u/dopaminevampire

This is a PSA to SAVE OFTEN AND IN DIFFERENT SLOTS. (as the game tells you to do)

My husband was 26 hours deep into a save, had beaten all ten rounds of Pazaak on Yavin, entering the Kashyyyk lower shadowlands, and.... the game corrupted. both his auto save and the ONE save he was using corrupted. So now he is starting the game over.

I DID warn him to save in multiple slots just before this... maybe this time he will do it. (second PSA, always listen to your wife 😉 )

I hope I picked the right flair for this, and also, compulsory disclaimer of major spoilers ahead- if you haven't finished at LEAST the first game get OFF of this subreddit.

Because I am a person that is incapable of interacting with favored fan media casually, I have had my own personal kotor novelization/ continuation in the works for years now. Here is an idea for what kotor 3 could have been that keeps both the flavor of the original ideas AND includes some of the concepts from the MMO. (I know, ew, but bear with me here for a minute.)

Here is Chris Avellone's idea for what the trilogy should have been, taken directly from the fandom wiki: "The third game involved you, as a player character, following where Revan went and then taking the battle to the really ancient Sith lords who are far more terrifying than the Darths that show up. These guys would just be monsters. These would have a level of power that was considerable, but at the same time you'd be able to dig more into their psychologies, and their personalities, their history, and even how they dealt with the player, how they talk with the player, the different powers they cultivated and developed, and for some of them like – they're the ancients, so they're not just ruling a solar system, [but] swathes of the galaxy.

"So the places you travel to [you'd see] how they left their stamp on that world, or that solar system, or whatever collection of moons. You'd see how horrible that was. Part of that environment would tell a story about that. [That] would be a great, epic way to end the trilogy. The Old Republic are out there. We just didn't get a chance to do it."

So. Hear me out. We keep Vitiate. We keep the idea that he influenced Mandalore to attack the Republic as a way to weaken it for his own invasion. We keep that Revan and Malak found out about this and had a confrontation, and possibly keep the mind influence (I know opinions are mixed on that here.)

Here is where we change things: Vitiate is one of these cosmic horrors. In fact, there are seven of them, correlating to the seven vices. Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Lust, and Gluttony.

Vitiate would be gluttony because he likes to eat planets and is insatiable for more. He would be the first one to show up, but not the first one defeated. He shows up as an opener and drops the lore and the setting for this part of the narrative, but then the players have to trace back through this Sith Empire and defeat each vice in turn.

Greed would be the next one. Narratively, because the team needs a winnable conflict in order to prove that it CAN be done. You can imagine what a world infected greed to its very stitches would look like. How do you defeat a concept? This is where Revan's tactics will shine. You can't defeat it by strength alone in a typical fight, you have to outsmart it and outmaneuver it. To defeat greed, you must be selfless, satisfied, generous. Obviously this is an oversimplification and the plot would need to be masterfully done in order for it to be as impactful as it should be, but the concept is there. Theme/moral lesson of the story: These entities can be disrupted if we understand their patterns.

Next would be Wrath. the consequences are getting real now. Wrath (though calling them by their vices would be heavy handed and probably no part of the dialogue would directly refer to the theme here) would react to the defeat of Greed and interference by our heroes. Defeating one has ripple effects across the rest of this network of darkness. Wrath is fed by anger, destruction, and pain. Fighting back only fuels the cycle. Unfortunately, being passive doesn't help the situation. You have to be peaceable and redirect the emotions to defeat this, and wrath will burn out without opposition and strife to anchor on and feed. Fire dies without oxygen. Moral lesson: winning has consequences. (Bonus: someone needs to deactivate HK during this round or he is just going to throw gasoline onto this mess. Though, being a droid, would he directly fuel this Sith lord, or only through his influence on the meatbags in the party?)

Envy. Now things are getting messy. Though a lot of this was addressed in kotor 2, I think this might be a particular trap for the Exile. Why was Revan forgiven and once again lauded as a hero and Jedi poster child, while the Exile was shunned and curbstomped by the Jedi for the entire second game? Going back further, why did the Exile have to lose their connection to the force at all and used as a scapegoat for all the things Revan and Malak did? The team is going to show cracks. Envy creates a loop of comparison and resentment that festers the longer it feeds. To break it, Revan and the Exile would have to confront their past with each other and air out these festering feelings. They have to choose their own identity independent of each other. Envy collapses if there is nothing to compare.

Lust. Get your mind out of the gutter for this one. While lust definitely does have some of THAT in it, the idea as a concept is more about attachment. Basically think what got Anakin in RotS. He wanted possession and control and it warped what would otherwise have been natural and pure love and affection for someone else. This vice would most directly impact Bastila or Carth, depending on which Revan route you set the game to. I could also see this affecting Mical/ The Disciple if you pick a female Exile. Jolee has potential also, but he's mostly come to terms with everything that happened with his wife so idk. Denial of emotions alone will not defeat this vice (contrary to what the Jedi often say.) The cycle of control has to be broken. The moral: even love and loyalty can be twisted.

(this would horribly be an ideal place to put in a major character death of some kind, too. A trolley problem. They have to be sacrificed in order to defeat this Sith. yikes.)

Now we come to the most dangerous of the vices- Sloth. It comes in just at the worst moment, when we are at this low from this major character death. Depression is setting in. If you have ever dealt with depression you know what it can do- it saps all your energy and motivation and turns your entire outlook on life grey, bleak, and pointless. Sloth is not laziness. It is entropy. Apathy weaponized. The erosion of will. If you've ever seen the Serenity movie, think about what happened to everyone on Miranda that did not become a Reaver. This planet is probably bare apart from the sith lord controlling it, because what could survive there? Perhaps this one does not even have a realm to control. It doesn't have the motivation to do so. it just creeps in when there is no resistance and infects all it touches. It doesn't need to attack and conquer, because when it wins it does so because everything else surrenders to it. It is the most dangerous because it cannot be lured into a trap or force a confrontation or outmaneuver something that barely even moves. it will just wait and spread passively. How this looks for the crew: burnout, loss of purpose, depression, hesitation. Fighting it can actually FEED it. Sloth only grows when efforts feel pointless and attempts fail. Progress stalls, people give up. How do you defeat this? deliberate, irrational persistence. Refuse to give up. choose to act anyway if it feels meaningless. choose to care when it is exhausting. choose to continue without certainty of success. You don't need the perfect plan. You just have to keep trying. (I am thinking of Doctor Strange. He can lose forever but he never gives up and he wears Dormamu down through repetition.)

Now we are ready to fight Gluttony again. The crew is ready. They have faced all the other vices and gone on a journey of self discovery and transformation along the way. They understand the system. This one will be tough and I'm still ruminating how you defeat something that eats planets. Arguably, you would starve him out somehow and cut him off from a food supply, or give him too much and make him choke on it. Either way, the method sounds disastrous for the galaxy. Maybe he gets shoved into a black hole or something. he basically already is one anyway.

Now we get to the secret final boss: Pride. Like Sloth, this one is coming in at the exact worst moment. Our heroes have just won. They have defeated the big bad. They're celebrating. This one has to be defeated by humility. Alternatively... for a dark side ending... your player character becomes the new Pride Sith and takes over the empire they just steamrolled. Moral: the greatest threat isn't hunger, rage, or despair. It is the belief that you are the one who should control everything. Victory isn't taking control. It is choosing not to.

The progression here:

We can fight this (Greed)

This is dangerous (Wrath)

This is personal (Envy)

This is corrupting us (Lust)

We won't give up (Sloth)

We are enough (Gluttony)

We have to not become it (Pride)

This is my idea for what kotor 3 should have been. It retains elements from both the MMO retcon but also fits flawlessly into the original idea for the end of the trilogy, fighting lovecraftian monsters- concepts, embodiments of aspects of darkness. self sustaining metaphysical loops. But truly, you can never erase a concept. the embodiment of it is destroyed, but the galaxy will go on to produce more Sith with these fatal flaws. You can't destroy an idea. All seven Sith share an idea- they are not infinite, but trapped. They are slaves to their own ideals. By becoming their vice, they lost the ability to choose to be anything else and are now locked into that pattern forever. So even though they seem cosmically horrible they are honestly pathetic and predictable. By having a fluid player character, you have a perfect foil to this. A custom PC is adaptable and fluid by their very nature of the game. And even though at first thought, the vices might be foiled by their opposite virtue, instead of a moral label, you get a mechanical counter that makes the pattern collapse.

Edit to add: I also would like to keep the idea of Canderous becoming Mandalore and uniting the clans, and the Mandalorians and Republic being allies against the Sith threat this time instead of enemies.