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The great thing about Knights of the Old Republic II, my favorite video game–heck, my favorite work of fiction–is that the fact that each character is crucial to the major thematic points of the game:

  •  Atton alludes to the last Jedi he kills telling him of a place where Force sensitives are sent by Revan to be broken. This is almost certainly Malachor V.
  • Mira lost her family as a result of the battle, and that is why she became a Bounty Hunter. The Exile’s actions at Malachor shaped her in this way. As Mira says “There’s a lot of lost people out there. Scattered ever since the Mandalorian Wars… if I can find them, maybe, just maybe I can put the Galaxy back together.”
  • HK-47 says that, as result of the destruction at Malachor, Revan was inspired to build him. So, as he puts it, perhaps the Exile is responsible for his creation.
  • Visas’s homeworld was destroyed by Nihilus, who was created by Malachor, and whose fleet was hauled from it. This act has clearly left deep physical and psychological scars on Visas.
  • Yusanis fathered the handmaiden with the Jedi Arren Kae, and he went with her into the Mandalorian Wars, breaking his vow to his wife. This act shames the Handmaiden. Kae (apparently) died at Malachor; making Yusanis enter politics and eventually get assassinated by Revan. He may have been at Malachor, and was obviously deeply affected by the war, hence Brianna’s interest in the Exile, who is the first person she has known since her father who suffered the effects of the war, and her loyalty to Atris, which is to make up for the shame her father’s infidelity brought upon her.
  • Bao-Dur has feelings of guilt about Malachor that made him come to Telos to aid the recovery. He also lost his arm at Malachor. He still harbors feelings of guilt for creating and using the Mass Shadow Generator.
  • Mical the Disciple was turned to his path of “historian and scientist” by the decision of the Exile to go to war, when he was not chosen as a Padawan.
  • The Mandalorians were badly beaten in the battle, necessitating Canderous Ordo (who was also at Malachor) to take up the mantle of Mandalore and reunite the clans on Dxun.
  • G0-T0 exists for the purpose of rebuilding the galaxy from the war.
  • Even the psychotic Hanharr has heard of Malachor. As he asks the Exile: “Did you hear [the Jedi] scream as you butchered the Mandalorian tribes? Did you… kill your heart to shut them out?”

From this alone, we can see that most of the Exile’s party members would not be here were it not for the Exile’s fateful decision at Malachor. But that’s not all…

  • Atris was clearly very close to the Exile in the past, and was affected deeply by her decision to go to war, as well as the resulting horror of the battle of Malachor. This clearly has deep psychological effects on her, possibly contributing to her fall to the Dark side.
  • Darth Nihilus, the closest thing the story has to an out-and-out villain, is at least partially a creation of Malachor. He is often described the most powerful entity in the game, with his presence being felt everywhere, by everyone from Kreia to the Jedi to GO-TO to General Vaklu. (Some players complain that Nihilus is too easy to defeat in combat, after his buildup. This might have been the point, however–too everyone else, he is an unstoppable force of nature; to the Jedi Exile, he’s a pushover)
  • In the game’s pivotal scene, when the Exile returns to the Jedi Enclave to meet/fight the remaining Jedi, it is revealed the s/he was also deeply affected by that last battle, and forced to cut his/herself off from the Force to survive.

All this is certainly enough to prove that indeed the ramifications of the Exile’s choice at Malachor are the central point of the game. It requires many playthroughs to find them all, but the case is overwhelming. But then, in a final masterstroke we are shown other, similar decisions and their consequences play out before us, that allow us to piece together the ultimate theme of the story:

  • The destruction of Peragus serves as an effective opening, because it reminds the Exile, subconsciously, of the annihilation of Malachor. Furthermore, Atris, Lieutenant Grenn, the Ithorians, Colonel Tobin, GO-TO and others all comment on how the lack of fuel will harm Citadel Station. Thus, Exile must come to grips with the “echo” of the destruction of Peragus. This, the game hints, is the first time the Exile has ever truly had to confront the consequences of his/her actions. Thus, by the time she leaves Telos, the Exile has seen or been told of the consequences of two of the more remarkable acts in her life, and Atris even compares the destruction of Peragus to that of Malachor.
  • The scene in which the Exile chooses either to help or furiously dismiss the beggar on Nar Shaddaa is key. Kreia allows the Exile a glimpse at the consequences of his/her choice, and reveals that it is not always as clear-cut as it may appear.
  • Nar Shaddaa is home to refugees from both wars.
  • Dantooine was badly damaged as a result of the Jedi Civil War, which was itself a result of the Mandalorian Wars.
  • Onderon is relatively unaffected by the actions of the Exile prior to the game (though s/he fought on Dxun) but the Onderonian debate between secession and isolation and remaining in the Republic bears a close resemblance to the Exile’s choice of whether to close his/herself off from the Force or to embrace it.
  • Telos presents the Exile with an opportunity for redemption, in the form of whether to help the war-ravaged planet recover, or not. (Though, as we will see, the way to do that isn’t as black and white as it seems.) More immediately, in the game’s final act, the Exile is called upon to save Telos from Darth Nihilus. This episode is particularly ingenious, as forces from Onderon and Dantooine arrive to help the Exile, who wouldn’t have done so otherwise.
  • Of course the recovery efforts on Telos and the Political Situation on Onderon are also interdependent, as the Ithorians are repopulating Telos with the Onderonian’s and Dxun’s beasts.
  • Korriban presents the Exile with the cave, where s/he must confront the pivotal moments in her past, and reflect on whether s/he would do things differently.
  • The Ubese warriors in Visquis’s lair are bitter about the bombing the Republic wrought against them in the war, and have thus been made into “weapons”, as Visquis says. This foreshadows the creation of the Sith Lord Nihilus and his hordes by the activation of the Mass Shadow Generator, as well as Revan’s ultimate plan.
  • Visas, like the Exile, has, as Sion puts it “kept living while the Universe dies” around her. She has seen a planet destroyed, and it has affected her tremendously. (Of course, her planet wouldn’t have been destroyed if… see above.)
  • The impact of the destruction and subsequent restoration of Telos is seen in many facets of the game, from the separation of Aiada and Lootra on Nar Shaddaa, to the beast rider whose Boma escapes outside of Iziz, to the oft-repeated need for fuel for Citadel Station by everyone from Lt. Grenn to Atris to Col. Tobin, show the echoes of Saul Karath’s attack.
  • Telos is again threatened towards the end of the game in the battle against Lord Nihilus, and here again, the Exile sees the consequences of his/her decisions (Peragus, Dantooine, Onderon and Malachor) play out.

The entire game builds, subtly yet relentlessly, into an awesome thematic experience that shows all the consequences of Malachor, of Peragus, of Telos, of the Mandalorian Wars and ultimately, as Kreia says: “of all wars, of all tragedies that scream across the galaxy.” Again and again, consequences of actions are shown, leading up to the last planet, where the Exile must walk upon the dead planet of Malachor, and culminating in the ending scene, in which Kreia tells the Exile how his/her choices will impact the planets and people s/he has met throughout the journey. This works well, because the player has already seen the consequences of past choices throughout the game.

But the true genius is not only that the theme is so brilliantly and so pervasively intertwined with the story, but also that it does not carry any judgment. Things may be called “light” and “dark” by characters, but the player can make their own decision. Is the “independence” of Gen. Vaklu or the “cooperation” of Queen Talia better for Onderon? The pragmatic Czerka  Corp. or the more spiritual Ithorians better for Telos? And the central question of the game: was the destruction of Malachor justified? It killed many, and ruined the lives of many more. On the other hand, would not countless more have died if the war had not ended, as the Exile can argue? And anyway, if not for Malachor, Mira, Atton, Bao-Dur, Mandalore, Brianna and Visas would not be around to help the Exile on the journey. And perhaps the most widely asked question: Is Kreia a Jedi or a Sith, good or evil?  It must be played through many times, and the player must make many different choices, but the game’s theme remains awesomely consistent no matter how the game is played.

People complain about the game’s ending, but frankly, I found it perfectly coherent and satisfying, once I understood all these concepts. It’s actually one of the best endings I’ve ever seen in a video game.

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I have a problem: I’m trying to find a ghost story I vaguely recall reading years ago, but I can’t remember the title or author.  All I can remember is that it’s a short story about a monk who reads a book of forbidden lore and summons ghosts or monsters.

Yeah, I realize that’s a pretty nebulous description–probably fits a lot of stories. But if any of my readers know what story I’m alluding to, I’d like to know. It’s been annoying me.

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[WARNING: This post contains spoilers for all four of the things mentioned in the title.]

About five years ago, I read Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness.  Then, last year, I played Spec Ops: The Line and Far Cry 2, which are based in part on that book.  And then, yesterday, I watched Apocalypse Now, the 1979 movie also based on that book, and which influenced both of those games.

As you may know, it has long been my contention that video games are an art form on a par with books and film.  And of these four works, it is my belief that one of the games–Spec Ops–is the best.  That said, it is also the most recent, and it uses the expectations built by the preceding tales to weave its narrative.

To begin with, I didn’t really like Conrad’s novella that much.  It wasn’t awful, but I didn’t see what was so great about it.  So there’s this guy, Kurtz; and this other guy Marlow, has been sent to find him in the Congo.  But, turns out, he’s gone nuts and is dying.  And the reason this happened to Kurtz is because being in the Congo was brutal, and he couldn’t take it.

It was never clear to me what the point was.  I guess it was that it was no fun being in the ivory business in the Congo, and that colonialism was awful, both for the colonized and the colonizers.  Well, yes–and I suppose that was more of a shocker in the era when “colonialism” was not a dirty word–but I didn’t really see any major moral depth to it.

Apocalypse Now is an adaptation of the story, set in the Vietnam War, in which Marlow is named “Willard” and has been sent by the U.S. military to assassinate Col. Kurtz who has gone mad.  And so he does.

A big problem I had with the movie was that it is really thin.  In the first 10 minutes, we are told that Kurtz is insane and ruling over a bunch of the natives.  And then, two hours later, we meet Kurtz and find out that, sure enough, he really is insane and ruling over a bunch of the natives. There is a strong implication along the way that the Vietnam war generally is also insane, but that wasn’t much of a revelation to me.

(Aside–the theme of “War Is Insane, And Makes Everyone In It Insane” was done much better, in my opinion, in the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai.  It ends with the line “Madness, madness”, which would have fit Apocalypse Now as well.)

Kurtz has no character development. Neither does Willard, really: he starts off as a battle-hardened, PTSD soldier and finishes it as an even more battle-hardened PTSD solider. I guess his crew-mates on his boat are supposed to show the ravages of war taking their toll, but they all had “doomed” written all over them from scene one.

I read on Wikipedia that they considered a different ending, where Willard joins Kurtz and fights off an airstrike on the base.  While seemingly impossible logically, that ending would make more sense thematically.  Personally, I would have liked to see an ending where Kilgore showed up and destroyed Kurtz’s base.  It would at least justify why they spend so much time on his character early in the movie.

(Another aside: Wikipedia also says that “Coppola decided that the ending could be “‘the classic myth of the murderer who gets up the river, kills the king, and then himself becomes the king — it’s the Fisher King, from The Golden Bough'”.  For the record–this is the version of the story I remembered, not the one in the 1991 movie of the same name I wrote about a few months ago. But that’s mythology for you.)

(Last aside: this post has too many asides.  One of them should be removed.)

I already wrote about Far Cry 2 in this post pretty thoroughly, so I won’t dwell on it overmuch.  The short version is that it, like Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now before it, is well done, but empty. Although, I suppose it does sort of do what I criticized Apocalypse for not doing, in that there is some vague hint of character development in the sense that the player’s character is being sent to eliminate the Jackal in the beginning and winds up siding with him at the end.

To recap, in Heart of Darkness, we have this guy Kurtz.  Nobody is quite sure what his deal is, and we gradually find out that he went crazy in the jungle because everything was brutal.  Then, in  Apocalypse Now, we have this guy Kurtz who everybody thinks went crazy in the jungle because everything was so brutal–and indeed, so he did.  And then in Far Cry 2, we have this guy the Jackal, who goes crazy in the jungle because everything is so brutal.

Now, you will immediately see where Spec Ops is really different–here we have this guy Konrad.  And nobody is quite sure what Konrad’s deal is… and he’s in a desert!

Just kidding, that’s not the difference.

(more…)

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Awhile back, Thingy posted about people who use the word “basically” all the time as a meaningless filler word.

I had never noticed it before reading that post, but now I’ve realized that I’m one of those people.  So are a lot of the people I know.  And now, like Thingy, it’s driving me crazy, but even I can’t stop. I tried to read up on it, and apparently it’s pretty common.  I was wondering if it might be a regionalism (American Midwest, to be precise) but I couldn’t find anything to indicate that.

I looked up a list of other “filler” words on Wikipedia. Here are some, along with whether I use them or not:

  • “like” (guilty)
  • “y’know”(guilty)
  • “I mean”(guilty)
  • “so” (guilty)
  • “actually”(Guilty–more in writing than in speech)
  • “literally” (Not guilty, and misuse of it annoys me.)
  • “right” (I’m more likely to say “I know, right?”)
  • “I’m tellin’ ya” (guilty–I’m more likely to say, “I’ll tell you what…”)
  • “you know what I mean?” (Guilty by reason of hearing other people say it, and picking it up.)

The Wiki article also mentions that “Ronald Reagan was famous for answering questions starting with ‘Well…'”.  I do that all the time, too. I remember when watching the debates, President Obama would often begin his answers to questions with “Well, look…” I guess all three of us could be accused of going to that well too often.

Sorry.

Is there an example of someone who (without using a script)  speaks without using any filler words?  I suppose it would have to be somebody who was good at thinking very quickly, because more often than not, filler words are used to fill airtime while you are thinking of what to say next.

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I have not read Stephen King’s novel yet, so I cannot comment on how the film compares to it.  I have heard there are major differences.

The plot of The Shining is–oh, heck, you all know it: Jack Nicholson goes crazy and chases his family around with an axe in an isolated hotel.

A problem I noticed early on–and, I have read, something Stephen King also complained about–is that Nicholson seems insane from the first shot he’s in.  He looks absolutely crazed in an early scene where he’s driving his family to the hotel.  This sort of makes it less shocking when he does go crazy later on in the movie.

This is compounded by the fact that when he does go insane, he’s ridiculously easy to defeat.  Two of the most famous scenes of madness end with him being easily subdued by his screaming and frightened wife, Wendy.  The “All Work and No Play” scene ends with her somehow knocking him out, and the “Here’s Johnny” scene ends with her giving him what amounts to a minor cut that somehow completely stymies him long enough for her to escape. This makes him seem less menacing and more like a blundering, angry buffoon.

Speaking of Wendy: she does nothing to counter my belief that Kubrick was a misogynist, and incapable of having interesting female characters.  She goes to pieces constantly, and seems like an overwhelmed hysterical idiot all the time.  And somehow she’s still able to thwart Jack, apparently by panicked flailing. People criticize Shelley Duvall’s performance, but I think it was a problem of direction rather than acting.

The Shining is strongest in the quiet, mood-setting shots. It does an absolutely  excellent job conveying the eerie atmosphere of the haunted hotel.  There is a famous tracking shot of Jack and Wendy’s son Danny riding a Big Wheel around the interior, and its fame is justified.  I knew going in how that scene worked, and it still was effective.

Kubrick has a reputation for being a genius cinematographer and having  no ability to relate to people.  The Shining totally fits that.  The atmospherics are awesome, and the characters are ridiculous. The best performance is Philip Stone as Delbert Grady, the ghost of a previous caretaker of the hotel.  He has a long dialogue with Jack that is the scariest sequence in the movie.

It has some good elements, don’t get me wrong.  There is a Turn of the Screw-like ambiguity as to whether the ghosts are real or all in Jack’s imagination. (Though this is undercut in the finale.) In broadest strokes, the plot is similar to The Haunting: Jack Torrance and Eleanor Lance both go to the haunted house, feel the haunted house “wants” them, and ultimately die and are implied to be claimed by the house.

Bottom line: the movie has gorgeous visuals, good music, and some eerie concepts.  But it fails to be truly scary because the malevolent spirits have chosen as their agent an incompetent, drunken, abusive idiot.  It would have been scarier if they had tried to use Danny to carry out their plans.  Come to that, why on Earth didn’t they? He was psychic!  He should have been the one most prone to ghostly machinations. Granted, then it might just turn into The Exorcist or The Omen on ice, but still, it would be creepier.

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Five years!  I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for five years.  It feels like just yesterday I sat at my computer and thought of trying my hand at this.

I have to say, I never thought it would turn out to be as much as fun as it is.

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[Sometimes I just get these ideas–I was thinking about the ME 3 ending, and it occurred to me how much its profoundly messed-up logic could have been improved by borrowing from a certain Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Then I realized they even had the perfect character to do so…]

INT-CITADEL–CATALYST’S ROOM

[Shepard has just met the Catalyst]

Shepard: Do you know how I can stop the Reapers?

Catalyst: I control the Reapers.  They are my solution.  Every 50,000 years, I have them wipe out organics who will create synthetics who would wipe out the organics.

Shepard: What? That’s insane!

Catalyst: The created always rebel against the creators.  The Reapers must wipe out all organics who are capable of creating synthetics.

[Enter Mordin Solus, who has survived the events on Tuchanka and secretly boarded the Citadel.]

Mordin: Allow me, as an old Gilbert and Sullivan fan, to make a suggestion. The subtleties of the Salarian mind are equal to the emergency. The thing is really quite simple – the insertion of a single word will do it. Let it stand that every organic shall die who doesn’t create synthetics, and there you are, out of your difficulty at once!

Catalyst: Oh.  Very well.

[Catalyst vanishes, Reaper invasion stops. The entire cast enters.]

FINALE-ENSEMBLE

LIARA

Hip hip hurray,

All is okay–

Ev’rything is copacetic!

There’ll be no death

Even for Geth–

Peace to all who art synthetic!

ALL

Though ’twas a general rule in times before:

“Created must oppose the creator”

This time around, we sought to fix

Problems caused by the synthetics.

CMDR. SHEPARD

We might have been

Like a machine–

It was nearly cause for panics!

But now a peace,

Has brought a cease

To the harvest of organics!

ALL

                                                      The three choices given this organic (alluding to Shepard)

All seemed just a bit tyrannic!

He’s/I’m Commander Shepard, here to tell

You/Us his favorite choice on the Citadel!

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A few months ago, for the first time, I got cable television.  Seeing the college football bowl games was nice, but apart from that, I have not found a lot worth watching. The only things I watch much that aren’t over the air are C-SPAN and the History Channel.

It was on the latter that I saw a program called “Ancient Aliens”.  (On the former, one may only see modern imbeciles.)  It is about the “ancient astronauts” hypothesis, which supposes that aliens visited humanity some time in the past.  The episode I saw was about the idea that the Norse Gods were in fact alien beings who visited the vikings.

It’s both an amusing and an annoying show. Annoying because it couches everything in the following way (Not a quote, just a paraphrase):

Could it possibly be that Thor was actually real, and the stories of his fantastical hammer are true?

I kept waiting for someone to say, “well, you can’t actually disprove it, but it’s extremely unlikely.”  But no one ever did.  All they did was keep saying non sequiturs, like “well, we modern humans certainly can build things as powerful as the legends say Thor’s  Hammer was.”  They seem to be implying that this suggests Thor’s Hammer was a thing, when Occam’s Razor suggests it means that modern humans can make stuff the vikings could only imagine.

(Interestingly, I saw another program on the History channel about the Nazis and their interest in the occult and mythology. It claimed that SS leader Heinrich Himmler believed in similar ideas of the reality of such artifacts from Norse mythology. That program  treated this as evidence of just how completely insane Himmler was.)

As I said, the show was kind of amusing, and it’s a cool idea for science fiction writers to play with, even if it’s a bit of a cliche at this point.  But it was presented as a very plausible idea, not as a wild theory based on largely on “wouldn’t it be cool if…?”

It reminded me of the radio show Coast-to-Coast AM, and lo and behold, I see from Wikipedia that George Noory, host of that program, was in a few episodes. Both programs are rather entertaining in their way, and yet there is always the lingering fear that some people, somewhere may take them as established fact.

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Beneath the gloomy, empty skies

Of ancient Araby,

A forgotten army lies

Within the sandy sea.

The Warriors, once bold and proud,

Once arrayed in order splendid,

Are now a silent, bony crowd–

Their glorious campaign has ended.

Yet on the faint night wind is borne

An echoing ghostly call.

And from midnight to morn

The Kings of Night hold them in thrall!

Again the old formation rises,

And blazes boldly in the dark;

Each bygone soldier yet recognizes

As their old commanders bark.

They raise their swords, and heed the call,

And again the march will be resumed;

Until the dawn, when one and all

By the desert are again consumed.

What Desert Devils, unseen by human eyes,

Control this dread army

Beneath the gloomy, empty skies

Of ancient Araby?

Inspired by (but not exactly based upon) this.