A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 119: Down to Dantooine (KOTOR II 10)

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

With two new party members in tow (and some dark secrets about our old crew newly learned), the Exile heads back to the first of two locales originally visited by Revan and co. during KOTOR 1: Dantooine. The old Jedi Enclave lays in ruins from a Sith attack towards the end of the last war, and the newly emerging government finds itself needing to serve three factions: fearful farmers, bored mercenaries, and sneaky salvagers. And none of them are big fans of Jedi.  Also, we meet one of the biggest herbs in the galaxy. Next Time: Return to Onderon 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 of Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Alia Kampora, Austin, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you are 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 boy, folks, I had some bad luck at the Pizak tables on. on Dantuin. Uh-oh. And so it's never been more important for you to mozy on over to patreon.com slash civilized.

Because I ran into an authoritarian card sharp and just got, where you can't tell me those are random draws. You can't, you can't tell me. You know what? That guy was pretending to be honest. He's like lots of humans don't want to keep playing with me after we play a few games. No, because I was, I was clean. his clock when you're playing for less money i can tell you exactly what happened there rob do you want to know do you want to know the secret yes he plays with better cards when you when you raise

the stakes he plays it oh my god playing with a worse side deck when you uh play for low stakes each step up increases he is a card shark he is or he's just you know he's on his competitor that's exactly right he's giving you a solid no no because what you don't play with words cards when you're paying you know what I mean you're trying to beat him every time as hard as you can exactly I'm not gonna like dad he's like a dad who's letting the kid win and then it's like oh shit oh you're really playing all right I'm gonna bust out the queen's gambit hang out isn't that card sharking isn't that like like you can say it's like it's dad I mean it is you're right but isn't that also like you luring it's it's like yeah if someone's luring someone

doesn't be bad at pool yeah he's not pretending to be bad though he's not making Inefficient choices. I think this is the difference. Okay. I mean, he's just playing with his beginner's deck. It's like playing magic against someone who's ever played magic before. You're not going to bust out the blue deck. But there's money happening.

Which if I'm playing commander and I'm using my silly deck and you win 25 bucks off my silly deck when I come in with my real shit now deck and we're betting $50 because you're feeling so good about the 25 you just won. Yeah. It's giving shark. It's giving, it's giving, I'm sharking you. Okay, but in this world, we all have the force power save scum. Right.

I forget to save between matches. So I just start out in hand. I don't know. It's a two button save. You can quick save in this game. It's a life sim. It's dishonest to do that. Triangle or why and then you go down for and you hit quick save and that's it.

No. It's in the quick men. You don't even have to hit the pause button. No. I just I you know what I play it as it lays that's that that is how the how the cards how the cards fall that's how that that's how I live I won't I won't you know what that's an honorable way of doing it you know that guy the guy we just talked about didn't make it into my summary and I he should have because authoritarian who stuck on this planet and bored because no one wants to play cards with him

anymore is a funny character and is one of the more memorable parts of this fairly flat planet we're playing today. We're back on Dantuin, baby. Never been more true. More mid than ever. More mid than ever. I mean, clear skies. Beautiful planet.

Yeah. The birds. That's great. Interacting with the wildlife. You know, it's nice to just take a breather. This is such a simple planet. We got through it all in one session. It's a little long if you count talking to people on the ship, but that's Cotor 2.

You can't count that. That's its own, like, you just have to go in a day. different brain mode for that you can't you can't be running around dantween in in in your day you can't be doing your dantuan brain and bring dantuan brain to the ebb and ha you are you are not going to have a different situation yeah all right here's my summary last time we finished up on and above narshadah recruiting the feisty and street smart bounty hunter mirror or the furious and revenge driven wookie hanhar and being recruited by exchange exchange crime lord go who sees us as a stabilizing force and a galaxy coming apart at the seams.

After talking to our respective new crew members and maybe finding out some secrets about both of them and the other members of the Ebenhawk, we head off to Dantuin, home of a ruined Jedi enclave, an upstart civilian outpost called Kunda that's built into the farmhouse compound of one of the two big families we worked with in Kotor 1, and a whole lot of mercenaries and salvagers, both of whom see Dantuin as a place to make a quick buy. We learn that somewhere out there on the grasslands, maybe in the ruins of the Jedi Temple, that Revenant co-visited during Kotaur 1, Master Verruc is investigating a unit of mercenaries led by a man named Oskul. And so we get on our way, talking to scavengers and militiamen and Merck's helping them with and or stopping them from completing the most petty of schemes. schemes about moisture vaporators,

schemes about corpses, schemes about phony holocrons. And when we finally do reach the Jedi ruins, we do not find Rukh. Instead, we find the disciple, a former Jedi Padawan who is working with the Republic to do the same thing that Godo wants us to do, stabilize things in this sector before it is too late.

Oh, and what is the disciples deal? Well, he was a Padawan in the order just around the time that we are the, the exile, reaching our peak, just around the time we left to go follow Revin and Malick to fight the Mandalorians. One time, we even teed a class for him. And oh, what an impression we made on the young mind of the disciple. Because once we left the order, so did he, following in our footsteps, not to war, just to civilian status. We never really talked to him back then, but that afternoon lecture, oh, it really made a mark so inspiring. And let me tell

you, he has some opinions about our exile. Is it even fair to call it an exile, really? Were we even really exiled to the disciple may ask? I think we're going to have a lot to say about this man. In any case, we bring him into the party for some reason, and we track down Varuch in the crystal caves that are overrun by big insect creatures that sound like pigs when you fight them, and a group of mercenaries, Askoul's mercenaries, all of whom suck, except for one guy who's kind of the homie, as far as I'm concerned, you then free Varouk, who tells you that you fucked up by freeing him, and that now a big mercenary unit led by Oskul is going to attack the village of Kunda.

At that point, you get a choice. Work with Oskul to overrun the nascent civilian government, or fight them off in yet another sequence where Star Wars pretends to be Seven Samurai. Finally, you get a second confrontation with Verruc, still played by Ed Asner, by the way, he still kicks ass, where he chides you, telling you that you're an asshole and that you were wrong about everything during the war and you're still wrong about everything now, except for the one thing that you know that he doesn't, the Sith are back, they have revealed themselves. He didn't know that, and they are gunning for you specifically, the last of the Jedi.

Dan Tween. Dan Tween. Here we are. It's sort of the same map. I did a comparison in the let's play video. Someone on Reddit, Reddit user Sutil Noir, S-U-T-I-L-E-N-O-I-R, pulled all the maps from C-T-I-1 and C-T-R-2,

and that let me line them up. And so the sort of Cotor 1 map lays right on top of, or the C-T-2 map lays right. on top of the Kotor one map, except it's really just like the northern half of it in a really weird way. Well, they cut one of the family compounds out of the map. That is exactly right, Rob. That is basically exactly right.

I'll drop them in the chat for us to see here. It's like the northern half where the Matale compound was, the Matale grounds, and then the north into ancient temple, which is, I think, the Star Forge zone. and the Jedi Academy, that stuff is what's become the whole map of Dantuin. And then, like, they kind of pulled the Kinrath caves from the very bottom and just moved them up to the other part of the... It feels super wedged in. It is really wedged in.

It is really wedged in. Like, they just created a little gap in the texture and just, like, narrow little spaghetti noodle tunnel entrance. Mm-hmm. Exactly right. And then they made, like, the place where... you um where i guess before would have just been north of the motale grounds off the map uh you could land a ship there don't worry about it you could just land a ship there it's fine what did everybody think

of dantoine and did i miss anything important i don't think i did so nobody is nobody wants to hang out with nico nest or tell him what their deal is you're right i forgot about this part The disciple sure didn't want to hang out with Miko Nast. Oh, really? All that happened for me was he leaves the enclave. Oh, did you not install the mods, Rob? I did. Uh-oh, but is this how I find out a mod didn't take?

I think so. And God bless it. Oh, my God. You don't need them. You don't need them. You don't need them. You don't need them. You don't need them.

You don't need them. The one thing you're going to miss is some very good Krayic. comedy. Okay. Because Kraya does not like this guy. All right. Well, now I'm going to need... But I think you're going to be fine. I'm going to need game tape on Crea-Oen's dude. I will at least... So it didn't take, because

every, this is the first time. Holy shit. That there's like content. Because I was like, yeah, this dude's just non-interactive for me. I was like he's, you're hanging with the disciple? Because all he did for me was he ran over to a hollow, a holocom and reached out to

Carth. Interesting. I didn't get the cards. And it was like, hey, I just found the exile. And Carth was like, what? And then Hart, because it's always weird when they do like cuts to Holocom conversations. Like, yeah. But so they've been, Carth is looking for you or something.

So, okay. So that answers that. I apparently have a gift for pissing off Crea. We are now two episodes past where everyone, everyone else got Crayas full back story. She will not talk to my exile about Revin. Won't do it. Funny. I'm like, I'm bringing her on adventures and being like, what do you think of this? I'm be really mean to this person. And Kraya's like, you weren't supposed to be mean to that. Like I can't, like I zig when I should say, I'm consistently misreading what Kraya wants. So like that bonding is not happening.

Bonded with Atten. Okay. I hadn't. We can talk about it. Can we all talk about, we've all talked about Atten now, we can do the Atten Talk? Okay. Please. Okay, so how do you guys feel about tense, transformative psychosexual encounters with random women? Because it appears we have another one of those. We got another one. As our origin story.

Atten sounds like a fucking serial killer as he explains his, yeah, I mean, I guess to a point he is true. Literally is, right? but yeah like I got Atten's full story and in so many words there's also a little bit of like you ever just like hate a woman like really hate her and want to hurt her

but also you kind of love her a little bit but the more you love her the more you want to hurt her yeah and it's like no but go on say more keep incriminating yourself you actually can't stop him it's it was It's a long story.

Oh, my God. I got this on the, I got this in the Arshada episodes on the streets in the refugee quarter surrounded by people who themselves had been hurt badly. Like, okay, so those two guys will come up to you and be like, hey, that guy that you're with, that guy's no good. And immediately, I was like, and those two guys came over here and said you were no good. And he was like, well, fuck those guys. Wait, what did they say about me, basically?

And I was like, well, what's your deal? What happened to you? And so for the, for the listener who is not. watching along or playing along, Atten, during the Jedi Civil War, fought on the side of the Sith, and was a Jedi killer. And you know what? I'm going to tell this story, and I think for the first 70% of it, people are going to be like, this is kind of cool. Yeah, I think that's what's so frustrating for me. It's like looking through a kaleidoscope of like what could be an interesting character, but it never lines up. This is like the worst his performance has been.

I was, like, willing to give a lot of grace when we were complaining about it earlier, but... This is the moment he has to hit it. There's a bit of... They were animals and I slaughtered them like animals. Oh, 100%. Yeah. So the very short version of this is he worked with the Sith. You know, the Jedi watched his people die during the Civil War.

He ends up getting pulled up by the Sith. And he is an expert at killing. Jedi and he does it the right way. He has this line about how it's like people talk about the Jedi being hard to kill. No, they're not. They go to sleep. Don't shoot at them with blasters. Don't try to fight them directly. Poison them. Bring them into your confidence. Target their Padawans. Drug them. Torture them. Like do the stuff that it takes to kill someone who you could never fight straight up. And you'd be like, yeah, buddy, all right, if you say so. And then and then he explains like the thing that you just said, Natalie, which is like, yeah, if you're fighting them

and they have their Padawan, hurt their Padawan, it freaks them out, and then you can kill them. And then he goes on to- I actually screenshot the highlights of what he, at this point, where he, after he explains that he developed a, like, he was part of this, like, special, like, kill team, but also started working for, like, an interrogation, uh, division, like, taking Jedi to a facility design to break them. Yeah. To break them and turn them into Dark Jedi.

And you'd be like, tell me more, Atten, and then you get the influence of success. How'd you end up here? Well, there was a woman, a Jedi. She gave her life for mine. She said that Revin was doing something terrible to Jedi with the unknown regions, that when we capture Jedi,

they were sent to a place designed to break them. Which, it feels like he was already enmeshed in like... He already told you his job was to turn Jedi. into dark Jedi. So here is the sloppy, weird, bad editing iteration stuff happening, because it's like, you just told me that at him. I did what I did with all Jedi. I hurt her. I heard her a lot. I killed her for crawling in my head, for showing me, for showing me that. But before she opened her mind to mind, my only thought was that I would love to kill her. And at the end, I killed her because I loved her. Whoa. Wow. In the end, she said,

sacrifice herself to keep my secret, Treventiseth from knowing about that touch of the force inside me. She wasted her life to save me. Me. Because he realized he was a force sensitive. Yes. She's like, wait a second.

She's there effectively to recruit him back, right? She realizes, oh, you are actually force sensitive. We could make you a Jedi. And then he turns into the dude from equilibrium. And after that, I couldn't stop feeling things. before guilt, lust, impatience that had been orchestrated to get close. Now it all just kept tumbling out.

I couldn't keep doing what I was doing. I didn't want to tell you any of this, but I had to, because if something happens, I can't let you think I was doing it for something other than the past. Mm-hmm. Yep. Now, I do, if any has to be,

they want to be a Jedi. Well, yeah. Or Dark Jedi, which I guess is what, this is what I'm curious about. Natalie, did you turn him before? or after you were dark side coded? After. Oh, no.

Yeah, I have an update about my squad. Is it going to be a picture of that? Okay. So yeah, but the reason I'm asking this is, if you go through with it as a Jedi as a light side character, what you get is the, it's sort of a similar thing to what you get. I guess this is the first character. I don't know if anyone's turned the handmaiden yet or not. In each of these cases, you get something sort of like the cut scene.

where Crea is letting you feel everybody inside of the Evan Hawk, you're kind of like connecting to the force and hearing thoughts and stuff. And so similarly, when you sit with Atten in this moment, you can be like, hey, reach out your mind, reach out your feelings. You can feel the world around you, you know. Yeah, it's not really, that wasn't really my approach with him. It was more like imagine the slaughter of the war, the death and the energy it filled you with. Oh. Hear the echo of the rage you felt during the war, feel the fires as republic ships burn, you know. Okay. Yeah, it's different for us.

But it's, you know. Yeah. You know, with this one, the way it works when you recruit him is you're like, it ends with you being like, I need you to like feel the thing you need to feel to protect me because that's the relationship we have now. Not so much I need you to feel the burning of the galaxy beneath you

Oh this is a You sent us a thing called whoopsies Not MKV I am downloading Let me do it Let me do it I mean it'll play in VLC But

Okay I can remux it if you need Let's take a peek here So that's just like a little Huh Hey what's a what's a with Beauder's face. Excuse me?

No. Oh, my God. There's smoke over the droid. This is very funny. Not Beauder. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, T3 covered in black smoke

is wild. So. You know, Crea's looking pretty positive also. Pretty neutral. Sticking to, sticking to... Oh, you've got to break the disciple. You've got to break that, that man. Here's the funny thing about the disciple because he's a dark Jedi now, but he's light-sided in the character selection screen.

Because he just hasn't, you don't have full influence, but you must, right? I went negative influence. I was like, I'm going to drop my influence with this guy to the floor. I love it. But because I am a Sith, Lord, when I perceive him, I can force him into being. a dark Jedi a dark Jedi consular But he hates you

He hates me But but But it's all the same dialogue We had that whole conversation It's all the same He's like I saw you And I was like holy fuck We were so epic

Let's finish up with Atten Before we talk about someone Who I think is maybe worse Because I think on paper I don't have a defense of Atten I think that I think that this is Gilding the Lily is what I think it is They do not need

The bit of this story That is about choking a woman to death Guy was a Sith assassin is really good guy who's been hiding who he is because what he used to do was kill Jedi and is like suddenly caught up in all of this absolutely works. Do not need the long description

of him killing a woman that he met and fell in love with and she left him and like none of that is necessary at all, I think. I think there's a version of this that is like I was so evil and when I was exposed to, another possibility, the vast difference in that experience, in that potential scared me so much that I reacted in the only way that I knew how, which was to keep being evil, to, you know,

to kill this woman for, like, that part I get. Like, I can see that as like a, as a, as a reaction to the possibility that there is a choice for him, that he could abandon this side and that he has something in him that can open him up to the light side. Like that I could more so justify. The idea that there's two really, really weird lines for me outside of just like the concept of it.

One was him talking about, you know, I did what I did with all Jedi. I hurt her and right when I thought she couldn't take it anymore she showed me the force in my head I felt everything she felt and I heard

just an echo of what the force was I think I I loved her but it wasn't that kind of love it was the kind of love where you're willing to give up everything for someone you don't even know and then she's like you know and then he says

at the end, I killed her because I loved her. I'm like, no, you fucking didn't. What are you talking about? To be clear, because I think this is unclear. What he is doing is killing her so she doesn't get brought to Revin to be turned into a dark Jedi. I don't think that that is exceptionally clear,

nor do I think it's particularly useful. I think, you know, I think that there are other outcomes here that are, that prevent the character from having his big backstory moment being that he killed a woman. woman because of love. I don't think that it lands. But he says in the end,

she sacrificed herself to keep my secret to prevent the Sith from knowing about that touch of the force inside me. She wasted her life to save me. And I felt her die when she opened her mind. Like that just the, the, I

felt her die when she opened her mind is like really weirdly like violating and And it feels very again in this game. Yes. It's like. Yeah.

There's an element of like, hey, man, we'd like you to stop. We'd like you to stop attending the meetings. Like that's kind of how it like is, let me tell you about my lowest point. And when I knew I had to turn over a new leaf. And it's, to your point, Austin, like, it's just. too many things happening in the story. We already had this kind of cool description of what his whole deal was. And then there's this weird like encounter with a saint.

That is, that is, that is totally. The thing is, I don't even mind the encounter with the saint. Encounter with the saint, I am blasted by the full power and brilliance of the force. And I fled like a coward. That's when I came to Narcadah. I couldn't even, I didn't even last the whole war. I turned my back on everyone and everything. I couldn't bring myself to love her.

I couldn't bring myself to love myself. You know, perfect, good. Yeah, that works. It doesn't end with him needing, the game needs the punctuation of a dead woman over and over again. Preferably one that was locked up with you and you were just slapping her around for a few weeks. Like, she was so beautiful. I don't think he says that, but he kind of says that, you know? Yeah.

Again, it's like, what I look at a pan. the Madonna and child I don't want to fuck the Madonna but that's kind of Adam's vibe like that but a bit like with Crea what would it is it is just like such a it just feels like such a perversion of what's being presented as like her selflessness or like her sacrifice the fact that he wraps her sacrifice around in his own desire for her and not just desire like rope in a loving way in his version of what love is but also his desire to hurt her like that's I think where this gets really gross

where it's like she it's it like goes beyond I don't know it's it's it's just it's really hard to give aton any grace in this because i think just the emphasis on what he derived from getting to hurt her was just so unnecessary like i think it could have started with started and ended with exactly how you described at austin of like i was shown the brilliance of the light side of the force and and i could not bear to witness it. And for that, I destroyed everything around me. That I can totally kind of get behind. But the, the, it being centered around this, specifically this woman and also like so much

language around loving her and loving hurting her, that's where I have a hard time. Vibing with my bro. I didn't know Neil Gaiman, uh, like, consulted on this one. But, but, This does feel like one of his, like something he would have tossed into a story. But also it feels tossed in because it does feel sloppily inserted. And that's what makes the insertion so weird. Not weird.

This game has done this, like versions of this relationship. Like this feels like the half, like the sixth or seventh time that we've sort of like circled around this kind of fucked up power dynamic abusive relationship but in this one it just it actually doesn't quite square because it's it's also like revelation on revelation like piled together and the more interesting one is that this is a guy who became disillusioned about the Jedi like this part overshadows but actually a pretty good origin story which is that this is a guy who becomes completely disillusioned by the Jedi order

during the Mandalorian War and it's completely bought into Revin, fundamentally Revan, what Revan is up to, being one of the only people who goes out and confronts the Mandalorians. And in the wake of that experience, being a witness to the way the Jedi evaded facing up to what was happening,

he becomes cynical about everything the Jedi preach. and everything about the order and the things they purport to represent and pass on to their students and future Jedi. And then when the time comes to kick off the Jedi Civil War, he is an eager volunteer because at this point, he follows Revin into battle.

Like Revin is, like his leader, Revan is the Jedi order as far as he is concerned, and Revin uses that to turn this soldier into effectively like a gestapo agent. And he becomes sort of an assassin and a secret policeman and gets deep into doing all sorts of like murderous and cruel acts. That is all to the good. And it is just the way his salvation is like introduced here through the, the offices of this unknown sainted woman, no details, just like so saint,

so saintly, so pure. And that is where he moves to reform his ways. It's just kind of at odds with, it doesn't add anything to the story, but also it doesn't feel totally contiguous with it because everything else, it feels like two different stories. you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Like, because what Kraya locks onto with him is all guilt about the war

and like what he did and the act, like everything is pointing toward the story he tells you to start out. And then his redemption story, and maybe it goes wrong because, because in a weird way, and this is where I sort of draw the comparison to stories that get passed around in like evangelical or faith communities where everyone's got to have some sort of bullshit narrative personal narrative between like about them and the Lord directly and they they have to take mundane experiences of realizations and elevate them to a level like cosmic purpose and intent and that's where we get this like sainted figure injected into the story because what's been laid out is the more satisfying resolution of that story

is probably, Aten fundamentally never strikes us as this guy who would be a bloodthirsty murder. You know what I mean? Like he doesn't, that could, if he's done that work, you could easily imagine it took a massive psychological toll on him.

That's what Craya seems to be pointed, like she is jamming her thumb into that wound that he is consumed by shame and guilt over what he's done. You don't need an, encounter with a saint who shines the light of God into your soul and makes you realize that like, damn, we're all people. Maybe I'm doing this to people. And they're not so different from me. I could be one of them. That's fucked up. He doesn't need that. But the story kind of gives

him that anyway. And it's, it is, it returns to this game sort of obsession with these sort of like power dynamics, but it makes a hard left turn from what we have seen and what has been implied and what has been said about and by Atten. Well, I think it's, yeah. Sorry, go ahead, Allie. Yeah, I just think like, it especially is cheapened because his revelation and his coming to this and the change in emotion that he has from this, this woman doesn't even feel lived in. Like, you know, the, the, when you were saying revelation upon revelation, like, one of the things that I really liked about this conversation is at least because the influence unlocked for me, it ends up feeling like this sort of rolling argument.

Yeah. You go back to the Ebb and Hawk. You confront him. You're like, hey, some guy said some weird stuff about you. You want to talk about it. And he says, oh, well, I'm not going to talk to you about that. Jedi lie. They manipulate. Every act of kindness they do, you can grab it out. Scruming into the. the light. And then like, you know, you keep pushing him and then finding he's like, yeah, I killed her and I loved her and me. And it's just like, you know, that on top of like, it's not like he came away from feeling this emotion, feeling this guilt about killing her and thinking like, oh, I need to have this investment in the Jedi Order or I need to change my feelings about them or I am at least going to have empathy for, you know, his whole thing is always like,

I feel vulnerable around the Jedi. And he never comes to like feeling that vulnerability was like a feeling of affection as well. He always hates that always. And it just like it's just such a waste of having that happen and having it such an extreme thing that happened. And having to sit there and listen to him be like, and I killed her and I liked it, but I loved her. And I didn't like it. Like, it's just, it just doesn't feel good ever because it's not written well and it's not performed well either.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, like, especially playing as a female exile, this is, like, so dizzying because the fact that he just, like, at the end, his, like, final, like, justification for it all is maybe she had saved me so that I could help you. And if I can't, then I have to try. So what you're telling me is that you killed and loved this other woman, and now you clearly love, you have a love for me, and it was all for me. And I'm just like imagining it, because obviously I'm playing as a dark side Jedi, so the whole time I was like, yes, yes, that's great. Isn't the dark side option here stuff like, oh, she was lying to you about what she saw on you actually?

You actually didn't feel any of that shit. That was a huge giant mind tricked you. Yes, 100%. You say, when she says that when she opens up his mind to the force, you can respond and say like Jedi lies. Like these are, you know, classic. You know that these are strategies that the Jedi use. You know that the Jedi can access your own emotions.

That's kind of the position that the dark side takes. But imagining playing this as a light side, female exile is like so are you supposed to absolve him of the sins that he's oh yeah like that is just wowza wowza you so like as a as a light-sided exile this person is like making this huge confession to you about these immeasurable sins and then a very specific sin that he cast against this woman that he tied up in desire and in perversion and et cetera.

And then he comes to you and wants to be cleansed of that and wants to redirect his devotion to you. Like, it's just such a bizarre ask. And if I'm the Light Side Jedi, how can I be like, even you, even you can, you know, come back from this. It's like such a...

Oh, you don't have to do that. You can literally say, I can't forgive you for this. And he'll say, I don't want you to forgive me. That would only make it worse. But I'm still going to become a Jedi disciple of you. All I want is to try and help. Try and make a difference. Pay her back.

I feel I owe her that much. You owe her being alive again. You should die now, actually. It's not like I can fix him. doesn't hit. I know. Like, that's why it's so friendly. It's like, it's like seeing a plate of like sort of good ingredients that are just all

burnt and like not emulsified the way that they should be. If we read his Wikipedia page, his Wikipedia page, I think we would all be we could fix him. But it's the delivery. It's the performance. It's the di-that's particulars of the dialogue writing and the pacing. Makes him less cool. Like the Pizak monologue is so money.

Yeah. Like, so much about him is exactly the type of stuff that I loved, conceptual. I don't think it, I think frequently misses in the line readings, but Star Wars, maybe. It's stuff I would have loved in Clone Wars of this character had been introduced. Like, if there was a, like, soldier who is just always, like, has sort of figured out, like, you know, it's that moment in, like, brain invaders where the clones all look at each other, like, Jedi aren't so tough.

not hard. Yeah. And we have, like, a lot of cool material here. And then, yeah, it's the, the hard left turn sucks. But then also, I think, this is a horrible way to have a party member be like, and now I want to be a Jedi. It was shocking to me that after that he was like, by the way, do you want to trade me? And I was like, I need a minute, bro.

Like, I need to wash my hands. Like, get away from me. me and I invests all my money in Atten's stock Yeah you did You said the words Atten is Meow Meow Meow I really like

You said that and I was like I can't wait to get this scene And I will say again Atten two things in Atten's favor There's more game to play We know there's a lot of Atten as primary You know In a primary plot relationship

With Krea and is like Clearly caught up in main plot shit Because of their deal and importantly another guy came to our ship today who I think is just more rancid in unsavable ways but we'll see

so by comparison and I want to see and those two don't seem to like each other off the bat I don't know if you all had Atten with you when you met him but vibes were off so

I think I made a good decision Bayo is my Dantween buddy love this and he's unlocking doors, opening chest. He helps with those moisture vaporators. Yep. He's like, why the fuck do you need moisture vaporators?

This ain't Tatouine. This is wetlands. It was great. Totally catches what that dude is up to. I missed this. So you'll have to explain what this is to me. But wait, before we leave the Evan Hawk, did anyone else get the Goto conversation?

You could go Columbo mode on Goto and it rules. If you haven't yet, you should. Okay. No. I got a lot of Mira. Sure. Like, Mira just started unloading. Mira is a Jedi for me now, too. And I have to tell you, it's very funny when your game is bugged, and the scene where

she turns into a Jedi is happening on Narcadha, with Han Har in the background, because he never despawn from earlier in the game. And she's giving you all this information about what the relationship was between her and Hanhar and how, like, what their, what their backstory was, which Rob, I'll let you get into in a second. But he is right there behind her basically deposing the whole time. And then you go through the whole thing of, like, reach out your mind, listen to the beats of Narshadah.

And she's like, I'm doing it, I'm listening. I can feel Narshad all around me. And Hanhar is right behind her in the frame. What? Why did this happen? So every time Nira is there, you... No, it's just, he's never left. Hanhar spawned there for a cutscene or something once

and he will never not be there for me now I'll send a screenshot over Please do that is really great About Mira So much You know obviously a rough and tumble background on On Narshada

A war orphan You know sort of Um, we're orphan and also like a, uh, freed slave. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. Was a, was a, was a slave of the Mandalorians during the Mandalorian wars, her and her family. But they're on Malacore 5 at the end of the war.

But was also kind of buying into the Mandalorian thing because like they train their young slaves to be like young. Candidate Mandalorians. Like you, this is very, this is very, um, Stephen Presfield gates of fire vision of like the Spartans type type thing where it's like, actually being enslaved by the Spartans kind of rules because you get to like hang out

with these cool badasses. And if you're, uh, enough of badass yourself, they, they, they bring you aboard. Yeah.

Anyway. Yeah. Did you get the bit? You must have gotten this bit where she's like, I really love Narshada because, or like, there's another way, I like Narshada, I like being a bounty hunter on Arshada, and there's something I do that isn't the traditional bounty hunting stuff. I like help people.

I like help find people on Narshada. I can like seek people out. And then you get the options. I just got that knack. That's six cents for finding people. I know what they're going to do. And your brain, the player is like, well, obviously it's because you have the force, obviously. Like, duh.

But then you get, did you get the three options that were like intelligence, awareness, wisdom? And it's three different versions of like, oh, it's because you're an orphan. You know how to do this. It's like just the point sailing past your exile. But then what I love about it is all three of those options. And I don't remember the exact details. But, you know, the intelligence one is like very, hmm, interesting. You know, people who've been lost sometimes can can, can, are good at finding things.

You know, like that type of armchair psychologist bullshit. Jesus Christ. All three of them, she's like, hey, shut the fuck up. Actually. I don't, what are you talking about? Like, don't tell me what my life is like, actually. And I loved that bit. Like, we'll walk away for it.

It's like, that's it. That's the end of that conversation if you go down that path with her. She will not. I got them. It's, she says, you can say, like, finding people in Arshada seems difficult. And then she's like, yeah, it's hard to explain. Narcad has a flow to it, life to it. At this point in the conversation, she'd already shut me down.

I was like, oh, that's the force. The thing you're talking about is the force. She says, if you know your target, you can feel them, know where they're going to go. And sometimes, you know what they're going to do before. they do. I'm good at finding people because when they're lost or out of place, it's like something's wrong inside of them. That's why I hunt. And you can say either, maybe you hunt because you haven't stopped searching for the family you lost at Malacor or a new family. Or you can say, it could be because you lost your family. You understand what it means to be lost. Or it's not uncommon for

orphans to feel lost or dissociated. Perhaps you feel an affinity for others who are lost. and she says, what are you talking about? Oh, really? Is it? How can you ever know? How could you ever possibly hope to understand that is beyond me? Jedi don't have family.

I know what happened on Malacor 5, and I know the Jedi didn't care about life there. Bang it. Damn. Get him. Yeah. That's bars. I mean, shut out. Yeah.

If you talk to Atten after she said that, he's like, I heard you're making fun. end with the bounty hunter. But then she does start to warm up to you. After, once again, I was like, all right, they put, at least this is one character who's like not immediately exile obsessed because like, it's like, hey, I'd like to get to know you, Mira.

Please. You're holding me my dad. This is weird and gross. Okay, cool. All right. Next time, well, I don't really want to get to know you too well, because. is Visa seems like she's marked her territory. It's like, what?

Yeah. To be clear, nothing has happened. Correct. This is just, like, Visa is just hanging. I have not, because, like, I don't want to push those conversations too much until I know it's not going to lock up handmaid. Handmaid and stuff, yeah. And I can't progress to the handmaid until I get swall and hit the gym.

We can beat her in the fights, yeah. And maybe don't level her up a few times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because she is just, let me tell you, like, she's got hands. She, that's in the name. They don't call her footmaiden. That's different.

That's something else. The first time I talked to Mira, I had maxed my light side points. And so we have never spoken on the ship before at this point. The first thing she says is, oh, hey, can I ask you something? Oh, my God. Your face, well, you have this glow. I mean, not a real glow. It's like you're calm at peace, but it's more than that.

You haven't been chewing on spice, have you? To which one of the things you can say is, I don't poison my body with spice. I don't use drugs, Mira. Okay, chill. Anyway, yeah. Straight edge exile. Getting ever more toxic. And Rob, maybe this wasn't the same conversation for you because that's where she says, like,

oh, I just, it looked like you're hooked up to a power couple. I thought maybe for a second there, you and Vsauce just, but it's just the force. And also, every time they keep this portrait, maybe the, you know what, maybe this game's going to do a great rugpole. And it would be like this was the signs were there all along that it's like a villain origin story. Because every time Atten and now Mira being like, hey, you just kind of like this way about you.

I just don't know. I feel like Charles fucking Manson. I feel like the Evan Hawk It's just roaming through the hills Like looking I think you are canonically you have that That is I think the thing about the exile right Like we wouldn't have to talk all about the Vruk stuff yet

But when you talk to him he even says like yeah Everyone's always been worried about you with the weird charisma power basically Like you've always had a way of bonding As Kyle said that Craya seems interested in us partly because we can do this thing I think this is a game in which you play Charles Manson And are building the exile family And what goes from there is up to you

But like I think it's just a really cool van Yeah And you know I think the game is Will eventually be very clear That it thinks that that's a little weird I think it's already

You're hitting on something I think the game is Knows which is it's a little weird That you can do this to people And maybe that's not good You know I feel like the first time it comes Because it wasn't, so we'll get to it on Dantuan, but I feel like even before I landed on Dantuin,

somebody else I spoke with, maybe Craya, but like brought up this notion that this made people uncomfortable. That this ability to draw people in, like kind of weirded people out back when you were in the order. I can't remember who the conversation was with, but. Yeah, I don't remember this either, but that sounds like it could be Crea.

Yeah. So it's a weird one. And you got Bayo, who even back from the war is like, I'll go wherever you go, General. General, yeah. Which is now increasingly all these things that were like, oh, wow, like, the Exxon, everyone seems like weirdly, like, kind of crushing on the exile. Now it's starting to lock into place as like an almost, yeah, just like a cult of personality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Which is the stuff that should have worked with Atten, by the way, in some ways.

which is like, oh, Natalie, when you're playing darksided and you're telling him, oh, that Jedi woman was playing tricks on your mind. You were playing tricks on his mind. And there should be some value there, but they like, they like, you know, completely scratch the takeoff on it such that it's like, you can't even bring it in for a landing because it was so fucked, you know, fucked up on the launch. It's true. What were you going to say? Sorry. I was just going to say that I think like, I don't think this, I think it's a effect. of how this game is structured in the way that these hit.

But the fact that right off the bat in meeting someone, you can have like one conversation that maximizes your influence with them. And if I take that literally, if I really imagine, you know, myself, the exile, just talking to Vsauce for like, you know, a couple hours. And by the end of it, she's- extrapolate and pretend that it's a few hours. Exactly, exactly.

Like, that's weird. It's weird that I'm able to move, to change people to bring people into being, you know, prestigeing them as Jedi. Like the fact that everything is so heightened and accelerated and that people feel so they can talk to me about deep, dark things about. their past so easily that I can get information from people so easily. Like all of this is like bizarre. And so even if like-

And it's true for every video game. Right. It is true for every video game. This is not me defending it. This is me suggesting. One of the things Cotor 2 is interested in is what is the video game protagonist? Right. The exile has the special ability to make people open up to them using the force.

No, they don't. They're the video game protagonist. That's the, that's sure. Shepard, that's every video game protagonist. They got a little meter that goes up when someone likes them. And then you get access to the secrets that they have inside. And maybe you get to fuck them at the end. Like, it is that.

It's just also rushed for real. I don't want to defend it too much. Because when in the room I met the disciple in, after I stopped talking to him once and started talking to him again, he said, as we've been traveling together, it's just something I've picked up on. I'm like, traveling together. We went two feet, my man. Yeah, yeah, no, I collect that too when that happened and I was like, I don't know you.

I don't know you. I don't want to. It does feel like, it almost feels like what, like in playing Undertale where you eventually get the kind of self-reflection of how you, you know, the kind of one of the aspects of that game being like an examination of what does it mean to play in our. and to kill mobs and, you know, what is the normal- Load your save. Yeah, load your save, yeah. All these kind of like RPG conventions, what if you examined them diogenically and like and actually had to confront the kind of mechanics of those affecting the world around you?

It almost feels like Cotor is doing that, but with the concept of the player, the, the non the whatever this type of RPG the the the relationship based uh uh uh

RPG of the bio wares that would come and um yeah you know Watersgate 3 now and everything else so I will say part of this really is just bad pacing and stuff that you're talking about that is weirdly

it's like oh it's kind of good that handmaiden requires you to beat her in a fist fight to get a little more story At least it puts some like blockers, like some obstacles in your progression of the relationship so that it can break out over time rather than speed run it in a conversation. I think because I went, before I left Narshadah, I grabbed Atten and Mira to do a quick, like, tour of the place, accidentally killed loads of people. Um, but where? I never dealt with the Seraco thugs. So I opened a storage locker thinking they'd be cool about it.

They don't like that. They were extremely not. So I just had to kill like 500 people. And then people were like, oh, I can't possibly go out of the refugee camp because there's too many, uh, exchange people around. And I'm like, uh, let me take care of that. So then I went around like Pac-Man just like hoovering up little groups of exchange thugs.

Yeah. And then I was like, like, hey lady, just follow the trail of dead to the exit and you can go be with your husband. And like doing one thing with this nicer people, Miro was like, huh, you're not like I thought you were. Let me tell you about Hanhar. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. Hanhar. Real bad dude. Uh, so, so Hanhar is Natalie did a little like, eh, motion. You know, you gotta hear from his perspective.

You're only hearing one side. Let's hear from mirror and then we'll hear it from honor. Maybe from my, maybe from my side, the Jedi are evil. That's right. Yeah. Exactly. So Hanhar saw what Zerka was doing on Kashik and was like, I could get him on that. And started.

rolling around like, like becoming a slaver is is kind of his origin story. But also just like intense sadist. Just just go just going around, you know, kidnapping people, brutalizing them, you know, selling them. But very clear, like the violence, the cruelty was, was what Hanhar was all about and then like got the assignment to hunt Mira right like that was his job but Mira has a little code she has a code

she doesn't kill anyone so she laid a trap for no Hanhar laid a trap for her but she's got her little mine perk she can just dance between the mines and a minefield and Hanhar went to sort of finish her off in his in his trap

his mines exploded I think because she had a little like a thing that could cause them to malfunction Right? Was that part of it? Is that she has them a little That's right. Yeah, she knows how to She jams them with her signal And then Oh, and they only temporarily

They sort of react to them. Yeah, that's right So he follows her now into an active minefield That she just turned off. It comes back on All the mines explode And she saves him And now he's trapped by is life debt, because wookie's, it's bone deep with a wookie. Wookie can't choose to violate a life, like, life debt.

It's just like it's so, that's hardwired in, in the wookie. I'll kill people, I'll be a slaver. But if somebody saves my life, I have to, I'm bound by honor to them. I'm not just going to fuck off. Just have to have to do it. That's what being a wookie is. Yeah. So he's been hunting her ever since.

trying to get out from under this life debt, basically, like, trying to kill her so that he no longer owes this life debt to anyone. She's kept, like, trying to spare his life and run away. The other thing comes through in that, and this is, I think, another moment where you start wondering is the exile having entirely good influence on people? She mentions, again, she never kills anyone.

until she hooked up with your crew. Yeah, ever since she, and mind you, my Jedi, my exile is as light-sided as can be just about. Like we are, we are pegged in the like,

like top, like the light of the force is shining down. I got that glow about me. And she's like, ever since I hooked up with your crew, I don't know what it is. It's just like easier for me to kill people now. Yeah.

She literally, that is exactly what, she says. She says it's like a reflex. I don't like it. And I don't know when or why it became so easy. Huh. Pure light side. In this conversation, you can get a plus one light side point because you can be like, all life is connected. That's why you don't like to kill people. That's so weird. Please keep doing it. Yeah, but like, don't stop. How do you, how do you square that? How do you square being a light side Jedi and getting mirror to kill people for the first time and being like, and we're going to keep doing this? Like how?

Well, it's kind of interesting because it's not like you're saying go kill someone. That's right. It's just that just being around you now, she's able to pull the trigger, like that she never would before, but now she can do it. She'll throw regular grenades and not just stun grenades now because you've hit the throw regular grenade button. So basically she goes from being Robin to being like Red Hood is kind of the kind of the arc here. Where just being around you, it's like, actually, you know what? We should kill the Joker and his henchman too. And that's kind of where she's just like just crossing people off.

I don't know where. And doesn't know where it came from. And again, my Jedi is not like wantonly killing anyone. It's just, well, okay. I should take that back. So, like, Austin's made this point before. The game does incentivize making sure there's not a single enemy left alive in your drink. Get that XP.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Uh, yeah. Did you manage to make her, sorry, go ahead, Allie. Well, I do think, like, this, this, like, pressure point here is why it feels like it's kind of a failure of the game to not. make the NPCs more invested in the overall mission so when there are these moments

of like everybody grouping up like that moment on Narshadah when like Atten needs to rally the troops like who are these people why do they talk to each other? We don't have enough team meetings yeah like Kraya doesn't want anyone there Beyo doesn't

fuck with Aten at all like you could see more splintered relationships between the crew than you can like camaraderie And I think that's good character writing, but it's not like good, like, I think that like what we're missing through a lot of these, these influence checks are at least the like sort of Mass Effect 2 like companion mission where you can like make your case to each character or at least have them be able to say like, this is why I care about fighting the Sith. This is why I'm invested in this sort of thing. And instead her just being like, well, I kill people now and I don't really know. But that's the thing is, I like that about this. They don't care about killing the Sith. They care about you.

You care about killing the Sith. And I think that that's what the game is doing. It's, Atten followed Revin because Revin did something good. Atten follows you because you have forced bombed. That's different. Revin saved his people in the Mandalorian Civil War and earned his loyalty. you showed up and have an ability by which you can magically influence other people. Again, the thing all video game characters of this genre seem to have.

And I think that is diagetic, as Natalie pointed out, and intentional. And I think it's something that Kraya is really tuned into, and it goes back to the big conversation Kray had earlier, about the difference between a teacher and the leader and your particular brand of leader. She cannot gain influence with NPCs. She has to resort to blackmail and force true. you can literally just hit the right dialogue button and make someone a dark Jedi

as Natalie is now doing I can't believe you gave him Darth mall face paint I didn't do that that he went in the bathroom and did that himself kitty cat so that's true that is just what she does

it's like welcome to the crew oh yeah people should look for that photo of Rob does he like still at least care about the environment and stuff. Yeah, he wants to be fucked up in Gothic and twisted.

None of his... Okay, so this is actually the part that's kind of frustrating with being dark-sighted is everyone will still be like you look like you're rotting from the inside. What's wrong with you?

And I'll be like, bro, you too. Like, we're in this together. What do you mean? We look like shit, bro. We're like cooked and like it's it's that's the vibe now like this is the vibe for us and it's it's kind of there's a little bit of a dissonance with it because on one hand I could sort of justify the oh they're putting their they're putting me above themselves and that like they're they're they're unable to see their own like they're not even looking at kind of looking inwards or looking at themselves they're so concerned with me that like. my well-being is of utmost importance.

But at the same time, they still say, like, you can still be saved, you know, it's not too late for you, et cetera. Meanwhile, they're literally already a dark Jedi. And so I'm like, it's a little bit weird. But, you know, I let it be. I did have. I'm looking at the Beauder conversion and it doesn't, he doesn't have one. It's the same as if you turn him into a Jedi.

What do you mean? Really? What's the tech? Did you turn him into a Jedi, a dark Jedi? You did. Yeah. What is, I'm looking at the breakdown on, on this thing. Is there a, is there a different, like, what did you tell him?

I told him, I have it here. Bo, B, B, oh, B, B, O, B, B, B. Because for me, it was like him being like, I can't go down this path, general. I hurt so many people. I'm very sad about it still. I was so filled with anger and hate. And part of the thing that I love with this, with turning him to a Jedi is what you get with him is very much like, oh, being a Jedi means you're going to have to learn how to control that desire for hurting other people, the desire for vengeance, the desire to kill. Because if you don't, you're going to become a dark Jedi.

And I don't think you're going to become a dark Jedi. I trust you to take that seriously enough that you hold, that you confront those feelings and become even, even, and become good, that you, that you, like, overcome that hatred. Are there, is it the same dialogue? Because in that dialogue tree, there were times where I could be like, it was good that you killed all those Mandalorians and the hate has felt good, but didn't feel like it was a different pathway. Yeah, yeah.

It, um, so I actually am realizing that I need like one more plus influence with Beauder. I didn't, I didn't prestige him yet. Oh, okay. I just double checked. But it is the same. There is no special, unless there's something in the restored content mod that is not in the wiki here. Um, I'll follow up after. Yeah, follow up.

I get a little bit more. I like literally need, I think like a couple. more points. He painted his face for you. He isn't even even a little. He doesn't say, I keep talking to him. He's like, do you need anything? I'm like, I, the only thing I can ask for is like some fucking repair kits

or whatever. I forget what I get from him. And I'm like, I want to I want to have a conversation with you, but for some reason, I need to like bring you out one more time on another planet and then we can do this thing, but whatever. It almost makes me want to

have the, the mod where you can check the influence with everyone because I think just being, going dark side and also trying to prestige everyone, it does require a lot of balancing my decision making when I'm making choices. Like I can't just kind of like go with like just vibe out in my conversations.

I like usually am consulting a guy that is telling me what's going to gain me influence, what's not. are you max red at this point do you have the I mean T3 was smoking like T3 is like yeah character portrait is in like a active volcano okay if you hit max low

what I've learned is the cheap way the non-mod way to check influence if you have maximum or like minimum morality if you're at totally light you get this big beam of light behind you the light siders here will know what I'm talking about maybe maybe they won't rob do you have this i did and then i pillar okay yeah you made some

regular choices yeah of course when you have that if another character has that you have max influence with them oh so that must be the dark smoke yeah i think that's probably the gray smoke that makes the most sense okay so definitely have it maxed out with t3 and t3 three is yeah you really fucked up T3. Hand-hard. I'm in your T-3 now. Beep-boo-boo-boo-be! I know.

It's so ridiculous that he's evil, but it's too. Here's another thing that's maybe interesting on the influence thing. You can't, you can't make obviously the droids, Jedi, and you can't make Mandelor a Jedi. You can still influence them, but you can't make them a Jedi, including Mandelor, who theoretically,

that's just a person, but you can't, like, give him the force. The fact that there is a hard limit all that, and you can't influence Kraya. you get influenced with Crea, but you can't change her morality. She's just Creia. She's crea coded.

She's crea coded. Although there are some particle effects in her. Maybe she can go a little blue, a little red, but not. Like there's a little... Because I do think mine's a little more blue than you. Yellow sparks. Hmm, interesting.

It might just be like the grayness, the gray smoke of it all. Yeah, so... But yeah, with Vauder, I haven't really been able to have a conversation. Yeah, we need to get there. Should we talk about Dan Tween? Is there anybody else we've actually had deep convos with?

Quick thing. Austin, you just made a good point about like this game being a sort of high, like a sort of a deconstruction of like tropes of like, hey, like, or just like examine the literal text of what is happening in a, the, what should be. ludonarrative dissonance in routine in RPGs. I think the mirror thing her killing people right and left is playing with the notion that in RPGs, ostensibly, every encounter is to the death. Right. And nobody cares because the enemies flash and disappear and turn into XP, but it's not like you see it.

But like all these games also have like, almost all of them have like child characters who come join the group. Like Final Fantasy, there's always like a kid or two. basically who's like tagging along and if what the game is depicting is literally happening then it's like okay you come come join my merry band of mass murderers and like so mirrors never killed anyone until she was stuck in a combat encounter with you for the first time where you have no choice but to just wipe everyone out because co-score does not let you take someone down to one HP

and knock your hand. Even if you force push them, they're effectively dead. Which I guess is like in a weird way you could test that, right? Not literally, but like if you went out with Mira

as soon as you got her and only used force push to win fights and she didn't and all, unequipped physical like weapons from everybody and put her on passive, she would still report that you were killing people. Now, obviously it's like bulls, shit. Like, I understand I'm being, I'm being kind of pedantic here. But, like, she's going to say,

I kill people now, even if you've never killed someone with her in your party, which is just the limits of this thing. But. And Mira again, feeling like she is the twisted version of mission and, and, yes, 100%. And the way that, like, mission is your sniper. Like, like, the little orphan kid you adopt your tutorial planet is like headshotting people that's right by the end of the tutorial planet like this is like this is like if uh leon the professional seamlessly turns into american sniper that's right and like that's really weird that like this little kid is going on adventures with you and then like gee i sure hope my brother loves me. I wonder where he is. Hang on one second. I got to lead this guy a little bit

more. Head explodes. And then it's like he's turned over a new leaf. He's going to start a microbrewery. I hope they're doing okay. Not in my game. They're not because I had Zalbar killer. But you know, in your games. Yeah. I think they're they're probably out there habit. He really wanted to get away from her though. Like there was a there was a real desperate. Like it's bad. I have to go be with my family now. now and please leave. But so like you have that dynamic with Mira. There's another through line that is making me a little bit.

The way the game tries to, or characters in the game try to box you into moral quandaries that I don't think are legit. Like there's a moment where Mandelor was like. That's all of Narshadah. Mandelor is like, hey, what do you think of the Republic? I mean, like, tell me what you actually, what you actually think. Do you think it was good? The Republic One?

And by the way, you don't have an option to qualify it. Like, basically all your responses to him were like, yeah, it was, obviously. And he's like, but then look at everything that happened. Like, the Mandalorians were on their way to creating an empire that could have resisted the Sith. But the Republic won and like, look how fucked up things got. Maybe you should think about that. I'm saying they're like, man, fuck off.

Like, I'm sorry. You don't get it. You did not get to, like, launch a genocidal, like, enslavement campaign, mostly for the epic wins that you're out there to post. And then turn around and be like, we're not so different, you and I. Don't you think, don't you think the Republic, the Mandalrians, it's all kind of the same.

And actually, maybe it would have been better if we, and it's like literally people are describing Mandalians as, like, glassing planets as much as the Sith were. uh basically on their on their way through the they didn't even have an ideology behind it besides it's fun to do it yeah and we're doing it so that people send their badasses out to come fight us so that we can feel big big and strong and i'm like man lord fuck off dude then i know you're candorous under there yeah eat shit he believed all that shit back then too i know yeah they're just bringing people under the tent it's good for the galaxy

They keep their sleeves guns. It's fine. They were just trying to, you know, build a bigger army. Only they had. I guess actually, wait. Sorry, I just realized we moved past Mira. We didn't get Han Har story. Do you have Han Har story?

Should we get Han Har story at this point? I do. I do. Is it different from what we know? It's, it actually is less information. So, like, his perspective. I probably would be volunteering that much. if I were Han Har either.

I mean, yeah. His perspective is basically just that, let me pull it up here. Where is my note? Here it is. Okay. You have to like max your influence with him to be able to even ask him.

Why did he, like, why did he kill Mira? Sure. And his justification is really just that... She's dead for you, I just remembered right, okay. Yeah, she's dead. She does not exist. She is dead. Like, when I first asked him, I didn't have enough influence, and he just said, like, I was stronger.

She was prey. She was weak. And then you can do a persuasion check and say, well, what weakness about her made you want to kill her? and that's when he starts to reveal by other hunters it is said that she spared my life which is there is no truth in such words she spared my life as an insult to break my spirit

she held my life in her hands and she cast it away and then once you get more influence with him he kind of goes into a little bit more and just says like she showed me mercy and that I could not bear to feel such from prey.

She had my life in her hands. Her weapon pointed at me as I lay wounded in my own traps, and she did not kill me. And when I saw her eyes, I saw she felt mercy. And to him having to, like, the Hanhar backstory, I should say, is that Hanhar's tribe was taken over by Circa, and Circa basically enslaved his entire tribe. Sure.

We've seen this happen. Yes. In his, yeah, we saw it last game. We saw what happened on, um, on, uh, yeah, Kishik. So his solution to, uh, how he would free his people from the, chains of circus slavery is by killing them was his solution oh that doesn't work because now they're dead so now they're dead um it's it's really hard to talk to ANR because he's just like he's so like psycho-coded like he's just like oh you're like and you're like and you're

and the way you talk about him is like when you ask Crea why do we have this psychotic wookie on board like you literally call him psychotic and um when you talk to him you can say like you're mad you're mad you went mad with with uh with anger with hate and that's what drove you to kill your people and he says no no I was freeing them like you have to understand like to live in the shadow lands is like to basically to pass on to the other side is is the only true freedom otherwise we we live our lives as slaves to to humans or you know uh as slaves in our life debts if that's like if that's what happens so which it did for him right i see which it did for him. So to him, it meant entering a life debt to Mira was akin to watching, was the same

like degree of, of, uh, servitude as his people to the Circa corporation. Um, that's wild. This is her saving him and him being like, this is just like what I had to kill my family to get them free from the slavers you need to kill me now it's it's but then you can like the way that you can talk to him about it that's like that gains you influence with him is basically saying like i think you you had a death drive like you wanted her to kill you and the fact you wanted to end your life you get to this guy with like dime store psychoanalysis i just say yeah between that and calling him psychotic it's like i didn't know Freud existed in the galaxy fire.

Dada Freud is the, is Freud's name in Star Wars World. Yeah, no, it's, it's rough. Like, I tried really hard to find, like, anything here that I could be like, okay, like, like, the Aton examination that we just did. Like, there's like this high level version that I like, okay, I can kind of see where you were cooking with that. But with Hanhart, it's just like he's so resigned to being this, this person who went mad with hatred for seeing his people enslaved that he literally killed them all. And then because he couldn't live, you have to force him into believing that he couldn't live with that shame or that guilt and that that's why he sought to, to, that's why he was so upset when Mira like forced him into a life debt, essentially.

Which, okay, there's like a small piece of that that I can, that I can grasp there. The idea of a life debt, the idea of like being spared, meaning how. to tie your life and your like that I'm like okay there's the seed of something interesting yeah yeah but it's just it's so wrapped up in like a lot of like him being coded as like he's often referred to as like a savage he's often referred to as like you know his primal strength is what you must learn from him when when his like the the The furthest extent of your relationship with him is you have to, Crea asks you to break Hanhar.

Bro. So, yeah. Like a horse? There's, yeah, yeah. Cray asks you to do this? Yes, yes. So Crea and Hanhar have a, you know, a back and forth where she's like, you, we talked about this when Hanhar was first introduced.

where Crea is like, you are going to serve the exile until I tell you not to, basically. So when you ask Crea, like, why did you invite this guy on board? Like, why did, because he's the only one that Crea, like, okay is bringing on board, right? Finally, a good crew member. Finally, I like this guy. She says to you to,

there is, the beast is a lesson in, strength. Learn that lesson than you will understand. And when you ask her, like, what could, it's really fucked up because you're constantly referring to him as like an animal and it's, it's just bad vibes. But Crea says, you say to her, I fail to see what that animal could teach me. And Crea says, because he is life at its most primitive. And he represents what happens when civilization comes to primates the illusion that we are something more than our instincts it's so rough um so then after you have this conversation with crea you can go back to hanhar and you basically get him to talk more about the life debt um and he you know whereas before when we've heard of wukies

talk about life debts it's often coded in like an honor like this is an honor to serve a life debt he very much sees this as a form of slavery um like the way he describes it is for my people to stop one from dying from traveling to the shadow lands which is like their version of the afterlife makes their life yours they are invisible shackles that one wears upon the writs and in the mind um so you can break him and to you tell him you were for to let your primitive customs chain your actions. Oh, it's dark-sided, all right. Yeah, it's definitely dark-sighted.

And then, you know, he basically says, like, how could I give up my culture? Like, how could I give up, like, you know, the culture of my people? That will mean that I won't get to, like, go to the shadowlands when I do die if I, if I forego the beliefs of my people. And then you can basically, you just keep,

pushing and you say well then you will always be weak you will always be prey um and uh eventually you just say like uh to to do this he says when i die oh my god yeah it's just bad he he says enough human you wish to break me from my people you wish to make it so i am no longer pray you've done it. You've shattered the shackles in my mind with your words. The last place, the place beyond the shadow lands is now denied to me. I honor no life debt now and I walk with you and your tribe by choice. So in order to get him to abandon the concept of the life debt, you break him into your own service minus the concept of the life debt behind it. He doesn't get to go to heaven in his mind. He's given up. He's committed himself to hell. Correct. So that he can

feel strong and strong though I wouldn't and when do this and when you do it I mean it's so sad like it's like he says he says to you you've murdered that which made me weak and it killed my spirit um and then he gains plus two strength and loses minus two intelligence Dude, Nietzsche would love this dude. Yeah. Oh, my God. And then... Oh, this is so good.

And then you... This is Darkside teachings. Yeah. Yeah. And then that's just step one. Then you have to ask him what is the source of his strength. And that's what you need to report back to Creia. So when you find out, he, when you ask him,

What is the source of your strength? He's like, oh, Kraya asked you to ask me that, huh? And he says, the old woman knows the lesson of strength. Her strength is to fasten shackles from air from the mind. She is a dangerous predator because she hunts other predators. It is a dangerous predator that can bend the will of another with a word. And then you can ask him, well, what does prey, what prey does Krea hunt? and he says she hunts truth i think and she seeks it in you and truth is dangerous prey difficult

to seek and difficult to face and with greater desperation she hunts that which runs against truth and when you ask okay so you're like okay so what the fuck is the lesson of strength he says to be brave enough to hunt truth yes for the hunting ground for such things within you but that is not all that is only first step and then you can go report it back to Crea and Crea is like so did you learn the lesson of strength and you can be like yeah and if you have the wisdom or awareness you can say he's incredibly strong yet he is powerless and then she's like why and you can be like he raw strength is nothing compared to the power of one's will the force is strong will is strong sure exactly

Exactly. So then you basically get an option where she's like, well, do you want to learn this lesson of his raw strength? Or do you want to reject it? You can be like, yeah, I want to get strong and you get plus two strength. Or you can say, no, I reject the lesson of strength. And she's like, oh, even smarter. This is a very strange but unique choice. Oh. What do you get? What do you get? Plus two to wisdom, baby. I am so wise. I'm so wise. So yeah, I mean, that's basically, I think, it with Hanhar. I think I've done everything I can with him. There's a lot of like dark side specific conversation stuff too

that it's just there's beyond that one seed of kind of characterizing a life debt as like a form of slavery or servitude, it goes absolutely nowhere. so pretty disappointing I would say and definitely disappointing for him to just the way that everyone talks about him is is very degrading

yeah do other characters in the ship talk about him or are people being like who's that smelly wookie you brought in it's like that vibe yeah it's like that vibe I think somebody else I think when he you can ask maybe Atten at some point or he'll have like something when he first shows up, yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, that's it. Other than that, I had like a couple interesting cutscenes in my, on the ship. One was with Bauder and Krea. Oh. Oh, I've not had this one,

but I know the one you're talking about. I'll save it. Save that for. Oh, Atten and Crea, because right after Atten's like, I've gotten right with the force. I'm free, Crea, and she's like, please. It's real mean. I don't know if this is her doing damage control on losing leverage with him and like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube. It's basically just like you're still under my thumb effectively.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's like, I told no more of your threats, no more of your requests, you and me were dumb. done. And she says, did you ever think I truly held you? You were more of a fool than I thought. What truly held you was you. And let me show you why. I once held the galaxy by the throat, as you once held her by the throat, and let her die slowly. And your emotion at that point is what you fear. I wielded power like you cannot imagine. Everything I saw was a watch with possibilities, spreading outwards, touching everything else. I saw all of that, all of the force is,

and only one is ripped from me that I truly see it. And I know what lies buried within you, that you hide with your desperate thoughts, your guilt, your lusts. Or perhaps you will continue to listen to my counsel, and I should ignore your pathetic attempts at freedom. Crea really invented gaslighting. Like, really, like, it's so wild.

It's so crazy to be like, oh, you thought I was manipulating you. You were manipulating you actually from the beginning. Like you're crazy for thinking I was doing it. Like you're stupid. Oh, she's good. Yeah. To the most manipulative woman I've ever seen in a video game. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Maybe those are the person I've ever seen in a video game, but it's up there. There's some other. There's some other. There's some guys who are pretty fucked up, so. Everything else's disciples stuff. I'm going to say I'll come back on the Goto one. There's a really fun Goto one.

Everyone should do the thing when they talk to Goto. You can get almost all of it through just talking to him, I think. You might have to get a little bit of influence, but you'll get that by finishing Dantuin and being like, I finished it. Oh, you could also at this point go back to Gita on Darsadah and she'll be like, thanks. And there's it. There's nothing else there. But yeah. Although I did get...

Go ahead. I was just going to say on the way back to Narcadah, has anyone else gotten some Handmaiden Atris, like... Oh, yes. Oh, the cut back to the Handmaiden? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The cut back to the handmaid's... Atress being like, oh, no, the handmaidens.

Hazards of delegating. Yes. We get a little cutscene. Well, wait, time out because actually there's a conversation. That's, I think that that's... triggered because of a Crea conversation. Oh. Do you know the Crea conversation I'm talking about? Maybe not. Have y'all had the conversation with Crea? Maybe I'm wrong then. There's a conversation with Crea where you can be like, hey, why doesn't Zezcal know that you were with me or why didn't

Atris know that you were with me? Why is it that no one seems to pick up that you're here? And she's like, yeah, I can do that. There are techniques in the force to prevent people from seeing me. or knowing that I'm with you effectively. And that has hidden me in key moments that would be inconvenient for us, basically. Wait, I haven't gotten that. And I'm like, I didn't get that. I didn't get that.

Okay, so then there's not tied to that. I got Atris finding out from the two handmaidens. Yeah, there was like this old lady who was with the exile. Okay. You're like, wait, what? Yeah. There was an old lady, and they were like, you were so busy and like, she was asleep.

Okay. Well, then that's what this is. I've realized now that this is actually tied to the big Revin conversation with Kraya, which I'm guessing people still haven't had. I do have that. Okay. Well, it's at the end of that, Natalie. At the end of that, you can be like, wait a second.

The story you just told makes me think that the Jedi Masters and Atra should have known you. Oh, that. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Why did none of them mention them to me? Because we're traveling together. And she says, there are techniques in the force where one can cloud the memory of others. make their presence so small as to be unnoticed. And on the worlds where we've encountered the Jedi,

there's much life and death where sensing such things is difficult. As I said, it's of no consequence to me or them. And you can say, do you use that technique on me? And she says, no, but if I did, you would never know. So my words only carry as much worth as you believe them to. But perhaps you will understand this, that perhaps it's important to me that you see me and my actions uncloked. It's important that your judgments, whether good,

or bad, stem from seeing me as I truly am. And you can say, I accept that. And I trust you. And she says, I did not ask you to trust me, only that you listen to what I have to tell you, but thank you. Or you can say, I still think that you're lying to me and that you haven't told me everything. And she, of course, says, then you're learning quickly. Distrust is an effective shield and should be carried always. And I thought that scene is what triggered.

The atris scenes where the handmaidens all go. yeah, when the exile left with the old woman, you know, she seemed like a bet. She said it all seemed kind of bad to me. And Atre's like, what old woman? What are you talking about? There was an old woman. I got to go back to my red holocron chamber. I need to go meditate on this.

Yeah. Uh-huh. For Aitch is suddenly getting attention headache. It's so funny. Like I just got, uh, top, top comment, by the way, on the most recent, let's play. From Golas says, Atris going to her chambers to doom scroll with the red cubes when she feels things are collapsing around her.

She just, like, me, for real, for real. Oh. It's pretty embarrassing that, like, she had her nemesis in lockup, and the head maidens were like, we don't need to bother Atris about this. She's so sleepy today. She's so sleepy today. I need y'all to get your,

your, uh, Crea stuff, Max so that we could talk about her relationship. I can't. I know.

But you gotta work on it. I'll give it another week or two, but we have to. I, I'm just gonna have to get a guide and be like, what does, hey,

what do you think Kraya would like for me to do? Yeah, that's the thing this game doesn't have, right? It's like, a lot of these games

eventually would give like, oh, you can go buy a stuffed dog and give it to Layliana to raise her influence. Not in this game, buddy. You got to bring him out

and to do something. Oh, man. If only this game were made in the era, though, where, like, giving gifts to party members could, like, build the affinity. That's what I'm saying. Because, like, what would you have to give her?

Affinities would be all over the map. Oh, yeah. It'd be really unpredictable. I found you a Sith relic. Oh. Thanks. Tots into the trash. Oh, you believe that objects hold power?

I thought you'd been listening. But then you get a nice bottle of whiskey, and she's like, you know, hmm, there's always room for such a, diversion in a journey like ours. Like, oh, okay, yeah, sure. Great. I should warn you exile.

I've been known to get sloppy. Oh, God. Scenic Dantuin. The majestic plains, the beautiful sunsets, the kinrath. Ooh. The local merchants with their charming wares and delightful. wears and delightful gab for visitors come and play a game of chance with some of the some of the colorful local characters go see the famous which family was it i think this is the

matali families i think it's the northern family the matali and anyway check out one of two identical villas we had on this planet but this one is the one we're caring about now it's now our town You might think, but that's not a town, that's a house. Well, here in Cotor 2, it can be both. We didn't have the time. Look, this game had to get done in a year. We didn't have time to make the town. What we had was a house from the previous game.

So we just put the town in it. And you can imagine all those things that could be closets. What if there was just more village happening in there? That could be an arms dealership right over there. And this, this could be. arms dealers on this planet there are there really are oh there's but also we like you could go over this this content we go over the story with a fine tooth comb there are of course side quests I'm curious to hear how some stuff went for you all so I don't want to say we should skip all

of it but the big picture stuff is like nothing here it's pretty bad it's so boring I'm so glad we didn't come here first uh I guess maybe it would have been interesting to come here first when people were like, you're not a Jedi, are you? Instead of now when they're like, you have a lightsaber, you're a Jedi. I'm running away from you in fear.

Also, I fucked up and I made the droid smart. This droid, it's a landing pad that's like malfunctioning. And I repaired it. And it was like, thank you for fixing me. Master exile.

And it was like, son of a bitch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do think it like the game, it does kind of feel like the game assumes that you'd,

do Dantuin first in a weird way because there's just like a couple conversation choices that make it feel like well one I think the disciples saying

you know we've been traveling together all this time right after he joins you like I think there's just something that assumes you've spent a lot of time and he also he gives you so much backstory like he's like the fucking

lore guy, I guess. Well, yeah, I think the, this is my, we'll get to, let's, I'm going to not say the thing I want to say about him yet. He does do that. You're right. I'll explain later why I think it's bad that he does that, but you're right. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's just like, it's a very, you know. Ruk is the guy who says all the stuff you expect the Jedi who cast you out to say.

Yeah. Right. So if you wanted, you know, our first full Jedi conversation was Es Kyle, being like, bro, you might have been right about all of this. And if you instead had started with Rook, when Rook was like, you know, giving you the vision of the shithead Jedi's that you got in the, in the recording,

maybe that actually justifies the turn to the dark side a little bit more because it's like, you know what I don't have fuck these guys, actually? I don't want to be a Jedi. I don't want to deal with the shitty with Rook and these guys. Like, so maybe there's value there. But. Yeah. It also just feels like given how little there is to do here, like even just in mobs, like there are very few groups of enemies roaming around this area.

It kind of feels like a beginner zone. It's funny that the mercenaries really don't, there are never any like random mercenary groups to fight who are like roaming around even. It's just different animals. And then you like sometimes fight the mercenaries in story battles and stuff, but they're not like. Right, right. The big thing is it comes at the end, I guess. There's things that don't pay off here, which I think is one of the frustrating things about this.

Like, first, people Dantuin don't like the Jedi. And this seems like it's going to be really to the point of something we've heard a lot in this game, which is that as far as the rest of the galaxy is concerned, Jedi, Sith, it was, and I think the exile makes this point, they hear Jedi-Syth War, and they're like, it was Jedi fighting Jedi. You know, the point that, like, these are Sith apostates,

is kind of lost on everyone else and arguably, justifiably so. But it's held out, like, once people on Dantui know you're a Jedi, this is going to cause problems. Oh, by the way, I'm gonna pissed Craya off. I got out of as a Jedi and she was like, real nice. And I lost influence with Crea.

And I was like, literally, I just landed on this goddamn planet. Like, should I just like mind controlled that dude to, I guess maybe I should have. But sometimes she's like, don't use mind control. What do you want from me, Crea? I'm losing my mind. She wants you not to walk around with your lightsaber out when you're a hunted, hunted person. Well, I'm a male Jedi, and so it's real important to me, as we discussed at the first story

beat while I was asleep, and we all got in her little meditation poses and then fell asleep. And then she, you know, she was explaining that, like, Jedi and their lightsabers, and now I have a double lightsaber. So what? You think I'm not going to be walking around with that thing out? Of course I am. Plus, I put bonds on it. It's got like, it's got like emitters and shit.

It's a good lightsaber. Anyway, they're like, they know you're a Jedi now. That's going to cause problems. It does not cause problems. It feels like there was an idea of like there'd be a version of this where you're trying to keep it on the DL or that there's going to be a lot of things where like, who knows what about your Jedi status is going to be important on Dantuan. Doesn't really come up.

You get fearful glances from like the end. PCs, but nothing ever happens. Characters are like, yeah, people don't like Jedi. And then when you do good deeds for the town, they like Jedi again. Problem solved. So, like, that's the first thing that, like, doesn't really pay off. The other thing is one of the characters that sort of catches your eye, Garavik.

Garavik, with a wild voice. Little oily, strangely courtly, very full of himself, sinister. is sort of caught up. There's an entire like deadwood-ass thing that's happening in this where like the salvagers are all over the planet

like excavating claims and there was a rich vein of salvage found by this team that was like that they were all killed mysteriously but Gerevick seems to have been the heart of it and then Garevich just gets God

he just shows up in the Jedi Temple the enclave and he's like hey I'm here to kill you Except, yeah, and then he's just gone, but it feels like this is supposed to be somebody. It feels like there's an entire, like, this is your sinister villain of Dantuin, and they're like, yeah, so then he just shows up with a bunch of identical bounty hunters and you kill them all. He's like an even worse version of the hot lady from Tilos or the twin sons on Dar Shadah. He is the like sort of interesting on his face aesthetically character. in this case it's largely voice acting

and then you go and then it's like okay what's that going to cash out to and the answer is he's going to get shot to death in the hallway and that's it like it's not anything it was so sad going through the whole enclave and fighting individual bugs

and like sort of struggling with it because sometimes they would team you and then coming up to a pack of bounty hunters so closely standing together that it was like two force lightning things that brought them down like it was like a second long fight it was so pathetic yeah and especially

from a guy who has so much aura when you first meet him he's like there's like you have like two attempts maybe like fail of a check with him and he's like I don't like get interruptions get out of here and I'm like I'm just passing through uh okay I guess you're just like a cooler character that I am the sheriff of the town is like Garivik had something to do with it. There are witnesses that he, you know, he's telling the truth about a story, but funny thing,

he said he shot a man overgame Pazok, but Garevick doesn't play Pizak. Interesting. We got a little murder mystery in this old last time. Not going to come up. We're just going to move on from it. It doesn't matter.

So the entire chapter kind of feels like the beginning of ideas that just don't, like whatever subplot is supposed to be there. Well, and there's stuff that some of it does have a resolution that is really hard to get. The Jedi thing, apparently there is a version of something that can resolve that I would, I'm wondering if any of us, we're going to come back to Dan Tween later in the game. And there's a follow-up about one thing, which is the thing you talked about first, Rob, the like the Jedi hating. There's a particular character who can go from who hates Jedi to likes Jedi. I don't know that any of us have done the set of dialogue options necessary to get us onto that path, but it exists.

But that still doesn't sound like a great conclusion. And the fact that it's so particular means that it's unlikely for us to have seen it. For me, the other version of that was there's the young militiamen who you meet who is like, I think that the head guy here is up to no good. I want you to research or like to investigate him. And I was like, yeah, I bet. Like I'll, I'll, I'll be talking to people all the time anyway. So if something is fishy, I'll find out about it.

And by the end, by the time like I came back in after meeting the head mercenary guy, this guy was like, wow, it sure is a good thing. You didn't, you know, throw that guy under the bus because the head of the militia is actually a good guy. And I was like, okay, if you say so. Like I feel like I fully missed this quest I talk to people I apparently he's fine I found out that

he was working with a mercenary on the inside He had he had a relationship with a mercenary And they had like their own plan I wasn't privy to what the plan was But he told me I basically walked up to him And I was like yo your underling is worried about you so just wondering if like there's anything I should know about

and he was like I don't really give a shit about that but if you want some work around here like here's a couple things you can do and why don't you go talk to one of the mercenaries and give him a message for me and tell him it's time so when you go to the mercenary camp

for the first time you can have like a side conversation with one of the mercenaries and be like hey our mutual homie says it's time Yeah, is the head of the militia. Geron, who's voiced by Charles Dennis, who I'm shouting out because I think this guy's voice kicks ass.

Yeah. I'm, like, what is this guy doing here in the back of a closet? He has, he's so cool. He's so cool. I want him to be a party member. I know. He's so, like, he's so, like, I want him to be a party member. And did y'all talk to the mercenary who's, like, force sensitive in the caves?

Who has the gland? Oh, yeah. Give me the gland. Well, I took the gland from him and held it, and I was like, cool. And I just gave it back to him and he was like, thanks. He's still there. He doesn't come to the fight. He lives.

He doesn't die. That's the homie. He's going to live forever as far as I'm concerned. He dies. He was the decision that made my character's face change. She looks really tired and pale now. Are you going dark side? I'm darksided.

I see. I see. Wow. Um, yeah. So, so. So, yeah. You deliver that message to the mercenary. I delivered the message to the mercenary, which ends up paying off in the final battle because he, like, turns on the mercenaries, essentially.

But wouldn't you sided with the way? You're evil. Why are you not siding with the mercenaries? I didn't side with the mercenaries. I sided with, uh, I, I, because, okay. She's on her own side. I was just like, because there was no, there was. was nothing about the mercenaries that I felt like they had any claim here or that anything

about the mercenaries being here would make you're role-playing yeah I'm role-playing a little bit I was like okay I fuck with this guy who's kind of doing covert listening devices and you know has a man on the inside like I kind of like his vibe but then I reported him in to to the prime minister here. I don't know what she is. The leader, the mayor. The mayor. Nothing's more dark chat out than being a narque.

You know? And then she was like, oh, that's bad. I'm going to definitely put him on probation. I was like, okay, like, sounds good. And then when the battle comes up, because eventually this all results in the mercenaries versus the town, aka the house. and when that

right before that happens she's like I just reinstated the oh I reinstated him he's back in Geron's back he we need this guy

for this job and the other thing is that the whole time when I was investigating and I got material like I got dirt on Geron I went to his underling and I was like hey I know some shit

and he was like oh oh oh don't tell me anything just go ahead and do what you need to do so I was like do you want the job or not like you you asked me to go do this this this this investigating for you I'm reporting back and he was like he was like just go talk to the mayor go talk to the mayor I can't handle it I was like bro what what what did you get me involved with this shit for so that's why I was like fuck him get the get the other guy back in and you know No, whatever. This, I was like, this place is a mess.

I don't even, I don't want anything to do with it. I'll help you kill these mercenaries and then you're on your own. I don't give a shit about any of you guys. Oh, no. So there's one thing I love about this planet. And it's all of the lightsaber crystals. You get, oh, my God. It's all the loot that you get all here.

It's, there's multiple quests or at the end, the guy that someone is like, yeah, there's just this Jedi shit. And you're like, oh, yes, please. I will take that off your hands. I will give you a thousand credits. I will give you a corpse. Whatever you need for me. for me to get the Jedi stuff, I will be taking that. Also, while I was on this planet, I had four straight crashes in the middle of the battle.

I had to redo that battle three or four times. Why? And I found out what it was. And it's, well, the first time, it's tied to a bugged lightsaber I have. One of Atten's lightsabers was duplicating itself. And if I looked at the information on the lightsaber while I was inside a certain place, the game would crash. and sometimes it was also just fucked because it was like crashing in little conversations

it's all in the let's play but at the end of the day I do not have two really strong lightsabers I have a bonus light saber with all the great crystals in it so it's fine it's fine but the loot you get on this plane it's unbelievable I was buying underweaves

hell yeah dude overweaves plies robes there's Jedi armor I found light Jezzen Shah Warrior armor is like Oh, it's light armor, high decks bonus, high armor class, and then you have full force powers. It's over. It's done.

It's over for these guys. Also, I have an important thing. You go in that crystal cave where the mercenaries are and Verruc is. You find the crystals. There's all the crystals. You get the crystal that's the your name crystal, right? Yeah. Super important.

Talk to Crea. You could be like, what's up with that crystal? She'll be like, oh. Oh, weird, if you've leveled up enough, or maybe it's if you're, if you're, if you're, if your light side, dark side has changed, I guess I'm not 100% sure. She will be like, oh, it seems like it got desynced to you. Let me re-sync it for you. Take it out of the lightsaber. You go talk to her.

Sorry, is this the genius part? Like, what is happening? She will level up the crystal for you more from when you first get it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you can keep updating it as you go. It's really strong. This is besides her, like you.

for Splututh when you walk into the cave and be like, get to that one. That's exactly, yes. That's true. It's a tune to you. Yes, 100%. Apparently there are 10 possible upgrades to it. It's level based, yes. That's crazy, because I think it's already giving me like plus two to like four different

skills. It's so strong. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, there's a lot of them. Can we talk about just how fucking busted this game is now at this point with like the gear, the gearing? So there's now just like, hey, this shirt, this shirt makes you smart and handsome.

Dude. This belt, that's a lifting belt, but also it's for dancing. Oh, and this like this like headband, it makes you like thick as hell, bro. Like you're just like nobody can bring you down. And so like I am now just able to respect characters completely based on kit. And that's before I get through the fucking lightsaber crystals Which also for the low low price of like yeah So you can't deflect some blasters

We're gonna make you worse at deflecting shit We're making you better at everything else And nobody's able to fire a blaster at you Because you're gonna kill them immediately Yep The mind name crystal gives me an attack plus two A plus four decks a plus three strength And a plus five wisdom

Which turns my character who is not a caster Into a caster Because that five wisdom gets me up I have the same wisdom as Kraya. Oh. So I'm, I have kind of a crazy build right now because I have double stunned things on my lightsabers. And then I have force wave, which seemingly is an AOE where your character just snaps in the air.

And then everybody, the area is like, what the fuck just has it? So like I just walk up to like stasis enemies and just hit them with hammers, basically. Like it's going really well. I forget what I put all on Mandelor. I think he just got one of those ridiculous sets of gloves and like one of the neural like band type things. But either way, he is no longer able to be hit. Like this appears to be true.

Like in the entire, he was with me in the final like waves of enemies pouring in. No, you can touch them. No, or at least nothing's getting through because I actually should probably look at the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, all my characters now are pretty resistant to taking damage. Uh, actually,

my dude is still the softest. Like, I have to, I have to duck in and, like, do a quick med pack from time to time. Mm-hmm. But beyond that, I am not sure. I,

it is possible that the, entire party got wiped except for Mandelor, he would have just slowly would he's not doing his ton of damage but he is just not getting hit it is and also he's just got a ridiculous number of hit points so even if they do start landing blows like

he'll be brought down on a geological time scale he's re-tend too right? He has a choice you can put the he has different things that you could set for him yeah yeah Oh, by the way, all my, all my Evan Hawk homies have regent now, basically. Like everyone's got the underweave.

It's just like the biorestorative. It's like my guy's good at healing. So we're all getting the, we're all getting that like under armor that just makes you feel absolutely amazing. So that's what we're doing. So yeah, it's, I kind of wish this were a more fun combat game in some ways because there's, just like the game is now at a point where it's like go ahead just like break the entire balance of this game like why shouldn't your characters have all their attributes start in the 20s and then from there you can decide how you're going to spec things out but it's still not

that fun as far as the combat like it's it's it's a lot of like I'm just going to stunlock people in Newcomb I mean and if not getting stunned locked I put on the the the the the the the the the the smart gloves more wisdom more charisma wisdom and then they then they get stunned yeah it's tough it's um you know the if they're not going to make the seven samurai fight good don't make the seven samurai fight uh it does not matter how many i've i wasted so much time trying to get the minefield thing right um i don't if y'all notice this but when you're laying out so at the end of this you go back and you talk to the guys and you're like oh the mercenaries are going to come and you can repair some turrets

and you can fix the droids and you can lay out some mines in the minefields and in one of the minefields when you lay out enough mines it goes, oh yeah, that's enough minds for this minefield. And the other minefield, it would not tell me that.

I put out like 20 mines in the other minefield and it never said. Were you putting them in the middle? In the middle. Natalie, if I show you what it looks like, you're going to be a gas. Did you try turning it off and on? I literally should have tried turning it off and on.

That is what I should have done. And then you start to fight and they all load in past the minefield for where I was fighting. My question was, where did y'all choose to fight? I chose the front line, the back, okay. I chose, I put the, I did,

so you get to pick here for the listener, when the mercenaries are going to come fight, you have to decide, you have three ranks of quality of mercenary, or not mercenary, of militiamen, and then you have three qualities, three places to put them. There's the front lines,

there's the inside there's like the rear entry and then there's like inside with the mayor that you're trying to protect and the quality of people they're described as like the best veterans they have the guts they have the skill a group that doesn't have a lot of experience but they have a lot of passion they care about what we're doing here and then some new recruits who are green and weak and so I put those in the back which has two entrances with me and then I put the best people up front with uh geron and then i put the middle group inside the passionate ones inside with the mayor i don't think it matters i don't think it matters i well because by at one point does it just tell you we've suffered too many everybody okay there was no one left alive and they

we suffered too many losses we all pulled inside i was like what are you talking about there's i was i was waiting for people to spawn in i was killing i did that fight four times by the last time no one was alive there was no chance we were being overrun I knew how to win that fight let me tell you I did feel awesome when I hit Stasis Field

and literally every personary was just like frozen and it's like all right guys let's just get chopping it's wild it feels like Bayeoder like flipping doing tumbling actions while he's like unarmed just like bashing people it's like that's good you can he's just he's stuck like that you could just you could just smack him he's like

nope i'm gonna get i'm gonna climb up on this turn buckle and i'm gonna do my thing it's like doing his elbow drops yeah yeah little pin his finisher i will say this is i brought bea d'ar and mandolore out to this planet and it was perfect it was just me and the guys in the sun love just shaking off the narshadah's dress it was perfect oh mandolor put that other mandolarian back in his place where a guy was like, you know, not my Mandelor. And Canderous is like, all right, let's see about it. Bluffs off, exile, stay back.

And then I watched that dude. It was, again, real bad fight. Mandelor wasn't putting the damage down, but nor was he taking any. So it was just like watching guys do spin kicks. It was a dance battle, basically. It was pretty bad, but eventually that guy went down and we won. Also, I admire this game.

You might have thought, going into the ruins of the giant iconcliffe. That would be a place like full of lore, backstory. No. The saga of the lost, like what happened when the Sith came to this planet? Nope, nothing. It's empty. It's bugs, man. It is bugs.

All bugs here. All bugs. You can't do an entire computer lab and you can't even like sit down at one of the desks. They're just like a statue in the corner, a guy in there who sucks and joined your party. And that's it. To talk to them about the guy who sucks. Oh, God. He's so weird.

Yeah, I guess. And again, I need you to remember, he's who you get instead of the handmaiden if you're playing as a woman. You don't get the handmaiden. You get him. What's wrong with getting a tall drink of water? You didn't get him, Rob. You can't speak to this because you've been spared. You know what, Natalie?

I think if you were a little older, generationally, you'd be unable to resist the middle part. I am going to be 30 years old in one week, my friend. But the problem is only a 40-year-old woman knows how. like alluring that middle part. This guy? I was... It's not...

He looks like he's... It looks like he's trying to do like Disney Prince with him a little bit. He has these like piercing blue eyes and he talks with the like, I'm a guy from Star Wars English accent. But he also is like almost too old.

He like looks like the guy who runs the Downton Abbey. He does. Whoa. I was like he looks like the Earl of Grandin. He's out there posting. We got to buy extra tickets. He's got to show support for the Downton Abbey movie.

You've got to buy out your theater. I'll then go you some money. It's just, and that I, I, I, he's such a dork. Can you set him up for us? There was a point that I got in this conversation with him where he was like, I don't think you know what happened to Revin. Do you want me to explain it? you and I was going to choke him to death.

I'm going to literally kill you. I swear to God. Can you set him up for us, Ali? Can you explain who this guy is and where we meet him and shit? I feel like I can barely even set him up because,

okay, so you get sort of like to the deepest part of the Jedi enclave, which is a sort of like big square building fill of bugs and like little offshoot, like areas that you can go to sort of look around and open chest.

Again, lesser dungeon would have more than one enemy type. No. Yeah. Invict in the one to this is these ruins are filled with the legwrecks Even the crystal cave had like here's bug and here's bug whom does poison You're right. So like you know they couldn't even like have a color change or whatever like it was crazy So you walk into this room and again this is the sort of the Jedi computer lab

This isn't the council chamber would you find nothing in weirdly There's just a room of a circle of chairs. We do know we're coming back because this is where we're sending out the Jedi Master Okay, fair. So, you know, you go, that's how you walk in there. You know what? And third person shoot you walk through a place like, ah, yeah, I'm going have a gunfighting here in 45 minutes. And Cote or two, it's like, oh, yeah, we're going to be back here in 12 hours. We're going to have an hour-long cutscene.

I guess so, but like, give me a data pad. Yeah, I agree. Like somebody's, you know, old bracelet or something, like, you know, do something. But anyway, so the way that this feels lived in is that even though mercenaries and scavengers have been coming in and out of here for like what feels like months to years people are not coming back it's super dangerous there's just this like

pretty not even dirty not even hurt guy called the disciple who claims that he like I guess we went over this he was in the Jedi when you left with Rebin and it was like well you know that really opened my eyes I guess I guess you could

just leave if you wanted to But for some reason, despite Like leaving and being still invested in Jedi shit He's like just a researcher now He like thinks that he's like an Indiana Jones type But he's still wearing the robes Like this guy thought they were gonna make a statue for him I think that's what happened

Like they've he's a fucking Stan He's a Stan He's a Jedi Stan He's actually not even a Jedi Stain No because he could have been a Jedi Stan He's an exile stand He's an exile stand Yeah, unless you're Rob, in which case he goes, which again, he's just like, what's up? Nice to be. I'll talk to you later.

You ever think about how important it is, the Republic survives this? It's like, yeah. Yeah, right on, man. I mean, I'm here with the Mandalor, and I do not think that. I'm sorry to say. I do think that it's important. But yeah, he's coming at this from this scholarly perspective. He feels like it's his responsibility to continue to study the Jedi to. you have these things live on, which I think makes him an interesting foil to the handmaiden because it's less of this like patch, like passing of the torch, like handmaiden is sort of indoctrinated into feeling like these things are important to her despite like feeling like she can never touch them because she's not allowed to because the, the force is sort of the dark place in her mind or the hot space that she can't touch or whatever.

Whereas he is like, well, you know, I didn't want to be trained in the force, but it's like, and it's important and like we still have to study it um but he's just a weirdo and he's not nice to talk to and i don't know yeah so the the stuff that you're the thing that i really dislike about him we'll get into we're going to bracket this in a second and talk about his voice actor and shit in a second too which also just sucks but oh the thing i don't like about him as a character is especially in contrast to the handmaid the stuff that's kind of interesting about him one

hey did you know that this sector of the galaxy has potentially bigger repercussions for the rest of the republic because if they if this place fails they might not have what they need to succeed elsewhere because all this stuff is connected yes we know that because that's Godo's story Godo just talked to us about that at length

hey did you know that the Jedi teachings may have failed Revin? Yes, there's a lot of, you know, people always put it on Reven and put it on Exer Coon, but didn't they have masters? Could there be something wrong with their masters, or perhaps the Jedi Code itself? Yes, because we had that conversation with Zez Kyle.

Everyone will have that conversation with Zezkyel. In contrast that to the Handmaiden, who is tied to Atris, one of the most interesting characters in the game so far, and the relationship with Atris, and is connected to other. stuff in the game that we haven't talked about quite yet. That is completely unique

to her character. Instead we get the disciple telling us that not only do we not know the truth about Revin who we the player played as but also that we're wrong about our own exile. Oh, that piss me the fuck off.

Him saying he tells you he he's like, I actually literally was like how do I kill him right now because he says to you, hey, after the first time you talk to him, if you like walk away from the conversation, he's like, hey, oh, one last thing. When I was, when I was setting some of the more recent records of the Jedi, Jedi histories, I heard tales of a Jedi

who was exiled. I know you're that Jedi, but why, I can't, I can't understand why you were exile. So I wanted to, I wanted to ask you about why you left the Jedi order and why you chose to accept exile. And you can just say, you know, I left because the Jedi suck, you dark side responses. I left to protect the innocence on the outer rim, light side responses. And he goes, I see. And because you went to war, they cast you out. And you could be like, yeah, like, I thought that was the reason why, but, you know, I've been talking all these other Jedi. and, you know, I'm starting to feel like there's something else going on.

And he asks you if you have a record of the trial. And I told him, no. I was like, there's no record of this trial. Like, don't look for it. There's no record. And he was like, well, that's a shame. I really wanted to watch it. And then I could be like, well, why do you want to watch it so bad?

And he's like, well, it's not just a professional interest. I really have a passion for Jedi records and lore. And I rarely have seen them pass judgment on anyone. Get in the locker. And I was like, I was like, you rarely see the word Lord? God damn. And he's, sorry, he says that the Jedi rarely pass judgment on people. Yes.

And I was like, I was like, you like forget what you're talking about. Like, just shut the fuck up. That's what Jedi do. Jedi are like wandering judges. That's like kind of what they're modeled after. Literally, that's like the way you go send them off to do. Go be the judge of this guy fighting that guy. That's literally the thing they do.

the beginning of phantom menace. Okay, I'm not going to go there. So then the next time you talked to him, he's like, I watched the hollow record. Even if you told him not to him that? Yes, yes. What? Wait, who showed him that? T3. T3.

Come on, T3. That's what, and like the other options you can say to him is like, yeah, the record exists, but, and T3 has it, but I don't want you to watch it. Like, you can just be straight up with him, and he will still watch it. Bro. Oh, out of my ship. I literally want to kill him so bad. And he was like, anyway, I studied the hollow record. You know, I'm unsure what to do about it because I was looking for a reason why someone would leave the order.

And I was like, I didn't leave the order. I was exiled. And he's like, yeah, but exile is rare. And I found it's not really something that's the order. He says, I found it is not really something that the order can enforce. Believe it or not, it really was your choice. And I was like, you watched it. You watched the record. It wasn't a choice. They asked me for the lightsaber back. What are you talking about? And he goes, I don't think so. Perhaps some of them felt strongly about your sentence, but I think something else concerned them. Anyway, the choice to turn away was yours, not theirs. Rob is breathing through a paper bag.

He's hyperventilating. And then... It is that bad. Like, it really is. It opens you up to be able to say, you look familiar. Are you sure I don't know you? And at this point, I gained enough influence, and I got the backstory of him being my fucking Stan.

So, yeah, I was just like... like you are which I'm going to I have to read you that because that's because Rob did you get the did you get that at least when you were talking to him? I could get you look familiar and he's like I just have one of his faces

oh I just I got as far as him I was like hey you can go talk to T3 and look at the tape but we were in the fucking enclave when we had this conversation because I accidentally targeted him so I didn't.

I didn't follow up with him yet. But, like, I just want to pause here because the fucked up thing about what he says to Natalie is, like, while you were having that conversation with the tapes over and over again, you continually are being like, yeah, they exiled me because of the war. But I think something happened and that that's not the case. Like, that is usually two of the three options that aren't the dark-sided options are basically saying time and time again, yeah, they said this, but I think this. So for this motherfucker to turn around and be like, I studied the tapes, I think there's a different reason. It's like, brother. I told you. I said that.

And even in there, even in that follow-up, he is like, I think you really, at the end of the day, it was your choice to turn away from them. What are you talking? This is like somebody getting, this is like after Red gets released in Shawshank being like, well, really, though, no one can imprison you without your. your consent. Truly. And so I want to be clear something here. Just because I think

there's a potentially you could be listening and thinking, oh, but haven't the Jedi denied cutting you off from the force at this point? Isn't that one of the game's big mysteries? And the answer to that is yes. That's Kyle and Andrewk will both say

we didn't cut you off from the force. You came back cut off from the force. That is not what the exiles or what the disciple is talking about. He's talking about being cast out by the order. So he was like, oh, but but you're, but they would never.

ever cut you off from the force, that doesn't seem like a thing they would do. That would make perfect sense. That's not what he's saying. He's saying they don't cast people out from the order very often. He must have read Dukyu Jedi lost. But in our case, they did. They just did. They just did.

It is a fact of the world. We showed him a tape of it. I was like, yeah, go watch the tape. And he did. And he came back and said, hmm, yes, interesting. They felt strongly, but I wouldn't say that they chose it. Fuck you. I literally, oh, he's so sauceless.

He's like, what is he actually bringing of value other than, I guess, he's a second castor. For me, I don't have another counselor. But, like, the shoe never drops on this because, like, it, like, I don't know how you get to writing these lines in this story when you wrote all of this other shit that contradicts it or doesn't even contradict it just repeats it. Like, is it intentionally making him look naive? Maybe. Like a fanboy, like anything like that. Like, is there any? That's why I think you were supposed to get him early so that he's the one kind of cluing you in to like there's something else going on maybe.

I don't know. I'm like trying to find a way that this makes any fucking sense at all because he's just so late to the game on everything. thing on every point he's repeating things we already know yeah i mean yes you're right natalie that if we'd gotten him first he would have said the shit about the republic being sick and being the importance of that that would have happened before we met go to 100% um and he would have and he would have said the stuff about the the Jedi failing their students before zeskayal said it that you're 100% right about that i think the thing that makes them a worse companion than handmaiden is that that stuff that other people cover whereas handmaiden stuff is handmaiden stuff is handmaiden

stuff. It's about her. It's about Atris. It's about you and your relationship to Atris. It's about whether you're going to train her or Atris wouldn't. All of that stuff is very unique.

Whereas not only is the stuff that he's telling you about the world, so far, at least, like repetition of other people's shit, he's often, what he's written, the dialogue he has to deliver is in conflict with other stuff we know. To your point, Allie, like,

or to answer her questions, like, how do you get here? I think it probably reflects the rushed state of the games production that maybe things were different at one point. Maybe you didn't get exiled in the way that now we suspect maybe we didn't get cut off from the force by the Jedi Council. That maybe is the case, right? And so maybe there was a time when you didn't get literally exiled by then. Maybe there was some other, and that dialogue just stuck the way it is. They didn't change it. Who

knows? But as it's written, it does make him seem like just kind of a self-righteous asshole who doesn't want to give up on the Jedi. And I think that that is partly true. huh but you know what's interesting okay he comes across better in my game where he doesn't you don't go down his rabbit holes much because a thing he says to me in the library where you find him is at a certain point if he's like if some of the greatest sif right like ulla caldromo and ex arcun we're also some of the greatest Jedi a certain point don't we have to start asking if it's problem is this problem with uh like but that's my point robin we just had that with Desquiel just told us that

with the same names. That's true. So it feels like it's copy and pasted like we need another guy. You call that Ulick and XR? He called it Ulick, XR, and yeah. The third one that I forgot the name of. It also just feels like, you know, the game, the way that it talks about the force

and the way that it wants you to think about the force and influence and, you know, was the failure in the teaching or is the failure in the interaction and things like that, like it feels primed for this character to really shine a light on that sort of thing. Like, here's this guy who has so much reverence for the teaching that he cannot actually open his eyes to the reality of both the exile situation and the situation of the world. Like, there's a way to do this smartly that feels like it is woven within the themes of the game

and also makes this character be annoying. but, like, in a way that you can be like, oh, he's so misguided. And that could be funny or that could be interesting. And, like, I just don't. He doesn't have it. It's just not hating. I realize, Rob, the thing that Zez Kyle says is on an awareness 21. You need awareness 21.

So maybe you didn't get that to trigger. But he says, there have been so many failures by teachers who believed in the code with all there being. Master Arka failed Ulik as Master Boss failed Xarkoon as K and Jarre and the others of the council failed Revin. and Malik and he hits all those names again later in his big speech it's the same speech it's just given to a companion and you know yes that means the companion will have that for you even if you fail and maybe that maybe that redundancy is valuable but what I would love is some stuff here that feels

really unique to him and maybe again we'll get it maybe we'll get it I've already maxed out his influence because I let him fawn all over me and talk about how cool I am because when you go on that familiarity path, what he says is, if I look familiar, it's because we've met before at the enclave on Dantuin many years ago, as on Corrassant, four sensitive children are taken to Dantouin as well, though it is done rarely and only with those that believe they believe are destined to become Jedi knights. It is the secret nature of the place. If you're not chosen by a master when you've come of age, however, then the path of the Jedi has denied you. I met you and Antoin, long ago, briefly.

You taught us how to move within the force, how to see it flow within others, how to see it in the behaviors of others, and to use that site to achieve truth. That's because I'm a Jedi Sentinel, which is like the Jedi investigator, the guardians and counselors get slightly different variations, but it's all glazing. It's difficult to explain the difference between you and Master Vruke, but I think it's because he was knowledgeable, but not a leader, not a mentor. Kreis said this already. You were different.

We could all feel it, and we knew. and I knew that if I were to have a master, I would want it to be you, and then you went to war. Many Jedi went to war, and the Jedi masters proclaimed that you were Jedi no longer. Atris, the mistress—you just told me that they didn't do that. But, okay, Atris, the mistress of the archives, was first among them. I knew at that moment that if you would no longer be a Jedi, then you must be correct. I realized I did not want to be a Jedi. Instead, I wished to follow your path.

At any event, there was no one to train me, even if I wished it. They all went to war and I grew past the age of acceptance and then you can continue from there But like this guy being a washed out Jedi gifted kid though is pretty funny But he self-washed out He chose to leave

Because you left And not even because you left to go to war Because they exiled you when you came back And then he just like And then he just And then he just like studied like lore like he was just like filling out the Jedi Wikipedia?

Uh-huh. That's what he is. He's a Wikipedia editor. He's collecting the lore bits. Not to mention Craya fucking hates him. Yeah. So the one thing that I got with Crea was her. It's the demonstration of they can't see her sometimes.

I don't think he knows she's on the ship. Oh, I had. Have they talked for you? Yeah, they had a conversation. For me, he's hanging out in the med bay And she is doing some like tap on his shoulder and disappear type maneuvers And he's like, what's going on? And she's like right there and she can't see her

Yeah Which is good It doesn't like sell it well in the moment It's kind of confusing but Yeah, yeah But yeah, no, there's a follow up conversation If you get, when you get on the Ebenhawk again After seeing that cutscene

If you leave and get back on Crea will confront the disciple and he's like he's looking at a map of all the worlds because one of the first conversations you have with him is him in he's in the main hold

he's usually in the medical bay but he's in the main hold and he's looking at all the holographic worlds and you can be like what's up like what are you looking at and he's like you know he's basically talking about

Qatar, Telos, Dantuin, there's something going on here and if you have the awareness check you can say like well there's something about the worlds

right and he's like yeah these dead worlds they have a pattern to them they were all touched by the Mandalorian Wars and the Jedi Civil War but sometimes I feel

as if they are they are all connected in some other way something is wrong the attacks on in Qatar, tell us itself, and the decay on Dantuin, something is wrong with life. The connections have been damaged, sick, and sometimes I feel like I almost understand, then it just slips away.

And Crea, like, Bluetooth's in and is, like, so close. She is not talking to him. No. Yeah. But she's... She's listening in. Yes. Right, right, right.

Yes. And then that's after this, when you board the ship, is when you board the ship is when you get the scene that you describe where she's like kind of hiding from him um that's where he's like i must be hearing things and she's like betrayer all thoughts of me will slide from your vision from your mind like water you know who i am but you will be unable to voice it to remember it what is i what does a jedi see only what i allow them to see and then the follow-up conversation that i was talking about is she confronts him um and she's like who are are you and you're like he says that yes yes yes and she's crea says what did you see in the web

of worlds that have died what did you see when you saw it through the force the disciple says i see the death of the galaxy of life at first i thought it was just conquest but it's more terrible than that it's an echo spreading out words killing everything it's not possible Kraya responds You are a wasted pawn of the Republic, young one You could have been so much more Even with your wide-eyed innocence Your naive love for others

Now you understand the magnitude of what is being done Because don't forget I don't know if we cover this But the disciple's job is He's a Jedi lore expert for the Republic Like he works for the Republic Yes The Republic is basically hiring

him for the same reason that Godot hired you, which is they can tell Congress. Right, exactly. That's the difference is that he's actually not here to actually, he doesn't have the ability to actually try to save these planets, but he's trying to figure out what's going wrong with them so that the Republican write it. Exactly. So then the disciple responds to Crea, I know you, not even the markings of the dark side can hide it.

Why have you done this? And Crea says, I, do you think I seek the death of all living things? there's no victory in such things. I do not want to win our war like this, Little Jedi. When I win, I wish it to be because I was right. My teaching's true. Disciple says, how long have you been here among us? Craya says, you know the truth.

I've always been here, watching and listening to the echo you have found. You know its source and what must be done. The disciple says, I will not let you hurt her. Crea says, little Jedi, you cannot stop me. But you will forget this. Your mind is worse than the others. So open, so trusting. Your feelings for her are your weakness.

Yet I will gift you with this. You will remember now what you have discovered. When the time is correct, know that what you have seen what formerly only I knew. Now we shall see if you have the strength to stop what comes. This is also another...

But she is going to mind wipe him here. She mind wipes him, but she's basically, like, at a certain point, I'm going to unmind wipe something important about a discovery you've made when the timing is good for me, essentially. But this is also another reason why I feel like the disciple is someone that was meant to come on early, because the way that he's like, how long have you been here with us, it kind of, I don't know, it just keeps pointing to him being, him in the,

the exile having developed a longer relationship over time. All right, so here's the problem as I see it. I'm not trying to be like it's the Chris Avalon of it all because Avalon's work contained some multitudes, but there's a little bit of a problem here, which is that all the dudes appear to be creeps. And on some level, they all come across as creeps and they have bad vibes

and you want to walk away from them, but it's a video game so they're in your party and they just continue to have their rancid vibes and being kind of creeps because it kind of sounds like a disciple should of anything, be kind of the naive, impressionable student. Like what Cray is putting down there

is actually pretty terrifying. That she's cursing she's cursing a young impressionable nerd whose life's passion is like knowledge and trying to like put the pieces together what's happening to the galaxy and the Jedi Order.

But because he comes across not as a student, like there's deeper knowledge, but as a know-it-all who tells you facts about yourself. He's always trying to sort of impress you and hold forth. He doesn't come from that position of vulnerability that I think the character is supposed to have. He doesn't bring that across. And stay seems like a little shit.

But the Crea scenes, because the Crea stuff always brings it, is Crea is finding yet another pain point on a character and like jamming it in a way that would be really scary and effective if this disciple characterization weren't such a misfire. Yeah. Speaking of men with allegations, the disciples voiced by Greg Ellis, who has been an actor and a voice actor for a long time.

He has been a bit role in a number of movies, largely background, nothing. roles, also in television. The thing that I think people of our walk of life video game people will know him from is as a voice actor in a number of video games most famously as Cullen in the Dragon Age series. He first, I think, made waves around some custody battle stuff in which his legally supposedly assaulted or was assaulted by a patient in a psychiatry ward supposedly he intended to harm his children. This is in mid-2010s. All that blows over. He continues to work in video games.

In 2020, in the midst of the Me Too movement, he releases a hour-long video or 15-2-minute-long video in character as his dragon. age character, attacking cancel culture and Me Too culture, defending Johnny Depp, and doing like a, the line is drawn here thing about this. And earlier this year, no, sorry, late last year, in December, he was charged with felony counts of offering a false instrument for filing an unlawful surveillance, along with a misdemeanor charge, including perjury, three counts of coercion, aggravated. harassment and unlawful dissemination of intimate image, aka revenge porn, and he got arrested for it. He turned himself in for that. And I think that that case has not finished yet. So

all of that is still alleged. He did not plead guilty to that. When I say he turned himself in, I mean he turned himself into the warrant or for the warrant. But that is the dude who's voicing this guy. He is an open and well-known piece of shit, even before the most recent stuff, which is truly on another level, but yeah. So I'm going to bench this guy probably. Yeah, he's never coming back out with me. I, I, I, goodbye. Dude sucks.

Goodbye. I know there are people who defend this character, and I, I'm so curious about where that stuff goes to be defended. You know, I, I, I know one person who I like, whose Star Wars opinions I think are generally pretty good, who has been like, oh, the disciple has some really cool stuff going on in person. And maybe there is some stuff here that I just haven't seen yet, and I don't remember enough of what comes later. The only thing that I know about is a scene that Natalie you're going to get, I think, because it's Darkside Atten and Disciple stuff. So we'll see. Because, I mean, that's the other thing that I think, I don't know if any of y'all had that stuff, but there's, like, Atten and Disciple, like, beef kind of immediately. Atten does not trust the disciple, basically.

so I when I first met him I was because the the whole the gender of it all really yeah um I I guess you don't even interact with him if you're a male character anyway well you talk to him in the in the archive and that's it okay sure sure because like I'm wondering if you're like are you supposed to feel like bros with these guys like how do you guys feel about aden as a companion in terms of like as a male as a male ex-examine yeah Yeah, I don't feel like bros, I, you know, I think maybe it's because of the mods that we have in, I don't know. I feel like the Atten stuff feels just as intimate with a male companion as it does a female one, but he isn't doing any, but that might be because he isn't being weird about gender. Like, I don't, we don't get anything where he's like, those jeans look great on you, buddy, you know?

Yeah, I just don't think. though you can be like you're just glowing man right without having vibes it's just weird it's just weird yeah he's he's he's still doing that stuff right you're glowing in a brotherly way yeah like bay odor feels like a bro mandolore doesn't really feel like a bro mandolore doesn't really feel like a bro mandolore feels like a guy on my ship who i'm took with me at all yeah yeah i don't there's nothing really happening with mandolore in this game outside of you bringing him around to talk to his dudes you're kind of like a taxi service for him and he's like yeah i'll fight for taxi work, you know.

Well, he's doing a favor for Kraya, and we don't know what that is yet, so it really is just like your... Yeah, and he's doing a favor for Revenue is what he's really doing. He's building, he's rebuilding the Mandalorian. He can't be reverend is in the dark. He's hung up on his true love. That's right. Exactly.

My love has crossed the wide ocean. Yeah. And the handmade and stuff, because, you know, that's the character who we have that you don't have in a regular version of the game, right? as a reminder, she's just not there is very clearly meant to be like relationship coded

but I mean that's so clearly all fucked by her just like undressing all of the time But it's also weird I'm sorry I didn't realize this podcast was a bunch of prudes Well in one of the things that We talked out briefly It's famously anti-nudity

That's right, yes of course Allie isn't a never nude but believes video game character should never be nude. So, yeah. It's just gross. You are. Yeah. Uh-huh. I do think the mirror conversation, there's that mirror

conversation that you gestured out, I think Rob, where you can be like, hey, I want to talk to you for a second. And she's like, uh, no. What are you talking about? You're old enough to be my dad. And you're like, that's not what I meant. And if you go down that line of dialogue, which is that is that male exile only?

Did Natalie Alley, did y'all get this at all? Mirror's dead. I forgot. Yeah. I forgot. I forgot about that. Okay, wait. I see. Did you get, do you understand men with Mira, Allie? No. I have not maxed out her influence, though, so I will keep an ear out. For us, when you talk, there's one of the things you say is like, hey, I was hoping we could talk. I was just hoping we could talk. I just want to chat with you. And she's like, uh, why? And you can be like, I just wanted to get to know you better. And at that point, she says, why? You're trying to be like my father? No, thanks. I already had one. And you can walk through all of that. And eventually she gets to, um, besides, like, I don't want to be buds with you is what she's basically saying. And she's like, besides, you already have your little. entourage. I don't want to be another person in the pack. And you're like, what are you talking about? And she says, look, if we start sharing a bunk, the other girls get upset and then I'd have to kick the hell out of them to show them who's the pack leader around here. No thanks. You're sweet,

old guy, but let's keep it professional. And you're like, I'm not that old. And then she says, it's more than age. I thought I'd seen a lot, but you look like you're a hundred inside. And then you can say, fine, I didn't think you'd run away from a challenge. And she says, run away, you're the one who couldn't handle me. I'd kill you, which is wild. And it doesn't go anywhere. There is no Mira. There's not like a next step to that. That's not the beginning of an age gap relationship with Mira. But I do think it's funny to like, oh, you are old enough to be her father. Like the exile is not a 22 year old video game protagonist. The exile went to war a decade ago and was a general. And I think that that comes through with the handmaiden stuff in a way that

does not, for me, as a 40-year-old playing this game, actually make any of the stuff Cray is talking about feel, like, real at all? There's no vibes between the handmade than the exile. There's way more vibes between the exile and a male exile and Atten. It's not so much with Beauder, because you have that history already, but I could imagine reading it there. I'd say a little bit more of Vsas, but it happens so fast with her that it's not, you know, like you're two practitioners of the force and that I think already means that you're on an

equal level in a way that you know you have a different a different relationship with but she's also oh my life for yours instantly well and that kind of changes that relationship also look you're not gonna the the the handmade thing can't beat the charges that atris is clearly your axe that's right like this is the show it up to date the stepdaughter thing it's like we're not doing this. Exile, we are not doing this. I don't care how synth code do you want to be. Yes. There's even more there that is not

about you being her father or anything. Obviously, she is not the daughter of my black exile. They did not change her skin color. But there's some other stuff there that I think is a popular fan theory that I don't think we can talk about yet.

Okay. Because we haven't had the Revin talk yet with Crea. I'll just get a guide I'll just look I'll find a way to please her Good luck Good luck buddy

I don't know I think you can get your influence up I don't think you can never please Kraya I think is how it is Like which person do you want to be me to be inexplicably mean to Which yeah Yeah

So yeah so that's the gist of all of the that alley To your question of like what the vibes are like I think Atten Atten is the first character you recruit Atten and Krea from the jump and so there's a closeness to them that I think is not there so yeah

for the other character aren't other because I actually because I came to RPG's kind of late like I skipped a lot of the foundational text of this like hell

the one that Planescape yeah never played it yeah Cray is kind of in that game Rob there's a character in that game

who is similarly Ravel, Ravel, Ravel, Ravel, Ravel, I think is the pronunciation. Ravelle, who is a very similar sort of key, cronish figure. But the thing I'd say here, though, is that this game is unique for me in that there's something,

it's not so unique in terms of a lot of, like, the male voice acting being kind of bland and, like, a lot of it kind of missing the mark. But when I say, like, the dudes are all written like creeps, it's kind of striking the degree to which, like, the dudes in this game are incapable of having a normal one. Like, they're incapable of, like, coming across as the archetype

that they're clearly set up to be. Like, there's always a discordant creeper vibe with a bunch of these characters that I think makes a lot of them whiff in a way that, I'm like, is this, I don't know enough about the, say the RPG at this point and in preceding years, but like when I played Fallout and Fallout 2,

I didn't get this vibe. Like, this is... The people in that game who were fucked up are really fucked up, but they're just really fucked up out the gate. They're not, this is Han Solo, but if he were secretly a creep, who used to choke women to death. Like, that's not...

Yeah. Which is Atten, right? No, he did it professionally, but it's still the thing he did. I do think that this game is allergic to playing it straight with 90% of things. I think we've talked before about it being a good sequel to Knights of the Old Republic because it cares about what happened in that game. But I think it's very suspicious of Carth O'Nasi. I don't think it likes that there's like a guy who is a loyal dad and soldier.

I think it thinks that that doesn't, that that is fake and that, If it's going to have a loyal soldier, it's going to be Baye O'Dur who's torn up in guilt inside. And if it's going to have a guy who uses, who's like sort of your basic white guy, it's going to be a guy who hurt women for a long time. Or it's going to hurt people for a while, but especially women. Here's the guy you know, but here's the like random ingredient we threw in the pot to make him different than what you would. expect. Cotaur 1 had Jolie Bindo, the guy who was suspicious of the limits of the Jedi Code, and who had a bunch of like old-timey wisdom to give you.

Cotor 2 has the disciple, the guy who's suspicious of the Jedi Code and the Jedi teachers, and he's just like an absolute train wreck interpersonally. I don't know that it's fun to be around those people, and I suspect that a lot of it is done with a sneer and not with a sort of critical distance. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah, but it is sort of like where I'm getting skeptical of the Chris Savalone of it all. And like I don't want to speak to like white and black about this, but like when if you want

to give credit to Carth, Carth is also a character who is riddled by guilt and things like that. And, you know, I think that, like, this is a game about influence and manipulating people and how much, you know, how easy or hard that is to do and how to get people to rally around you. And when you have it spearheaded by somebody who has those sort of allegations around it, it is my fear playing more of it is that is it eventually going to be like, that is cool? Like, there's reverence to that. Like, that is, you know. Right. um it is a superpower it is something that sets you to a difference you know it puts you into pedestal so to speak that like i don't know i again i there's sometimes like where i'm waiting for the

other shoe to drop and i don't know if like some of these themes are going to end up continuing to be disappointed disappointing especially as we get more around like weird violence and like stuff like that or is it we're in like a weird middle dip of getting through these characters and then it's going to like land once we get to the ending you know i will i am very curious about how it lands because it's been 15 years since i played this game um i vaguely remember what i pretty strongly remember some key scenes about confrontations with the with darth nilus and darts zion i remember what their vibes are um there's like a line in the dart nilus confrontation that will always live in my mind forever. And I remember what the big final confrontation is and kind of what it's about.

And my memory of it is not, it sure is cool how you can manipulate people, which it totally could be. Because, you know, it could swerve into like, wow, the power of leadership, which is the version of this that we keep hearing Crea talk about, right? Wow, it only worked because you were able to bring everyone under your thumb. But even if it's not, explicitly about that, it is mechanically been about that. You know what I mean? I think a lot about reward structures in games and what those suggest are not necessarily morally good, but when you reward the player for walking down a path, you know, or when you produce new content for walking down a path, that content is like formally giving precedent to one thing

over a different thing. You can think about this. Classic video game endings like Bioshock and Life of Strange One give a larger, more complex ending to certain choices over other choices.

Sometimes like in Bioshock, I think I don't really give a fuck. Both of those endings kind of suck. In Life of Strange, one of those endings is like kind of explicitly given the shaft and it's the one that allows for a sort of like queer happiness ending.

And the one that isn't that is the one that gets all of the detail and all of the care. And I think there ends up being a politics of that or there ends up being a meaning making in that. I think this is true for a lot of different games. When you give players more stuff to pay attention to, you're encouraging them to play towards that.

I'm not saying anything about that extrapolating out to life necessarily, but like if there's a good path and an evil path and only the evil path has like three hours of additional stuff to do in the game, there's like an extra push towards that path. And that's where your development time went. too. So I'm, I'm thoughtful about what the, that kind of design pressures are on the player here. And I think that those are very pro you giving influence to people, taking influence on people, et cetera. Yeah. I mean, because we've said, like, you know, this is, this is a game

that tends to be smarter than other systems about those games. Like, even earlier in this episode, like, I'm not going to create a, like, you know, a burnt rat that I found on the Jedi Council for. And she's going to be like, oh, that's so cool. Thank you. Um, but Like, there is a kindness coin system to the influence thing of, like, you know, how good are your relationships and how satisfying is your play-through of the game going to be because you can get someone close to you despite your, you know, you know, me, me, me, and like, I don't know. You know, and I, my memory of this game, like, just saying out loud what I think the one of the big goals is, is that it is concerned with the mechanisms by, which that happens in the Star Wars universe. This goes back to be talking about the cause and effect stuff on Narshadah, where Kraya is like, do you see how you gave that man $5?

And now he's getting beat up. I think there's a very clear reading of that that is about unexpected outcomes, which is a thing that Rook says, actually, when you talk to him and you save him from the from the mercenaries. He's like, why would you do that? Don't you know that when you do a good thing, sometimes a bad thing can come out of it? And you're like, yeah, dude, I work with Crea. She's always telling me that shit.

But I do think that there's another read on that, which is about how someone who has your particular force ability to change the world around it, how any Jedi with the force has that ability, that is a scary amount of power. And the force enables that. I think that's a big, you know, the thing that she has said she hates the most, the thing that she's afraid of the most is nihilist, consuming the entire world, which is only available to people who've studied this ancient Sith technique. So I think that it is very interested in the way power works in that way. And I should also say, even if it is critical of those things, even if it ends up being critical of the way influence works in video game stories and the way that powerful people,

real or fictional, use their influence in order to hurt people or to manipulate them into doing what they want, even if it is very, even if it's exactly on point for that, that doesn't that anyone who created it has lived a good life around those things, you know, in the same way that people talk about like, oh, you should love the art, not the, you know, care about the art, not the artist, all that shit. Like, I'm not going to say, or separate the art from the artist. I intend not to be a real separate the art from the artist person, but I mean that in both directions.

Just because you made some really good art about a topic doesn't mean that you don't, haven't fucked that stuff up in your real life, you know? I've told a lot of stories about people. who are like bad at committing to things and people who are overworked and people who are you know how to resist I am the biggest workaholic I know and I have my dad and my stepdad who are who before me were the biggest workaholics I ever knew like it doesn't mean that you told a good story about a thing doesn't mean that you're not guilty of the thing you know and so I should be clear that when I say that I think I remember this game ending on a place

that's very interesting about the question of influence and manipulation that is not me saying that Avalon or anyone else involved is not extremely capable of misusing their influence to manipulate and hurt people. Notably, Greg Ellis did it, you know? Or is in jail currently awaiting trial is my understanding. So, you know. Star Wars, baby. Star Wars. So, Vruk. Yeah. Oh, God. I forgot we haven't even talked about him. well I'll say this I like that

after well yeah first at Asner huh the fucking goat second I like that there isn't an ounce of contrition with this guy after running across so many Jedi masters who were like hey man I feel kind of weird about like how things went down

and you know after we exiled you I did a lot of introspecting and Vruk is like well well well looks like this piece of trash blue back into our yard. He completely un-

and has that real cranky old professor like well what about like why did you take away my force we didn't you idiot now that we couldn't now that we couldn't have that power

we didn't exercise against you so go figure something else out my force powers are returning to me really I don't feel a goddamn thing from you Excellent. Superb. Like, Vruc, when you, when you rescue, and also you meet him, he's in the mercenary cave being held hostage because they're preparing for their assault on the town slash mansion. You rescue him. And he's like, God, could you stop fucking things up for just a minute? You haven't learned anything, have you? You just made everything worse. And that's even if you were a max light side, even if you were like, there's no, there is no winning with this guy. is nothing you can do to be like, I'm actually, you and I align on stuff now. Nothing. He's

just like this. I hate him. No approval. No, like just absolute disdain. This is not, so you rescue him and he's like, well, now that you screwed this up, I don't know what his plan was. Again, this is, this is not a, wow, we should trust the Jedi to know what's best here. Because his, his plan, he's like, I got captured, but I was going to learn stuff. And now that they know that I'm not a hostage, they're going to attack the town. So we got to get back there and help out. But they're in attack the town anyway. There's like literally the guy leading the mercenaries is a kind of, he's an ex-Syth soldier,

uh, who sort of rallied the troops to him. And he's, he's there to massacre everyone regardless. He gives you the option of joining him. Uh, game embraces the notion that there's nothing cooler than, And then a scarred eye. Like, you know someone's like a real badass if they got like a cut and like a milky eye like a like that, that's someone. That's cool.

That's, that's cool. Like that person's a badass. That's a guy who got me some Kraya influence, by the way, because I chose the great lie. Okay, I'll help you. She loves that. Well maneuvered, exile. Oh, it just occurred to me. Yeah.

I had just a little thought I had, actually. Just trying something. So you go, you beat the shit out of these mercenaries. And then after you win the fight, Vruke is like, okay, come here for your lightsaber form. And then he's like, you probably have some questions. And he's deeply frustrating. He's basically like, we're not hiding.

We're just evading the Sith. We're just trying to, we're trying to lie low until the SIF come out of hiding and they reveal themselves, but they haven't yet. Well, how can you find the other Jedi? We can't. Not because we're hiding, but it's just safe. Or if we all stay covert and have no means of communicating because if one gets found and tell the, tell where this are, that would be bad. And then he, something else he indicates, I think this is interesting for how it complicates the exile.

We heard from Zezkayal, you were the only one who came back to face judgment for going off to fight the wars. Vruc has a different take on it, which is that you came back because you'd lost your connection to the force and you were freaking out. Right. That you came running back

because your transgressions had, you'd sort of reaped the harvest that you'd sewed. And you came running back to the council, not just to face judgment, but to figure out what's going on with you and see if the Jedi can help, can offer counsel. And instead, what you got was exiled. But the damage to your connection with the force, that was already done. Jedi didn't do that. they just held you accountable for the choice you made. I thought that was interesting because a lot of what we've heard is this like sort of exculpatory,

like pro-exile version of this. Rook's take on it is that you came back in a position of profound weakness basically unable to face the consequences of whatever you'd done that opened you to losing the force. Yeah, I really love that you're getting different versions of this from everyone you talk to. You may not be doing seven samurai well,

but we're doing, Roshaman, okay. We're doing Roshamon just fine right now. Yeah. You know, I almost wish we didn't have the whole conversation of the trial and the after conversation. Like I, you know, though maybe, but maybe even with it, it's still, the different perspectives on why things happened the way they did is still really great. I think I remember, don't you see a video, don't you see video somewhere of Rook talking to another master being, yeah, you see broken up distorted video of him. Yeah. talking about, I can't remember.

Is that not the trial? No, no, it is him talking to another master about you. And it's a little broken up, but you basically get an impression of him saying, like, this guy is, this, this influence power he's got weird. And it's, it's bad news. Like other padouans are like, glomming on to him. I don't know. I can't remember where we found this, but it was like a four came to Antoine.

I thought that that was, are you saying like, before Dan Tween, but post Yeah, it wasn't the trial footage. It wasn't the trial footage. It wasn't that bit. Hmm. Yeah, I don't remember. It's, if it exists, it's on that let's play.

Unless I didn't get it somehow, you know? So someone, someone will tell us where it is and gives a timestamp. But yeah, I do think that that is, you know, and we've definitely had Zeskiel say, oh, yeah, like, that bond thing of yours, people, people think it's weird, you know, so. Yeah, that, that is. is like a rare, a rare thing to occur even amongst Jedi and the force sensitive in general. Exactly.

But, yeah. Yeah, Master Fruke is like, he just, he really just kind of, everything you say to him, he kind of shits on in one way or another. It's like, you can be like, the Sith have revealed themselves? And he's like, have they? I haven't seen him. And you're like, they literally fucking attack. to me and they're like he's like why would they attack you you're not a Jedi you can't even feel the force and you're like I've literally reestablished my connection to the force he's like

maybe it's just dantween I don't think it's like I don't think I'm feeling that from you really I'm feeling like it might be dantuan maybe it's force that's dantuan that's dantuan yeah maybe it's going on this road trip was doing something to the force vibes with you actually he says what he says actually kind of loaded what I feel from you is what I feel the same day we pass sentence on you, right? Which is not that you're completely cut off, but whatever he feels from you, that's ambiguous. Right, whatever that is. Yeah.

And here's the thing. Is changed. Are you, maybe that's true that he feels the same thing from you that he felt that day, or he feels the same thing that he felt that day. Are you sure it's from me that you felt that? Was that, maybe that's from you. Maybe that's from the world. Maybe that's from a woman who's invisibly in the room with us

That you can't seem to pick up on I don't know I don't know Maybe there's other stuff moving on moving around here I don't know I like that a lot about this game That these characters have God

It's it's I think I said this in an earlier episode But it's like it's pretty rare that a game In a game where someone will just be Wrong about their interpretation of events They might be wrong and where like Oh I've been betrayed in a big dramatic way or wrong in the like they've been misled or something um but it's rare that they're just like yeah I see that day differently and you're like oh no I'm here look I I can tell

you exactly what you said and they can still be like no I think I see it differently which again I don't like the disciple but I kind of like that he that it's a game where someone is willing to watch the same video as me and then be like no I think I'm right about this still because that is a way people can be sometimes. I don't know if you've lived in the world, but out there, people are constantly seeing the same videos I'm seeing and saying different shit than me. So I like it in that conceptual space. I like having a guy who I can hate because we have the same world in front of us and we've been in the same conversations and he thinks a different thing about it than I do. And not just because he's a Templar. And so being a Templar means

that he thinks that we should kill all mages slash get all of the pieces of the apple of Eden or whatever the Assassin's Creed Templars do. Other Templar things. Whatever Templar type of video game Templar you are. I like that, you know, that's fine to disagree. I love that you bash them up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're both.

Kill mages, get the pieces of Eden. Pieces of Eden, whatever it is. Whatever they do. Create modern banking. Right, all that stuff. That's all fine. Whatever, that's a fine thing. But I like it a lot when it's like we have a conversation.

and you and I have like a different pure read of what that conversation was about and like you were reading into my intentions and the tone of my voice and I was reading to you like that's cool I wish more games would do that type of thing you know so well and he's kind of satisfying as for our interest with like the pigheadedness of like Jedi senior leadership this man is not his this man sleeps like a baby. He has no crisis of conscience over letting the Mandalorians run rampant, seeing the Jedi basted brightest go off to fight the Mandalorians, exiling you, the fallout of the Civil War. Everything we did was correct. Look at what's happened. This is why we didn't want to do anything. Yeah. But you did something. And all of this is on you. My hands are clean. And that is or it did, like, it has infuriating. But what's so infuriated about people like that can be the confidence,

the, the, the placid, unshakable, unreflective, just thoughtless confidence that, like, sorry, that chapter is closed. There's no new information that can be inscribed in my mind about what transpired or the choices we all made. it's done yeah the fact the fact that he's still like we did the right thing by letting the mandolarians kill millions of people is wild and actually everything bad has happened since then that's on you guys for going out and fighting them this is this is why we didn't want to do it

which i don't think was the argument it's just the Jedi we're like we need to further study and think about what we're what we're doing but yeah yeah yeah costs, costs lives, Rob. Where are we going next? That's such a good question, because I got the call to come back to Anderon. Yeah. We can do Anderon. We can do Anderon, or we can do Corribon.

Both of them are places we have to go. I don't have a dog in the race, I think. A horse in the race. I feel like because we got the call, like nothing has pointed to a Corabon yet, really, like in terms of urgent plot stuff. Yeah, yeah. But the game has said Anderon is now, like, that apple is ripe on the branch. Like, it is time to go pay off some of the Dixon stuff. Let's do it.

Let's finish it off. Let's go back. What was the place called where the guy was the sky ramp and see if the sky ramp is finally a place we're going to go to? We can walk up. We can go see what Kavar. Kavar is up to. Kavar, who seems like maybe our boy, you know? Yeah.

He keeps coming up with someone who, like, trust. at us or something. I don't know. Yeah, so I guess how many of y'all will be siding with the queen are locked into siding with the queen? I have to imagine we're locked in

right? I'm not locked into her. No, but I imagine, I guess my point being, I'm not sure are we at this point locked into what we were leaning. Interesting. I think based on the approach, if what's his name,

uh, the, her cousin is it? The general. The general. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. But is a relation of hers or her brother, I forget. But he approaches you before you leave and is like, I'm going to call you when I'm ready for you to come back. And that locks you in to siding with him or if you deny his call, it locks you into siding with the queen.

I believe. So I'm curious. That makes sense. But yeah, I'd like to wrap it up because I got to get back to Gita and let her know. that I got another planet for her. It's really important to me to be keeping Gita, you know, just supplied and open up her wares across the galaxy. So that's my priority.

Don't really care about the Sith right now. Just, oh, real quick. Uh-huh. Did we all give that lady the wills to get control on the entire? I didn't give her. I didn't. Not. Did you find a way to get the stuff from Jaron?

When you find those bodies, I think you get the option to, don't you get the option at that point to create a false will? That's when you have to have done it. If you do it then, then you can go turn in the will and the modus to Jaron. And then you get all the stuff. Then you get all the stuff. But Jaron would think less of me. He knows these wills are fake.

He doesn't give a shit. Well, okay. He was like, Oh, they have the wills? All right, whatever. You can have it. Okay. How good is that loot?

I don't remember what it was. It was so good, Rob. It was the best. It was the best loot ever. You need to reload your save. Except I bought so much from that lady's shop. Don't worry about it. You're going to be fine.

You're not going to miss it. Before you go back to Anderan, there's going to be a moment where we're going to be. to switch between two parties. One of them is us is the exile plus Kraya plus a third person, I believe. And the other one has to be led by, I believe, handmaiden or, I think it's, I'm looking at it, handmaiden or disciple, Mira, Visa, Handmaiden, hmm, I'm going to read the sentence. You'll be choosing a party there, which must be led by one of the handmaiden or disciple,

Mira, Visas, or Atten. Oh, right. The first or is because for most players, it's one or the other. So either handmaiden, disciple, Mira, Vsas, Atten. So make sure that you've, at least one of those people leveled up to a point where you're like, I want them to be my stand-in for their own party. I have a question, very brief, because I know we're wrapping up. If I have prestige people, am I, like, good on influencing them?

Yeah, I don't need to worry. You don't need to worry anymore. Okay. In general, prestigeing them means that you've maxed their influence out, yeah. Cool, cool, cool, cool. And you can still lose influence with them, but it's fine. Yeah, okay. You're not going to un-restresteish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool? Yeah. I'm excited to go to Duxon. Woo! Underon. No, no, the man Lawrence wants to be back in Duxon, too. Oh, okay, well, okay, well.

You got to go to Duxon first to make the plan, I guess. I see. Yeah. We must follow the path. of the ancient beasts. Oh. Well, first I'm going to the mall because the people in Antoine

had a lot of money. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's time to go shopping. It's like giving out multiple thousands of credits per mission. Just because. That's how I don't gamble anymore. You won't see me on those tables.

Smart. I love that. You know, stay off those draft kings. You know what I mean? Yeah, no spending money on cards. Don't, don't. No money to lose. That's right. That's right.

Instead, you should open an investment account. Why doesn't this game give you the option to open an investment account? Less Pazac and more CDs. Yeah. I'm trying to retire. I'm trying to retire after all this shit's done. I feel like Godo should be able to give you a bank account, like an investment bank.

He has the vibe to me. People please talk to Goto, see if you can get Giotis thing. It's fine if you can't. But you can talk your way through influence with him, I believe. So. All right. Maybe we'll talk to him on our way to Anderan and, uh, Duxon. With that, we've reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age.

Our show is produced by Chi Contreras and it's supported by our listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. We will see you on And on Dron. Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform, choice. And didn't anyone else think it's suspicious that the, Queen got a Jedi advisor and immediately isn't like on the cusp of being overthrown. Super interesting. I feel like

the track record is not great for the Jedi as Jedi wondering judges or advisors. Did you mean, did you mean Talia or did you mean this woman on Dantoen? It's her too. Oh shit, that's true. It goes bad. For anyone... It goes bad.

Don't, don't... Des Kyle had it right. Keep the Jedi out of politics. Yes. That's right. That's AMCA promise.