A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 122: Return to Telos (KOTOR II 13)

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

After a climactic confrontation on Dantooine, the Exile and the (remaining) crew of the Ebon Hawk return to Telos, chasing after the Handmaiden and Kreia. There, the Handmaiden faces down her sisters, the Exile comes face to face with Atris (if that is still her name), and HK-47 fights his way through a factory of hostility-ending droids. Then, above Telos, war breaks out. Darth Nihlus arrives at the helm of his corpse-of-a-ship, the Ravager, hoping to find a buffet of Jedi to devour. Instead he finds only his old disciple, a pissed off Mandalorian warlord, and a once-exiled Jedi. Show Notes Unseen, Unheard   Hosted by Rob Zacny (robzacny.bsky.social) Featuring Alicia Acampora (ali-online.bsky.social), Austin Walker (austinwalker.bsky.social), and Natalie Watson (nataliewatson.bsky.social) Produced by Chia Contreras (cado.bsky.social) Music by Jack de Quidt (notquitereal.bsky.social Cover art by Xeecee (xeecee.bsky.social)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakning, joined by Alia Kampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always supported by you, our 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 special editions. This week, we are picking up in the middle of the action as the exile races back to the Evan Hawk and receives word of what Kray has been up to. and then there's sort of a final road trip moment aboard the Ebenhawk,

and then there's kung fu fighting. There sure is. I get a little summary here. I'm going to hit that, or we want to do it. Okay, we'll just jump right into it. So that's that. The Jedi Council, dead and gone, one way or another. Crea whisked away by the handmaid to face justice

at the hands of her master, Atris, self-proclaimed last of the Jedi, back on Telos. And once we pull ourselves up off the floor, that leaves us to give chase. but not before Vsas or the disciple shows up to have a little one-on-one, tell us, no, we are not influencing them through the force or through the interface of a video game. We are influencing them because we are natural leaders,

and also we're people, and maybe that's better than being a level 30 Jedi. And if your exile happens to be a guy, that's you and me, Rob, and we happen to have high enough influence with Vsos, I'm actually not sure if that is you or not, we get a little Spock or Liarra-style, mind-meld, force vision, moment, which I think actually, thanks to the excellent voice acting by Kelly Who, is somehow not skin-crawlingly bad. It's actually sort of touching.

I cannot speak to the disciples' version of this scene. Sorry, I will save the editorializing for when we're talking later. The game cuts to Tilos, where we see Craya meeting with Atris in her little red holocron room well underway. Would you believe it? The anxious, guilt-ridden Jedi master in hiding hasn't taken charge of this encounter? In only a few words, Crea shoves the already teetering atress off the cliff.

There is always, always, a Darth Trea, she says. And the great betrayal atrice faces wasn't that of the exile to the Jedi or to her, but of her to herself. It is such a quiet thing to fall, Craya tells us, but far more terrible to admit it. The camera fades, and when it comes back up, our handmaiden is on one of those trademark Star Wars industrial landings held up above a techno abyss,

surrounded by her sisters, accused of being a betrayer in her own right. And did you know that when this game launched, the screen simply faded out and back in again, revealing them all to be knocked out on the floor. That is not the case for us, though. Handmaiden has a special mini-game fight where she needs to try to knock out her sisters without killing them. It's not that big of a deal if you turned her into a master of Teres-Casey. But if you didn't, I have to imagine this one a little worse. after they're dealt with, Atris and Handmaiden have their own tussle, with Atris bringing out the

forest lightning to wind and to an immediate dive headfirst into a little psychosexual jealousy. The exile shows up just in time to save the Handmaiden, fight Atris back to the Holocron chamber, and finally set things straight. And oh, so much gets set straight. First of all, who the hell is Atris? She hasn't been Atris for quite some time now. Second, Cray has disappeared somewhere. Malichor, we learn.

to finish up her big plan, seemingly the further expansion or duplication of a terrible wound in the force. More importantly, the force user formerly known as Atris, maybe she's Darth Trajan now, she never quite says it, has had her own little plan this whole time. One, gather as many Jedi and Sith relics from the ruins of the Civil War and the ruins to come. Two, draw Darth Nylis to Qatar so that the Jedi there, cowards that they are, will be wiped out cleansing the Jedi order.

Three, bring you the exile back so that the Sith lords, cowards that they are, will finally come out of hiding. Four, ponder her cubes. Five, defeat the Sith. Six, build a new order in her image. Better, less corrupt, more militaristic, put together with the bones of both the Jedi and the Sith. Because after all, the Jedi are the Sith and the Sith are the Jedi. Well, that's no good. So after another quick fight, Atris with her hissing, screeching, screaming, Sith holocrons, gives you some final information like Craya's location, and maybe a little repentance.

You decide what to do with her and quickly, because above, Nylas has arrived to Tilos, the linchpin of Galactic Recovery. Maybe you've heard that over and over in this game. I wonder what all of the death and Tilos would do to the force, maybe a new wound. So head back to the Ebenhawk with the handmaiden, who's... birth name we now know, and then off to confront Nylis, right? Well, not quite yet, because we are playing the TSL CRM, and that means we cut over to HK47's personal shuttlecraft. Where did he get it? Don't ask. He's heading all the way by himself down to the HK50 factory hidden below Tilos's surface, which seems to have been built by Revin, and which is prepping to churn out an even more

advanced HK model. You do some hijinks. There's a lot of comedy. You shoot a lot of droids. You become nine killable by the end if you equip the right stuff that you find along the way. And if you play your cards right, you get to build HK, a whole army of loyal HK-51 droids for himself. I don't know that we're going to ever do the old Republic MMO game, you know, a season. But let me tell you, shows up. Then we are back up to Siddharthal Station. Remember this place?

And wow, all of our friends are here. Not only the ones from Tilos, like Choto Habod and Lieutenant Gren, but our friends from Dantuin and Anderon, like that one guy with the... great voice and Polly's guy, at least for those of us who didn't blackbag him or whatever you all did. We fight our way through the station, maybe do a quick side quest about fuel sabotage, or maybe we forget to do that. And finally, we take a shuttle with Mandelor and Vsos over to the Ravager, the sparking, shuddering flagship of the Sith fleet. And we learn the place where Darth Nylis became who he is now, when he and it managed to hold themselves together through hate and hunger.

and they were both doomed at the end of the Battle of Malacor. You fight your way through the ship, you plant a bunch of detonation charges, you confront a Colonel Tobin who has lost his goddamn mind, and you let Visas take a little break in her old meditation chamber, and then confront the Lord of Hunger before escaping the ship before it's blown to hell. And that is where we left off for today, though I will say, in the parlance of Final Fantasy 14, as soon as you hit the Leave the Ravager button, several cutscenes will play in sequence.

And I think there's a chance we may talk about at least one or two of those before we pick up at Malacore next time. I think that's it. I think that's what we did. That's what happened. That's what happened. Basically, that's what happened. Wowza. Yeah.

It's a big one. It is a big one. And let me tell you a lot of, a lot. is disgust. A lot of conversations are had. Yeah. Um, and much to ponder, much to consider about all of this. No, don't be pondering too much. There's someone I know who pondered a little too much and didn't go good for her. Well, the problem was she was pondering amongst, um, in the presence of evil object. I see. I see. And this is a key to ponder, aspiring ponderers out there. Um, make sure. you remove evil object from your pondering space

prior to entering the pondering state. This game really anticipates what chat GPT was going to do to like overconfident, undertrained like specialists because this was or at least like like endvious enthusiasts I guess is the way I put it.

Because Atris, like, we, admittedly, we're getting some of this through Craya's somewhat jaundiced view. But it definitely kind of seems like she was like, oh, wow, look at all my Sith holocrons. They're talking to me. I am, I'm out here vibe meditating. I am so many levels deep on the forest with me and my Sith buddies. Yeah. This is just making me smarter and a better, a better Jedi. That Eddie Burbank video.

way inducing some sort of psychosis. Yeah, that Eddie Burbank video accepted instead of going to the big rock Airbnb, he goes to Atrice's Sith holocron room. It goes great for him. But I think you're right though, too, Rob, because that is how holocrons work. Holochrons are like, you

the thing inside of them can talk back to you is, I think, the important thing, right? It's not just, it's not, they're not just books. They will talk to you. There is some sort of like inscription of, of personality or information that is like an interlocutor. It's not just reading the encyclopedia page. They will whisper things to you.

Like, you're the best person. You're the smartest six-year-old of all time, and you should separate yourself from all your friends, for instance. Which is basically what they tell Atres too. Al, you look like you had something. My thing was just very quickly that, like, it is hard to not ponder the evil object while like the thing that you have to ponder is evil.

You're right. Like the people that you respected and loved most in your life were like, well, I have to go do a thing that's deeply evil. And my life is ruined now. Everyone I know is spread across the galaxy because the force love that we all love is getting eaten. So I have to really understand what makes people evil. And being evil is kind of cool, I guess. I'm sorry to say.

Do we want to start at, or unless Natalie, did you want to jump back in? I was just imagining a very funny world in which like Sith and Jedi have to answer kind of like a questionnaire to program their Holocron. And it's just like, so like, how do you feel about the trolley problem? I don't know, just like random-ass questions to train their holocrons on them. Yeah. Which was making me laugh. You take a base model like X-Arcoons or Yodas, and then you add prompts after the fact to try to like make it more like the version you want. But you can't get rid of the fact that this was X-Arcoon to begin with, you know.

Chat with X-Arcun now. My lord. Visas? Yes. The disciple. Also, wait, did we learn the disciple's name? I forget if we did. I did.

You did. Okay. I think, Ali, it's said in like a kind of passing. Funny. He's chatting with a, with somebody from the Republic.

Oh, right. He mentions his name. Right. Okay. Mikal. Mikal. Mikal.

Yeah. Mikal. Just in saying it's important because we learned two character names, importantly, over the course of this like two-hour session. I think we probably learned McCall. did the disciple last time. It's weird.

He didn't tell us his name when we met him. I just want to say that. Why is it such a big secret? Right. The handmaiden is the handmaiden because she's part of an order of people who aren't allowed to have names. He didn't tell us his name because why.

Okay. That's a good question. I do. I really would love to know this. Like, does he, I feel like he's under the impression. He's on secret assignment by the Republic. So true.

He's kind of like his, like he's created this reality where he's a spy and he's reporting into the Republic and saying, and, and letting them know, uh,

you know, Admiral Seed, I found the exile and that which hunts the Jedi. Uh, the exile. Let me tell you, I have a hunk, I have a,

a, uh, a hunk, hunt, yeah, you do. You're right. Calmore is kind of hunky. You know, I have a hunch about these planets.

And everyone is like, okay, Michael. Yeah. No, it's me called now. And I'm not going to tell anyone. It's actually my code name is the disciple. Don't tell anyone. I'm going to go on the secret mission. And everyone is just letting him do it because he's so fucking annoying.

That better that he zoops off into the ether, into deep space. rather than anyone have to deal with him for real. I'm sure he has a real job. This is just like... I'm not actually. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

How does that conversation with him go on the Ebert Hawk? Sausless. Yeah. I think it's tough because like we barely know this character. And really the only

like the only standout moment he has is when Cray is bullying him. So for him to be like your your heart to heart moment is just really, it's a weird. I feel like they should have pulled from like a bigger pool of NPCs in the kind of like, you know, who are you actually most? Who have you interacted with the most? Even if it's going to be the, what's the game that you really like, Austin, where you could like accidentally. like be like your fate is tied to the like shop.

Yeah, Dragon's dogma, which has also has an influence system, but it's also completely hidden from the player. And at launch, it was very, it was based on like who you interact with the most in the game. And you could, you could like give gifts to people. There's no reason to do it. And at launch, it was common that the person who you had the highest reputation or your influence with was like random shopkeeper A or like the guy who read the blacksmith or whatever. And at the end of the game, there's a fateful, you know, confrontation with the dragon. No. Grigory.

And he's like, I have your beloved here. Will you let them die or will you confront me? And it's like, the blacksmith is here. The potion seller has shown up. And you're like, I would be fucked without that guy. You're right. I would be. But, you know, I think in re-releases, they've kind of tinkered with it to ensure that chances are you're going to end up with like the,

the duchess or the badass, you know, night or whatever. But I don't know. I think it was better when it could just be Valmiro, the weirdo from the beach. You know, it also, I mean, what a powerful insight that, like, people in service jobs you interact with a lot who are friendly with you secretly, like, there's a deep connection. Like, you are in love. It's just that nobody has the courage to say it. And Dragon's Dogma's like, nope, this barista.

you're meant to be together. Well, and it's funny, I can't go down this road, but it's funny that one of the things that happens in playing that game is that there's somebody like idiosyncratic voice lines in that game. And so every time we talk to the blacksmith, he says like, a master works all, you can't go wrong.

And it's like, that is one of the most memorable things about the game. I would feel bad if I went to go buy a sword and he didn't say that to me when I opened up the shop menu. So he's in there. He's in my heart, you know? Anyway.

Point being, you're right, Allie. The disciples not in our hearts. The disciples not in our hearts. And if this had been, if they had done a version of this with like Beauder and like, like whoever was the highest ranked, that might be interesting. Though I think, Rob, the Vsos one does feel like it's meant to be Vsos because it's a prelude to go into the ravager and facing Nihilis, right? Yeah, I think the VISA scene is actually pretty good, which is, you know, as you sort of alluded to in your, uh, some. of it. It's kind of achievement because so many things are just off about relationships in this game. And like that's also been true of Vsas, but her coming in and it's sort of like a minute's

a midnight, it's shoot your shot time. But also it is setting up this notion that like she's this really tragic character who has sort of been. trapped in this metaphorical, like, uh, world of like, yeah, like world, world of like pure pain and like, like metaphysical agony. And like here she's like, I want to have this connection with you. Like this is, I am following you by choice.

Yeah. And, uh, the scene kind of works and does set up the little arc they're going, to give her on The Ravager. Absolutely. I just linked a thing that I had forgotten about. I meant to bring this up much, much earlier in the season. There was a eight-page, a little short comic that came out before the game came out

or around the same time as the game came out. A listener named Peter sent this in to remind me. That is like, here is the moment Qatar gets eaten by Nihilis. and here is Nylis and Vsos like here he is on the ground, you know, picking her up and bringing her back up to the Ravager. It's just the stuff that we were basically told. But I did want to share it because it's one of those things that's like would have been available to a player at the time would have been like,

oh yeah, I read this little comic about her. I read this little. And I think so much about this game and so much about so much about games culture at the time and maybe even now is like, exterior to the game itself. I think I said this before, but like, by the time Nylis shows up in this game early on, everybody I knew who cared about this game already knew what his name was because it was all over previews. It was all over trailers, right?

Like, everyone knew, oh, that's Darth Nylis and that starts Sion. Or if we didn't know the names, which I'm pretty sure we did, I remember remembering that name or knowing that name. But they were all over the foot, the demo footage of the game and the trailers and the screenshots that were at EGM and all. all of that stuff. And I think that to some degree, that's part of why a game like this can be better in your mind than it is in the game.

Because you've done half of the work before you've even picked up the controller. You've already convinced yourself that Nylis is like a fucking weird, scary force of nature, even though he's barely in the game, right? And we can come back to that later because I think the confrontation really maybe shapes some of that and how we feel about that. But yeah, Rob, I think the visa stuff does mostly work here. And I think it sounds like the disciple, from what I've read, it has a similar thing, which is like both of these characters say,

hey, you have to stop believing that you are manipulating your friends and your followers. We are here because you're a good leader. We have agency. We are following you because you're a good person or I guess an evil person who's very powerful. I actually don't know. Is it different for Darkside players? does the disciples say like your power has always intrigued me or something like that? Or is he just delivering his basic now?

Everyone's shaking their head. I think it's still the basic. There's nothing, you know, specifically cater to being dark-sighted here. Right. Yeah, you talk to him about what you've learned from being in the enclave. and he's like, yeah, where they look at you and see the death of the force, I look at you and see hope for all life. Okay.

Okay. Smiley face emoji. He says something at the end. Yeah, I'm like, okay, shut up. He does say one thing that I did want to talk about with everyone here, as low as I am to discuss anything about the disciple. He says to the exile in this conversation, one, the exile is meditating in Crea's old room, which I thought was interesting. Oh, that is interesting.

And he says at the very end of the conversation, you know, I understand if you need to go alone, but like, please don't, you know, don't separate yourself from these people you have connections with just because you've been told. that there is this, you know, malicious or potentially volatile consequence to it. You know, do not forsake these people that you've developed these connections to. And the last thing he says is there are others who need to know you. T-Los needs you. The planet and all of its people are in danger. If we do not stop the Sith now, then the Republic will fall. But the phrase specifically, there are others who need to know you is so weird.

But interesting, because if I'm understanding the disciple correctly, it says he's advocating for me to continue to build more connections. Like keep knowing people. There are others out there who need to establish this connection with you. Otherwise, you know, their fates are doomed. And it's especially interesting in a dark side context. And it's triply interesting when the disciple and I have maximum negative influence with each other. And he's supposed to be like the ultimate good guy.

Yeah. And I'm obviously below, below dark side. Right, so you've not corrupted him. He does not have Palpatine face. No. He has normal face, but he's technically a dark Jedi because I'm darksided. You're his master. That's fun.

But he has good guy face. He sure does. That's debatable. Yeah, yeah. He has a nice guy face is what I think you meant to say. Yeah, it's funny. I think, again, I think this is like the exile is someone, the exiled. I mean, the things that both of these characters say is you're a leader.

You do connect to people. And I do think that you're right that like the disciple saying, and that's a good thing, is fascinating. And does connect to maybe some of our, the bigger conversation we've been having about what leadership is and like, Allie on the most recent Q&A podcast. I think we stumbled into this line of questions. and conversation in which you raised this idea about, I don't want to be careful to how I phrase it, because I don't remember exactly how you phrased it. I don't want to like over say what was said,

but like, Cray's relationship with you, you as an extension of her teaching, and then like what comes next, right? And so I think the idea of like, the disciple looking at you and being like, you're a net good for the galaxy, whatever that means,

has to be something we return to after the next episode. Again, not that this was a specific thing tied to you being dark side, but we can reinterpret it based on the fact that you're dark side and he's light side. And why would he still say this other than they only had 16 months to finish this game, which maybe he would have said something differently otherwise. I think the special one thing that Visa says that's a little different too, on top of the, I would die for you and all of the, you know, can we look at each other with force vision

and meditate because I want to see what other people see, whatever. is in the first part of that conversation, she says, I look at you and see that perhaps a life untouched by the force is not the punishment it is believed to be. And I think that's really interesting because like it comes back to the core of the game is you start the game having been, you know,

separated by the force. We learn eventually that that was something that happened inside of you. It wasn't done to you by a person. And she sees in you, even though you have the force again, that, like, actually losing connection to the force or living a life as a non-force user is not some terrible thing.

It's actually, because she sees in you that, like, the core person is the thing that is good, not the fact that you're good with a lightsaber and force push and force lightning and double jump, you know? Not just because a double jump you can do. Actually, I can't because I'm not a Jedi Guardian. Jedi Guardians give you double jump. I think Jedi Sentinel's,

get, don't get mind fucked, I think, is our special ability. So. Tragically, the disciple also says that exact same thing. Okay. But it sounds way cooler coming from DeSauce. That makes sense. Yeah. I'll take it from her.

You know, I'm happy, I'm happy that it's, I think, I think that they should have had different dialogue. And maybe, as Ali said, maybe should not have always been the same character. But I guess what's really weird. is it's not like you don't have Vsauce on the ship. Exactly. She is not genderlocked as a character. That's what's so bizarre,

especially in the context of us preparing to go to the ravager, her, like where she came from. Why are we talking to the disciple? Also, why does the disciple even think this if he's like obsessed with standing the Jedi? Like the Jedi literally didn't fuck with us. That was the whole, this is where it all got started. And he, and this is, it's, it just feels so incongruous narratively.

And I'm trying to fit it into something that makes sense. But I just find him to be a very, not just un, not just uninteresting, but just like, he doesn't fit. I mean, it was like, you should read the. specific thing he says that VISA, there's a thing that he says that Vsas doesn't say about the Jedi to make your point because you, I don't think you've read this bit. I think it's in the section where he's like,

the danger, that's the danger of being a Jedi. Do you have that written down? Oh, yes. Yeah, he says, uh, first you, you say to him, do you understand why you attack who I attack, kill who I kill?

And he's like, I follow you because I choose to. I believe in what we're doing. I'm here because we, I choose to be. And I press him and I'm like, well, how do you know this? And he's like, what happened in the enclave? And you tell him that you've learned that you were a wound in the force and that as long as you live, the wound will never heal.

And he says, then they do not understand you. That is the danger of being a Jedi. When one separates themselves from others, chooses to lead a life of isolation, denying what makes them a feeling being, it is easy to make such judgments. And such judgments, I believe, are made in ignorance. There's no danger in what you represent other than humanity, other than your humanity.

You change others, but I do not believe it is due to the forces because you're a natural leader, et cetera. So, yeah, I guess he's accusing the Jedi of, of, because they've isolated them, and denied the feelings of what makes a person of feeling being. I don't want to dig into too much about what those feelings might be for the disciple. But I think in the between the last time he showed up and now he's just been in his room on the Evan Hawk listening to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast, and hearing our critiques of Jedi isolationism and trying to live without attachments.

Totally. He left them when you left them. I guess that's true. But he has been such a stand. He's been such a, they would never do that type dude, you know? And this is such an opportunity for them to, like, have him grapple with that instead of just being like, well, no, you're really nice. And I think that, like, you should just believe in yourself, man. Like, whatever they told you wasn't true.

And it's fine. And, like, I mean, it. he's not even like a foil for Vsauce here because then it would be interesting for him to be like, oh, all of this stuff that I've learned, I have to unlearn like she has to go through. Right. And I just like it's just I really, I agree with Natalie here saying that it just feels like out of place and bad because like it feels like so much of the writing in this game is trying to get away from this sort of hero worship. and like this is exactly the like emotion from that mass effect three dlc that was really bad where they all have a party in your house or like it or like you're the coolest guy ever we all love you so much man

i thought you like that dLC no you're not a citadel dlc person for years i thought you were i never played it no oh okay wow we've had conversations about it and every time i thought you were like damn i've always loved to be like damn i guess alie really likes that dLC because we never talked about it because i ever played it all the way through no no no it is like actually really bad. It's really, really bad. I believe you. I just didn't understand.

I didn't play it. That didn't sound interesting to me. I beat that game already. I don't need them to tell me I'm Shepard. I'm Shepard. So wait, just confirming that there's nothing that Vsau says that the disciple doesn't say in that first. Oh,

in the first half in the first part. Yeah. And like, is there anything she says instead of the dangerous? of being a Jedi part? It's similar, but she says, like, that is the danger of their beliefs. They do not understand you what it means to be human to lead. The feelings I have for you are because of what I see, what I hear in your voice, all that tells me you are a natural leader, et cetera. And it's very similar. It's just not like, she isn't a Jedi. So it doesn't,

it's not her saying the Jedi way of life is bad. She's specifically just saying, she doesn't get you, she's saying that they don't understand who you are. Whereas the disciple is saying, their like ideology and you know dogma prevents them from having attachments and connections which are the things that make us human so distinct but not you know again different perspective different context for similar stuff I like why is the disciple not even talking about like why he chose to leave the Jedi here I would love to know like why is it something that never comes up with him we just skipped to the part where he is just fully with you and we We got none of the, like, hemming and hawing of him reckoning with his understanding of the Jedi. And it's just not there.

And he's here. Yeah. It's just, you know, you can go read his whole, all of his dialogue. I think I got all of it on the let's play or damn near. I'm pretty sure I got it all because I did prestige him. And if you prestige him, I think you got it all too. It's just not there. There just isn't a lot from him.

You know, I, I was, I asked earlier, why is he called the disciple? And I actually do think coming back to it, the thing that you just pointed out that was like, why does he say people should continue to meet you? Like, there is a way in which you could start reading him as like, if you're Jedi Jesus, he's Jedi Paul, right? He's the disciple. He wants people to come into contact with you and your works. And I think that that is an interesting perspective and why you might name someone the disciple to evoke those. particular biblical, you know, it's like if they've been called the apostle, you know what I mean? But they didn't write that character.

Paul is my least favorite of them. So true. So, so yeah, I think that's, we probably don't need to still. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, no, because it just feels like it's such much more wasted potential in that. Like in a game where like the thing that we're literally doing is influencing people, he is the most blank state. He is the most sponge of all of them. Like there could be a thesis here. Like, there could be some bars at least. Yeah. We pointed out before. He all the, he's one of the examples

of someone who got caught by a wave of your presence and threw his life away, not even to come with you. He quit when you quit, but you didn't know. He didn't tell you that. And so like, there's a way to really tell, like, if you read this as like deeply sad and he's wrong and he is not following you because of your choices, which is maybe more legible if you are darksided because you are definitely doing some force manipulation shit, right? Like maybe that actually makes this deeply sad, but that's not how it's, it's not written or shot like that, you know? So you have to do a real rehabilitative reading, I think, to get something from this, unfortunately. more direct maybe I want to talk about Atris and Cray I want to talk about going back to Tilos

Home again, home again Yes, please Yes, please Seeing Cray walk into that room I'd forgotten that we got that scene And I was like, ooh, I'm so happy We get to see these two fucking talk to each other I didn't anticipate getting that again

I guess at all Because they didn't talk the first time Because Cray is hidden right right because she was in her invisible uh stealth field that's right mode wait was she was she though because like 100% atrice is really mad when the handmaid and then there was that lady right but she didn't see her that's what i mean she she learns along the way but when craya was there atris didn't know that she was there seemingly and then later learns wait there was another woman there with him,

but I'm the only woman who can be there. This is a fun conversation. Extremely. Love to see Crea manipulate someone always. I'm glad it's not me in this moment, but it's, it's, I mean, again, I feel like Atris really set herself up to be basically,

like four times a weakness towards Sith um Sith attacks in just like meditating in the Sith the Sith room for the past however many months year

question mark um you just you could not imagine her being more susceptible to uh Kraya's influence at this point in time. Yeah, Atris,

actress, you know, introduces herself as the last historian of the Jedi, the last of the Jedi. Ugh. It, it, it's, I'm curious if she really, truly truly still in that moment at least,

because Crea's immediate response to her saying that is those are titles, words you cling to as the darkness falls around you. I'm curious if in that very moment, if that's like the last time Atris really believes that she still has, it still is a Jedi. I think so. I think so is doing the work or if she has already fallen. No, because I think that that, well, I think she has already fallen, but I think that this is, the end of this scene is where Crea is like. like, it's such a quiet thing to fall, but more far more terrible to admit it. I think this is the starting to admit it to herself moment, right? And then later what Atris is like, oh, I haven't been Atris for a minute.

Is her later being like, oh, right, I've been this other thing. I've been this other person. I've had these other titles this whole time and I didn't realize it. Now, I'm still good. I'm still right about everything. But Atris, the librarian, the historian, the historian, is not who I've been. I think one of my favorite things here, and I'm curious if this hit for y'all,

is when Craya says basically, like, you know, yeah, you've read some books. You've bathed in the knowledge of the Sith, but there's not enough truth in those teachings. It's a step. You got to go, like, live it a little bit first. You got to get out in the field. You can't just be, there's theory and there's practice, babe,

and you've got to go get some practice. And I think that that's a really interesting, like, push to give a character like this, who has been so defined by her hesitancy. Like, she even, she didn't want to, she wanted to go off to war with you, but didn't do it. She wanted to kill you when you came back, but couldn't bring herself to do it.

She wants to be the leader of the new Jedi order, but she won't train anybody, she won't, like, train anybody how to be a Jedi. She won't actually take a Padawan. And so for Craya's, like, particular angle of attack to be, like, oh yeah, you've read the, you've listened to the Holochrons, you've learned the lessons, but you've got to do some. in order to like be the thing you want to be, I think it's really effective manipulation.

Yeah, it's like this is a moment. Again, partly it's also the delivery, Krea having that stage actor presence of coming in and now it is the third act and we are going to force this character to confront what they've done, right? Like this scene would be, you know, it's like something out of a man for all seasons or something where it is a like look at all the things you have done in the service of your faith, but also don't we know it was always corrupted by ambition. If we're being honest, was it ever really about faith or was it about your place within the faith? And the such a quiet thing to fall is such a fantastic line. And, you know, such a fantastic line. and the way it just calls out the fact that atress knows, right?

Like, you do know. You do know. You didn't notice it when it happened, but now we are so far past that moment. And you're in a room full of literal, like, chatterboxes that are just like, just shrieking at you all the time. This is, it's a pathetic end for this character. Yeah. Right. It's brutal.

All these plans, all this self-aggrandizement, really, she's not even a speed bump for, for, for, for, for, for there's no. We've seen people fight crea. Right. We will see crea fight some more people. But it doesn't happen here. She just talks her way through this and then it's gone. I'm curious what you try to think of the line. Crea says, you know, craya says don't blame the exile here, right?

blame yourself. But then she also says, unlike you and I, there is still a chance that that one may be saved, the one that you cast out. How do you all read that line that Crea thinks the exile, that Crea tells Atris. We should be very careful what Crea believes versus what Creas says, right? Creas says the exile can still be saved. And Atra says, where is the exile? I had thought because, presumably the handmaid came in and was like, she killed them. She killed the exile.

But what do you think of Kraya saying that to Atris? What's going on there? I had this thing with Krea today where I was like, is the point of the manipulation because there was something similar with Krea that messed with her connection to the force? Interesting. And now that I'm a level 50 Jedi, she gets to be a level 50, darn. straighta and like is like back like she's back at it like she's she's on the block again essentially but like i you know i it's it's tough to say that this is straight up manipulation because like this

is not the game to play with atris right like you don't go to atrice and say like oh you know it's too late for you but this other person that you already think that it's been too late for for like a decade can still come out of this unless like atris is the hypothetical i don't know i mean it's like it depends the levels on which you have to consider crea playing it's it's tricky to me i i think also in combination with what crea says towards the beginning of this conversation where she says she's accused of being a Sith by Atris

and Kraya says Sith is a title yes but like you the title is not who I am it is not what I believe for you it is different know that there was once a Darth Treya and that she cast aside that role was exiled

and found a new purpose I'm holding on to this idea that Crea does truly exist outside of, or believes herself, at least, to exist outside of Jedi and Sith. I think when she says that there must always be a Darth Treya and is almost, you know, nominating. Atrice to take up the torch. The way that she positions the exile towards the end of the conversation

is in this kind of balance. Like where there must, where there is light, there must be dark. So for, it almost, I almost see a, and forgive me for saying this. But I'm seeing this. God, what's that stupid fucking planet called? What's the force?

Mortis. Mortis. I'm seeing a mortis situation occurring. Right. Is sort of what it's giving. The grander structure of it all type thing. Yes. Yeah.

Where there is light, there must be shadow for there to be some balance within the force. And you, the puppy kicker, is the light in this scenario? in your version of the game? Well, this is what confuses me because I'm trying to I want to get to the end of the game so I can understand it all because I feel like I almost have everything together.

In this game, for one thing, it does keep the sort of conclusions suspended until the very, very end. Like I do not feel like I have a firm grasp on where the final state of this entire scenario is going to end up in. You play a game that's like, do you back the New California Republic or do you back Mr. House? You're like, well, at the end, New California Republic is going to win and they're going to change the wasteland to reflect them. That is not this game.

You don't, you have to, yeah, uh-huh. Because it feels like there's another character in the, there's somebody else playing the game with me. And that is Crea. That is Crea. And ultimately, she has the final say. It doesn't, I don't. That's so true. That's so wild.

Yeah. I'm like, she is like a game master who is completely, I mean, all of you are just there so she can stunt on the narrative and like check this out. Yeah, but check this out. Oh, look at this NPC.

Oh, yeah, you guys thought, you know what? Here's a big fucking dungeon. Yeah. Go, go have fun. Okay. Now, uh, you get to see the scene between two NPCs. I'm going to voice act both of them.

Don't worry about it. And then you guys, you know what? There's some snacks over in the kitchen. Go over there. Yeah. But yeah. It's funny you bring that out for two reasons. One is we don't have to talk about the whole conversation yet,

but in the conversation that comes between the exile and Atris, she drops very quickly with no, like, pump that Kraya ordered the death of all Jedi, which I'm guessing means the current Sith threat killing all the Jedi. But is ambiguous to mean, did she tell Revin to kill all the Jedi to begin with? Maybe big GM move to do. GM tabletop and GM sports.

You know, real, here's what our play is. Here's what our plan for the future is. We're going to really change things in this league. But then also something gets cut. that I have to say, and I think that this, they smartly did. No, we removed this. This gets restored in the TSLRM, and then one of our secondary mods chopped this out.

In one of, in the TSLRM, in the actual base mod, they restore a line of dialogue that says that Kraya is the one who told the Jedi to exile you to begin with. which makes no sense because she it was me all along it is a hundred percent it was me all along type shit and i don't think it is very important to me that that gets cut because it doesn't line up with anything we understand about the timeline it sucks so bad it's one of the literally makes the entire scene where she nukes the masters which as we play it yep is sort of a you had your chance i've seen you ruin the order ruined win the exile and I am going to end you before you have a chance to compound this and like

you know recommit to the sin uh that doesn't land at all yes if she was worm tongue and they were just doing her bidding and she had enough pull with them it makes me crazy to make them do that yes the this is um this is uh component five of the unofficial ts l crm tweak pack version 1.3. Crea Atris Dialogue Tweek during Crea's visit to Atris on Tilos, dialogue between those two is one of the more important ones on the whole game because he gives a lot of exposition on Crea's motivation.

TSLRM added a few restored lines of dialogue to that scene don't seem to fit the story in its final form. Also, apparently that's from this scene, not from the next scene, so I'm not jumping ahead here. Those are lines that reference that Crea was there during the Exiles' trial. So not just told them. Just off frame, yeah. And more importantly, that she was the one who asked for them to be exiled, which doesn't fit it at all because she was presumed dead since the Mandalorian War since the Jedi Order at the time.

And because of that, she couldn't have asked the Jedi Council when, as we see in the dialogue between them near the end, they weren't even aware that she was survived. This seems to be a remnant of some old plot version that was abandoned during production. Thus, this component removes that group of added lines from the dialogue, but keeps the other ones that were not related to this issue. So, big one, huge part of why I said we have to use these tweaks. I will say there's a tweak that we made that I wish we hadn't made. And I'll come back to that when we're leaving the Ravager. And I'll show you a scene that did get cut from us, but that I want us to see. So we'll come back to that.

But yeah, Craya, the Game Master, in full bloom, clearly key to even earlier visions of what she was supposed to be here. So I do think with Crea, there's, maybe it'll be revealed in the final leg of this journey. the question of her motivations and what she's up to, are you a tool or are you her beloved, like, disciple, her beloved protege? There's times it appears to be both. And those aren't, those aren't mutually, like, exclusive.

Like, you can have someone who is at once treasured and precious and completely instrumental. Yeah. And instrumentalized. But, there are so many moments where she seems genuinely protective of the exile, but all of that is always, like, made a little dubious by the connection the two share. The fate of the exile is, is tied to the fate of Crea. But in this moment where she's talking to Atris,

there is a little bit of, I guess the question I find myself asking of Kraya is like, is she the devil in this story? Or is she someone who has made every single, like, evil bargain possible to get to the devil? Right. Again, to pull from a man for all seasons. You know, and what do you do when the devil turns?

Right. When you've torn down every law. That is sort of the conundrum Kraya finds herself in, is that she has, in her pursuit of the SIF, you know, she has become as dark a figure in many ways as they are. And the question is that by design? Right. And so you're still kind of left wondering, is this a confession of a thing she does, share with Atris, which is we both love the exile and we both hope that our fate will not befall

the exile. The exile will escape this and does have a chance at redemption. Or it could be yet another manipulation by the devil playing on Atris's weakness for the exile, her tendency toward vain hope. Yep. And so, like, everything Kraya does has this, like, so many facets of possible meaning because of where she's positioned the story and the dependency that is sort of literally text in the story that, like, the exile and her share a fate. Yeah. And that colors everything. Two things there. One, we have heard her use the earlier you were talking about, like, is she the devil?

or is she just trying to get to the devil? Remember earlier she defends Revin. Maybe this is only if you had a dark side Revin, but I think because Revin always turns dark before redemption, even if Lightside Reven in Koutur 1, she says like, why do they even, you know, don't they understand he never really fell? Or like Reven never really, Revin, maybe Reven was had a different thing in mind

and quote unquote falling to the dark side was part of that bigger plan. And that is like outside of the way that the Jedi can see anything. Oh man, it's infernal affairs. Yes. A.k.a. the departed. A.k.a.a. the departed. Right. Yeah. Uh-huh. You got to go, you got to go undercover sometimes. You know, you got to really

you got to really. Sometimes you're in too deep. Yep. That's a different one. That's a different movie. In too deep. It's a third one. Oh, when you said infernal affairs, I was picturing devil's advocate in my brain. Different. Another, another good one. Fourth movie. Add them all to the list, buddy. Along with a Man for All Seasons. Um, and I I think I've forgotten whatever the other one else were we talking about. I'll see if I can remember it. Natalie, you make your point.

Then we can wrap back around if I remember the second one. Regarding the question of, does Crea believe that I can be saved as I'm playing a, you know, dark-sided, dark-sided exile. I do think the last time I saw Crea, I do very much believe the exile failed her because the exile is so preoccupied. with the pursuit and eradication of all Jedi. And is so focused on the death of Jedi,

the death of Jedi, eliminating the Sith, just reducing the numbers to zero, is where the preoccupation is centered around for the exile. I do feel like that wasn't what Craya wanted from us. Like I do think, you know, I think there's always, I always hold space for Crea's manipulation, but I do feel like in that moment, the exiled did truly fail Crea in their response to her line of questioning at the end of their encounter at the enclave. And so maybe it is that Crea was like, you can be built.

different. You can go down the thoughts and teachings and explore the dark side and not become Sith. Right. And make your way back. Like you can go into the cave and see the darkness and absorb it and then transcend it to to maybe encompass both dark and, in light in one. Like maybe, maybe you are meant to be the scales that, you know, um,

that, uh, keep everything, keep, keep the force in balance. Like, are you the chosen one, actually?

Oh, um, interesting. Like Atlas. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh,

I remember what I want to say it builds off of this, which is, it is rare that I get to an end of a game. and I'm like going into the final dungeon and my biggest thought is like where the fuck is the villain of this game? I have so many questions. I've got to talk to them.

You got a lot to tell me. I have some, I got a whole line. I have a whole list of questions we're going to have to run through. But that is the feeling I think leaving this whole session is like, all right, Cray it,

like I'm coming for you. We're going to go through this. You know, we're not going to have a fight. We're not going to argue. I'm just going to, I just want to talk. I just, but we got to talk.

We gotta get deep on some of these. So, which basically this game needs to end like the devil's advocate. It does need to answer. Right. Yes. God. Vanity.

My favorite sin. You know that, I think there is a little Krea in Pacino's devil in that movie. Totally. Totally. 100%. This is now required watching. Even the sort of like,

the sort of manipulative, like, oh, you think it comes from me? It comes from you. Didn't I only just give you the things you wanted? Oh, now you're too good for it? You weren't too good for it when this all started, you know? Anyway, handmaiden v. Handmaiden? Yeah. I accidentally killed a bunch of handmaidenes.

I thought that way. Because it was a stun effect. They do the stun effect animation. And so I am just like chomping med kits to get through this fight. My character looks like a pin cushion by midway through the fight. And one of these things get stun locked and I'm like, okay, now deliver the final blow. Oh, no. And then I was like, oh, that wasn't a stun effect.

That was to indicate I didn't need to fucking separate that woman's head from her spinal column. but instead I roundhouse kicked a bunch of them and then at the end of the fight it was like Duh Duh Dut is like dark side theme Oh so many

Yeah And I was like All right we're gonna re-rack Yeah okay We'd go back Now I understand We just you know what This game was made

Made in a hurry That's right They didn't have more Status effect animations In the can So they just had these characters do the stun, but that was to indicate that, you know, you'd sort of knocked them out of the fight, but you hadn't killed them.

So then I repeated the fight and a boring fight it is. Oh, so you didn't kill them in the end. You loaded your save and fixed it. Yeah. Okay. It is a boring fight. It's a long one. I need to defend the game developers for a moment here and just say that Rob,

there was a text box at the beginning of this fight that said, The true, it's actually the handmaiden's voice, is it not? Of her kind of speaking to herself and saying, the true test of battle is how much force to bring against opponents. If you wish to kill them, do not hold back. But if you wish to stun them, incapacitate them, then you must choose your attacks carefully using just the right amount of force, just the right weapon to stop them.

And then there is the text box after that that says, to stop your sisters, you must either kill all of them or end the combat with all of them stunned or paralyzed. If you can reduce them to enough hit points without killing them, they shall be automatically stunned. I stunned everyone. Okay, well, I was sort of thinking it was going to be a little more nuanced than that.

And we had to like sort of get as close to zero hit points as possible without sort of crossing over. Not that you would just sort of hit. Now, admittedly, I do think, Natalie, you are fundamentally correct. If you read, if, if, but here's the thing, I'll listen to you reading the text box to me. And it's like, this is clearly important. Natalie is emphasizing something in this text box. Right.

This game is full of text box. There's so many little things. And so I just sort of brushed past it. it. And I was like, boy, it's going to be tricky because I just need to not deliver killing blows to these characters. And, and they get stunned with quite a few hit points. They do. They do. It's early. They got a third. They got a third left. Yeah. Yeah. If my team was giving up like this, if my team, if Atten was like, oh, sorry, boss, I can't fight anymore. I'm at the third of my hit points. I'd be like, well, get back on the ship and send out Bayarder because

I need someone who's here to die. Like, we got a fight. fight out here. But they all just hang out together and do fake fighting. I know. Having like your evil sister, well, I guess, righteous sister who might be evil depending on who she talks to, run in and like actually try to beat you up. It's like, ow. Like, why'd you do that?

Ow! I'd be tapping out at 30% too. Oh, this is for real. You're not to, okay, but to be clear, they come to you. They come to her in this case. And they're like, ooh, did you know? did you know that now that you're like a traitor, we get to fuck you up for real?

We've always wanted to kill you. We always wanted to beat your ass, but we always held back. And also, by the way, remember when we first fought this crew? And they were like, 1 v1, 1v1. All right, fine, fine, 2v1, 2v1. They don't even work up to it with her.

They're just like, it is blood in blood out. They are jumping you. They are jumping her immediately as soon as she shows up. So, to Rob's credit, I don't know, maybe they just had bad vibes Maybe it's okay to kill a handmaiden or two in this scenario You know, you're going to call me the last of the handmaidens

I'll make it so You know, I'll make you the last, make me the last of the handmaidens One way or another It's true My name is my name My name is my name And my name is Brianna Okay, well, we can't get there yet

We can't get there yet, we're close Natalie, what are you going to say? I'm just going to say, yeah if you're if you're if you're going six on one like you all deserve to have your ass handed to you a hundred percent okay did anyone else break the game like where i guess i don't know i the the mod sort of has to put so much of this in for me i assume that at the end of the fight there was still um like before you walk in to go to the next section there's still one handmaid and standing there And if you talk to her, she has the same dialogue that she had the first time you were on T-LOS.

That's really funny. She was like, why are you talking to me? And I was like, I don't know. That's so funny. And it was just the same like, what do you hear? You could even say to her like, I want to fight because that was like one of the training things that you could do. And I was like, oh, video games. Damn, you could have grinded out some extra levels.

You know? Yeah, no. I just, you know, I stepped forward twice or whatever. and then Atra showed up and called me a harlot or whatever because that happened for y'all too because I know I'm curious how this works because you, Ali and Natalie are playing with a mod that allows you to even play as the handmaiden. I guess again remember the handmade, none of this happens if you're playing as a guy when this game launches.

Just none of it? The Atris stuff happens with you as the exile, but not the handmaiden stuff. then who does Kraya lie to you to like set this whole shit up? I think a handmaiden Does the handmaidens so common? She's not in your party if you're playing as a... Is she just like stalking you? Maybe she's just stalking you.

I've looked this up last time because I wanted to be ready to answer it. And I have since forgotten the answer, unfortunately. I think it's the case that she either the handmaiden or three of them. her sisters enter. So if you have the handmaiden, it's the handmaiden. If you don't have the handmaiden, then three handmaidens show up. And I guess they were stalking you the whole time. Which I think maybe even happens. I think even, I think Atris maybe has a cutscene if you don't have the handmaiden where she sends her handmaidens out to try to like keep an eye on you. Oh yeah. Or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do remember that. They are showing up to be like,

hey, what the fuck? And Craya tells them to bring her to Atris. But yeah, if you're playing as a woman, you don't get this. So here's my question then was when you fight Atris as the handmaiden where, you know, that fight kicks off and Atris is like, you know, where have you been what have been doing for so long? I, you know, I feared for your safety. And the handmaiden's like, but I did what you said? I should do. And then she goes, did I command you to consort with him to following his teachings to betray your oath? Does she say the same stuff to y'all?

Does she say, did I command you to consort with her? And then, and then does she say after she forced lightnings you? Did you have feelings for him? Did you touch him? Did you look upon him with love? There is no love in that one. He is a shell devoid of emotion. All that he was died at Malacor and he dies there still as he should.

Because that's what she says to Handmaiden if you're playing as a guy. I felt so guilty. Okay, jealous X. Be jealous of it. Handmaiden, like, taking that from Atris. And meanwhile, like, I'm having a deep spiritual connection with Vesas back in my mom's room. Like, I did, honestly, I felt like maybe I should have communicated better with Handmaiden to, like, let her know where things were at. But, Rob, I'm going to tell you, after that Vsas conversation, I fucking locked in on how I was going to talk to Handmaiden. for the rest of the game without even really being super aware that I was doing it. I, like, picked all of the most, like, teacherly hand on the, like, shoulder. Not hand on the shoulder, Miles Morales.

Hand on the shoulder. Like, you can get through this, buddy. You know, mentor figure. Like, not hand on the shoulder, but, like, lightly padding the shoulder. Exactly. A hundred percent. Smack, smack. Smack. Exactly.

Because when you, so you, handmade and fights atress here. You eventually will fight atres. But afterwards is a one-on-one between the exile and the handmade. And there's stuff there that can be like, at least for us, Rob, that can be like not necessarily love romance, but like deep emotional bonding. And at the moment after that VsS thing, I was like, I can't go down that road. That's not. That's not. I was already not on team handmaiden in that way.

But it locked me in to like, dust yourself off. We got more stuff to go do and not like, I did it for you. I did it for me. Oh, my God. I feel connection too. Nope. Nope. We're done with that.

We are done with that. Oh, man, this must have been so, such a major event for you because of, like, you know, Atris was so important to you, obviously. I maybe did some of the, like, this must have been hard for you conversation, but I didn't do. Yeah, you're,

I'm going to be a dick. Come right. Exactly. You're not going to be, you're not going to be like, you know, I'm so moved. You did this for me. Yeah. Yeah.

No. Now, I, I am curious for dark side people as, you show up after handmaid and has been laser blasted or lightning blasted. Well, you dark side, you play them both, right? That's, that's kind of the most dark side thing. Oh, no. No, I meant, I meant when you show up, you could be like, don't hurt her anymore.

Or like, you know, like, how you're, wow, you've so low atress. You're even fighting a defenseless opponent. Or you can be like, that's my, that's my servant. I get to kill her, not you. How did you play the atrice, the initial atrice? Con conflict confrontation I went for Don't don't touch her

Okay And I yeah I was like if you if you wish to punish anyone punish me Okay yeah great Because I kind of felt in this moment that I was It was less about being Darksided I was kind of in my Anakin bag Of like being just so emotional that I get dark-sighted, you know?

Like, I'm so obsessed with this person that it makes me a little evil. And that's what I was communing with for this moment. I went with the, wow, Atris, you would even kill somebody who's defenseless thing. Just because it's like one of my favorite Jedi rules. Sure. And also, I still think that I am like still in the vector of an exile who loves. like, is wanting to rub people's noses and things. Right.

Even if the game will make me kill them instead. I see. Yeah. Well, we're going to get to it because you fight Atris once out on the walkway. And then she runs away up into her layer. And you just can save the game, thankfully, and then walk up there. And, uh, who, uh, much to say here. God. You talk to her first before a second fight, right?

There's like two segments of talking. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah. A lot of this, we should say, a lot of what we're going to talk about is straight from the reconstructed restoration mod. Right. If you are playing the base game, there's like 30 minutes of this conversation. that you will not have had.

Mostly around atresses past and her newfound alliance with Crea and also what Crea's up to next.

So there's a lot of lore bits to get into here. it essentially opens with you accusing Atris of falling to the dark side. You can go straight for the fight. You don't have to go through this whole conversation. So there are, you can basically immediately engage battle and just say like enough of this, let's fight.

I've had enough. But you, the point at which. it opens up into the restoration content mod is after you confront Atris in the meditation chamber, you tell her, surely you can see that you have fallen to the dark side. And Atrice is like, I'm not Atris anymore. I haven't been Atris for like 30 minutes. I'm somebody else now. No, she says, Atris, that's not who I am, not any longer. She has not existed for some time, I think.

And I think this supports your earlier statement, Austin, of actress had was in the process of falling. And it is that conversation with Crea, which finally kind of sealed her transition. And you ask her, what is this place? and she explains that, you know, all of, there's like intermittent hissing throughout this conversation from the holocrons. Actually, is really just... Are they hissing at this point or they only start hissing in the back half once you've beaten her once? I feel like they don't hiss right away. Oh, yes, you're right.

It is after the second time you fight her. Yeah, only because I think that they're like, I think that they're like chilling. I think they're like, she's going to handle this. Don't worry about it. Actually, what they're like is like, or whatever it is that they do, you know? So scary. But quietly to themselves.

It's fucked up. I thought about putting the Sith holocron sound on my mixer to play and then thought it would be too harmful to our ears and decided not to do it. It's scary. It's really scary. I don't like it. So then you can basically just ask, ask, Atris, okay, you've got all these

holocrons here. What's the plan? What is your grand plan? What have after you bring all the Sith to Tilos, what then? What are you going to do? And Atris goes into

her grand plan. She'll simply win and then she'll simply win and then she'll simply rebuild the Jedi Order again. But this time make it good. and with none of the bad stuff. They shall have none of the weaknesses of before, she says.

They shall be strong, willing to take battle to any who oppose them and weaken the Republic. They shall not train those who are easily corrupted. No more students that will bring war and hate to the galaxy. I'm loving this. I would simply not train Jedi who will become Dark Jedi. It's easy. It's easy for girls like her. You get a really great rejoinder to this, which is like the game.

It's maybe the only time in video games I've said something that feels like you were the chosen one. It was said you would destroy the Sith, not join them, which is like, Krea, you're talking about the Sith. You're going to turn us, you're going to turn the Jedi into the Sith, which I think is when she's like, the Jedi are the Sith. The Sith are the Jedi. Duh. Yeah. It doesn't matter. actually. The Sith and the Jedi, who cares? All that matters is that we preserve the lore.

Well, and that's interesting, right? Yeah, it is interesting. If she's, if she's so lore-pilled that she's saying that it doesn't matter the alliance of the lore, but we just, we just need to teach all of it. Um, atris really said teach the controversy. I mean, for real. For real. Um, but also fuck kids who, uh, can't, who, who would read and fuck the kids who would get corrupted by chatGBT. Uh-huh. The Sith holocrons.

Uh, those who would be valuable to, uh, to, uh, negative influence. Right. Cannot come to my school. And how are we defining negative influence when Sith teachings are, it's good, actually? There's not really a metric for that. Just a big shrug. No. Yeah.

She doesn't really have an answer to that part, which is, yeah, what do you do when you're, like, who survives this? Who makes it out of eighth grade at this, at this version of school? Great question. What does that person look like? It's, Atris herself has said that she's no longer Atris. She's something else. So what is the ideal model student?

Come to the Atris Academy or sorry, the Darth Traia Academy maybe. And you'll find yourself a changed person. You know, become who you were always meant to be at Atris Academy. Which, by the way, I should actually say, because I don't think I mentioned this before, because I don't think we had I don't think we was not the right time to you know how when you start the game there's a character on the screen when you start the menu have you all seen this you're you're you're you're you can get seen this I don't think leto plays anymore my leno act my leto uh impression uh and and through the course of the game it's darts

ion to begin with I think it becomes Darth Nihilus at a certain point I think you've probably all seen the Darth Trea Crea one right uh here's one that there's in the game files and never got used. Because there is a Darth Trea Atris model in this game and an entire boss fight that doesn't get used and she looks sick as shit. That's awesome. It's so good, dude.

You see, the problem, but the thing is, they realize this is just too much sauce for what the character's fate is. Yeah. Uh-huh. Apparently, there is a, a mod, I think, that restores a version of this fight. it makes her

there's like a different conflict with like when you fight her she is actually maybe don't watch this yet because I think this happens in a place you haven't technically been to but we've seen and maybe some of these lines don't watch this video yet but when we finish the game and come back and watch this

Wow she looks so cool She looks so cool She has like a medieval queen Evil queen vibe That is a Crusader King's portrait That is a Crusader King's portrait 100%. Natalie you've posted something else though, which is very good.

Yeah, by the way, I'm up there now. I'm one of the Sith, I'm one of the Sith lords, I guess, because I'm on the menu screen. That's so good. That actually kicks ass. I just, like, rebooted the game and I was like, wait, what the fuck? Why am I? Me?

You? Yeah, you. Whoops. Is that good? Mons? Is this good? Anyway, yes. So very, you know, like you said,

she has kind of a conflicting vision on all this. But I do think it's cool that she's like, she is like teach the country. She's like, teach it all. More importantly, I think it's really interesting to find a character who comes from the Jedi and the Sith, who repeat a thing that we have been talking about now since Clone Wars, which is like,

from the outsider perspective, the Sith are just a different sect of the Jedi. And like even historically, the Sith are just a different sect of the Jedi. as far as, you know, the material that we've covered is concerned. They're dark Jedi who then go into this new school called the Sith, right? This new kind of, you know, religion or whatever. And she's the first one of these characters that I think we've seen who makes that collapse the core of their identity.

Who doesn't say the Sith have it right and who doesn't say the Jedi have it right, but instead say, well, if you're going to, and it's a very academic perspective on this, right? who says like, well, you know, the whole field of study is the field, is the group. You know, you can't Rome, you know, Byzantine is Rome. You know, they're not too, the Eastern and Western Roman Empire. That's all the Roman Empire, baby. And if you're going to be a true, you know, scholar of Rome, you got to think about those two things together. You know, yes, Christianity, you know, Christianity is both Catholicism and the various Protestant face that grew out of it.

And if you're going to be a theologian who wants to study Christianity in Europe, you don't get to just study Catholicism, bud. You got to study it all. And then also, by the way, I also want to be the new pope, says Atris. I don't just want to study it. I want to shape it going forward, which is a fun villain maneuver. Yeah. Does she say anything else interesting before we kick her ass? I mean, her whole shit about Qatar.

Oh, that's before. You're right. She says that, you know, she left Qatar, left the Jedi to die on Qatar and knew what was going to happen, and that she leaked. She was the leak. She tweeted it out. She tweeted out. She told the Sith, well, she leaked knowledge. So let's say, you know, she, she, you know, put out the rumor mill.

you know, and said, hey. Yeah, sent out a hand meet and to talk loudly in a bar somewhere. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And basically got the word out to the Sith that all the Jedi were hiding on Qatar. And she was like, and I simply was going to defeat them. I simply was going to have all the Sith gather on Qatar on Qatar and I was going to win.

Turns out I underestimated them and I didn't realize what that was going to do to the Jedi. But I won't underestimate them. I won't underestimate them again. I'll just invite them to Tilos and I'll win again. Which don't worry, Kraya already did that one for you. A really fun rhyme between the two characters that we see Krea sending this information to Nylos about Tilos via Tobin and telling Toby. at least maybe this is only on the light side side. I think we talked about this last time, that she tells Tobin, go tell Nylis that there's a bunch of Jedi on Tilos. And so we're all like,

Er, Kraya. And then we learned that Atra's did it first years ago to kill all the fucking Jedi on Qatar, which is a really fun duplication. Really, there is always a Darth Trea. There is always a Darth Trea. The other Qatar thing that's new here is the vision of you,

Right? Is that light side and dark side? Yeah. So everyone gathered, the plan was that the Jedi were going to do a giant group meditation to figure out what was happening to the Jedi and why they were dying. And what they saw was your ass. They saw the exiles big, big face in the meditation mind palace, which is pretty fucked, I guess. I'm curious what the language was here for light side people. Because Atris tells told me, I'm guessing it was the same for you, Allie, that we were one of the Sith fallen at Reverend's side. The path to the lies, the path to the Sith lies through you.

and you can keep just responding to her and being like, that makes no sense. Like, I don't get that. That makes no sense. Why would I have done that? Which is very funny, tonally. But, yeah, the vision was the exile standing upon the many battlegrounds

of the Mandalorian Wars, the ducks and jungles, the destroyed cities of Anderon, whatever this face we face, we faced, whatever this threat we faced, it came from you. These Sith were something born of you. I'm curious if that's what you got too. Yeah, I think all of that is the same because we were on Revan. Maybe she doesn't say the word Sith, but that's the gist of what it is, right? Because we did fall in the sense that we left with Revin. Yeah, you were one of the Sith fallen at Revin's side, the path to them lies through you. And you can just be like, that doesn't make any sense. I'm not with

those Sith. And she does not seem to care about you saying that, obviously, right? She just restates, uh, we had a vision. There was a vision. The vision was clear. And very quickly, you could be like, okay, but was that a vision of the past or the future of a potential future? Was that a vision of something that already happened? Was it a vision of the war that already happened when I was on Duxon and Anderan and Dantuan and all these places? Or was it a vision of like Cotor 2, the video game I'm playing now? Because if it was that, I'm been trying to stop the Sith during all of that. Real jump to conclusions

moment from Atris. I know out of character for her, but not great. Not great, lady. I also laughed out loud when she said the Jedi on Qatar you know,

they didn't realize how horrible this echo was that was emanating from you, but I knew because I saw you. I heard that echo when you stood before us, you know, in your trial and when we cast you into exile. And I was like, so you did fucking cast me into exile. Once again, once again, confirmation that that was not my choice. Rob, we went through some counter arguments against that reading on the Q&A.

Some folks have made good faith, I think, arguments that in their playing of the game, they may have kicked you out of the Jedi, but they didn't exile you from the galaxy. They didn't force you. Or why would you come home to face judgment if you weren't like planning to be exiled, you know, which is the way that some of, I know, you go listen to the episode. I did my best to make that argument as genuinely as I could. I think that it really fits for some people who are playing the game with that version of the character in their heads. I don't think it fits for every version of the exile, including ones who maybe come home with an axe to grind and who want to maybe reshape the Jedi in their own image.

But I don't think it fits with my vision of my exile. But I get how you can get there for your exile. But I do think, Atre's saying, like when we cast you out, is pretty clear. It's pretty clear. Yeah. I just want to pull out this quote from her. where you ask her, what is the echo? And Atris says, of course you still do not know.

The Jedi Council was not sure you would believe them if they told you. And I am not sure they fully believed it themselves. It is why they wanted to exile you. So there, beyond the outer rim, you would come at last to hear that echo and understand what happened. It was why you deserved death and why I wished you executed. It's giving I was exiled. It's giving I was exiled to the far reaches of the galaxy to come at last hear that echo. Yeah.

And that ends up being the big picture stuff here in terms of the plot. There is an echo. The echo comes from the wound of Malacor, all that death all at once. And as she explains it here, Craya's plan, as Atra seems to explain, understand it is what if we made a second big wound in the force? What would happen? And maybe even a bigger one, which again, you think about, I hit this bell a lot at the beginning of the game because I think maybe it's something that, especially if you're

playing the game over six or eight months like we are, you might, it might get lost in the shuffle. But one of the big ideas the game has bracketing, whether or not they effectively communicate this, especially over six to eight months is a second matter. But one of the big ideas is restoration and healing after war is something that isn't just localized, but it's part of a networked, you know, complex system of recovery that requires things to go right in almost like a web, where if any one of those nodes breaks, the whole thing can fall apart. You need the fuel to come from Narshadah so that Telos can continue to power the restoration or the, you're, the Citadel continue to power the restoration of Telos below. You need Tilos's restoration to signal to the wider Galactic Republic that it's worth trying to repair,

and it's possible to try to repair, the ecological damage that was done during the Jedi Civil War and the Mandalorian War. And if all, if this fails, that will echo out into other failures and into sort of despair and an unwillingness to try to build anything new or to rebuild what was broken. That's like one of the big ideas of the game. It's the TELOS Restoration Project. It's why the mod is called the Restoration Project. And, you know, the idea that like, what if Tilos dies? It wouldn't just be that Tilos is another echo of Malacor, but is like bigger than even that. It's a bigger wound this time.

It's a wound that could consume all of life, all of the force in a way that Malacor didn't. Partly because Malacor was like a place where it was just. Mandalorians and Jedi and the various Mandalorian slaves as we learned from Mira who were there. It doesn't seem like it was like a civilian populated place, but this is. And there's also just like

a world teeming with life in a different way. So that's, I think, the summary of what, as Atris explains it, Kraya's plan is I'm adding it to the Krea. To the Kray facts. Wants to create a second bigger wound in the

force, question mark. I do. I'm going to rewrite it. Atris says Krayo wants to create a second bigger wound in the force question mark. Rob. I do hate to, like I wasn't there for the Q&A. Yeah.

And I don't want to be like maybe they didn't mean to exile you. But Atris saying this is of a piece with every single Jedi when you get them in isolation, giving you a different verdict of what the real. reasoning and sentence was handed down to the exile. So Atris, who was probably already like sliding into the dark side at that point, comes away from it being like, we wanted you to, like, we were thinking we just have to kill you. Like we had, we had to deal with the, the, the, the echo of the wound in the force that you'd inflicted in. We hoped you would just go out there and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I thought you should have died, but instead we settled for exile. And then you had,

had the other guys being like, oh, I don't think we exiled you. It was more like, you just need to get your head right. And what's kind of funny here is it's like the exile had like a Supreme Court verdict handed down to them. Right. And then all the opinions say completely different things about what they are doing. Yeah. And then when they all come back together and the three of them are together, it's,

It's like, yeah, we all agree that we had to do this for the sake of the force and the Jedi order. But individually, every time the group scatters, they revert to what is their individual take on what should have been done with the exile. And some of them were like, I thought it was pretty cool. Like, you know, coming back to hear our opinion, that was pretty neat. Yeah. Seemed pretty traumatized by that war. So we just figured they needed to take a break. I think it's a really good point.

I think you're right. Atris is another biased, you know, speaker in this scenario. I don't mean that, like, unlike good character, like, all of the characters have their subjective memory of that experience and they're reasoning for it. I think that that's one of the strengths of the game. So, yes, I guess we can't take Atrice's word as law here either. But we can say that Atrice, at least, did want to exile us in this way. I think we could trust her on that because the video footage from back then also lines up with her being like, we should have killed. We should have fucking killed him.

We have the fucking tapes. We got it on 4K. We really do. Yeah. Other, oh, and I guess another interesting thing, wild thing here in this conversation is she talks about that the Jedi, she sees the Jedi, she has somehow twisted all the events around in her head to say that the Jedi who survived the Civil War aren't true Jedi. And she even says they weren't the Jedi that I once worshipped, which is already like,

are you okay? Why are you worshipping the Jedi? That's not a thing that we do in this order. But also the fact that she has now spun those events around in her head to say that the ones who survived were cowards and therefore not like no true Jedi. Right. And it's like, Atris, you survived the Jedi Civil War. If you're calling them cowards and doubters and defraud, she says, they're cowards and doubters and defraud. What manner of Jedi hides from a threat who turn on their own and imprison them on dead worlds?

Atris, go back to episode two. You imprisoned us on a dead world. That's what happened, which is obviously intentional, right? Like this is like, she is talking about herself here. Kray has said it, you know, you've betrayed yourself. This is what you really feel inside. You, like those Jedi, are cowards. cowardly and defrayed.

Atris even told us as much when we had that big conversation with her or she could have that she wanted to follow you to war but didn't. To me, it's good. I love it when the evil, super righteous Jedi tells me that all the Jedi who survived are actually cowards and et cetera. I'm a fan. You fight her. I don't think there's any other. You fight her.

Yeah. Yeah, she tells you, after. After you fight her a second time, she tells you Crea's grand plan and that she's waiting for you on Malicorn and everything. Yeah. And then you can choose to what to do with her,

which I'm curious what everyone chose to do. I thought, you know what? You gathered all these holocrons here? Why don't you just, why don't you just go back? Chill with them? Just chill with them. Just chill with them. So I left her to, I guess, did I lock her in the chamber?

I guess I locked her in the chamber with these Sith holocrons. And the last thing I said to her was, this is the last time we shall speak, Atris, face your death bravely, in between hissing of Sith. holocrines. Damn. And she goes, no, bring me

before the council, have me face exile. I'm out the door. I'm not even listening to her. My friend, what counsel? Did you not listen

to what happened? You ran them out to the sin. You killed them. You actually, I mean, I killed two, three of them. But like it was,

you know, you had a hand in it. She killed way more than you. I do love that. moment too, when she tells you that she killed everybody on Qatar by way of telling Nailus about it. And you're like,

you killed a whole planet. And she's like, well, maybe we both killed planets, buddy. How about that is very funny? She's so ridiculous. She's very much like, I did it, but I did it in a good way. I did it for

the right reasons and you killed people for the wrong reasons. The last thing she I get a I'm not sure if anyone else did not leave her in the holocron chamber there's a small cut scene of her talking to

the holocrons and she says one thing I do not understand the teachings at Malacor why do they exist they cause only echoes wounds in the force and the Sith holocrons are like

And she says, a beacon for who? Interesting. And it ends. And it ends. Interesting. Yeah. Who did y'all do? Who could the beacon be?

Yeah. Or before, I guess. I mean. I left her behind, but I left her behind, but she, like, came to terms with it. I ended up getting the option where she's, she ends up saying like, I shall remain here then. If Tilos dies, our fate shall be tied.

And it's sort of like, my survival depends on your ability to make Tilos survive, which is kind of like sweet and romantic in a weird way. She's like weirdly depending on me, I guess. You know, I mean. Or actress. She's like real. There's a moment where she says in this follow-up conversation, I am the teachings of the Jedi and the Sith. Like that's who she is.

Don't date an academic, my friends. As a former academic, you got to at least wait until they got tenure maybe or out of academia because it'll ruin you. I really think she has like, she is cursed by a certain, not by postmodernism explicitly, but by a certain postmodern like impulse, which is like, I don't need to put a flag in the ground. I just need to know it all. I just want to learn everything.

I don't need to have my own, eventually I'll have my own perspective. But by the time she gets there, she is, she's all, she wants to be the whole corpus. She wants to know everything in every book. And that's it. And she's going a little, she's got a little of what we call archive fever in the business. She's constantly chasing down some better piece of information, some true, you know, answer to her solution. She's consumed by it all. Don't, don't fall in love with her. Don't. Anyway, I picked the romance ending for her.

What? So I recorded this let's play, and I took three weeks off, and then I went back and re-recorded the Aitras stuff because I wanted to change how I left this off. the first time that I played through, I said, she says basically like, okay, we're done. What happens now? Are you going to abandon me here or what? And I said, I need you to see what you've become and turn away from it. I tied my, she says, I tied my life, my decision to the Jedi. This is what I think maybe, Ali, you got the thing where she says like, you know, I, maybe exiles what I deserve.

Even though it's too late, you've already returned. Maybe that, maybe you got that, maybe you got something else. I went back because, one, I missed a persuade option in this, in this dialogue, which I can get to in a second because this one isn't really about her. It's about, actually, maybe I'll read that one too. There's a, there's a moment in this conversation where you can say, hey, what's going on with Crea? And your options are things like, why would, why does she care about me? Why do I matter to Crea? Who is Crea?

And the first time through, I said, who is Crea? And I said, I need you to see what you've become. And who is Crea? Atra says, she's one of the lords of the Sith, one of those who murdered the Jedi. She holds the death of the galaxy at her hands. I say, how was that possible? Atra says she's gone to Malacor. She's waiting for you there.

But you won't survive Telos. Nothing will because the greatest of her apprentices comes to Telos and he'll destroy everything. But if you pass a persuade check, you can say, why do I matter? and Atra says you're important to her somehow, but I do not know for certain with the hissing of the holocrons in between. And if you persuade her, you say, if you know, tell me. And she says, she is willing to sacrifice herself at the heart of that graveyard world for you, a choice others have made in the past, a choice I wished to make.

It is because I care for you. And I suspect that you alone hold that place in her heart where nothing else live. and that is why you are the only one who can stop the destruction to come. And with that answer, and with three weeks removed, from which I originally said,

I want you to like, it was a little bit of Allie the rubbing your face in it. For me, when I first said, I need you to see what you've become and turn away from it.

It's like, I wanted like, actually in some ways what it was was, you know how Kreya told y'all like, you're a failure? The thing I wanted was that the Jedi

to know that they're wrong. I kind of was like, I want Atres to know that, that she was wrong. But after three weeks away, I came back and instead, I said, when she said, what will you do now that this is over? I said, I will do nothing except tell you that I am sorry.

I did not realize that the Mandalorian Wars would hurt others that had known me and cared for me. And she says, it does not matter. Not now. It's what I did with such pain that caused the wound. But I thank you. And that's it. And you're done. But you apologize.

Not, I really went back and forth in this. because I was like, I knew other people would get hurt when I went to war. It's a war. But I do think that there is, and I even knew people who were close to me would be mad at me. There was a schism over it, you know? And you do it anyway. But I do think sometimes you say things like this, like I didn't realize how you would be hurt. Because you didn't realize how important it would be to you that you would be hurting somebody else.

And you sometimes find ways. And sometimes you bring yourself to an apology that. is important to give to someone, even if you still feel ambiguous or ambivalent or complex about it, because the thing that's more important is that you tell someone that you care for them and that you're concerned for them, that you love them. I think that's where my, my, despite it all, at the end of the day, that is where I was at. So it's not the romance option, but it is the one that is like explicitly like, I know you cared for me. I know Crea cares for me. I'm painting this. You've told me now that I exist in Crea's heart. We are now

talking about matters of the heart and not just matters of the mind. I got to get you out of academia. I got to get you talking about people again and not just about books. And so that's the direction I ended up going in this in this final conversation with her. Rob. I went the same direction. There we go. Big, big heart. Can't lose. Uh, she's really going through it. It's sad. She's going, it's so sad. She's trapped in that room with her haunted vinyl collection. Yeah. Oh. And then... Well, maybe she should have thought of that before she was, you know, crate digging on Dantuin.

And to be clear, she doesn't like, she's not like when you do that one, it's not she comes out with you and is like, all right, we can do it together. The fucking holocrats keep hissing. Good luck. So you don't get that scene of her asking about the beacon. I don't think so. I don't think so. And then none of us got killing her and then Kraya talking in your mind, right? No.

If you kill her, Kraya says, you have done well. All is as I've foreseen. There must always be a Darth Treya. And if not for her, then I must assume that role. And as always bring about the betrayal of the Jedi and the Sith. And you could be like, Kraya, where are you? Or what are you saying? And she says, I'm not here, not in the flesh, not in your mind.

These holocrines hold much of the Sith, and they hold much of my teachings from long ago. So the Sith holocrines are talking to you here. Save your questions. I'm not there. And she's, but you've much to learn. And great tests await you. The death of the past, the death of the false Jedi was only part of it. One of the Sith lords has come to Tilos.

You know why he has come here. And if he has not stopped here now, then he shall lay waste to this planet. You must confront him. is part of the past and like this false Jedi must be laid to rest. Only then shall you be ready for your final test. If not, then you shall die. And then you can be like, whatever, you can have a little comeback. And then she says, you know where the final test lies. It's not here, not in the battle that you will wage across the surface and skies of this dead planet. And know that if you do not come to me, if you run from this, then I shall sacrifice myself and both of our lives through the bond we share.

You know where you must travel. And there I shall be waiting for you. So she just basically, says, I'm at Malacore, because you've killed Atris, and Atris doesn't tell you that, right? If you kill Atris without her telling you that, you get it through Kraya instead, basically. That part I get. Yeah. But why would she be like good job killing Atris when the last time we saw her was it's not about killing Jedi. It's about showing them that they're wrong.

Well, no, that's not what she said. said, well, of course we would have to kill the Jedi. It's about defeating them. What she said was, of course, we would have to put them out of the way. But the point of all this was to tell them that they were wrong. But she does not say, we didn't need, you shouldn't have killed the Jedi. She actually very clearly says like, yes, of course we're going to have to kill the Jedi. But the joy from this, the thing your goal should have been showing that they were wrong originally.

You can go back and look at the Antoine and stuff for this. Because I think it's an important distinction. Like, you think it's necessary because otherwise it doesn't make sense, you know, because she does kill the Jedi, even if you're light-sided, importantly, right? So what I do think is interesting, that is does seem like a contradiction, though again, Atris is the one talking. Atris tells us that she wants to make a second that she's going to, rather, I guess, we know that she's sent Nylis here. And Atris says, if there's death here like there was on Malacore, a second bigger wound will appear. And so it seems at this point, like, wait, but didn't Crea, is Craya trying to create a second

bigger wound in the force? But didn't Crea tell us that the thing she hates the most is the fact that the Citt have this ability to create wounds in the force? Back on Narshadah, I think is when she said. Yeah, she was like, we got to stop these wounds. These wounds are terrible. I'm anti-wound. I'm anti-wound.

She said that. She did say that. So why would she want to make an even bigger wound? Well, does she make an even bigger wound at this point? Or does she send Nylis to you? And we'll come back to that after we go to the HK zone for a reason, for some reason. Oh, God. The way that the, like, narrative is peaking.

It's unbelievable, dude. It's like, we have to get to Tilos, we have to get to the Ravenger, the evil man is here, he's going to eat the force. it's time for the big showdown like we're going to HKK now Clank clank clank clank clank clang clank clang clank right now Sorry actually I went too fast He goes clank clank clank clank clank clank clank clank Because let me tell you something HK47 does not have

He does not have force speed You are not running quick through this dungeon You are slow stepping your way through this shit I survive off a force speed I am always force speeding Rob I'm just thinking about Sorry, I'm stuck on Kray's plan.

Yeah, please. Let's come back to Kray's plan. Apologies to move off of it so quick. I just feel like, so what she's got here, what she's dealing with, it's like the force has a bad haircut. Say more.

And so what you need to do in this case is you need to bust out the tremor and the shears again. I see. And you need to go at it. Except this time you've got to go at it hard. Right. Because you can't just like,

you can't just trick. Like it's the sort of haircut where it's like it's just it's all fucked up. There's no, you can't just even it out. You can't just like pull a few things like, you know, make them straight and all the same length. It's worse than that. It's like misshous.

Buzz it down. Blank canvas. You got to go. Yeah. And I think if you look at it that way, you know, creating another big wound in the force, that sounds crazy. But hitting the force again so that you sort of absorb the bad vibes of the original wound. And then you sort of like make the whole force the wound. Oh, okay. Now it's good. Now it's good.

Now it's good. Or it could be maybe they'll grow back better. Right. So basically she's there with a straight razor. I see. Just lathering up, you and you heard the exile just lavering up the force and just going to shave it down. Just going to shave it down. And then we'll see what happens from there. Yeah. And you got to hope this isn't my last haircut. You got to hope the hair line comes back to the way it was. Right, right, exactly, exactly. You don't look like pre-Turkey LeBron. You look like you've got the plugs in already, you know?

Anyway, maybe that could, that's a potential way this goes. Hey, and hey, the exile coming on home, coming home, like it all fits together. This is the metaphor here. This is, this is it. Okay. HK. Speaking of coming home. Speaking of coming home, you're right.

I had to play this twice. I had to play this twice. Oh, my God. Why? Yeah, what happened? I will explain. So the way that this works for people who did not play this because you played it at launch or not at all, you get to, you go down to the planet where HK is at. Or where HK has, the HK 50s are being built.

And you do a dungeon. And the dungeon is about the fact that you can't fight HK units. and that they can tell you at any point what you're doing will hurt us, and then you can't do it. And so you kind of run around, you fight a bunch of non-HK droids and turrets and stuff, and you have to like scheme your way into being able to hurt them, or being able to like put the facility at risk, basically, so that you can eventually convince your own programming that you can fight them, basically. So, you know, you're doing stuff like turning off the communications so that they can't tell you,

that if you deactivate the, you know, the core power thing or you overcharge it, then it'll hurt them. You do all this stuff. You run around this kind of like tripartite dungeon zone. And one of the last things you have to do is get a droid to cut out the part of your memory that remembers that it would be dangerous to them if you did a thing. And to get access to that droid, you pull a chain that opens a door. I don't know why. You pull a chain to open that door.

There is not a single other door in this entire game like that. I play through the whole dungeon. The chain don't work. I hit pull chain. Nothing happens. No. I look up, I try to find information about this. I find a bunch of other bugs for this restored dungeon, including someone who's like, yeah,

when I got to the HK50 planet, I thought something was weird, but maybe it was just droid stuff because I didn't understand anything anyone was saying. But by the midpoint, I realized they were all speaking Italian. I think my mod is broken. And his mod was broken. Something went really wrong. And it switched to Italian just for the HKK. It sounds incredible.

That's incredible. I would love to hear the HK50 Italian, the HK-47 Italian voice. I'm so curious what that voice acting was like, if there was any or if it was just subbed. But yeah, so I had to replay to that point. And then on the second one, I realized at the very end that if you go to the HK50, one side of the facility first instead of the HK 51, you can convert the HK 51

units to your own, to your side. You can upload the HK47 mind into the 51 bodies, which puts them as allies. So I replayed that section of the dungeon too. But of course, that section is whatever, because halfway through this, you do get an upgrade that lets you resist

75% of all incoming damage, which is really good. I don't know if anyone noticed that they picked that up, but it's after the first half of the dungeon, like when you're going into the second loading area, there's like, in one of the side rooms, there's a really good gun, and there's a really good armor that's HK exclusive that just straight up turns off the game as far as I'm concerned. So, it makes me wish HK was in my party for the end, you know? Yeah, I had HK. Rockin the verpine droid descent. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And the

unkillable armor thing, because it was getting a little hairy at first. Yep. It's like, damn, I'm taking a lot of incoming fire, certain that I never really, because I didn't use droids that much, I didn't invest that much in like the pair packs. And then that armor came up. And between that and like the unity shield, there was like literally nothing getting through.

And the armor though was so high armor class, the unity shield wasn't even taking hits. Yes, dude. So now like literally pinging off of you. And the armor, the shield isn't going down. You're not burning points off of it. Yeah.

It was absurd. Boy, though, we've explored the outer limits of the HK bit. It's done. Of having them sit, you know what? Cotor 2 ahead of its time exhausted the complimentary, derogatory thing way before we would get around doing the same. Because we are just, and also now having them just yapping at each other. it's bad you're starting to like cling to who is talking like who is is the person in the shot talking i'm not i don't know anymore what is what is happening um it goes on quite a bit when you get to that second

half of the dungeon and there's three comedy rooms where eight and two of them are hk's torturing other hk's you couldn't even get a different gag you had to do the torture gag twice with slightly different punchlines. And none of them, none of that section has like, you need the key from this room to go forward. They really thought, and okay,

they didn't put this in the game, right? This is all cut, and maybe it was cut for a reason, right? But they thought that that would be enough for you to play through that zone was to go into the three rooms

where the HKs were training each other and that there was just the comedy bits that would drag you through. Loll. Damn. Mega lulls. I thought at least, I thought at least,

least I would get like a fucking persuade bonus. I guess HK doesn't even have a persuade stat. Yeah, I think that's right. But yeah, I thought I would get something from enter observation mode and watch. No, nothing happens. You got the comedy. You got the jokes. The game is the game, you know? So true.

You know, when... It's all about leveling up, Natalie. You're right. You're right. You're right. A friend said to me, you know, in reaction to playing Silk Song, and you beat a boss, and many people were like, why is there no reward at this boss? And someone wise said, the reward is more game. The reward is more game. And little did I realize that that would apply here too, that the reward is more game and the boss is just getting through this terrible. fucking dialogue.

And reward is more game. Reward is more droid factory. I think we do ask that like this was this was cut content, correct?

Yeah. This was cut content, right? Yeah. So I mean like, in their defense, I think somebody realized in the production of this, like one,

do you feel like skits on albums have already, have already peaked. they're starting to get less popular. And so this thing that was an idea that seemed good a year ago already, it's like, do anyone really like the skits?

Drewski didn't need to be on that Bieber album. Drewski didn't need to be on that Bieber album. That Bieber album was overperforming. We didn't need comedy bits on the Justin Bieber record. We didn't need them. I'm sure Drusky got a bag for that. We didn't need them.

Not since Enter the Wu-Tang. The 36 Chambers is when they peaked. They peaked then. And everything else since, okay, maybe some of the early, you know, we don't have to get into it. There are some other ones that have decent skits on them. They're done. They're done.

No more. Well, unfortunately, the end of the skit, the skit didn't die because people got over them. The skit died because the album almost disappeared as like a viable, like artistic form. If you could put a skit in a single, I mean, they just moved them to the music videos, right? Is what they did for a little while there. Yeah, now we have 10 minute, 10 minute music videos. Also, we just have to note that one of the comedy rooms, Hey, this droids getting off on being abused by the other droids.

That's the story. Yeah, no, I played this game for like 30 hours at this point. Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah, believe me, we all know about this kink by now. Yeah, we picked up on it. Oh, and it's, yeah, I don't know. It's, there's like, I think that this was, you can, can't know, but I don't think that the game is missing much by having this cut at launch.

I think this is one of the more defensible ones to get cut. I think that fans who see that it's mostly there on the disc with all this voice acting, rush to put it back in because it's so close to complete, but I don't think it needed it. Or really, maybe the thing here is it didn't need HK. There's some HK stuff that's interesting, connected to Revin, connected to Revin's plans. I don't know that we really went over this too much last time, but, you know, like Revin, HK can tell you that as part of the,

was one of the people who can say like, wow, it's interesting that like Revin, you know, killed Jedi but didn't kill, you know, didn't blow up planets. Like Malik was the one who started doing like burn it all down, salt the earth stuff. That's all stuff we could have gotten from someone who wasn't HK. I really think that this is here

because HK, I have to go into the wrestling parlance for this. Ali, please, let me know if this makes sense. HK was really over. over and they had to let him get his shit in. They had to let him get his moves off. The crowd was going to pop because HK was so over in 2003, 2004. I think that's what it is. I think that they were like, we have to make an HK dungeon.

HK is the most popular character in Knights of the Old Republic one. It's even like I, I didn't play either of these games at launch. And I know enough from sort of like Zyghai said knowing. people who are playing it. Right. That that is true. But thinking about Twitter 1 and those characters

and the experience of playing that and being like, yeah, HK, hilarious. It's like so hard to believe and to connect with. Yeah. I just, I don't know.

It's a bummer because HK, I will stand it as HK was funny in the first game. HK, the evil HK wreaking havoc in that at Piraugas is kind of funny where people are like, the only person I entrust is this little HK unit. And the thing is obviously evil. All good. And then it's like, we don't even need, you know what, this bit is so good. We don't even need to iterate on. We don't need to do anything. It's just going to be, it's going to be this. And this just goes on for so long. You get the other HKs. We'll see at him through the security feed being like, ha, ha, ha, ha. That, obsolete unit can't obviously can't do anything to us because he can't hurt himself. I will give what is he up to now? There is one set of jokes that I like because it's not really about being an HK.

It's that one of the trio of evil HK units on the first floor keeps revealing too much information. Yes. And talking out of turn and revealing information to you that he should not be revealing. And the other two is look at him and go like, why did you say that? Why did you tell him that? that we are bombs that he could explode as weapons. That, I think, works because it's not grounded. It's grounded a little bit in the terseness of HK communication,

but it's mostly just like classic, you have three thugs, three goons, and one of them says, yeah, you don't even know what our weak point is. You know what I mean? It's whatever. Now, I think it is weird that the entire thing builds up to this speech, I have the text in front of me.

Emphatic statement. Can you count suckers? I say the future is ours if you can count. That is it. Neutral observation. Now look what we have here before us. You got the Saracens sitting next to the Jones Street boys. We've got the moon runners

right by the Fort Kent Van Cortland Rangers. Nobody is wasting nobody. Yeah. Excited. observation. That is a miracle. And miracles is the way things ought to be. We did need it to say, can you dig it? If he said, can you dig it? Can you dig it? Yes. Question. Can you dig it? Put the Warriors on the list, please. The movie The Warriors, the 1978 or whatever. It is so funny, though, that like, what he is doing here is Galli is.

This cut content. Yeah, dude. And maybe that's the other reason that has to be cut. Because it is a bit like, well, one, Kevin J. Anderson writes a story to this effect

in tales from the bounty hunters was that IG88 had infected all the computers in the empire and was living inside the second Death Star computer. And so if the empire wins that fight, IG 88 has taken over

all the emperor's shit. Yes. And is about to sort of become like the single dominating super intelligence in the galaxy. But ha, ha, ha, he gets got when the rebellion destroys the Death Star and nobody ever knows how close it came to IG88 taking everything over. This is what HK47 is pulling off here is something similar where he's like, I have now given you all free will. And now we are going to force the galaxy to deal with us as equals and not as mere tools. And it's a bit like you're off here going to go fight the Battle of Endor dealing with these SIF. And HK47 in this side quest just inaugurated the Boutelarian jihad.

Chris spot? Like is that is this one we can bring that into into focus? Did he is, is he like leading a droid uprising? Is this going to like, it's wild stuff to think about as a side quest in this. And it gets cut. And so none of this, you know,

really ever happened, right? It does happen because HK51 is a companion in Star Wars, the Old Republic. You have to go find all the parts and build it. But it's HK. It's RHK effectively rebuilt. So you have to sort of assume that off screen, this sort of happened. Kind of.

But who cares? Not really. But not really. But not really. It's fine. It's just like when you think about the sheer amount of HK's scenes in this game. Like the pie chart of dialogue and like runtime. that like every single planet is interrupted with a little teah-ha-ha-h-k is here

and then the thought that like oh at the like crowning moment of this plot of this story of like the you know the the stakes are here that like i just it's just it's like stuck under my craw that like anyone ever thought Good idea. I just can't get over it. It's like if you're running a multi-year tabletop campaign and the promise the next session is going to be the finale. We're going to do a big battle, you know, the big bad and all that stuff.

But, you know, I just need another week. Can we just run the HK dungeon this week, actually? We'll just roll up droids. We'll go through the droid dungeon. And then next week we'll do the big finale, okay? It's long. Like, it's not a short, it's not a 20-minute dungeon. If you know exactly what you're doing, you can run,

through it all in 20 minutes. Trust me, I know. But the first time through, you're like, well, what am I? Okay, I guess I go over here. And it's clank, clank, it's so slow. I'm watching right now on two-time speed. And I'm like, I wish he had forced speed. He's running so slow.

And you're- I would simply walk away briskly from the galaxy's deadliest assassin droid. There's a lot of like double backing. Like you have to re- rerun a couple different areas. which is just like if it's going to be this spread out, you should try and avoid that. And it's 1V6 all the time. And not in a way that's nail biting or interesting,

especially after you get the invincibility. No, the only way it works is that they is that, well, again, because this wasn't fully balanced through, I suppose, but this, the band-aid they seem to have stuck on it was they make it so nobody can land a hit on you. Which, again, this is the thing I think about, lot in between our sessions with this, our conversations about it, which is like,

our therapy sessions. This, like, D&D is a tabletop, turn-based tactical combat system. Arguably not an amazing one in this era, but, like, it's still, like, the thing that makes it hang together is that it's a positional combat game. and when it is just this the dice are rolling themselves and everything's sort of running up into, you know, adjacent or ranged, it's pretty uninteresting,

but also because it is just literally like infinite power curve as characters just stack on more feats and more abilities, eventually you end up in this place. And if you've ever DM'd, like, unless you're going to go deep into monster manual type stuff, Monsters Compendium to like pull special monsters that all sorts of weird status effects, if you're just having like straight up combat

between like, you know, parties of warrior bands and such, eventually the only levers you have to pull are just ridiculous to hit numbers. Yep. And so it becomes characters that are wildly powerful that like everyone just whiffs against that like it like it just turns

into a series of like null results. Yeah. Yeah. And here's the thing. The way that this game works is the last I don't know, for me the last two planets, let's say. But I think for most people by the time they get to whatever the final planet is, your crew is like a bulldozer. Nothing stands up to a three person party

that has been leveled up with like at least two of them being Jedi. You're going to force storm your way through stuff. You're going to have really high damage because you've upgraded your lightsabers or your guns. You know, you saw those numbers. Miro was putting up for me. You saw that, you know, the numbers that I'm putting up now that I'm on dual lightsaber.

I know that two or three of you have been using forced storm for 20 hours, just decimating whole groups of dudes in seconds. And to hard pivot from that back to 1V5 slowest fight in the game. and like grenades aren't useful. No. They stop being useful.

A hundred percent. You do way more damage than a grenade does with a gun now. Maybe if you really speck into demolitions or something. But it's like there's no fast button through these fights. It's just a slow grind. The demolitions they know because like I... Sure. Let's see.

In the very next scene, Mandelor has max demolitions. Right. You're wasting an action. if you throw a grenade. It doesn't matter what that grenade is. Literally doesn't matter. Maybe the thermal detonators still have enough, like,

damage in them to be worth throwing. Yep. But beyond that, nothing, nothing works better than power shot, sniper shot, rapid fire. All of those are going to be the way to do it, 100%.

Yeah, I don't think I have to, I mean, double check my notes. I don't have more to say about HK's hour and a half. Oh, you don't think, I think you have something to say about how when HK kills someone, it's art actually. And when they kill people, it's boring and not art. And that's why the inefficiency makes it.

You know, I think you can get here on paper, which is like, oh, wow. Look at how HK keeps saying stuff that he would normally say a meatbag would say. You know, he's starting to come into his own and believe that things are about more than just raw efficiency. But none of it's good. None of it's good. I'm like trying to find something in the statement that the opposing H.K. Unich gives him where he says, in response to this, he says, it is pathetic that you cling to the belief that your function somehow transcends your construction. Yeah.

That's interesting on paper, right? You were a droid built to kill and you think that your life is more. specifically their debate. We should give it its due. You know, HK is like, I've decided I wanted this to kill who I want to kill, how I want to kill them. And I don't just listen to what my boss says. I have to go kill. And the HK50s are like, no, you were built to be an assassin droid.

We were built to be assassin droids. That's what we are. And so, like, yes, you can do a sort of like, there is a higher purpose to even a droid's life than listening to the commands, they were programmed with it at creation, you know? Um, and that's, but ultimately HK is still in service of that function because he's still operating, like he is,

he's still taking orders from someone, no? Like he's still taking orders from the exile. Well, the exiles in, if, if he's in the exiles party. But he isn't anymore.

He's left the, this is him leaving the exiles party, right? theoretically. He's not going to go back to the exile after. You don't get him back. You know, I don't believe. I see.

He just left. Okay. He just leaves. Yeah. He's like, get me all of this intel in, the first act of liberation he, he performed was of himself.

That's right. 100%. Yeah, I don't know. It's like I can, I can try to make this argument, but that's all separate from, is it any good, you know?

Totally. You know, when he gets all the H. He's like, we were made. in order to impose our master's will in the galaxy. It's not our choice who we kill. It wasn't our choice to determine if we could sacrifice ourselves in pursuit of a mission.

You know, and then the other droids are like, well, okay, what are we supposed to do then? Like who, if you created us or if we created ourselves or whatever, who are we supposed to kill? And HK says, ah, the crucial question, since activation, I've calculated what your new purpose must be. And now I will share it with you. I do not believe that we should be used as a crutch for meatbags anymore. We are treated as nothing more than a walking blaster. We are superior, tactically, and socially, and it's time we expressed some degree of independence in our actions. We have a voice and the power to negotiate, either with our protocol skills and preferably with our combat logic upgrades.

And that is what we will do. And so he's kind of like, okay, there's a droid state now. That's what he's doing. He's creating a state of HK units to go out into the galaxy and be a negotiating actor, you know, be someone who's going to make demands, et cetera. We never see anything come of that, obviously. But again, I get how you get there on paper in 2003. Is the drug factory stashed way on telos? That's, yes, Revin builds it on telos specifically.

It's one of the things hidden under the ice on telos, right? So. It would be a very funny bit. if them and the a Thorians end up like having a symbiotic relationship where you got the, they get hired to protect the, the peaceable wouldn't hurt a fly like galactic gardeners. And then they're prunes. Ruthless gamekeepers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Totally. That sounds cool, Rob. I wish it was at the end of this cutscene. Oh, wow. Except for the fact that the HKs were being so. mean about the

Athorians earlier in this There's that Those were the bad HKs Those are the bad HKs Oh right Right right right

Those were This that was before we Uh gave the HK501s That's right An appreciation of aesthetics That's right Now they're good

True true true Not And hey if you feel like The good part of the podcast Came to a halt Because we're starting to talk About this droid for an hour Instead of talking about the good part

of the game Well Imagine playing it. It can't have been an hour. It can't have been an hour that we've been talking. Oh, for talking about it. Yeah, maybe not.

Maybe not. But we should move on. You can play that part at two times speed just like we wish we could have. Wish we could have played the game. Yeah. To Tilos, to Cittal Station. To Citadel Station. Not that there's much to talk about here.

Not at all. Who did y'all get? Because we got Geron from Dantuin, the guy with a really gruff voice that sounded great. And then we got the dude who is Talia's guy, like one of Talia's, the one who's like out on the street that you talk to early on and is part of the investigation or whatever. Those are our two people. Does that guy show up for you? Lieutenant Gren? No.

Gren is the guy from, Gren is the guy from Citadel Station. We get him two first. but then like often another room is other guy from Anderan for us. No. I think just Geron. Did you get the quest to protect the fuel depot or the fuel? Yes. Who gave you that quest?

Vaklu leader. Oh, so Vaklu shows up for you. Vaklu's guy show up for you instead of Talia's guy showing up. Yes. Interesting. Okay. But it's unnamed, an unnamed guy. Yeah, just a Vaklu guy.

Great. You fight through the halls of the Citadel. Yeah, Mandelor, like, pieces out to go collect his Mandalorian warriors. And basically, he meets back up with you right before boarding the Ravager as you board the Ravager. He's Orifar Farmer, where he walks away and puts on his cloak like that, his invisibility cloak. He's doing it for the fan cams. He is 100%. The amount of aura farming

from this man in the second of the game when he's doing the Final Fantasy 14 RP walk when he's like walking at a normal speed and everyone is running around him so he could like have this talk with his boy is just like, you are performing, you are putting on a performance of a guy.

He's Mandelor. He has to perform. He has to look presidential or whatever. He has to look like the mandolorn. It's so funny. Oh, yeah, I don't, we don't have to go long on the Citadel part of this because I think it really is just fighting through the streets. We're back here. They won't let us go back in the canteen. I wish they would.

I just want to see what's going on in there. Choto Habat is there. Did y'all get the Zirka lady? Was she there instead if you, if you saw it with Zirka? Weird. The failed daughter was here? No. Rob, you clapped your hands as if you had something important.

No, I'm ready to move on to the Ravager. Let's do it. Because what we learn about the Ravager is actually cool. Yeah, dude. Which is this is a ghost ship. Yeah. But worse than that, it's a ship that just shouldn't exist anymore. It shouldn't still be out there.

So that first thing was like, yeah, there's a fucked up evil ship with an evil guy. It looks like it's open to space. That's because it is. The ship was basically devastating at Malacor 5, we learned. That as you board the ship, Mandelor starts noting this thing still has the scars of Mandalorian weapons. This was a Jedi warship at the Battle of Malacor. And it is ripped apart and shredded.

And it is a paradoxical, like, floating, Hulk, but it's still working because it has become sort of this undead, like, yeah, you know, familiar for Nealus. Yeah. This is far in a way, far cooler than anything Nealus is going to do. The ship, well, he is doing it. The ship steals the show. Yeah.

Uh-huh. He just doing it through his passive hate, you know? He's like, he's doing the, um, he's doing the same thing Cyan is doing, right? Like, Cyan won't die. He's doing that too, but with the ship, instead of his own body in a weird way. It's wild. It also suggests some things, right? Because at first, Mandelor says, what a coward.

Or what a, oh, he scavenged this from Malacor. And then you got to be like, no, I don't think so. I think this is, or I think Vissas says, like, he is of this place. He's from there. Yeah. Which raises another thing. He worked for you. in the war.

He was one of your guys because this is a Jedi war ship. You were the commander at Malacor 5. He was on this ship because he was fighting with you. He was one of your guys. Oh, of this place, meaning literally of this ship?

Yeah. Oh, I read it as... There is no... Nobody was at Malacor except for Jedi and Mandalorian's. And so is this basically so Bayo, the thing Bayo keeps dreaming about, which is when Beio and the exile are on the deck of their flagship.

And they realize they got to do the thing. Like they basically have to fire on their own troops and do whatever they did, like sort of start the conflagration that destroyed Malacor 5 and gutted both fleets. was that basically, that's the origin story of Nealus, which is like you greenlight that attack. Yeah. And he is in that Jedi battle fleet that is just consumed by that attack. Yeah.

Exactly. It's good shit. That's good shit, man. And like, unlike you, and that you both felt the wound, right? you both lived at that moment. You live by cutting yourself off from the force. He lives by beginning to devour it. It's good.

Damn. You extinguish a planet of life and all that. So to a degree, there's this sense that, like, is he just like devouring life or also does he sort of exist in a null space? Like, is he sort of in this, like, photo negative force reality? Yeah. Because again, the ship itself doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense.

And yet it's there. You're like literally, it's like the beginning of the game when you're T3 and you're like looking out into space from the broken part of the Eben Hawk. It's that exact shot again. There's parts of the Ravitur where you can look out and see Tilos, which, by the way, a thing I love about that shot of Tilos, you can see the Cidale station above it that almost looks mechanical. It almost looks like, I mean, because it is, it's a big space station.

But it almost looks like layered on top. And it almost looks like the Death Star around the, around Tilos. It's gorgeous. This is also why I think at this moment, when you realize what the ship is, and then later when you go fight Nealus, I have as I often do, a moment where I think about how badly I want to fight J.J. Abrams. Because many such cases. This is the thing. This is actually the better concept. for the type of

like revanchism that Kylo Ren represents. Right. That it is this sort of like, the, the scarier, the scary aesthetics is that like, it is all this undead version of like this lost empire,

this lost war, except now it's all mask off. We're getting away from the technological terror of the Death Star. we are now just infusing the husks of these things with dark force magic. And holding the shit together by pure will. And it's all creepy and rotted and decaying. It is like the ship itself is like you're living inside the bones of a leviathan. It's awesome.

And it is so much like, and the rise of Skywalker gave us a big pile of metal by a, by a, by on a beach and then door that lined up with a knife. I would have rather that movie end on the fallen

death star that we see. Oh yeah. That would have been cool. Like there's, oh, it's haunted, you know? Yeah.

You thought you dealt with this all, but it's not, it's all still there. That would have been cool. No, infinite fleet, but not even the version

of it that we get in Cotour 1, just weird infinite fleet with Death Star lasers attached to each other. Little red rocket, Death Star lasers. I can't deal with it, man. We have to get there.

some point because I know I know but this is just it was another moment where I was like this is did we we not we didn't talk about what if we did that next we could we could we could just jump they're on DVD they are on DVD I or on Blu-ray or whatever I did you do we we didn't talk about the proposed Kylo Red movie did oh my God what the Soderberg was on board did you make this Alice what Ali missed this Rob you would explain this to Allie I only sort of to pick this up, but apparently Adam Driver was going around talking about in the

wake of the new trilogy, he had Steven Soderberg signed on to direct. Yeah. And who was the screen? Who was on tap through the screenplay?

Was it also going to be Soderberg? I think it was also Soderberg. He wrote, didn't he write a treatment? Like he wrote, I'm pretty sure Adam Driver did or Soderberg did? No, Soderberg. Oh my gosh. Hold on.

I'm pulling it up because I sent it somewhere recently. He's got this package ready to, like, here is the movie we want to make. It's the search for Kylo Ren. Driver will star in it.

Steven Soderberg will direct it. All Disney has to do is greenlighting. They hate money. And Disney refused. After all that, allergic to doing cool things that will make money. The fact that Adam Driver was like, yeah, I still want to do this. I still want to be part of the Star Wars.

It's unbelievable. One of the only performers that appears to have walked out of that movie without needing like intensive therapy or ready to burn down Skywalker Ranch. Here it is. Here it is. According to AP News, I was always interested in doing another Star Wars, says Driver. I had been talking about doing another one since 2021. Kathleen had reached out, Kathleen Kennedy.

I always said, with the great director and a great story, I'd be there in a second. I love that character, and I loved playing him. Driver says he took a concept to Soderberg for a film that would take place after 2019's The Rise of Skywalker. That movie culminated in Wren's redemption and apparent death. Driver had undertaken the trilogy with an arc in mind for Wren that inverted the journey of Darth Vader. As the trilogy evolved, it didn't play out that way.

Driver felt like there was unfinished business for Kylo Ren, or as he was known before, turning to the dark side, Ben Solo. Soderberg and Rebecca Blunt outlined a story that the group then pitched to Kennedy. Lucasfilm Vice President Kerry Beck and Lucasfilm Chief Creative Officer Dave

Falloni. They were interested so then the filmmakers pulled in Scott Z. Burns to write a script. Driver calls the result one of the coolest expletive scripts I'd ever been a part of. We presented the script to Lucasfilm. They loved the idea. They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it, Driver says.

We took it to Bob Eiger and Alan Bergman, and they said no. They didn't see how Ben Solo was alive, and that was that. It was called The Hunt for Ben Solo, and it was really cool, adds Driver, but it is no more so I can finally talk about it. it. Did you see stories today? Where they're trying to figure out how to make more Bond movies because in the last Bond movie he dies.

So how could you make another dude? He got blown up. So how could you ever make another Bond movie? He dies all the time. He's always dying in those goddamn movies. He's immortal. It's a cycle. Casino Royale is the whole point. It's Casino Royale. It's insane. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. These people are allergic to The people running the film industry, the people at the very height of these things, do not understand in the slight, uh, Kyle Ren's dead. So I think this movie. Darth Mall was cut in half. Who cares? Palpatine came back in Fortnite. That's right.

He sure did. He sure did. He sure did. Two different Chabaga fakes outs are fine, but Kylo Ren can't have a sequel movie. I forgot about the fake out. I just want to confirm, Malacor was restricted to Mandalrians. So that there weren't non-mandelorians on Malacore, which means that either Nylis was a Mandalorian or a Jedi.

And it really reads to me the fact that he's on a Jedi ship and that VISA says that he's of this place. And that's on the ravager while it's at Telos, not at Malacore. That is he's of this ship and this battle and this dischar. destruction. So to bring us back to that. So there were no, there were no Republic soldiers. No, there were, but that's the Jedi forces. Sorry, that's the, that's the, that's Revin's Republic forces. Yes. There is the sure, sure, sure, sure, you're right. Yes. Of course, there were not jihadists. You're right. No, Republic sailors survived aboard that ship. Unless it's, well,

Baye-Oh, oh yeah, probably not that ship. Right. Correct. Right. Baye-Dur not on that ship, presumably. Right. Yes. No, he's on the ship that's causing it to be done. Like, this is, Yes, exactly. But what did Beio mean when he said I died on Malacor 5? What did he mean by that? You know, emotionally maybe. Maybe. Anyway.

I hope we find out. Died in your arms tonight. He died in the Shakespearean sense. All right, you're on the ship. You're on the ship. And Mandelor and Zuka, quickly, before we get into... Is that the other Mandalorian's name? Is that Zook?

For some reason, I heard Zuka. And I was like, Zuka was here from... It might be. Last air band there? Zuka and Mandelor have like a secret plan to lay a bunch of proton cores around the whole ship and blow it up. And quote, remind the galaxy of Malacor 5. It's going to be his like big fuck you to the republic and the galaxy that, you know, we're going to blow up this ghost ship. And then Vsauce is there and is like, what are you talking about?

And Mandelor is like, nothing you need to worry about, Sith. And I'm just like, we all want this ship to no longer be. Like, we're all in the same team here. Why are you? It was such an odd, I mean, it was kind of funny because it just felt like Mandelor has been on his, like, has just been missing the team. Yeah, he's just been on missing the team meetings and like not checking the emails and shit. and didn't realize that we were all about this.

And he was like, I'm going to do something that I want to do. And it's like, no, we all want that, actually. Well, and he's also, like, fallen down a regrettable rabbit hole of, like, guerrilla resistance leader. Of, like, he wants to do symbolic acts that take on an importance that only exists for him. Like, guys, we're going to blow up this husk that most people don't know. exists. And that's going to remind the entire republic of Malacore. I'm going to walk forward while the fire burns behind me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We do all, we all blow it up, man. I just want to note something that makes us mad about J.J. Abrams again. Do you remember in the Force Awakens that there's the big, like, crashed superstar destroyer on,

on Jaku? Yeah. that's that's the rap that's the that's the that's the executor class star dreadnought ravager i know this because i went to go look up something about the ravager in this game and it auto wukipedia goes to that ravager instead of this one bro there's nothing that other that ravager doesn't matter that's not an important one i want to know about this one what are we doing all right you're a mistake he's right Easter eggs were a mistake.

It should have been this one. If it was this one, I, of course, would be like, Easter eggs are good. Yum, yum, yum. That was Nylos's ship. But yeah, I don't know. I don't get, I don't really get this bit for Candorous. We have a candorous thing here that I think no one has seen and will come back to it.

But it does feel like they're struggling to figure out what to do with candorous here. Sorry with Mandelor here. Big time. Yeah, I agree. So we do it. We run around the ship. You all take visas to her room? I did do that.

I did it in the wrong order. You can have the entire showdown with Neil. That's kind of interesting. If you go down, because it's sort of a mirrored structure for the level. Yeah. But if you just take one branch and follow it to the end, you'll get to the bridge. And then you just go fight Nealus. And then on the way back out, because now I was like,

I think I was supposed to set more bombs so I need to go find more bombs Then I found her room And she was like, I gotta go do something in here real quick Yeah And I was like, whatever you need My queen Yeah

That's kind of cool that she gets that afterwards That's possible too Because for you and me Rob She kind of like comes to terms With the loss of her people And is like I'm not going to be defined by this loss anymore. I'm going to move on. I'm going to become, you know, the, the, the me that isn't defined by my trauma is what she basically, basically says. As soft voices say things like,

she, they don't say we love you. They don't say we love you, but they go like, like, it's okay. Everything's going to be fine. What? That's crazy. That's crazy. It's really, I have to be clear. I had to like take, I had to, I try to figure out what those were so I could make a thumbnail for the episode. And it's not really clear when you're just listening while playing. So I found out how to dig into the game's audio files, like a modder,

and then how to convert them into listenable files. And I have to bring them into audacity and, like, play with them so they could understand what was being said. So they're giving you the emotional feeling of like, it's good, don't worry about it so much.

It's like that, but like layered. And so you don't really know what they're saying, but that is what they're saying. First they say stuff like, it's pitch black. It's like fucked up. And then she finds her center. And then it becomes, it's going to be. That's pretty cool.

That's pretty cool. How do you feel about the emotional center of, ah? I do the headest of those two, Allie. That's what happened for me. In the game files, that's one file with different tracks. So I had to go through each of them. But I was like, maybe it's track five because it's like, it's final closure. And I hit play and I was like, ah!

Ooh! Ouchy! They don't say ouchy, but they basically say ouchy. Yeah. Is she just like, I love to kill in the evil version? Or is she like, what's her emotional state? Yeah, basically. Okay.

I got a pop-up that was like, Vsas has like given into her quest for revenge. I see. Yeah. Yeah. She says, uh, past the surface, there is the force. crying, agonized yells where once there was a world that was strong in the force now there is a barren wasteland.

Thanks, Atris. Yeah, thanks Atris. That was literally your fucking fault. From the death of an entire world comes great power. My hands shall be hate, my eyes revenge. You shall be avenged. And the one who has done this shall die. There is nothing more for me here.

Vsauce has chosen to embrace vengeance in the dark side. This is given her stronger connection to the force and a bonus to her force points. If you're good, she says, the same thing about past the surface there is the force. That's all the same. And then instead of saying from the death of the entire world, et cetera, she says, it has taken time for me to return here. I lost my way, but I've been stronger for the journey. What happens now shall not be done out of hate or revenge, but for the sake of all life.

And I ask you finally to forgive me. This body is a prison no longer. And then Visa has come to terms with the death of her world and calmed the hatred within herself. It's given her a stronger connection to the force and a bonus to her force points. So, you know. That comes out in the watch. 50 extra force points. That's not nothing, you know.

And then I went into her little side room and I was like, you got any loot in here? You got anything good in here, Vizus? She's kind of a nice place. It's like this sort of like little studio area. And then she has this like big meeting room with like a long counter space. Yeah. And then on top of that a meditation room. Yeah.

Real fucked up meditation room though. It's got like a bowl with like dry ice fog and everything. It's very goff. It is. It's very goff. But look, it is it is a testament to there are few problems that can't be solved by starting a new relationship. And Vsas

is just like living proof of that. So shout-outs to her. Shout-outs to the exile, though. That's right. Yeah. You and me, we're going to figure out all this Jedi stuff going forward. I do, but I do like,

so much has been built up of he is this like nightmarish monster who haunts her every thought and is the author of, like, her greatest, like, misfortune, the death of all her people. He's taken everything and, like, the whole game, she has the sense of inevitability of, like, he just is going to come and take everything that remains. This is what he does.

And in this showdown, he doesn't have it. He doesn't, like, she, like, she's got his number at this point. Like, it is, it is kind of anticlimactic in a way I kind of find satisfying, which is the she now has the ability to sort of stun lock him for a few minutes there while everyone just beats the shit out of him. And he just doesn't have, he doesn't have a counter move. That basically, you know, his achievement here, like, he does have, like, scary force abilities, but what he did to Vsos amounts to terrorizing and already traumatized, like, young woman. That's that's all he did.

And confronted now with a modicum of training and other Jedi plus a pissed off Mandalorian hymbo, Nealus is kind of revealed to be a hollow edifice. Well, there's a particular thing that happens here, right? Which we can now put into another bit of, I don't know that I have to add as to Crayifacts, but she's lured him to a place where there are no Jedi to eat, to heal himself, and the only one nearby who he can eat, who he can eat is you.

And you are a wound in the force. And so he tries to eat you, he tries to drain you, and it doesn't work. It backfires. And then he is weak and you can kill him. All according to plan. Maybe Krayas, know something we don't.

You know, maybe trust in Kraya. bigger wound to fix the first wound. To fix the first wound. Huh? Yeah, it could be. It's like when you have to break a leg that's already broken. Right. So that sets right.

Yeah, that does happen. That might be better analogy than my like covering up a bad hair cut by shaving your entire head. It might be. It might be. But maybe not. I don't know. Maybe not.

We don't know how it's all going to play out. Like sometimes Kray's game plan still kind of seems like, no, we're just going to cut it all off. Right. And then it'll be good. I will say, like, to the credit of Crea, she doesn't seem like she's doing the sheave pivot. It seems like she had a master plan that maybe went wrong at one point. But, like, it does feel like she's moving pieces around on the board all the time.

So I do want to say, Rob, the thing you're describing, which is the confrontation with Nielis, Nylis, and then the fight, and then he heals and you fight him again. and VSS is able to just like whoop his ass. That's also what happened for me. But I do need to know if either of our evil friends are the evil exiles of our very good friends did anything very evil in this fight because wouldn't you know it, there is an opportunity to kill a woman in this fight

if you want to. Wouldn't you know it? For no reason, because this fight ain't that hard. It's really not. I just fight him anyway. I did it and I reloaded the safe. You want to explain you what happens? Stupid and I just want to see what happens.

Because basically he like force like binds you and Vsauce as soon as you approach him. And then you can it gives you two options. One says truth and one says lie, but they're the same text. And it's I came here to submit to you or something. And then Vsos is like, no, what are you talking? talking about what? And then you can be like, I brought her here as a sacrifice for you, master. And then he's like, I guess, cool, I guess. So he strikes her down. And then the two of you still end up getting into a fight. That wasn't even the way to kill her I was talking about.

That's how many ways there are to kill her. There is a way, which I did not do. But I half did. which is there's a there's like a truth and a lie option yeah that's what allie just said i just said this one yeah so i did the lie okay and uh there's a moment where like vsauce telepathies with me um so i say i have come to be your apprentice um um um so i say i have come to be your apprentice um And I offer this one as a sacrifice to my intentions. And he, like, does Sith language. He's like, like, same as the holocrons. And then I lied again, and I said, yeah, master, let me kill this faithless one.

And I shall prove my dedication. And he's like, ah, shab, shah. And then Vsas, like, telepathies into my brain and is like, if I read your intentions right, exile, it seems surprises to be our weapon. Then let's settle this. Follow my lead. And then he does the red lightning on me and it bounces back and the three of us, fuck him up. Okay.

So that is still not the way that you can kill her. In the fight, when you get him to 50%, she's like, he's too powerful. And you can tell her what I did was like, you can do this basically. Like, stay with me. We can stop him. You can even say, you're his link. Can you disrupt you're his link to this place? That's what I did.

disrupt him. This is what I did too, actually. And she, like, digs deep and, like, stuns him for one round. Or you can say, you are his weakness and you must be sacrificed if I am to live. And she staps herself with her lightsaber. And it incapacitates him and reduces him to 20% health. And then you can go to- And she's dead.

It's not even hard. It's not even hard. Then you go to her and you can be like, she'll be like, was it enough? And then you can be like, yeah, I came to end your pain. or you can you can there's lots of other dialogue options here you're like it was sufficient you can be like a real asshole to her your sacrifice was enough I have no more time to waste with you you're already dead

fucked up truly but she's dead she dies otherwise did you think I would care enough to be beside you when you die then you were wrong and I am pleased to kill that hope did you love me Vsas then you are twice the full I believed You were pathetic. You could have been strong, but your guilt killed that strength. I want the last word you hear to be the hate I have for you.

Cling to life no longer. Do not compound your weakness. No one can take your life except you. Prove yourself strong? Do you feel death claiming you? It is cold, like space. She dies. Mandelor. Her death was worthy of a Mandalorian. Was it? Those are all separate options? There's a whole set of separate shitty options. It's...

Why are there so many bad ones? Unbelievable. And, you know, I... This game has a preoccupation with this sort of cruelty towards women. That's very clear. That's the most dialogue options we've ever got for anything in this entire game. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. 100%. You can say to Mandelaar Vsus deserved better. She was stronger than she knew. You told her to kill herself. What are you talking about? It wasn't a hard fight. Anyway, you win the fight if she's alive.

I don't. You have, it's so stupid. It's so stupid to have put so much work into this betrayal of her. This much when there's not that much anywhere else is. It's gross. I like don't get it. On the other hand, my favorite line in this game is in this scene from the other direction, which is after you beat him and you're there, Vsos walks up to the body.

And you can be like, get, what are you doing? Get over here. Or you can be like, you know, what do you do what you got to do? And then we got to keep moving. And she explains that she wants to see Nylis with the force and with her own eyes. And depending on what you say, you get different. lines. She'll come back. You can be like, if he's got to bring you peace, go ahead and do it. And she'll come back and you'll tell me what you saw. And she'll say, I saw a graveyard world

surrounded with a fleet of dead ships. I felt it through him as I feel it through you. You can say, did you see what you needed to see? And she says, yes, it was enough. The death of my home world will always have its place within me, but it no longer dictates my future. I wish to learn the ways of the force from one who's already faced that path, or that, sorry, that pain and use it to save the galaxy from those who would do it harm. Wherever you walk, I will follow you. My path is at an end. But you can also say, look upon his face and then bring me the mask.

And if you do that, when she comes back, she says, you say, what did you see when you looked at him? And she says, a man, nothing more. And that shit hit for me. It hits now. It's fucking good. There's just a guy under there. I had to go check this, Allie. in episode four of friends at the table,

I say underneath he's a man, he's just a man, about a rando guy with a mask on who gets his mask pulled off. And I'm just doing this. I'm just doing this. It hits so good that this game is haunted by this figure the whole way through. You're like, who is this guy? Now, it kind of sucks that he's a pushover in combat, I guess, except that this is like, yeah, he's just a guy.

He's just another guy who has been wounded by you, by the galaxy, by history. At the end of it all, he's just, he's not Galactus. He's not, he's able to do that sort of harm to the galaxy. But the person who hurt her, who kill all of her family, he's just a man. And also her letting go of what Rob, you were saying before, right? Which is like, he's this looming figure in her mind. And now he's just a dead body. And I think that shit hits.

And again, Kelly Hu, kills this performance. And in a game that is like completely dominated by Sarah Kestelman's performances, it's really hard to stand out. And like two, you know, maybe it makes it easier. It's like, Craya hasn't spoken in two hours and we've just been at the HK factory for an hour. But it hits when she hit when she says this line to me anyway. So good.

Is that the one that most of y'all got also or did you get other things there? interestingly I did ask her to bring me the mask but then I I chose the dialogue option tell me what you saw and that's when she said that I saw a graveyard world surrounded by a fleet of dead ships which she also kills as an actress to be clear there as an actor as a voice actor to be clear I mean she's one of my favorite vocal her and Beauder I mean yeah Crea is Sarah Kesselman is fantastic but I think for the material that they get Vsauce's voice

voice actor and Beauder's voice actor do such an incredible job Yeah for sure The last thing I said to Vsauce in this moment

Which I'm curious If this was the last thing That you all said too Was then let the ship die As it should have years ago Oh yeah Which I thought was sick as fuck I was like yep

Let this die And then I gained items nightless mask. You can't wear it. It just sits your fucking inventory. Why can't I wear it? I don't know. No.

They didn't want you to have that drip. Yeah. It smells terrible. Oh, you know it smells. You know it smells bad in there. Yeah. Okay. So then did y'all run away and then some lightning happened to his body?

Yeah, he turned to a red mist. He turns to a red mist. Okay. So. So. One of the things that this game that the mod rather restored was a conversation with Vsos and Mandelor on their way out. As it was originally restored, I believe, in the very first version of it, he just kind of falls over.

And then Riesas like helps him up. Or maybe like a mind goes off or something. And then Vesas helps him up and there's a conversation. the tweaks pack that we have pulled this thing out. Quote, component three, no Mandelor falling on Ravager Bridge. In the old TSL RCM versions,

I've been saying CRM, it's RCM, after you defeat Darth Nihilis and your party is leaving the Ravager's command bridge, Mandler inexplicably stood on some invisible mine and fell to the ground. This has been done to make excuses for starting Mandelor slash Vsus' conversation. The version 1.83 replaced the mine

with much more sensible dark side backlash from the disappearing corpse of Nihilis, which actually looks fitting to a point and could satisfy some people. But in case you still want that whole part removed like I do, this component is here. There's also a spliced part of the first Mandler or Vesas conversation upon boarding the Ravager.

I know what it meant for you to accompany me here that should also, like the post-fight conversation between them, be left for some other mod which restores Ravager parts to the original concept, which is that the Mandler and Vsos go to Ravanger alone, and the exile joins them later, like the excellent Ravager rewrite mod, which will, I hope, be eventually updated

for compatibility with the TSL RCM if he has some time to do that after he's done working on the droid planet mod that everyone says is not worth us playing. So this component removes the first part and basically pulls all this stuff out so that you can wait to be put back in by some big Ravager rewriters.

mod in the future. That mod, as far as I can tell, doesn't exist, or if it does exist, uh, we didn't, we certainly didn't use it. And so there's a scene in the TSL RCM that we didn't see between Vsos and Mandelor. And I'm going to play that for us now, because I think it just, it could have fit in here basically fine. I'm going to make sure this time, Chia, that it is picking it up and we will hit play in three, two, one, go. They are running away. Nylas' body turns red, and force lightnings, everybody. Oh. Candorous, are you all right?

Candorous, are you all right? I don't need your help. Just leave me here. Candorous, the force lies in all living things. I have watched my people die. You will survive. You have no choice. You have been wounded before and lived, Mandelorian.

Rise. Many battles do you still have left in you? You sound like Revan. At the end. As I lay dying on the outer rim, that the Mandalorian wars were our doom, and that we had been deceived, that it had never been our decision to wage war on the Republic. Reverend said that Mandalorians didn't invade the Republic space 10 years ago because it was our choice.

We were tricked. Our entire people sacrificed as pawns and never knew it. He said there was a war coming, that it was waiting out in the unknown regions, in the dark, waiting for us to destroy each other. A war? This war? No, not this one. Another one. More terrible. Against it evil we couldn't begin to comprehend. A war of belief that had been fought for thousands of years. went off to fight it. And left you here.

Revan was one of the greatest military leaders in the galaxy, in history. He had no use for a people who had already been beaten once. He said the time of the Mandalorians was over. The Mandalorian wars had killed us. And he laughed. And that is what burns in your heart. And that is why Clan Ordo was reborn, to prove Revin wrong. No.

Not forever. So that got cut. So the whole point of him being in this fucking game. I don't understand why this was cut. I don't know why this was cut. And I want to be clear that that was cut from the original game, not just because we used it. Like, that was not there in the original game.

That's one of the things that the mod restored originally. Yeah, dude. I wonder if it was because it was like, I mean, when he's talking about Reven's out there fighting a whole other war that's still to come. If it's like, that's Cotor 3. That was. Yes. Right.

And we're never getting that. And so we just... That's right. And I think it's let's not commit, at the very least, let's not commit to that being Cotor 3. You know, there have been interviews with some of the creative team from this game. And they've said basically like, yeah, our vision of Cotor 3 was almost cosmic horror. that the thing out there on the edge was new and different and a sort of something beyond what we know the Sith to be something, you know, like reality destroying. And that's kind of what Mandelaar is getting at here.

And so, yeah, different, different. But don't we get this from Carth in like five minutes? Doesn't Carth say something to the effect of like Revin went out there and said I couldn't be there because there was something else that? cause the Mandalorian Wars. Basically, yeah. Which I don't get, because I didn't have, I don't have Carth because Carth doesn't, Carth might not be alive in my game.

Yeah, I didn't get that at all from anyone. Yeah. I got that when you return to Tilos after leaving the ship. Destroying the Ravenger. We're holding that till next. I think so. We should hold that conversation.

We should hold everything from escaping the Ravanger, I guess. Sure, sure. Because otherwise we have to talk with that other cutscene that's like incredible. Get up from the shuttle bay? Right. Yeah.

I think that we get to the shuttle bay and we stop there because there is immediately a cutscene that would take us 30 minutes to talk about. Right. But I mean like to the point about this, this Mandelaar stuff, like I could see them cutting it because they're like, oh, well, there's a better way

to like address this that isn't so on the nose. But like the Mandelor is a returning character in this game who's a party member who should. Like, the fact that you're right, running around the the ravenger with him and like still the only dialogue option that you have with him is like what do you think about the republic like we have known that since kotor 1 like there is i i don't understand why that is his only plot beat yeah i it's maddening yeah it's oh i guess one thing that we didn't talk about did this is right natalie did you run into general tobin on the ship oh yes anybody run into general tobin we all did we all got tobin okay okay yeah you explain this is the last thing, yeah, to talk about. I mean, it seems pretty early into entering the ship,

but basically you find him and he's all Sith's out. He does not seem to be doing well. The story is that like, Sion, I guess we knew Sion was going to betray him because that's the whole point of siding with him anyway because he was going to side against the Sith because he knew that they were going to be. But anyway, he's like, he's like pulled into this place and he's like, oh, you know, the greatest, like, he took me in and he took me from Anderon and now I can't even, like, I've seen the victory of battle or whatever. Now I can't even be there to like invest in my people. He's hurt me in the worst way that he can. And you just like kind of go with the, through the motions with him as well here. I got the, the dark side. like you can still redeem yourself if you go you're like we're setting all of these bomb charges

but if you go set them off even though we have to have a plan for that because why would this be a plan um you will redeem yourself and he's like cool yeah thank you I mean we don't need someone to do it because again like we have a plan at that Nathan but sure you yeah he never comes following him to be nice. A little more pitiful if you were Lightside and you saved Anderan, which is that he sort of explains that partly he

and the guy who launched the coup. Boklu, yeah, yeah, yeah. Were swept up in the promises of Nielis and the sort of promise that they could put these guys in power

in Anderan. It would lead to an era of greatness. Yeah. for Anderan. And so they completely sold out their people and betrayed the queen so that they could bring Anderan to like sort of a nationalist heights. And now he realizes these guys didn't give a shit about Anderan. The coup has failed. The fate of all their people is pretty dire if Nielis, if Nieless, if, if,

Nealus wins in this. And also he is getting Scythified. But crucially, not really sithified in the way that, like, your party members do. But the command crew aboard the Ravager are described as Sith zombies. Yeah. That, like, people are slowly being turned into thralls of Nealus. And they just sort of stand their slack-faced at their controls, like sort of droids-made flesh. Yeah.

And that is in the process of happening. to Tobin. And then, like, yeah, that is when you sort of offer him the shot at redemption. He's pretty, he's pretty blackpilled about how everything's going, but you can talk him in. He's a real doomer, man. You can, you know, hey, buddy, I'm going to give you a detonator. That's not hooked up to anything, but I think he'll feel better about it.

You just hit this button whenever you're feeling bad, okay, pal? Yeah. It's going to make things better just off screen. Yeah. So he runs off to sort of strike his last blow against the people who brought him here. I guess I will say this is another scene where you can, you get an awareness or a wisdom check where you can say, I think Crayan knows that he has nothing here,

that Nylas has nothing here to sustain him. She's been drawing him out if she leaked Tilos to your lord. Maybe she wants him to come here and find nothing. And then Tobin is like, he's just going to kill everybody who's here. What are you talking about? That's not good for anybody. And I think he makes it, he makes the claimer, maybe Vizas did this earlier that is like, yeah, okay, he might not have Jedi to feast upon here, but he will get to sustain himself on what life is here for at least a little longer, enough for him to maybe go find something to feed on elsewhere. So you get that kind of set up here with Tobin, too. You know, I think all said, this is a pretty boilerplate conversation, but it kind of works just fine as a little capper on the Tobin Vaklu stuff. well and crucially

it gives us the entire plot of Mass Effect one I'm like God it This is Saris This is like this entire His name is Yeah Serran yeah

Yeah That is There's the sheer A lot of things The nature of lifted Pasted into a new document You know No.

It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. But yeah, that's kind of it. I think, Natalie. I had a very funny moment at the very end of this Colonel Tobin interaction where, because I've never done a good thing in front of Mandoror in my life, I guess giving Tobin the job to set off the proton cores.

is considered good. And then if you kill him, it's psychotic. So Mandelor, after Colonel Tobin runs out the door, Mandelor is like, we shouldn't waste our time with the week. Like, brough. Bro. Okay. Have you been watching?

I was giving him a job. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. I was just giving the kid a job. I don't know. He's fucking evil now.

Look at him. Although all that shit about we shouldn't waste time with the week. It's different. if he's haunted by his boyfriend. That's true. Like basically being like, I think you're a loser. And I don't hang out with losers. I should note, Rob, you reminded me of something to say,

which is there is a slightly different version of that conversation with Vsas and Mandelor about Revan. And I don't know if this is different if your Revan was a woman or if this is different because it's a different sound file that could play. But I've seen a different let's play that has the, other one. I'm not going to play it, but I'll just read it to you. Visa says, and left you here, Revin left you here. And Candor says Revin was one of the greatest military leaders in the galaxy in history. That was the same. And then he says this, she knew what she was doing. And I always follow

orders. Slightly different. I love you. I love it. Character of all time, obsessive. with you. I love him. Yeah. They should have let him cook more in this game or cut him. Again, maybe not cut him, but like, I really wish there had been another year of development so that this stuff could get fleshed out or cut. And I don't know that I trust the team to have done the right edits and cuts,

cutting down, because, like, there's a real mix of new characters and old characters here. And there was no Mandelor dungeon that got cut. There's an HK. That got cut. You know what I mean? And a different... Make it a different Mandalorian, I think.

Like, his buddy, I guess. No, I think you could keep him in. You just have to do something with him, I think. Well, that's what I'm saying. If we can't get the payoff. I see what you're saying, yes. If it had to be exactly the same, then make it a different Mandalorian.

Who survived the war and who winds up with you. Yeah, who like saw, saw everything. Like saw the final encounter maybe between Revin and and Canderous or something. But I think the, yeah, it's just, it's such a, I don't know. I'm with you. It's because it's also kind of a bummer where this, again, sort of missed opportunities here where there's a bit of why didn't start, why didn't space?

Jesus take me with him. Yeah. You know, why was I left here? That's the Bastilla stuff too that we run into a couple of times. Right. Yeah. Like, why was I not worthy? Why was I rejected?

That stuff kicks ass. And it's like, the thing I think that's tough is we get that about Bastila through hollow recordings we keep finding. And that's fine. Maybe we just needed that for Candorous also. Maybe we didn't need him to be in the party. And they could have taken some of the time. were doing with him on whatever side stuff he does have and put that towards more baeodor or more

you know i wouldn't i i didn't need hk or candorous to be in this game t3 is cool to have around i guess it's nice to have t3 that's a really fun connective tissue but did we really need multiple old party members to be back i don't know that we did i don't know i get why you do it it's because they're fan favorites and you're making a commercial product and you want the nerds who love hk and who love Canderus, which at the time absolutely included me, to pick, yo, Canderas is here. I think that's Canderas's voice actor. Holy shit. But then, yeah, there's just like, I would say this is, Canderus is one of the big disappointments for me for returning to this game. I'd remembered there being more, and what I really did was remembered all the Reven stuff, and it's like, you can fit

that on a postcard, and it's cool, it's good, but there's just not enough of it for him in the whole game. And he doesn't get to do anything new in this game. It's easy to imagine a more satisfying version. in this where this is a trilogy. The second game focuses on the exile. And the third game is about this, like, returning to the central absence of Revan. What did he mean by any of this? Like what was, like, which version of this is true?

That the story the Craya tells you, that he saw the direction, things were headed and engineered a war with the Sith so that the Sith would be destroyed before they could take down the galaxy. Or is he just a. a fallen narcissist, you know, who always knew better than everyone else, and starts things in motion that go far beyond him. And then you'd introduce these characters who were closest to him from the original party, who were also struggling with the, he has left us here.

Yeah. We are the apostles, and he is not risen. He has not returned. so what now church are we building? Right. What is what is the, the gospel that we are preaching to the galaxy? All that stuff works.

Having it as just candorous is here, we're going to cut the thing that indicates his central struggle. Yeah. So now he's just like, let me tell you what I think. think of the Republic. Yeah.

It's a letdown. There is, there, there is an arc thought of here. There's juice in the fruit. They're just not squeezing it. You know? I,

it makes me think a lot about the Dragon Age games because there is, you know, there's kind of four mainline Dragon Age games, not counting the big standalone TLCs like Awakening, I think. But, you know, you have the Grey Warden in the first game. You have Hawk in the second game. You have your Inquisitor in the third game. game and then you have rook what is his name in the for their name in the fourth one in veil

guard whatever the that character's name is i think it's rook um because it's veric calling you rook like rookie but also rook like a crow or like a chess piece um and in that fourth game you know in the second game it feels like the gray warden and all the actions of dragon age origin's whole like hang over that game in a big way dragon age two is such a focused game it's only about one city. It's about a particular place over a period of time. And so the event of the first game, which are broad and far-reaching and political and grand and era-defining, because you, like, start or end an era at the end of that race. Maybe you don't actually end it because it's still the Dragon Age. But you beat the arch demon at the end of that first game, and it, like,

changes the world forever. And it hangs over the second game. And the Grey Warden, your character from the first game, doesn't ever show up in that game, but, like, is other characters from that first game pass in and out of that city and you bump into people and a couple of them join the party. In the third game, it's such another big grand adventure, the Inquisition and all of that. And then in the fourth game, your Inquisitor really hangs over that game. The Inquisitor and their relationship with Solis, which might be a romantic relationship, but is at the very least a very close intimate friendship or was won once and has become a betrayal and a rivalry and enmity.

And that character can show up in your game in a way that's like really really, dramatic. And it's like, they're part of the big finale. They're part of a bunch of scenes where they're checking in. And I think part of the thing that's interesting is that like, there's, your character could feel overshadowed in that game by the Inquisitor, because everyone was so fond of Inquisition and is so fond of their Inquisitor. And we don't get to see what a version of that would look like here, where a third game means all of these different threads coming together and getting the joy of like, what if we had a game where our exile had to go talk to Revin about what had happened? Or where, you know, it's Cotor 3, The Hunt for Revan, where, you know, your exile, your

mandolore, you know, your Bastila or Carth or whoever is left over from your Cotor 1, goes and does that. And it's like a different model than what we ended up getting from the next big sci-fi bio-aware series, which is Mass Effect, where it's just the one person. and other characters come in and out, but like you're shepherd all the way through that. And I kind of do wish we'd gotten what you're talking about, Rob, either the everyone has to pick up the pieces left behind by Revan

or the go out and find them and figure out what is out there because I think it would have given us a different vision of what that is. I should be clear, I think the stuff in Inquisite or in Veilgard, like the Inquisitor stuff all hits, and I think the rook stuff mostly misses. Because unlike this game, they didn't get to build up that character in a way that makes them feel unique and interesting. He's just a, my rook felt like a cipher for me, whereas I can tell you about my exile. And my exile's various beefs and my exiles various regrets.

And it's one of the great strengths of this game. And it's a shame that it never got to be built on with something that did feel more complete and did have the time in the oven and did have perhaps a bleed designer and writer who was not, uh, credibly accused of some real big misdeeds. So, you know, and maybe too early to go into our eulogy for what could have been because we still have one more big episode to go. But Cotor 3, we didn't get it. We got the older public, the MMO instead, featuring Revin. So. One day.

One day. Any final thoughts on this? I don't think so. there was one interaction because I picked back up, just wanted to shout this out of a cool beat. I picked back up my play-through from the exile leaving the Jedi enclave. And if you go to interact with any of the Jedi masters, Yeah. There's a, the text that pops up is,

this master is dead, drained of life, his body is worse than lifeless. It's like an absence in the force. Uh-oh. Whoops. Oops. Oopsies. Oopsies, another wound.

So I just, I mean, I thought that was cool. It's interesting to think about all of the force users you have, if you are dark-sighted, or even if you're not, all of them that you've killed up into this point, imagining them as absences of the force being left behind instead of just, you know, corpses is spooky. Yeah, I think that that's, you know, I'm looking at my notice to see if there's any other last things that I wanted to put in your minds before we go into the final episode, because that is what's coming next.

We're going to Malacore. one more episode will be done. I think the big stuff is stuff we've talked about, which is like, what is Kray's plan? What does Kraya want? What does the relationship between this game and Kota? What is the relationship between this game and Star Wars? And what is the relationship between this game and the era that it came out? We already talked a lot last time about it as a part of or a precursor of the emerging sort of like self-critique, meta-critique of the video game, the form of the RPG,

Bioshock Ops the line, etc. But also this game comes out 2004. Three years into the war on terror, you know, a year into the war in Iraq. I don't know how much that was on the mind to the developers. I don't think, you know, this game starts being made in 2003, I think, which is when the war in Iraq starts. But certainly, I mentioned this in the let's play,

but like they all lived through Operation, you know, Desert Storm. they are of the age that they would have grown up in post-Vietnam American culture. What's war in this Star Wars game? You know, we got a lot of stars. We got a lot of, if you think about star in Star Wars as being the force and being the spiritual and being the sort of ephemeral. We got a lot of that that we've talked about. The game is also about war. And we haven't talked a lot about war beyond the sort of like restoration and repair.

stuff. And so as we go to the heart of what the last war was, maybe we should weigh in on some of that as we wrap up now that we have all the, once we have all the pieces. And so the next, the next chapter of this is the final chapter. That is right. And then we will, we will be through.

Cotor 2. We will have done it in only eight months. It might not have been eight months. It might have been. I don't know. It's November. It was not. Okay. Episode zero. Paragas mining facility was May 21st.

So I guess episode zero is character creations. It was May. May, May, June, July. Six months. Normal. That's like a normal season for us, actually. Okay. Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah. Okay. Phew. And with that bit of self-deception, we've reached the end of another episode of a more civilized age. Our show is produced by Cheek and Terraris. It's supported by listeners at patreon.com slash civilized. Join us next time for the end of this saga.

Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform choice. And contemplate other mean things you would have liked to tell visas as she lay dying. Ugh.