Part 9: Telos: "Good To Have You Back, General."

Last update, we were making our way down to the surface of Telos to look for the Ebon Hawk, when this happened:





300mph crash we all get safely thrown clear. Thank god for those seatbelts!



This is Bao-Dur. He's an Iridonian, like Darth Maul, but he's generally a nice guy. He's also got a voice actor who recorded all of his lines in a bathroom, so all his dialogue sounds really soft and you can barely hear what he's saying half the time.

"My head... feels like I've been ripped in half."



"But it's only fair, I owe you more than one, General."
"What are you talking about?"



"Too bad he's not a droid, huh?"



"We can't all be that lucky."



"I can see how you'd forget me, being that I was the only one."
"I don't want to talk about the war."
"I'll agree to that. The less said the better. We all went through some tough times after Malachor, and maybe we all did a little forgetting."
"Guess that's one thing we've got better than droids - they can't forget anything. But then, you give them a memory wipe and they forget for good."
"How are the others?"
"They'll be fine. The pilot's more or less unharmed and the old lady, well, she's tougher than she looks."



"Crashed a shuttle that time, too?"
"No, pazaak."









Bao-Dur's got an energy thingy for an arm; he lost his other one during the battle at Malachor V.



Anyway this is Bao-Dur. He's his own class, a Tech Specialist, which means he gets tons and tons of skill points, but his defense doesn't increase much as he levels. You can  turn him into a Jedi Guardian  later, but since there's much better fighters elsewhere, I don't see the point at all. I'm just going to keep him as a Tech Specialist and make him the crafting bitch.



Someone's watching us.




"Who do you think shot you down in the first place?"
"Good point. Forget I said anything."



The guys down here are a lot tougher than the ones on Citadel Station. They use energy shields, healing kits, and grenades, and the lack of cover in this area makes it hard to line of sight them.



I don't know why the guy's flying through the air.



Here's something we'll be seeing a lot of; enemies standing behind mines. It's completely aggravating because it takes advantage of your party's own retarded AI, as they're unable to avoid running over them.



Single Iridonian male, high income job, enjoys long walks on the beach.



For the record, I tend to agree more with Czerka than the Ithorians.

The Outer Rim worlds under the Republic were pretty much massacred during the Jedi Civil War, and Telos was suppose to be the Republic's flagship restoration project. If Telos failed, there would be no more money to help fund the restoration of other worlds.

The Ithorians sounded like good ecologists, and given enough time they would have restored Telos to the way it use to be, but it wouldn't have given the Republic enough of a return on their investment. In other words, they would have saved Telos, but they would have lost the Republic. Whereas Czerka sounded like they had a economic plan for the restoration of the planet, and while they didn't have the Telosian's best interests in mind, it would have been just what the Republic needed.

I liked that the Dark Side vs. Light Side choices in this game are more gray in nature than in the previous game; Dark Side isn't necessarily just robbing old ladies and eating succulent baby flesh. There's a similar murky dichotomy coming up with the political situation on Onderon, one of the next planets.



Some more mercenaries ahead. We could avoid them... or we could kill them and get the XP and loot.

Tough choices, guys.





Quick shot of the nicely done sky here. The story is that during the first Jedi Civil War, Revan and Malak had the planet bombarded with some sort of weapons of mass destruction, enough so that the surface of the planet turned into a giant acidic cloud. The glowing pillars in the distance form a forcefield that hold back the poisonous atmosphere.





Unfortunately, we're playing on hard difficulty, and we've decided to wear the default armour for this playthrough, for aesthetic reasons. With that in mind, eating a bunch of grenades isn't very good for our health.



And pretty soon Atton is the only one left alive.



Good thing there's only one mercenary left too.



One last look at the beach and the force pillars.



Let's talk to Bao-Dur for a sec.

He keeps calling us General because he served under the Exile in the Mandalorian Wars. Shouldn't it be 'sir'? Ah well.



"I moved around for a couple years. Working as a starship mechanic got me from place to place. I wasn't ready to settle down after the war."
"During my exile, I did the same thing."
"Then you understand my restlessness. Though the war had ended, I couldn't find peace in anything. As long as I kept moving, I didn't have to think about what happened. Know what I mean?"
"I decided I'd do something constructive. I wanted to make up for the things I'd done in the war."



"But Czerka ruined everything. I thought I could force Czerka out on my own, but I guess I can't fix everything myself."



"All I wanted to do was send a message, but I couldn't even do that right."

"Where did you pick up that remote, anyways?







Okay, enough with the chit chat, we have to find the Ebon Hawk still.



I haven't seen a game so doggedly determined to show you its own gameplay flaws as this portion of Telos.

I'm talking about the tendency of party members not under your control to rush forward at enemies as soon as they see them, no matter what's in the way. These minefields are perfect example.



There's turrets on the other side there, but we're not close enough to trigger them yet. So we'll get Atton to disable as many of them as possible.



As soon as we get too close though, the turrets will aggro. Next thing you know, Bao-Dur's rushing to shoot a turret, stepping on 2 or 3 mines in the process. Nevermind the fact that he has a gun, and could shoot it from a distance. There's no easy way to stop them besides putting them on stationary AI, but then they wouldn't be able to shoot the turret because of the poor targeting system.





Fuck you.





More of this standing behind a minefield bullshit.



This is the mercenary base on the surface.





"Corrun Falt did say you were dangerous... maybe he does know what he's talking about."



"Falt hired me to keep everyone out of the Restoration Zone... you in particular."
"You've done a miserable job of it so far."
"We'll see. You may have caught a few of my boys off-guard... but let's see how you fight now, 'Jedi.'"





At close range and grouped tight together, they're pretty easy to disable with force CC.



Of course, Kreia managed to get herself stuck in a building.

Don't ask.



Bao-Dur isn't faring much better. He's not great in a fight in the first place, but since I refused to put armour on him, he's flopping over every fight.







"It looks like power is being drawn to generate a shield over a small area in the polar region, but nothing should be down there. Orbital cameras show... nothing. Just an empty mesa."



Kreia's keep her secrets again. She knows more than she's letting on here.

"How are we going to get to the polar region?"
"That's a little tougher. According to the computer, a shuttle is currently docked inside the research facility."



So off we go to the underground Telos base.





With his cyborg arm, Bao-Dur can instantly punch through any force shields. They play it up like it's a big thing, but there's like only 2 places in the game you can use it. This being one of them.



This place doesn't get any more annoying. All those vents on the floor are filled with poison gas traps, which can't be disabled. Guess what: the turrets are on the far side again, so it's all you can do to keep your party from rushing onto the traps.

The correct way to do this is to use Stealth, walk around the floor vents to the center console, and use the computer to turn the turrets off.



There's nothing down here but droids. Lots and lots of droids. It use to be some sort of droid research lab.







"The hangar bay doors are closed. I don't fancy flying the shuttle through solid metal, so I'd say we need to find a way to get them open."



That's a beautifully done model if I might say so.





5 or 6 droids sitting there waiting for the base to power up. Not good odds.



That should do it.



Now this is interesting.

There's a disabled HK unit sitting behind a locked door here. You can do anything with it other than to make it follow you.





Take another 10 steps, and all of a sudden the HK-50 unit goes...



...kaboom.

This makes no sense at all in the context of the game, but this is just more cut content. It's actually suppose to be foreshadowing, because in the next corridor over there's this locked door:



Which you can't get into.



This is actually the droid factory, and it's correctly sealed at this point. What's suppose to happen is HK-47 returns here during the siege of Telos later in the game, and has a solo mission in here. I'll include it at that point in the game, but I'll give a little preview:

HK-50 #1: "Confused Query: Where are you going?"
HK-50 #2: "Ineffectual Command: Stop."
HK-50 #3: "Ineffectual Command: We command you to stop."
HK-47: "You have just admitted your own weakness."
HK-47: "Conclusion: You have just shown me your soft, meatbag-like underbellies, and said, 'HK-47, please shoot me repeatedly there until I die.'"
*HK-47 walks away*

The whole thing is a glorious HK-47 badass fest, and thankfully Gizka's restoring it in their mod.



At the end of the base is the reactor, which allows us to power up the hangar door.



Unfortunately it also opened up this door.



I didn't know they could make enemies this big with the KOTOR engine. It kind of reminds me of the Gargantua from Half-Life.



It's coming straight for us!



It's heavily shielded, so the best thing to do with two Consulars in the party is just to blast it with Disable Droid, Force Lightning, and Ion Grenades till it dies.



What the heck happened with this screenshot?



Holy shit!





And we're off to the Telos north pole.



Just don't tell me we let Atton fly again.











This the polar mesa in Telos that's giving off the energy signature. It kind of looks like...

Well, I have no idea what it looks like. An upside down chair?



This can't be good.





I don't like to post repeated shots, but this is just a great fucking focus pull in the cinematic. It pulls from the barrel of his gun right to the missile.









Atton!


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