Jedi general who won the battle at Malacour 5 was, you know, judged in this way and exiled. It's like there were ripples in the force to use Cray's term even there, right?

And, you know, does Kyle's like, I'm not a Jedi anywhere. Does Kyle, I'm curious, Allie, how that hit for you is the character, the player who's had a character who's been the most, I Am No Jedi coded. Hearing another Jedi, like, did that register for you in any interesting way in your own character? Or you're like, yeah, dude, for real. A little bit. I mean, I do think that he's an interesting position, but I think that, like, there's such, there's such a cowardice to the way that he presents. himself and there's also such like a like from a character's perspective there's the betrayal is still always there in such a way that I don't feel like there's like a like an evening out

and equaling between the characters you know it is it is always going to be that like you were in a position of authority and you did the wrong thing to me and it is my responsibility to move beyond that. And, like, there's not, like, empathy or grace or, like, forgiveness that I am willing to give yet. Right. I do also, like, my, I think my favorite line in what he says there's, like, that he was like, I was surprised that no one has taken responsibility for you. You know, all of these other bastards with these, you know, with Revin and these other examples, like, there were people who, who felt accountable for that, but no one has done that for what we done to you and I was like yeah that's right yeah if anything atra seems to be the one who would

be most responsible and is like drilling down into a sense of her own persecution you know well and again like where does I mean the quite like where does the rot set in like there elements of when you run into this guy it reminds me of how many great like I guess I got Sherlock Holmes on the brain a little bit this week but how many great stories have like a flashback to like the curse like confederacy of plotters who did something unspeakable, like the, what is it, the orange Pips, is that what it was the sign? I can't remember, maybe the sign of four. But it all stems back to what a group of thieves did

during the Great Mutiny in India. And it casts the shadow, that everything that has flowed from that goes back to the decisions they make in this one like high pressure moment and the again, the ripples, the ripples go outward. And there is this sense of you find this recording of the judgment that made against you. But actually now in his telling, what you have found is the moment the Jedi Council committed a crime and they can't live with the consequences. That what sounds like a somewhat contentious meeting where honestly like they kind of thoughtlessly hand down their judgment on the exile and then they're kind of uncommitted about it

afterwards that they never resolved that there was no second follow-up like how did we handle this instead they just immediately start splintering apart and you're left kind of wondering when did the snake into the garden right like we have suspicion about Atris, the fact that she is there sort of being the most doctrinaire Jedi in the room pushing for this. And now when we meet her next, she has cornered the market on Jedi teachings. And he is saying maybe something's just irrevocably off about the Jedi. And the orders that is constituted is not sustainable. She may have also reached that conclusion, but has drawn the most like narcissistic conclusion.

from that, which is, and like literal narcissism, she has gone off to her ice fortress with clones of herself effectively, where she is hoarding all the knowledge and once she is ready, she'll begin teaching people. But in the meantime, all these like identical versions of her are not allowed the force and they must maintain like ironclad obedience. mm-hmm yeah um much different thing i just realized y'all didn't learn a lightsaber technique

y'all learned to force something right like a force form yeah right yeah so there's it's it's it's the same slot but if you are a guardian or sentinel he teaches you like um a different lightsaber form, like Atreus or, not Atraeus, Atreus is the guy from, um, no, it's a Trey U, yeah, Atreus might be right, actually. Uh, Ataru, no, Ataru. He teaches you Ataru or Shian or Jiuyo, the various like literal lightsaber forms that give you different bonuses in combat for like your to hit and your defensive stuff. You should have a few of those by now, I think.

But if you're a consular, which I think all of you are, he gives you force affinity or force potency or something like that. I don't remember which one. Because he was like, it's good for crowd control. He's like, it's good for, if you're fighting against like high odds, this style of combat is good. Where your alignment is. The guide says if you're a Jedi consular master or Sith Lord, the prestige is a force.

Oh, you did prestige. Oh, you did prestige. Are you a force? Are you a weapon lord? Are you a watchman? No, I can be, I can never be a weapon lord. Okay. I can never, I can never call me a weapon lord.

Maybe you're a watchman then. Yeah, okay. So then that's why. Rob, you got that. Also, she was like, because the famous, the watchmen are rare and they used to be, and I was like, that seems, who was, who was the watchman example she gives? I was like, that guy was cool.

I don't remember who it is. I mean, our good example, the example I used in the thing was Teres Nubei is clearly a watchman, our old turtle detective. Oh, I miss him. He's great. Bring him back. Good thing he survived

the purge. Yeah, he's definitely just around. He retired, I think. Bumboing somewhere in the galaxy. Yeah, exactly. If you did get Force Affinity as your new force form, if you are still a consular, don't use it. It's trash. It's just a worst version of the default Force Channel that you get early on.

Cool. Just saying that. Oh, great. Force Affinity gives you 500% FP recovery in combat. Force Channel gives you that, and then also 50% percent faster force regeneration outside of combat plus three force damage a force power damage and a bonus defense against force attacks so i don't understand why this it doesn't make any sense that they would give you that and not force channel is just better it's just so in that point so there's

one last thing i'll toss out here yes about him like there's just something fucked up about the shot i order and just like the way that like what what's the quote austin you said that maybe being in touch with all things is a burden or or just another uh that it is not a blessing that it is a oh his his thing of like he's talking about like the the cost of well he's it's interesting he's talking about when you lose the force right uh that one of the things that scared them was the way that like you have to understand like god it must have sucked um where is the exactly line. Because I think that there's some, it's a little unclear of what he is saying is being stripped of the force is scary or if having that connection is scary. I think it's written

like the ladder, right? Yeah, where he was like that, that it's, might have been around the time. Yes, here it is. I got it. I got it. There's something wrong in the force, a wound, a sound that is growing like a stream. You can hear it echo on narshada sometimes when the moon is on orbit. It is a frightening thing to feel that perhaps being connected to all life is not enlightenment at all, but is simply another doom and et cetera. And that like, and I think that may be perhaps to cut, this is again, what he says is perhaps to forsake the force as you did to cut loose our bonds may not be the wrong thing to do. So I cannot believe we're bringing it back to this. Yeah. This game's made 2005, right? 2004, I believe, right? Is that

Right. So in 1997, 1998, Timothy Zahn wraps up what he's doing with Star Wars. Yes. And Mara and Luke go on an adventure. But the way it starts, even before they go on an adventure is Luke shows up to like a peacekeeping. Like he goes to like do Jedi mediation and shit. Han is sent there as well. It's supposed to be a routine thing. And they're like, we're happy to have general solo like work as a mediator, but we do not want.

Luke and he's like okay well that's why and Han is the one relating this he's like so what they told me was in all the history they know they've never seen a Jedi as powerful as you not eventually become a dark Jedi that you like that you scare them and they think you're on a bad path and Hans like but I don't worry like it's just their superstition all that. Don't worry about it. Luke, this sort of takes root, though, and he begins wondering, like, it touches on this disquiet. And so when he and Marr go on this adventure, one of the things that as they are sort of parsing a lot of the stuff that has gone wrong with them over the years, one of the things she begins to hammer him with, is this idea of

you have become so powerful and so, like, good at being a Jedi, that you cannot help it, but, like, treat the force as a tool. Like, it is your first recourse is to touch the force to do anything. And the thing she hammers again and again is, if the force is a tool, it can't be a guide. it can't be a source of like spiritual enlightenment or anything like that the two the two things are diametrically opposed and what she's pushing luke toward is a similar version of like you need to take your hands off the force and just start listening rather than like grabbing it and controlling it and so this in 98 in revenge of the sith It's like, what, 2000, five, right around there.

It's 2005, yeah. It's right after this, yeah. So 2005, you've got Yoda talking about, like, the Jedi have, like, gotten so used to, like, we'll go see the future, we'll consult the force, we'll read the signs. And they just can't do it. And it's dark side influence, but also there's this, oh, you're completely dependent on this, that you have no. Your judgment has atrophied in your years of dependence on, well, whatever we do, that's just the guidance of the force. So we're fine.

And they can't sense this, like, growing darkness. And then this game has a similar thread of, hey, like, we're enormously powerful. We sort of have the monopoly on, like, this use of the force. Right. And you can hear something in it has gone badly wrong. Yeah. And the more we try to fix it, the more it's going wrong, the faster it's going wrong, that we keep generating Dark Jedi, that we keep losing, you know, some of the best of our number.

But, like, it is funny that so much of this does stem from, or it doesn't stem from, I'm sure, like, a lot of people may be thinking along parallel tracks. But I was surprised how relatively early to a lot of this that, like, Zahn returned. to these themes, which we're starting to surface in the Air to the Empire trilogy, where Luke realizes like, oh, he can just zone out sometimes and just like do a whole bunch of awesome Jedi shit, but like, was he bullied in control of that? Right, right, right. And Sabayov is like, yeah, don't worry about it. That is your, that is your due as a superior being. And the thing Luke can't quite shake is, you know, Jedi might, that might not be too far off

from what Jedi. It doesn't, it doesn't sit well with him, but what does he know? He's just a nice farm boy. But he can easily imagine Jedi being like, yeah, that's our due. This is what the job is, kid. And there's a bit of this here, this notion that like, there is something corrupting about the way the order uses force, uses the force, treats its relationship with it, that the more doctrinaire and confident they get in their teachings. the more it is rotting from within. I mean, Kraya calls you out on it if you,

like at times, if you go, if you use force persuade instead of regular persuade, she'll be like to lean on your force power, like that was an unnecessary use of your force powers. And you should know that like you're, you're essentially using this as a crutch.

And like to do that is to, is like, you know, it's beneath. you to resort to using the force in these ways adding this to the creifax list I think this is an important crayifact

sometimes using the force and especially force persuade is wrong yeah important what she's doing I don't well she's certainly using the force she's certainly using the force as a it's just

interesting right she's threatening aton with things she's she's threatening a Hanhar with I could make you feel terrible forever. She's just doing, she's blackmailing these people. Yeah, she's putting them in the positions to make the decisions for themselves instead of using this, according to her, more cowardly way of like putting the thought in their head. Directly. Right.

Yeah. Which is, you know, we don't have to go back to that previous thing. But like, it's the thing I meant to really say before, too, is like, we talked about this game being interested in agency and stripping agency away, Craya does not think that it is, Craya does not think that it is the Jedi's due to whisper into someone's ear. She might think it's her due to whisper into someone's ear. But I don't know that she thinks that it is good that the force is, she, we can go back to that previous, the big famous Craya example of, if you give this guy $5, he might get beat.

up. And if you don't, he might not. And I, we've already put that in the context of questions of charity. We've already put it in the context of this kind of libertarian bootstrapping stuff. We've already talked about all that stuff. And I gestured last time that I also think that it's going to do a broader thing about Krea, thinking about the force and about what the forces connections can do. But I didn't say, and I should, I think I could have said then and just didn't think to is she also kind of like, is talking about you particularly. Hey, you've, You're, when you do stuff, the world ripples around you. Uh, you got this weird force bond thing going.

In fact, this is one things I skimmed over with Zaz Kyle. You can talk to Zaz Kyle and be like, hey, do you really think about like force bonds and getting out of force bonds? And one of the things he says is like, yeah, it's weird. You always had it like that. Oh, that's right. There was always something about you. You're the vibes king of the Jedi.

You're the vibes king of the Jedi. He says, um, you know, the, A bond allows the transmission of feelings of influence. It was something you were gifted with, as I recall, before your fall. You formed such attachments easier than most. Even to those who could feel the force only faintly, even Vruke couldn't ignore it, which is saying something. And so, like, I do think to some degree when Kraya is like, listen, dude, be careful

with who you give a penny to, she, she, we can, again, we can and should think about that critically in a broader context, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I also do think that there is something about you particularly as a thing that can exist in this setting that she is like, you have to move more carefully than you do. Because you can get like fucking literally force connected to people. That's right. As you're moving around Narshadah, especially when you first get there, there's a cutscene that happens.

I think we talked about this last episode. where Crea will like beam into your head and be like, can you feel that? Can you feel the rumblings of the world around you? Like you were just hyper, hyper, hyper sensitive to the force around you. And as your powers are growing, that sensitivity is growing.

So the idea, what if an unintentional force bond was created with somebody and they get got, you're fucked? Like we, when Crea's hand got cut off, You felt like the idea that that could expand to more people and presumably you've had bonds in the past. And so I'm curious.

I mean, that's what Zez-Kail is saying here. Is this what you had with Atris? Is this part of why Atris is the way she is with you? That's interesting. Or are you just... You're her wound. Fucking A. You know?

I mean, to some degree, too, there's a really fun, Again, I said before the thing I love about this is the way that this isn't just a game that has, like, rhyming or reflections, A to B. There's often like A to B, B to C, C, C to A. And I think you can also pull Nylos into this, right? Because like, you're both been described as wounds in the forest. But Nylos is great power, this thing that the Sith, that even the Sith turned away from, the ancient Sith turned away from, because they realized how destructive it was, is that this like deep hunger, this complete, you know, decimation of worlds. the removal of the force in a place, the like the devouring of it. And you are like a conduit for it. Even to people who barely have the little whisper of the connection to the force, it seems like you can pull it into them or pull them into it.

This is how you can make the handmaiden Jedi and Atten and et cetera, right? Is it like, oh, you're, you are the conduit through which the force connects people. And Nialis is the sort of like vacuum that like, bring that breaks it all up and destroys those connections and sucks them in and i think that that's a really fun mirroring uh uh in the same way that that the two of you have these other connections i just i think it's all very good and so what jedi master hulk uh says here where it's like zes kail zes um what zez says like you hear the this the scream in in the force like sometimes he hears it and it's like is there something on the surface but what is implied

is that nihilus hears it all the time and the only way he can make it stop right is to end all life again the way the the way vsas describes it he showed he showed her his handiwork which was to denude a planet of everything that was living and that all that is left is like matter and physics and chemical reactions, but, but nothing organic, not a, not a, not a trace of the breath of life. And to, to an extent like that that this quieting thought, that thing that is on the edge of Zezkyel's hearing is a real thing, maybe a fact in the force and nihilus is right the reaction to that taken to its darkest possible thought which is that life itself is a somehow a torment to the universe that has to be brought to to to a close

and meanwhile cyan is again to play this reflection game cyan is someone who seems like in what we read his body has been broken again and again and again and he won't die right and so as Nihilus consumes all life, Sion seems to be unable to die, right? The way that this game sets this stuff out, I've said it, we said it last time, but like, maybe two episodes ago was like, part of why when I hit Mortis, I was like, are you, come on, what are we doing? Like, I'm all four big, weird explorations of the force and the, and big capital C, cosmic force encounters. But I've seen them done in a way that really hits for me. Like, this is it. Also, the thing you just said, Rob, really makes me feel like, what if the thing Reverend went out

there to find was the Yuzang Vang who themselves, you know, are, are the, the culture that is, you know, material en masse, but no, but no, I mean, again, we can dig into whether they have the spark of life. Clearly, they are people. But they, the force does not hit like that, you know. And I think that's one potential reading for what was going to happen. I know that there's also quotes out there saying other stuff. But at the time playing this game, I was like, it's the fucking Vong. Here they come. Yeah. Should I? Should I? Should I tell you guys what Zez Kyle says to me because I'm dark-sighted? Please. Is it at the beginning of that conversation? Is at the very beginning of the conversation? So the difference is I don't get the bit where he's like, what's his name knew you would come back or like said you would come back. Yeah, Kavar.

So instead of that, the opening of the conversation is, so you have returned from exile, though I do not know why. You were always difficult to read when you were tied to the force. and even more when it was lost to you. But I can sense the death of others upon your hands. I know how this will end. But I will answer your questions. If only for some measure of peace.

Shut out. Good thing is my good guy. There's no sense of death of others on my hands. That's good. Yeah, not the 180 people we just killed on the way here. Right, right, right. Yeah, the glow just kind of, it absorbs it. I didn't just nail a colony of canned, like the biggest can of raid you've ever seen.

It's wild. Your glow aura is like Fabriz for the death on your hands. Well, and that's the fucked up thing. It's, I was going to say this before and then forgot to, but the, when you go back to the thing I was saying about Crea and oh, you and your particular ability to build force bonds, that's also where Cotor 2 can be read as a critique of the player, right? A couple of years before Bioshock hits and then before spec ops the line does, here is a game that's like, ah, it fucking sucks. that in all these virtual worlds, the entire narrative has to like bend itself around the will of the player

and everyone has to fucking take a kneel, has to kneel to the player and the player's whims and, oh, the player wants to date this character and the player wants to solve da-da-da-da-da. And Craya is like, yo, be careful. You have a responsibility that none of us have. You have an ability to touch the world that none of us have.

However, it does not care that you killed all of the Gand in existence. It will not give you a dark side point for that it will it does not like the limits of that critique are all in the Evan hawk is the big flying harem that's yeah a hundred percent I think that's part of like why godo doesn't land for me yet I mean we'd love to have a droid we'll get into that later but um you know I like the when you were saying before he he's sort of this like author analog for him to have that role and also to be the person who says I need you

alive to save the galaxy is like really towing that line of like the sort of player worship that you know we've made a ton of comparisons to mass effect where mass effect ends up getting really tired and like losing all of its edge with its characters from being somebody who like is to put on a pedestal by all of the people that you interact with for go to like immediately sort of say that line and, like, need you as a savor, saviour, especially when, like, Kraya is already a person in position of manipulation who sees you at the center of it, but is, you know, not complimentary in that, in that, in that, you know, in that space. So, absolutely. And I think, you know, the game is at its best in this mode when it's showing you conversations that are not

about you and character relationships that are maybe about you but are not um are not you don't have agency over you can't stop crea from manipulating aton for the first you know half of this game or whatever most of this game i guess you know that's just happening all of those scenes are are great and are a key part of what make it so good and so yeah to have the guy just show up and be like you might not know this yet but you're the chosen one this is how gono talks by the way we're we're We didn't really go in to go to performance. It's fine. He's fine.

He's not. Just to tie up the dark sides as Kyle thing. He, when he says, I will answer your questions, if only for some measure of peace, in exchange, I wish only the answer to one. Why have you done this to the Jedi? Was it just revenge or something more? and you can be like I'm not the one responsible of this

or do you think I'm the one killing Jedi what do you mean? Interesting. So I said what do you mean and he said whatever this threat is it leaves echoes in the force wounds that do not heal it is something that we've never felt before

until you stood before us in judgment and we exiled you and I said whatever is killing the Jedi is not being done by my hand or you could say but you blame so you blame me or if I could have done this I would have but his response to me was not directly perhaps but it is something tied to you and something you had experienced and had survived some of us sought to understand you to find you it seems we succeeded even though we thought you were lost to us now as we had hoped you have returned and you know nothing

that could help us such irony. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you just talking for the first time, man? What do you know about what do I know? But, yeah, I mean, I think this conversation probably hits harder if you go to, I don't know. I guess like we, I don't know, if maybe this isn't like the first Jedi you meet. Right, in terms of there being like his

Many Jedi that have died Yeah I see The fact that like there's this pattern Of Jedi being killed I think he doesn't mean the other Four Jedi I think he means

The ones killed like guitar And everyone being hunted down Right yeah yeah yeah But I just think I just think we haven't had that much Time with that concept yet

Because we're just kind of getting started with getting to know, like, what the fuck have the Jedi been up to since Revin left? Like, they've gone into exile, they've gone into hiding, whatever. But I don't think, at least for me, I don't think the idea that the Jedi are being actively hunted. Maybe I'm kind of, maybe it just hasn't hit for me in a big way yet. I also think this is we've been playing over five months because the whole beginning of this game is there's a bounty out on Jedi and they've all been killed but you. right we just haven't playing this game for too long we've been playing a game for too long

that that's no I think the game's never really sold like it's the thing the games always struggle to do is sell you on the scale of like Jedi slaughter that has happened um and I think this game struggle was a little more than the last one last one had the cut scenes of like T-Los but the other planet with the T. Perugas getting leveled yeah terrace yeah getting leveled that give you a sense of like damn like that's just everyone just that just happened like everyone just got fucking got. Here, you have great lines like the, the room of a thousand fountains or whatever has,

has gone silent. But I still don't, because the other thing that's kind of at odds with this is like, yeah, the Jedi are so got. Like you're the last Jedi. Okay, what about all the Jedi in this video footage I found? They're all alive. They're just hiding in various places.

So it does kind of feel like, um, The Jedi are out there. They're just lying low. And the game is playing fast and loose with like, are the Jedi dead? Or are they just being like, I'm not a Jedi anymore. There's being big cowards. Yeah.

Like this is the empire era thing too, right? Which is like, were the Jedi all purged or are they hecking out on Tatooine or on who's the other? Yeah, we do. We see one on Tatooine in Obi-Wan who gets God. Also, the exchange bounty hunters, all the people looking for Jedi are the least threatening people. and like, no. Like, I'm sorry, if the, people are sending HK droids out there

and like a Tier 1 Jedi ability is destroyed droid. What are we doing here? Yeah. You don't think, you don't think the, the HKs could have gotten Bastila or Juhani at the end of, or Jolie Bindo, no? Nope, absolutely not. That's my question.

Like, where's Jolie? Where's, where's, where's, where's Bastela right now? Did they get out during this? And if Bastille is like he'll be back. And in a minute now. Yeah. Joe Lee is just like, oh, fuck this.

Like, like, Joe Lee just pieced out. He's like, yeah, the, look. The wheel has turned. My moment, my moment at center stage of history has passed. I'm gonna go kick it on. I'm gonna go kick it on Monon with my boy. Play some, play some pizzoc. Are you guys getting basilid?

any of the cutscenes that we're getting Carth in? I am. I've seen him in T3 footage, the same clip of Baselah where it's like, yeah. Okay. But that was all before Revin left, right? Which is the weird thing. All that footage. Right.

I think that like the Carthor Bastel stuff is during the leaving. Sorry, you're getting, you're getting Carth as the Admiral now, though. Oh, okay. Like when he shows up to Paragas, or not Paracas, but, T. Lo, no, no. When I, when you get influenced with T3, I get a specific, okay, yeah. But I'm saying on top of that, you're all, the three of you are getting Carth as an admiral in the Republic right now. He shows up to Tilos. I don't get that because he's dead for me, because I have Darkside Revin.

But so you're right. I have Darkside Revin too, yeah. Okay, well then, yeah, then, yeah, Carth is around, I guess, still. And yes, your other question, yes, the T3 stuff for me with male Revin is Bastila and not Carth. Okay, yeah. Yeah. The hollow recordings. Yeah.

We can get more into that, but it's a lot of like, oh, Revin left me behind and couldn't go with me and yada yada. And there's sort of an implied romance there that I figured it was gender switched. Oh, yeah. I thought we talked about this stuff again months ago, but I, but maybe not. Maybe we skipped that. Who knows? Long podcast. Our listeners.

speaking of I guess the last thing you get a new droid Goto he sends you an interrogation droid he does as a gift and to be his proxy GEO G0 hyphen T0

right yes we didn't mention it last episode because there was so much to talk about but like the way that the game made this obvious the first time that you see Goto like the way that like the droid is what you see first in that cutscene

like sort of dividing through this this group of bounty hunters and then there's this hollow projection of Godot who comes out with this bang or open a line which is like perhaps you've heard that the Jedi comes to Darshanah and I was like this is cinema man but like when

Goto with the Zeros joined my party I was like that cut scene was introducing the droid not this guy yeah he was in front of to me the whole time. Cool droid. Love to have a little interior. It's like the all black Sith Imperial really design that we were familiar with

kind of floating around. And yes, Keyes like, you should upgrade your remote droid to Beaudera. We get some Beauder. I got like five of them in a row. I think of my influence of Beaudera high enough. They just like back to back to back to back to back.

It was a real Final Fantasy set some time aside to view all these cutscenes before you do. But, like, it didn't give me that warning. It was literally just, like, 20 minutes of peyodor scenes. I wish it had. I wish it had warned me what I was walking into when I loaded back on the Ebonhawk. Every game should have, like, a little, like, loading screen. It's like, this is an excellent time to get a snack. That's right.

You will not need your hands for this next stage of gameplay. Right, right. Okay, maybe that does come raw. Like, yeah, you know what I mean now. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes that's why I have a little movie. Yeah, you can eat your popcorn.

I needed popcorn for when that character in the first real big one of those in Final Fantasy 14 got poisoned. I was like, damn, I'm glad I got popcorn for this. Yep, yep, yep. So, you know?

Super glad I had snackies for that. Yeah, should we go back and get the fuel from Voga? I did. Make sure you do that before you leave Narcadah. Yeah. Oh, before you?

Please do you go talk to him and be like, hey, Godot is cool now. Can I please get the fuel? Because Voga has the fuel to bring to Tilos. And now that Godot's yacht is gone, there's nowhere blockade. He's not stealing stuff from the extreme. And now we can help that ever so scientific terraforming that the athorians are working on. So we need big jungle cats, right? Yeah.

How many? A lot of them? A lot of them, please. A lot of them. Now, do I understand why the guy who wants there to be stability in the galaxy was not just letting the fuel go himself? I don't know. I don't know. Don't look at me. Wheels. I'm not. Such match. You've got to get his cut. I guess so. Let him dip his beak. I guess so. I guess so. I have no idea how we're going to cut up Dan Tween. I have not played ahead. I apologize.

announce on blue sky some time. We're actually recording kind of ahead because I just moved and Robbie are about to move so we're trying to like literally and stuff. Yeah. It's 11. I've got moving. I've got

showing up at 8. So we got to go. We got to go. That we've reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age. We're going to Dan Tune next. We do not have a cut up for it yet, but you do think it was another two for us? I don't know. It might be, you know, I'm looking at it on strategy

wiki and it's one page on strategy wiki. Maybe it's a oneer. Maybe it's a oneer. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm wrong. Maybe it's a twofer. It's a twofer. Oh, it's a twofer probably. Well, I see it now. Did anyone get a call from General Tobin when they got back on the Ebenhawk? Mm-hmm. Yes. And he's like, you could come back now. Yeah. Yeah. You get called to Duxon. Was it Tobin who called or was it somebody else? Was that, is that who called? No, it's the Mandalorian guy saying Tobin wants to talk to you. So I'm Tobin called him to call you, yeah, to come back.

So I was curious if we, okay, well, yeah, it's up to y'all, but I think we should save that and go do Dantuin, thinking about Rob said, oh, no, yeah, well, let's not talk about it. I was just wondering if we wanted to maybe go finish out on Dron. I see, no, I think that we should save it partly because four episodes ago when I was like, where do we want to go next? Some people said Narshada, Rob said Dantuan. My, Rob said, my Jedi exile would go to Dantuin and I was like, oh, that should be our plot then. We should do that.

The other reason why is, I think it's like, I think it's fun to go back to the place. We've done the new place. Now let's go back to an old place. We were just told about some stuff about the being exile. Let's go to the Jedi place after, you know, having met our first Jedi. And we can wrap up, either on or on after that or after Corbyn. I'm down. Cool.

Our show is produced by Chia Contreras, and it is supported by our listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. Next up, we are headed to Dan Teween. I don't know exactly when we'll be getting the next Q&A recorded. Probably soon. We're going to have to double up or something because, yeah, our moving schedules have been bad. Let's disrupt the things a little bit.

Either way, until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And if you hear a distant screaming in the four, don't worry about it that's nothing it's true that's normal it's vibes