Star Wars KOTOR #9: The one where we get a Lightsaber.
Finally, after what seems to be an eternity, I've managed to get to the point in the game where the main character learns how to use force powers.
I'm actually quite disappointed in myself, i took way too long finishing the previous planet and taking pictures of every little thing that happened in it that I'm 9 episodes in and my character is just getting his freaking force powers.
Because of this, I'll try to change my approach to this game's content so that i don't end up with three billion different screen shots that i won't even end up using.
Okay, so. New episode! As i said before this is the one where we get force powers.
Avren(Mr. Protagonist) & Friends managed to escape Taris on the last episode and find themselves on a little planet named Dantooine where there's a Jedi academy or something. It's in this little planet where a small group of Jedi masters, who are part of the Jedi Council (which is kinda like the Jedi presidents in case you don't follow), decide to train the protagonist in the ways of the Jedi.
All of this thanks to a series of weird dreams Avren has had ever since entering Taris which show him three different people, Revan(now defunct) and Malak who are the big bad evil guys of this game, and Bastila Shan a Jedi Padawan who seems to share the same dreams with Avren.
For some reason, there's a bond or something between Avren and Bastila. Bonds between people who have force powers let them share things like emotions or even feelings (like pain, for example). In this case, they share dreams, no one really knows why Avren of all people made a bond with Bastila, not even the masters.
Anyway, let's get into the important part which is about Jedi training. Most of it is handled through cutscenes like this:
After a couple of those you'll get some very simplistic tests like, for example, memorizing the Jedi code, and then do a personality quiz or something to determine your Jedi class.
The way getting Jedi powers work in this game is that your character goes through a really small quiz which gives him a specific Jedi "class". It works like an upgrade in that you stop getting levels for your previous class and instead get Jedi levels that give you force powers.
The classes available are Jedi Guardian, Jedi Sentinel and Jedi Consular. This is also their level of "difficulty"
A Jedi Guardian is pretty much the most basic of the three, focusing entirely on fighting with a lightsaber.
Jedi Sentinels are a "upgrade" of Guardian which lets you get more force powers at the cost of less lightsaber stuff.
And finally, Jedi Consulars are the class that gets more force powers than anyone else and the more difficult of the three to play properly 'cause they have too many different builds.
For this run, I'll make our little Avren a Consular which gives him a lot of force powers to work with.
The way the quiz works is that you're asked three different questions with three possible answers, this is where it gets silly, to become a guardian you must answer with the first line of dialogue your character respond with, to become a sentinel you have to answer with the second line and to become a consular you have to answer with the third.
Another thing to consider when talking about Jedi classes is that at this point in the game the player probably has reached level 10, which is like half of the possible levels in the game (the limit is 20).
A strategy that people use is to simply level up the main character like two or three times in Taris and then just stop leveling him/her until they get to Dantooine and get their Jedi class. This lets them get a lot of force powers, because not leveling does not stop a character from getting more experience points which in turn lets you level up after leveling up.
Right now Avren is level 4, if i level him now he'll be able to get to level 8 and also get a lot of force powers thanks to his new consular class.
Let's talk about force powers now, the game divides them in three different "types" Dark Side powers, Light Side Powers and Universal Powers. The way force powers work is that not only do they need your character's stats to work but they're also affected by that character's karma.
For example, a Light Side Avren would have his Light Side powers be significantly stronger than if he was a character of Neutral Karma and he also has his Dark Side powers weakened by this, conversely a Dark Side Avren is stronger with the Dark powers than the Light powers. However, nothing stops a player from using both types of powers with a character, so you can be a good person and choke people to death like Darth Vader.
Right after your Jedi class is chosen you're also given a lightsaber crystal which changes the color of the beam the saber has, despite the masters telling you that every Jedi class has a color that represents them you can pick whatever. Right after this you build your own lightsaber and head on to your final test.
I feel like a little kid posing with his toy lightsaber.
You're now allowed to explore the other part of Dantooine (the one with actual enemies and side quests). Most of what you'll find here is just animals (and if you're doing a raider side quest you also get to fight some raiders), your main quest is also here, your goal is to just head towards an ancient grove where the "Dark side of the force is making animals go wild"
I took Avren's armor off here, force powers don't work if the person is using armor, for some reason.
Once you're in the grove you fight a certain character that's "fallen" into the dark side, the battle can have two different results, either you convince this character that "Dark side bad" or you kill them right then and there. If you help them they later become a party member and if you kill them the masters will be disappointing at you, but you get a cool red lightsaber.
Dantooine is pretty straightforward with quests, the only "difficult" one would be a sidequest where you hunt some mandalorian raiders. Here's me employing the ever useful tactic of "running away" during said quest.
After this test is done you receive different orders from the masters, this time you're supposed to do two different things: investigate some ruins in the planet and also help solve a feud between two families. I usually do the blood feud first.
It's an... interesting quest? The patriarchs of both families (Matale and Sandral) hate each other, the first because he believes the other to have killed his son and the other because he believes the first took his son. It turns out that Sandral did kidnap Matale's son but it also turns out that the Matale's only son and Sandral's daughter love one another.
It's a quest that can have several endings depending on what you choose during the final conversation, it's here where i remember bioware was just learning how to do rpg stuff because this moment here is extremely dumb. You can either: convince the guy who is totally enamored with Sandral's daughter that the relationship is not really worth it, convince the parents to fight one another in a fire fight that ends up killing the children as well, etc. There's a lot of results for this simple quest, for some reason.
The actual thing we're supposed to do right now is to check the ruins of some temple, according to the visions Mr. Protagonist and Bastila share this is where Revan and Malak (the two villains) went while searching for... something that will be revealed as soon as we step inside.
I would put screenshots of said dream here, if i had any that is, so instead have some screenshots of other stuff happening as i tell you what is happening here. This is the only "dungeon" in Taris, it has five/four rooms and two big puzzles you're supposed to solve.
First you talk with this machine thingy, it gives you a story about the Star Forge, unfortunately the machine doesn't know what the star forge is, much less does it know what it does. (I believe it is a forge which makes weapons or something, probably space ships because star).
The machine tells you that you must first complete a set of "tests" in order to access the room with information on the Star Forge, there's two tests and they're basically opposites of the same thing; In one room you find a terminal-
-which asks you to "indicate the three life-giving planets" and in the opposite room you find another, similar terminal which asks you to "indicate the three death-giving planets" Pretty self explanatory.
After that you access a room with what seems to be a map, or rather an incomplete piece of a map. At this point it becomes clear to the party that this is what Revan and Malak were looking for a long time ago, the map to the Star Forge.
So, in the hopes of following their steps and destroying the thing, the Masters decide to send Avren and everyone else on this quest. From here, the galaxy becomes our oyster and we are free to explore as we want (or as far as the game will let us).
This is pretty much everything that happens in Dantooine, or at least anything important that happens here, right now the party is free to go anywhere they want at their leisure.
I think this is as far as this episode goes, next time I think the party will go to Tatooine or something...
Like always, thank you for reading and I hope you have a fantastic day!