Here we are Act 1 proper. Surik, the Jedi Exile, just woke
up passed out on the floor, in her underwear (what the hell is up with the
skivvies in the Star Wars universe, are these the most unflattering things you
have ever seen?), and on a cold floor surrounded by four dead guys, like you do
after a night that has tequila involved.
So the Exile goes exploring and finds out that she is the
only survivor of the people in the tanks, and decides to go check out the
morgue since that is the only place that you can go. Inside there are two
bodies, one is lootable for the first weapon you get in the game (a plasma
torch) and when you do the other body arises from the dead.
AH! ZOMBIES!
Not really, although this game would get more interesting if
there were zombies, but no this is one of the more important characters in the
game.
She starts talking to us, “Find what you are looking for
amongst the dead?”
I choose to respond with something like, “I thought you were
dead.”
Woman: “Close to death, yes, closer than I’d like. You have
the smell of the kolto tank about you… how do you feel?”
To which I respond, “Enough with the false concern – what do
you want?”
Kreia: “I am Kreia, and I am your rescuer – as you are mine.
Tell me – do you recall what happened?”
The Exile says, “The last thing I remember I was aboard a
Republic ship, the Harbinger… what happened to it?”
Kreia: “Your ship was attacked. You were the only survivor…
a result of your Jedi training, no doubt.”
Exile: “I am no longer a member of the Jedi order.”
Kreia: “Your stance, your walk tells me you are a Jedi. Your
walk is heavy, you carry something that weighs you down.”
Exile: “The Jedi and I have a… troubled history.”
Kreia: “So it would seem. Keep your past – let us focus on
the now.”
Exile: “All right – what’s going on? How did we get here?”
Kreia: “I do not know. I was removed from the events of the
world as I slept. A survey of the surroundings may provide the answers we seek.
The ship we arrived on must still be in this place. We should recover it and
leave.”
Exile: “Care to explain why you’re in such a hurry?”
Kreia: “We were attacked once and I fear our attackers will
not give up the hunt so easily – without transport, weapons, and information,
they will find us easy prey indeed.”
Exile: [Awareness] “You seem nervous, worried. Is something
wrong?”
Kreia: “Even as I spelt, I felt much unrest here – I saw
strange visions, minds clouded with fear – now everything here feels terribly
silent. I would find out as much as you can about this place quickly – I fear
we will need to depart as suddenly as we arrived.”
Exile: “I’ll go look for our ship – and some weapons.”
Kreia: “You may wish to extend your search for some clothes…
if only for proper first impressions.”
Then as the true Light Sider that she is the Exile says,
“I’ll return soon to make sure you are alright.”
Kreia: “I will leave you to the explorations of this place…
here I will remain and attempt to center myself.”
With that we are free to take the weapon we found to break
open the door and move on to the next area.
I am going to stop the game here and comment on a few
things.
I don’t understand why we needed the Prologue section with
T3-M4. This section has some nice foreshadowing for what will happen in the
rest of the level. The Exile still is a useless twat so far, but Kreia is
delightfully cryptic about everything, but that will soon lose its appeal. Here
we get our first real reference to the events that happened aboard the
Harbinger. Now I still have issues with this. And with the “The Order and I
have a troubled history.” It is not a good story telling device. This just
alienates the player because it keeps calling back to a backstory that the
player doesn’t know about. We know that Surik is an Exile from the Order but we don’t know why, but our character does. I am not saying that we
need to know everything that our character knows but something that will be
haunting and following our character around the entire game requires some
foreknowledge on our part which simply isn’t fair. Plenty of characters in
fiction that have a troubled past but there are two things that are probably
happening: 1.) It is a subplot, probably an important one but still secondary
to the plot, and 2.) not in a medium that requires the player to make decisions
as the character that affects the story/world/other characters/etc. The problem
with this is, depending on how you play, it leads to a certain amount of
schizophrenia in the character. Keep this in mind when we come to the main
fetch quest that the game is centered around.
Back to the game!
The Exile fights some droids and starts to encounter a whole
bunch of doors that are locked because of convenient plot devices! Kreia speaks
to the Exile with her mind in a few places, but they don’t amount to much, and
The Exile finds more holorecordings of how all kinds of shit is going down and
people are dying/getting hurt.
Then after a particular room filled with pointless droids
that die in two hits this scene happens:
The Exile: “I feel strange… like the sedatives are wearing
off.”
Kreia responds with her mind (!), “It is the Force you feel…
it has not been so long for you to forget…”
The Exile: “It has been almost a decade – I had forgotten.”
Mind-Kreia: “Do not turn away from it. Listen… feel it echo within
you. Come, I shall guide you down familiar paths – you will need it if we are
to survive and escape this place.”
Yay reason to level up! You know what would reinforce just
how much of a not-Jedi the Exile was for the last 10 years? I don’t know… how
about not giving the player Jedi Force powers right away. Think about how
awesome it was in the first Knights of the Old Republic when you got to level 7
and then you got your Jedi prestige class and became an Ď‹ber-badass. It was awesome. We
just literally got two whole conversations about the Exile’s trouble past with
the Jedi (and we haven’t even gotten to the whole reason for the exile in the
first place which would be nice to know now) than by having the first couple
levels be that of a regular soldier. Then the moment when you finally reconnect
with the Force is whole big deal instead of: “hey look, I made it to level 2!”
This is where I am going to end Part 2. Part 3 will pick up
with the meeting of the second party member and more useless underwear times.
Saving Throw:
Is anyone else really confused as to why this game has the
first forty or so minutes of you running around in your underwear? Why is this
a thing? I bring it up because it is referenced like three times. What? Why? I
don’t even…
Seriously, who at Obsidian decided this was a good idea?
What does it serve? Why can’t I just
have pants? I really, really, don’t get it.
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