SPOILER WARNING
This blog post discusses plot twists in Knights of the Old Republic, including one of its endings.
“the hardest choice in every rpg is deciding if you want to play as a gayboy or a cuntress”
– Twitter user @g4ys0n
I love RPGs. I have God-know-how-many hours logged in Final Fantasy XIV, multiple original characters of mine were first thought up while playing Vampire the Masquerade, and once upon a time, I was obsessed with with Dragon Age: Origins.
I’m not here to talk about Origins, not today at least, but about another of Bioware’s games.
Sometimes, to convince myself that I’m not addicted to FFXIV’s pleasantly dull grind, I put my subscription on pause. This time around I gave myself a few conditions under which I can re-sub, depending on which happens first:
1. My partner re-subs. They’re currently up to the Stormblood expansion, and I absolutely have to run those Trials and Dungeons with them.
2. Patch 6.4 comes out, continuing the Post-Endwalker story, and concluding the Pandaemonium raid series. This will be some time in late-May, which means it will probably come soon after my 25th birthday. That’s not super relevant, just a fun thing.
Something occured to me – This would be a good time to go back and play through two games that I didn’t get the chance to finish. Games that I enjoyed, but were each cut short by some circumstance or another, and I never went back to them.
So that’s what I’ve set out to do. Go back and play through Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and its sequel, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
At time of writing, I’ve finished playing the first game. Just last night I saw the curtains close on a 30ish hour tale of one man’s refusal to be a good boy.
In Knights of the Old Republic, like in other Bioware games, the player makes choices which affect not only their own character, but the world itself. As I mentioned before, I’m pretty familiar with the Bioware formula, so I go into these sorts of games with a character already in mind, at least in the broad strokes.
I made my character a man, picked one of the more twink-ish faces provided at character creation, glanced at a few builds I found online, and enthusiastically picked out the “Scoundrel” class. What a fabulous name for a character class. Scoundrel.
If you like Star Wars, but haven’t touched these games, think of Han Solo. A gunslinger with dubious morals and a certain roguish charisma. Maybe he could’ve even had a similar arc to Han Solo, becoming gradually less self-serving, more loving, and so on… But I knew from the start that I was deadset on playing a bad guy.
Now, in the creation menu I didn’t give this guy a name per se, just a place-holder, as I modeled much of his characterization on my character Whisper (Content warning for sexy themes and the use of the F-slur, which also appears later in this blog post, by the by). Thinking of a fitting Star Wars-y name just wasn’t something I cared to do. So let’s just call him Naver.
Naver was a smuggler, presumably running space-drugs and space-weapons for all manner of space-gangster. Just prior to the events of the game, he was given a legitimate job. Being multilingual, he was specifically requested as a crewman on the Endar Spire, a Republic ship, commanded by a Jedi war-hero named Bastila. A woman who despite her youth, is said to have slain the Sith Lord Revan only a few years before.
That’s a pretty prestigious gig! But also unlucky, as the story begins with the Endar Spire being attacked by the Sith Lord Malak’s fleet, and Naver has no choice but to get into an escape pod with a soldier named Carth Onasi, one of only two other survivors.
Being the player-character of an action-packed video game, Naver’s life becomes very hectic, very fast, but he takes it in stride. He’s better at making money than Carth is, he’s more slippery, more observant, and since Carth needs his help to find Bastila, Naver’s got a big strong man to hide behind when things get dicey.
Along the way, a few things become apparent about Naver. For one, he’s terribly selfish, doing almost nothing for free. The galaxy is a harsh place, and comforts cost money.
He also proves to be very good at inspiring loyalty, even when he’s being a bit of a bastard. Sometimes because he’s a bit of a bastard, when it comes to bonding with Canderous the Mandalorian, and HK-47 the assassin-droid.
On their own, those things might be innocuous, or at least ordinary. Traits which, in tandem, better suit a smuggler than a hero. Things get a little more complicated when Naver finds out he is force-sensitive, which is to say, a candidate for Jedi training.
In fact, more than merely being force-sensitive, Naver is remarkably strong in the force. He’s a quick learner, and willing to lie through his teeth when he promises his Jedi masters: “I will uphold your ways, I will be good and noble and preserve order in the galaxy.”
Maybe they don’t quite believe him. They send him off with another Jedi, the aforementioned Bastila to watch over him as he sets out to do their bidding and save the world. What they do believe, at least, is that he’ll ultimately serve their ends, and halt the Sith Empire’s expansion. And to his credit, he agrees to this without any fuss.
In his life as a smuggler, he must’ve had his fingers in some Imperial pies, and found he’d rather have the Republic run things. They were a little incompetent, and he liked that in a government. The Sith run a tight ship, and frankly, they’re easy to hate.
As for following the Jedi Code, living the selfless and austere life of a warrior-monk... That wasn’t going to happen. How could you even ask that of him?
Suddenly he had the ability to wave his hand and say “You want to pay me twice as much”, “I’m supposed to be here”, “These are not the droids you’re looking for”, and have his lies ring true, so long as his victim is weak-willed or not too bright. Of course he was going to exploit that!
And so it isn’t by cruelty, and certainly not by having any love for the Sith’s ways, that Naver gradually falls to the dark side. He loves money, he loves controlling other people, he loves himself to the exclusion of others. Day by day, those around him seem less like people with wants and needs, and more like obstacles, tools, and playthings.
As the events of the game unfold, as secrets are revealed, and loyalties are tested, I had so much fun seeing how nasty he could be, while still sticking to certain principles.
Naver never liked to see other people being enslaved, manipulated, or controlled – He’s a bit of a hypocrite, see, and he has an easier time condemning others than himself. Or maybe he felt that, having such power and insight, he had a unique ability and right to control others’ lives.
He also had a soft spot for little critters. I don’t think there’s anyone he was nicer to than the ship’s Gizka and the Jawas of Tatooine.
What I’m getting at is that there was some fun nuance going on. There was this incredible sense that the characters inhabiting this world owed something to Naver, and he definitely got a kick out of that.
Here’s where I get into spoiler territory, so you ought to look away if you plan on playing this 20-year-old video game spoiler-free.
It finally comes out that Darth Revan, the Sith who was once a beloved Jedi Knight and Veteran of the Mandalorian Wars, never died. His apprentice Malak did usurp him, and the Jedi did corner him, but the Jedi do not execute their prisoners. Moreover, they had a better idea.
They preserved his life, and reprogrammed his mind- An easy thing, as his injuries wiped his memory. They gave him a new life, a new identity, and a chance to redeem himself. The player realizes the character they’ve been controlling was Revan all along.
And at this point, those in his orbit suddenly realize how dire the situation is. Allowing him to rediscover his Jedi powers undid all the progress that had been made in restoring his soul. They realize that history is at risk of repeating itself, and none of them know how to stop it. All they can do is nag and scold, helpless in the knowledge that they can’t complete their mission without him.
The great prize everyone is fighting over, the Star Forge, an ancient starship and weapons factory which led to the destruction of its builders, is the site of Revan’s final descent. In the words of more than one character, it is a “living thing” which feeds on violence and hatred, and it is hungry.
Revan is doomed to make the same mistakes all over again, become a slave to his whims and to a great, primordial evil, all because he couldn’t just be a Scoundrel with a knack for pod-racing and telling lies. He was too powerful, the enemy had already made its nest in his heart, and he lacked the insight and integrity to expel it.
It’s hard to feel bad for the guy, because he wins. There's not a flicker of grief in his heart as he sucks the life out of every Jedi he can get his hands on. Those who were his friends, and those who raised him from childhood, all are nothing but food to him.
He takes his place as Sith Lord, with Bastila at his side as his apprentice, and as they settle into their new roles, they're having so much fun. They smirk, they conspire, they have the rapport of a fag and his hag. Astoundingly, even after all the side-switching and twist betrayals we see throughout the game, Bastila doesn’t betray Revan.
As I watched the ending cinematic, where evil wins, and Revan and Bastila stand over their vast Sith army, I thought: Is this what he wanted? Is he genuinely happy? Why is he smiling?
I thought about it more while I was cooking dinner the next day, and more still as I did the dishes. What I’ve come to find is that none of his actions or stated desires really suited this position as head of an expansionist empire. Not after all his eye-rolling at political squabbles and cringing at Sith antics on Korriban.
A common idea throughout pretty much every piece of Star Wars media is that a Sith Lord’s rule can’t last forever. Eventually the Apprentice will always turn on her Master, or die trying. If he grows bored, maybe he’ll make it easy for her. Slip away like a cockroach down the drain, live on in the public imagination as an undying, unknowable, ephemeral thing. As Revan learned in those years between his two reigns, he thrives in obscurity.
Well that’s what I’ve been thinking anyway. I haven’t gotten to the sequel just yet, so I don’t yet know what will be said or implied about Revan’s ultimate fate, especially since the light-sider goodboy ending is the one written about in wikis and things.
It’ll be neat to see what KOTOR II has in store. Maybe I’ll have even more to say, or maybe I’ll spare you. I’m looking forward to it either way.