Revisiting A Classic:
"Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" (2003)
- Part 3 of 11 -
Dantooine
Hey fellow Hivers! Here we are again with another installment of my "Revisiting a Classic" series on 2003's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, also known as KOTOR.
Here is my my first post on Endar Spine, my second one on the change-over and mod situation for Steam, and my last post on my KOTOR character's first planetary adventure on Taris.
This time around, I'm going to switch my post format by placing Side Quests in front of Main Quests because that's usually how I play-- I do as many side quests as I can first--then get on to the main story missions.
So last we left off, my character Varen Thard and his Taris team defeated crimelord Davik, stole his ship, and fled the planet -- doing absolutely nothing to stop Darth Malak and his Sith ship from razing billions of innocent people in an apocalyptic barrage of giant blaster fire ...
Honestly, I've watched the cities of Taris get destroyed so many times I'm basically numb to it -- but this time around I couldn't help but wonder why the story didn't require you to at least try and stop the Sith ship before running away to save your own hide.
Later, you can have a conversation with Mission Vao (the blue alien girl) about how devastated she is to know the world she called home is now mostly destroyed ... but after Bastila's like, "Save your tears. We got Jedi stuff to do!" and then we're off to Dantooine, a planet home to the current Jedi Council who are so powerful Malak wouldn't think to attack them -- which made me wonder why these powerful old guys didn't lift a finger to stop billions of people from burning and being crushed to death. Not very hero-like.
One of the first things we learn in the game, is that Bastila's Battle Meditation Force-Power can turn the tides of battle and raise morale -- so along with that ability and the five Master Jedi in this picture I'm left wondering why no one tried to save Taris at all.
Side Quests on Dantooine
Elise's Lover
Outside the Jedi Council HQ, you run into a woman Elise who asks you to help find her droid who somehow disappeared from their internally locked home and ran off into the wild months after the death of her husband. There's a joke here about the woman being "too close" with her droid and I think you can make fun of her for Dark Side Points ... which I didn't do -- because my character Varen Thard is supposed to be a good guy.
Out in the wild, you find Elise's droid being attacked by Kath Hounds. And surprise, surprise, he doesn't want to be Elise's substitute husband anymore and thinks killing himself will allow her to get over her grief and re-enter society.
He asks you to kill him and there's a few options the game gives you: Force him to return to Elise, Promise to tell Elise he died and destroy him, or Tell him you'll kill him and tell Elise he's still out in the woods somewhere so she spends the rest of her life looking for him.
And again, since my character Varen Thard's a good guy -- I accept the droid's request and promise to tell Elise he died before putting him out of his misery. And now writing this, I'm not sure if that was the best option. Because destroying the droid is technically murder but also not killing him is allowing a human person to continue down a dark unhealthy path of never moving on from their grief. Good news is, after telling Elise her droid got eaten by Kath Hounds she runs away upset but you find her later flirting with some random guy so I guess it was okay? I don't know. The game probably should've let me just hide the droid on my ship or something. Pretty annoying that I didn't get any Light Side points either -- but I did put down a nice droid. I wonder if including T3-M4 changes this mission.
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Mandalorian Raiders
Leaving the Jedi Council HQ, you can run into this guy Jon whose daughter was murdered by Mandalorian Raiders. He asks you to find them and kill them and I said yes because avenging his dead daughter seemed like the right thing to do.
So far, I'm loving the range of version one of three Force-Lightning it's not too slow and it's got decent range but it'd be great to hit two or three enemies in front of me with version two, or basically all nearby enemies with version three.
You run into four different groups: the first harassing a man who offers to give them his wife and children in exchange for his life before he gets blastered to death. This was an easy fight. The second battle is a larger battle near some trees and their swoop-bikes. The third group is near some ruins -- they're a little more difficult but I didn't feel the need to use any power-ups. Now the fourth and final group has the leader of the Mandalorian Raiders, a guy who collects lightsabers from dead Jedi and has some decent buffs. For his crew, I had pre-buff before the battle and ended up using my full arsenal of Force-Powers and other equipment, like frag and concussion grenades.
One of my favorite sequences is seeing my character Varen Thard dodge, Force-Choke the enemy, and then swing away with the lightsaber.
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Murder Investigation
This was a boring mission. Basically, you have to figure out who killed who somewhere out in Dantooine -- but it ends up both culprits were the true bad guys. Basically, the dead guy cheated one of his business partners and then slept with his neighbor's wife ... so there were two motives to off him but also you catch his business partner and his neighbor in some pretty obvious lies.
This specific quest felt like an after thought or maybe the studio ran out of room and couldn't fit the whole thing.
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Crystal Cave
This was another super-short side quest. If I remember correctly, you have to get a crystal for your lightsaber for this one -- but since I have the "Jedi From the Start" mod, I started with a lightsaber so this felt pointless. You kill some pray-mantis monsters and there might be more crystals in their eggs but I spare the innocent life inside them in fear of Dark Side Points.
I remember thinking how interesting it was that there were pray-mantis monsters in this crystal cave, and that these creatures were laying their eggs near the crystal formations. It reminded me that even though the Jedi tried to portray themselves absolute good, even their own operations required harvesting from nature.
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Sandral & Matale Feud
This is probably the best side-quest on Dantooine. Basically, you're sent by the Jedi Council to make peace between two Rome and Juliet-like families. The problem is that one of their sons is a wannabe archaeologist who got killed by bug monsters in the crystal cave so nobody knows where he is. His father freaks out and kidnaps the other family's son, thinking they stole his son -- because he doesn't know the dude's dead. Ironically, his own daughter's in love with the guy he kidnapped so she asks you to rescue him. This results in you blowing up a bunch of droids and then letting them both escape the house ... only for the kidnapped dude's dad to show up. It's one of my favorite scenes so far, just this old man walking toward you in the distance while flanked by droids. And then the icing on the cake, is that the girl's father shows up too, and everyone starts saying each other's names like that one scene in Shrek: Fiona! Shrek! Donkey? Oh man, that might've revealed my age a little bit there haha.
Zaalbar, Bastila, and Varen annihilated the security droids -- just one explosion after the other. I'm starting to think melee teams might be the most fun when I have the advantage.
The Sandral and Matale family members yelling each other's names during the droid stand-off.
Main Quests
First Test: Jedi Code
This main quest was a little awkward since I'd already made myself a Jedi with a mod but beyond that it was still nice to see cutscenes of my character doing some "learning" at the Jedi Council headquarters. I'm not sure why this is even listed as quest as all I had to do was trial-and-error answers for the Jedi Code: opposite of knowledge, peace, justice, life, and so on. There's the option to run around asking people for reminders on what the Jedi Code is but you can just keep taking the test until you pass so I didn't even bother.
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Second Test: Constructing a Lightsaber
You make a lightsaber -- not sure why this is listed as a quest either: all you do is go to a workbench and put some crystals into your lightsaber hilt and you're done. I installed a mod that let me get a couple more lightsabers just for variation: a long purple, a long red, one short green one, and two short red and purples for dual-wielding in the future if I ever change my mind.
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Third Test: Corruption in the Grove
After constructing my back-up lightstabbers, the green Jedi Master sent me on a quest to remove the "corruption" from a nearby grove which had been causing the Kath Hounds to be a lot more vicious than usual. One of my biggest surprises so far, mod-wise, was to see a lot more Iriaz antelopes and Kath Hounds compared to the vanilla version of KOTOR on iPhone, which was nice. This take consisted of a lot of Carth, Canderous, and my character Varen killing a lot of corrupted wild-life before learning the source of their strange behavior.
There were A LOT more animal enemies on Dantooine when compared to my other play-throughs, which was nice. It was good to see that the mods I'd used were not just making my overall game experience smoother and less buggy but were adding to the game as well.
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Fight Juhani
After clearing out a lot of corrupted Kath Hounds and Iriaz antelope-creatures, my group finds the source of the corruption: a female Kathar Jedi named Juhani, with a red lightsaber. This fight had been a little difficult in the past, due to her stunning your teammates and turning the battle into a one-on-one duel. Thankfully, I know a lot more and not only switched on my Mandalorian melee energy-shield but injected myself with a Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution stimulant before upping my attributes again with the Force Powers: Knight Valor and Knight Speed. So Juhani got a few hits in but didn't get a chance to dent my health. After she gave up, I stuck to my Light Side good-guy play-through and encouraged her to return to the Jedi Council to seek forgiveness for striking down her master. Plot twist later: her master was still alive and only pretended to be dead, because the Jedi like to traumatize their students and guilt-trip the hell out of them.
There's my Scout-Consular Varen Thard dueling Juhani while Carth and Canderous just chill under a Jedi Stun spell. It's good to know that my main guy can hold his own without their backup.
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Ancient Ruins
After sparing Juhani and completing all my side quests, I took Bastila and T3-M4 to the ancient ruins that her and I dreamed about. In our shared dream, we saw Dark Lord Revan and his apprentice Malak intruding onto a forbidden ancient-site. After battling some pretty hardy droids, we learn of the existence of the Star Forge, some ancient factory or weapon or ship that Revan and Malak were looking for. It's probably what's responsible for their sudden armada of strange-looking ships. Upon returning to the Jedi Council, they task us with traveling to the worlds listed by the machine we found that will contain other pieces of the Star Map leading to the Star Forge.
I really hated fighting these ancient security-droids because other than Force Lightning, I have no other Force Powers that work good against machines -- so I'll have to perhaps invest in those, or just upgrade my Force Lightning to be stronger.
Final Thoughts
Story
Dantooine was a nice reminder that Star Wars: KOTOR is a Jedi story but the Jedi Council's presence felt a bit weak -- nothing like what we see in the prequels. Other than Juhani, there aren't a lot of other quests related to other Jedi which was a bit of bummer. I think my feelings of weariness with it, go back to how it felt like the starting team you get just abandons Taris to be destroyed which felt off and not heroic at all. Also, the Jedi Council didn't seem very personable with Bastila which was strange since she's a famous Jedi, but they spoke of her very distantly. Taris felt more like a distinct world, while Dantooine just felt like a rich pasture world bothered by the occasional Mandalorian Raiders. That's the other thing that bothered me: there was a Mandalorian going around, killing Jedi, and collecting their lightsabers but the only side-quest that the Jedi Council seemed interested in was me making peace talks between two squabbling rich families.
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Characters
The most important new character we meet on Dantooine is Juhani, a female Cathar Jedi, or Soldier Guardian, who briefly falls to the Dark Side after she mistakenly thinks she struck down her own master during lightsaber practice. I had no significant thoughts about her character. KOTOR is a sci-fi space opera, so it made sense that there'd be a literal space-cat lady. It makes the cast of characters much more diverse -- because there's four humans (me, Carth, Bastila, and Canderous), one wookie (Zaalbar), one Twi'lek (Mission), and one small astro-mech droid (T3-M4). Story-wise, I figured she'd going to either swing hard to the Light Side or Dark Side depending on what I do, but gameplay-wise I was happy to see that I finally had a melee soldier in my party. Carth and Canderous are great but they're more ranged-characters, and while the Wookie Zaalbar is a great tank, he's technically a Scout class, which makes zero sense to me. My ideal party would be my character Varen (Jedi Consular), Bastila (Jedi Sentinel), and Juhani (Jedi Guardian) to have all party-sides covered by strong melee or melee-adjacent types but I'll be switching up my party for character quests and for story reasons regardless.
Other than Mission and Zaalbar, Juhani's my only other alien party member.
Before I forget, I did really enjoy this one brief scene in which Carth and Canderous started arguing about their opposite parts in the Mandalorian Wars. As a Mandalorian, Canderous brought up some good points about how despite their small numbers the Mandalorians still struck fear into the hearts of the Republic and Jedi who had to team-up together to stop them with overwhelming numbers. Carth's part was him arguing that unlike the Mandalorians who prided themselves in a lifetime of battles to become better warriors, guys like Carth were forced into the war and saw no glory in the fighting. Despite it being most appropriate to side with Carth in these arguments, I couldn't help but prefer Canderous because he wasn't so whiny and wasn't constantly complaining about the Sith or the unfairness of the galaxy.
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Enemies/Bosses
One of the first things I did after completing Dantooine was change my game's difficulty from NORMAL to HARD because it was already starting to feel too easy. Now it wasn't that my team or main character had become unkillable -- if I make no preparations and click the wrong commands I could easily get obliterated in battle -- but I found that I was killing monsters and bad guys so fast I almost didn't have a chance to truly enjoy the battle. There are stimulants and power-up abilities in the game that last from thirty seconds to two minutes and I found that for most of that duration my opponents were already dead or defeated.
There's other Force Powers to stun or instill fear in opponents but other than the poison status-effect spell of Affliction/Plague, I found myself sticking to Force Choke and Force Lightning for straight up damage. While most of my main character's abilities didn't work on droids -- there was nothing they could do against my Force Lightning which proved very potent.
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Final Grade: 7/10
While I didn't find myself as bored as I was on the Endar Spine, excluding the initial Jedi-mod fun I had, Dantooine was nowhere near as interesting as Taris. I kept waiting for Malak and the Sith to ambush this silly pasture world that the decrepit Jedi and isolated oligarchs had hidden themselves away to.
I was happy to add Juhani to my party but at this point of my play-through I couldn't even use her yet.
While I would've preferred a much more fleshed-out world, it was nice to see that the mods I'd installed had made Dantooine's monster population a lot larger and to my knowledge the Iriaz antelopes aren't even in the vaniilla version of the game. I'm pretty sure it was all Kath Hounds and Kath Beasts.
I also did enjoy striking droids with Force Lightning, it reminded me that my character wasn't entirely useless when facing a robotic army, which if I can remember I'll definitely need to improve my skills with later in the game.
Kashykk and Tatooine are the next worlds I'm traveling to, and I couldn't stop thinking about how much better those worlds are compared to Dantooine, which was nice because it gave me something to look forward to.
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Feel free to leave comments and questions below!
See you all on my next "Star Wars: KOTOR" post!
May the Force be with you!
Additional Image Sources:
KOTOR poster
Screenshot by me
Gifs Made by Me at Giphy
Juhani pic