Part 29: A Shattered Memory

Part 29: A Shattered Memory

Last time, the Ebon Hawk and its crew were captured by the Sith aboard the Leviathan, the flagship of Admiral Karath and Darth Malak himself. The hopes of the entire crew now lie upon the shiny dome of T3-M4, who has temporarily disabled himself in order to be taken to the junk pile by the Sith. Once there, his replacement memory bank will kick in, and he can hopefully mount a rescue...



The Sith technician dumps T3 in the droid maintenance area in the middle of a pile of discarded droid parts, just as planned.



This, however, was not in the plan. This shop droid is presumably responsible for "maintaining" its fellow droids and deleting all of their data banks.



I know this game has a lot of words and all, but the sheer number of obvious typos I've seen is quite staggering. The PC version is somewhat better in that regard, at least.



Why did it have to be number puzzles? This one is easy, at least, as it's just a Fibonacci sequence in reverse order. All you have to do is subtract each number from the previous one in the sequence: 34 minus 21 equals 13, 21 minus 13 equals 8, 13 minus 8 equals 5, and 8 minus 5 of course equals 3.



That's what you get for hitting me with number puzzles, you jerk.



It's not over yet, though.



For this one, you need to simply pick the only remaining two-digit binary combination. It's surprisingly easy to overthink this, or at least it was for me because I'm a dumbass.



Making progress. Honestly, I completely forgot you even had to go through this as T3. The fact I've never done the Leviathan escape with T3 might have something to do with that.



Do your worst, droid!



Ah, it's just prime numbers again. 11 is the next one in the sequence.



No need to be rude, buddy.



The shop droid does what I often did in math exams in high school.



Okay then. Now that we've gotten rid of the shop droid, let's take a look around this maintenance area. First, though, we should level up.



T3 really doesn't have much in the way of available feats. He automatically learns the Battle Droid Logic Upgrade, earning a +6 boost to defense. We also give him an extra DEX point.



Really, all we've got are some skill feats. This one is at least useful.





T3 also gets the Class 3 upgrade, meaning he can now equip Class 3 mods such as armor plating.



I... may have slightly forgotten to equip the Baragwin Flame Thrower we bought from Suvam, and since all our stuff was confiscated by the Sith we're stuck with whatever we've got equipped.



The footlocker in the room contains some repair parts and other items, and we'll use those parts to fix this droid.





Very engaging, I'm sure.



Our 25 Repair is enough to easily complete all possible repairs on the droid, optimizing its weaponry and shields and all that good stuff.



That's enough to level us up once more.



I had to take Toughness here because the only other option was Caution. Caution improves your Demolitions and Stealth, neither of which T3 is going to be using. So, we'll take the paltry extra vitality provided by Toughness because that at least has some utility to us.



Advanced Flame Thrower? Hell yeah. That, in case you forgot, deals a fixed 60 points of damage, which is enough to one-shot anyone we encounter here on the brig deck. We also get some level 3 medium armor plating, giving us a +6 defense bonus.



Let's do this. The robot revolt has officially turned violent.



I know R2-D2 had flamethrowers in the prequels, but he only used them against Separatist battle droids if memory serves. An astromech going around incinerating people to death like this is just hilariously violent and reminds me of BT-1 from the Doctor Aphra comics.



The medical bay opposite the droid maintenance area is where Canderous would start his version of this sequence. It involves him pumping himself up with stimulants and blowing himself up with a grenade, which causes the Sith to take him to the medbay to die. Then his implants kick in and he's all better. Pretty similar to T3's plan, actually, just with more explosions.



This door to the detention area is locked, so our immediate objective is to find some way to open it.



You are on fire and also dead!



We've found the brig terminal, which is used to unlock the detention area. There's a box in the corner with four computer spikes, which is really all T3 needs.



T3's computer skill is so high he doesn't even need a spike to slice into a computer.



He can also quite simply open the detention area with the spikes we found in the bin nearby. For other characters, this wouldn't be nearly as simple as they'd have to find some other way to slice into the terminal. Before we do anything, though, let's look at the security cameras.



The starboard barracks have lots of Sith soldiers standing about, right next to a power conduit as well. Sadly, we can't overload this conduit for whatever reason, so we'll have to kill them the old-fashioned way if we decide to head down there.



That'll take care of the detention area door.



Most of these cells to the left have insane Rodian prisoners in them, and they'll attack you if you unlock the cells. There is also one non-insane Rodian prisoner you can actually talk to, and he'll give you an ICE breaker that can be used to unlock the detention area without requiring any spikes. I completely forgot he was even there, honestly.



The Blastromech Meatbag Murder Tour continues. You can free the insane Rodians and sound the riot alarm to get these guys out of the barracks, but T3 has tasted blood and his lust can only be sated in one way.



The Sith passcard is used in the detention area to unlock the holding cells. I think you can do that with spikes as well and skip getting this, but I'm not 100% sure.



The east corridor leads to the elevator that'll take us to other parts of the ship, but of course we're gonna have to rescue our crew first.



Alright, here's our detention terminal.




Slide the Sith passcard in there to unlock the cells, and...



...uhh... we'll be right back.



So yeah, this right here is what I momentarily thought to be a game-breaking bug. First time I ran through the section, the game crashed to a black screen and I had to replay the entire Leviathan part up to this point because naturally I hadn't saved during it. Absolutely brilliant.

When I got here the second time, the game crashed again to the black screen you see in the image above. This time, however, I had saved before touching the computer.



Okay, third time's the charm.



Oh, thank god. For a few minutes, I genuinely thought the game might have been so broken I wouldn't be able to progress. I did have a save before the Leviathan, so trying other characters would have been an option but at that point I wasn't sure if this wasn't just a game-breaking emulation bug that never got fixed and would happen regardless of the character you chose for the section. I believe you'll run into such a bug if you play this on the Xbox 360.

Speaking of which, this section is also home to one of the most infamous bugs in KotOR - the so-called "Carth Glitch". This bug (it's not a glitch, it's a bug - glitches are random and can't be triggered reliably, or at least that is how I always thought it was) is named thus because, well, it causes Carth to break and completely fail to react to your character. You can trigger it by using Mission and being in stealth mode when you free the party; since you're in stealth, Carth won't see you or be able to interact with you, and there's nothing you can do about it. You can load a previous save or just sit there for hours, possibly forever, waiting for the RNG to get Carth to see you. UPDATE: I've been informed this bug actually won't trigger until AFTER you escape the Leviathan, and apparently it only happens if you use Mission in the section, but at least I got the general gist of it right.

I know KotOR II is the one with the reputation for being buggy and unfinished - which it is - but the original game has some doozies and we haven't even seen the most ridiculous bug yet (that'll be in the next update or the one after it).



The bridge is the only place we can open the docking gates of the hangar where they've got the Ebon Hawk. We have to open those gates before we can fly out of here!







Count me in, then. I've got a score to settle with the Admiral before we get off this ship, and I have a feeling I'm gonna find him on the Leviathan's bridge!

Naturally, Carth wants revenge on Saul, so he insists on coming along.



We should probably remind him that we have more important things to think about.



You better come with me and Carth. The others can find their way on their own, but we might run into trouble. We'll need you and your powerful Force abilities to deal with it.

Fair enough.





Canderous is going to be in charge of the rest of the crew as they make their way to the hangar.





We still have to get our equipment. Let's go.



Our stuff is in this storage room right around the corner.





Didn't bother to re-equip the player character automatically, huh? Also, for whatever reason, the game stays in this fixed camera angle until you switch characters.



The locker to the left contains 2000 credits, while our stuff is in this one.



Since we have to take Carth, he'll need to level up a few times. We'll give him Master Rapid Shot and Implant Level 1 (because I couldn't think of anything else at this time, and it's Carth so who cares).



We need to do something about that DEX bonus, though.



The Cinnagar War Suit we looted from Uthar Wynn doesn't offer quite as much defense, but it is less restrictive in terms of DEX so we'll give it to Carth. It looks much nicer than Calo Nord's armor, anyway.



Bastila hasn't been in our party since Tatooine, so she needs a lot more to get up to speed. Master Sense is a +6 DEF bonus, and Force Immunity: Paralysis (again, not to be confused with the actual Force Immunity power) does what it says on the tin. We also give her an extra WIS point to get that attribute up to 14.





She also gets a bunch of new powers including Stasis Field, and learns Improved and Master Flurry as well.



Now that everyone's re-equipped and leveled up, we're ready to head to the bridge of the Leviathan.



We're counting on you, guys.





Next stop: the command deck.



The command deck is a maze of interconnecting rooms and hallways, and as you can expect there's plenty in the way of hostile Sith soldiers between you and the bridge itself.



Hostile Sith soldiers, and Sith grenadiers. These guys don't give a shit, they just keep spamming their grenades at a rate best described as alarming.



Stop that!



Most of the Sith here are a nuisance more than anything and are easily disposed of, either with Force Wave or just regular old attacks.



I think this Sith damaged himself with his grenade as well. Or maybe that's just the damage number from the Force Wave I used.



We eventually find ourselves in this droid bay, containing two war droids and one rather scary-looking assault droid.



The war droids are no trouble.



This guy can be activated via the nearby computer panel, and once active it'll wander around the command deck and attack everything that moves. We'll just leave him be, I think.



We took care of the guys in Barracks 1 and 2, but Barracks 3 is still full of Sith just waiting for us to come through the door. Sadly, there's no way to take them out remotely, although I guess the assault droid might eventually make its way to them.



Yeah, not going to waste that many spikes. We will, however, open all security doors.



The command deck isn't that massive, but it certainly feels like it. While it seems our goal is the big old "To Bridge" marker to the east, the door is actually locked. Where we actually want to go is the bridge storage entrance slightly to the northwest of the bridge itself.



goddamn mines



Here in the armory, we also come across a space suit which we'll bring along with us.





There's also some pretty solid gear, which we don't particularly need but can be sold for a decent chunk of money once we get off this ship.







Oh, hello there. This is the way to the bridge storage, and it's being guarded by a bunch of Dark Jedi so let's go say hi to them.





These guys aren't really all that much stronger than the lower-ranked Dark Jedi we've been fighting on the planets we've visited.



Okay, now we're in the right place.



I decided to check the door to the bridge just in case, and yeah, it's locked and can't be opened in any way.



So, we'll head through the storage area then.



The storage room has some boxes containing items we don't really need all that much, but I suppose more healing items is always nice. Getting this many healing items all of a sudden also seems to indicate we're about to have a big fight shortly.



In order to get to the bridge via this route, we'll need to go through the airlock. This is why we picked up that space suit earlier.



Well then, here we are in the vacuum of space. Thankfully, finding a single space suit is enough for the entire party, which might not be realistic but certainly saves us some time and running around.



This section looks really nice, not gonna lie. There's just one problem.



When you wear the space suit, you move incredibly slowly.



Incredibly, incredibly slowly.



That little walk probably took 30 seconds or longer. Obsidian adjusted the walking speed of these space suit segments in KotOR II, but the animation is also sped up and it looks completely ludicrous. Still totally worth it, of course.



As we exit the airlock, we need to re-equip our weapons (except Bastila for some reason) because the game automatically removes them when you put on the space suit. We're also greeted by some more Sith, but that kinda goes without saying by now.



There are some containers with random items here, but nothing worth showing off. We can see the bridge up ahead, so let's go unlock those hangar doors. We'll probably be facing pretty strong resistance on the bridge, though, so might want to be careful.



There's Admiral Karath, just waiting for us to show up.



I'm surprised the Sith guards don't gun us down when we enter. Maybe Saul told them not to?





Don't be a fool. I am giving you and your companions a chance to surrender. A chance to live. Darth Malak himself is on his way, he will be arriving any moment.

I went back to the original Saul portrait for this update.



Malak will destroy you, but if you throw down your weapons now I will ask my Master to be merciful.

I'll bet.







Saul has a Verpine Prototype Shield and a Sith Assault Gun, so he's quite tough. However, neither of those will save him from our obscenely powerful Force Wave.



We should, however, keep an eye on some of the other Sith on the bridge, because someone's tossing grenades again and both Bastila and Carth are taking heavy damage.



Carth just seems to have problems with these Sith troopers, but a life support pack should keep him in the fight.



Admiral Karath is dead, and his Dark Jedi henchmen don't last much longer.



Carth, why is this so difficult?



That's better.







That sounded pretty threatening, Carth.



We should stop him before he does anything he regrets.







Hm? What's this now?



Remember my dying words. *cough* Remember them whenever *cough*... whenever you look at those you thought were your friends!

A sneaky bastard all the way to the bitter end.



Whatever he told Carth must not have been good.







Anyone planning on letting us in on the secret?







Please, Carth, I'm asking you to trust me. For just a little while longer.

Whatever it was, it can wait for now.







We'll deal with that whole thing once we're not in immediate danger of being skewered by a Sith Lord. Sounds good to me.



Better grab Saul's stuff before we go.





After the cutscene, these Sith grenadiers show up because of course they do. We can't leave the bridge just yet anyway, because we have to unlock the hangar doors if we want to get off this ship.







That'll do it. The option to program a new destination doesn't actually work, so we can't program the Leviathan to fly itself into the nearest star. But hold on a second... the current destination is the Star Forge. If we stayed on the Leviathan, we would find the Star Forge. Of course, that would probably be suicide, so maybe we'll just find the last Star Map instead.



Back to the command deck we go. Thankfully, we don't need to use the airlock again because the main door is open now.





Dark Jedi and more Sith grenadiers have spawned on the command deck. We've seen plenty of these idiots by now, so let's keep moving.



Back to the elevator, and down to the hangar bay.



Good, Canderous and the others are ready to take off. Shouldn't someone have disabled the Leviathan's tractor beam, though? Or is there no one left to operate it after we killed just about everyone on board?





Yeah, yeah. Get on with it. Now that I think of it, I may slightly be overusing Force Wave, but I just can't help myself because it's so good against these trash enemies.



The ominous red door clearly indicates progress.



And a whole bunch of Sith, apparently.





Not that they last very long.



Nothing else in this hangar control room except for a few items. We're right above the Ebon Hawk, so it should be a short walk from here.





More red hallways of ominousness. Just gotta get through these corridors here and we'll reach the hangar bay.



Actually, let's not celebrate our escape just yet.





I do like how Carth just instantly unloads on Malak without skipping a beat. Malak deflects his shots easily, but at the very least Carth showed he's not afraid of any Sith Lord.





Malak finds the idea of Carth falling over extremely amusing, apparently.







What? Ha-ha-ha! You mean you don't know? Ha-ha-ha! All this time, and you still haven't figured it out? Ha-ha-ha! I wonder how long you would have stayed blind to the truth? Surely some of what you once were must have surfaced by now.

What we once were...



VIDEO: The Truth (if you only watch one video in this LP, make sure it's this one - the screenshots just don't do it justice)





We see flashbacks to Bastila telling us about how the Jedi do not kill their prisoners.



We hear the words of Master Zhar once again. "Special case", huh?





We like our mind where it is, we said.







We haven't yet seen the vision of Manaan's Star Map, but here it surfaces from somewhere.











What indeed, Bastila. What indeed...











We've seen this before, of course.







Visions of Star Maps, clouded in a haze. Visions of Bastila and Darth Revan, clouded but getting ever clearer.







Visions?







No... not visions.







Memories.



Our memories.







And there we have it. The big plot twist of Knights of the Old Republic. The main character wasn't just some scrub who turned out to be exceptionally strong with the Force, but an amnesiac Darth Revan.

This is one of those video game plot twists everyone knows nowadays, but if Final Fantasy VII still managed to surprise a few people when Elentor LP'd that game a few years ago, I sincerely hope there's someone reading this LP as well who genuinely did not know the Revan twist. The foreshadowing is not subtle to say the least, but I'm not sure how it comes across if you actually don't know what's going on.



The Jedi strike team captured you and the Council used the Force to reprogram your mind; they wiped away your identity and turned you against your own followers.





I ordered my own ships to fire on your bridge. I thought I could destroy all my enemies with a single glorious victory! I never dreamed the Jedi would take you alive from the wreckage.

Why wouldn't the Jedi simply kill me?

The Jedi are fools; they do not believe in executing prisoners. Originally I assumed you had died in the battle. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were still alive, Revan.

But why did you betray... your master?

You mean why did I betray you, Revan. You are the one who taught me the ways of the Sith: the strongest must rule if we are to survive! You knew I would one day challenge you for supremacy, but you underestimated me. I acted sooner than you expected and seized the Sith throne with a single brilliant stroke!



We can ask Bastila if this is true, or just deny the whole thing, but we know perfectly well it's true.



Your mind was destroyed, but I used the Force to preserve the flicker of life in your body. I brought you to the Jedi Council. They were the ones who healed your damaged mind.





Wasn't asking you, Malak. That being said, he's not exactly wrong, is he?





Yes, it was clearly much better to have us find out by surprise like this.







The Council created an identity for you: a soldier under my command. Your subconscious memories were supposed to lead me to the Star Forge; there was no other way to get the information.

But... if we were going to lead them to the Star Forge all along, surely the Jedi must have known there was a non-zero chance we might encounter Malak at some point, and the jig would be up right then and there. You know, the thing that literally happened just now.







Bastila hides the truth behind noble words, Revan! The Jedi needed the memories buried deep in your wounded mind; there was no other way to bring them out. They had to keep you alive!

Even then, Bastila saved Revan's life, and we can't ignore that even though we can't exactly discount what Malak says either.





Tell the truth, Bastila, you wanted to taste the dark side for yourself! You knew the only way the Council would permit you to explore the Sith's power was through Revan's lost memories!



Past crimes... right. Revan has done some horrible things in her past life, things that cannot be taken back no matter how she might try to redeem herself with this second chance she's been given.





Oh. Well, I suppose they were extremely desperate when they devised this whole plan.



I really, really wish they'd have given us an option somewhere between these two. The Jedi did a pretty terrible thing to us, and they 100% used us, but I don't want to blame Bastila for that because all she did was save our life. Despite keeping the truth under wraps due to the Council's mandate, Bastila has been there for us throughout this journey and we have come to consider her a friend. As such, I'd like to have an option that basically says "We're cool, Bastila, but fuck the Jedi Order."



But now fate has given me a second chance to prove myself. Once I defeat you in combat no one will question my claim to the Sith throne; my triumph will be complete!



This is supposed to be the dark side line. I don't care. The light side option just sounds stupid. I guess this line still kinda works if you think of it like "Listen, dumbass, you'll have to beat me first, which you couldn't do before and certainly won't now that I'm a Jedi again."





Malak puts Bastila and Carth into the dreaded Plot Stasis to ensure this fight will be one-on-one.





Nope, not getting much help from these two until the plot dictates the Stasis wears off.



Malak is extremely resistant to Force powers, so he's not going to go into Stasis. I could've sworn I've managed that before, but maybe I'm wrong.



He also hits quite hard, but that's nothing we can't deal with.



Malak doesn't have a lot of health in this encounter, so a couple of good hits will do it.



Come on, I had Force Immunity on!





Having Whirlwinded us, Malak runs through the blast door in front of us.



Clearly, we must follow.



Well, we're not going through the same door as Malak.



I'm not gonna lie, for a while here I thought the game had glitched out because none of the doors seemed to be open and I completely forgot we were even supposed to follow Malak. I thought the cutscene we saw of him running away would continue and we'd follow him in the cutscene. It's been almost a decade since I last played through this section so my memory was fuzzy. Of course, I eventually realized I didn't try this one door on the opposite side.







Time for Round 2.



Once again, Malak is a pushover in this encounter.



It takes us no time at all to end the fight, but of course he's not done yet.



This time, Malak puts us into Plot Stasis (again, we had Force Immunity activated) and that spells certain doom. He's got us right where he wants us, and only has to land the killing blow. I really don't like when games make you lose in a cutscene after you completely dominate the actual fight.





Before Malak can kill us and end any and all threat to his domination of the galaxy, Bastila reappears.



We've fought tougher insects, Malak. Too bad Malak has plot powers.







Bastila throws her lightsaber and wounds Malak, buying us some time to get free of our stasis.



Carth has gotten free as well, although we're still trapped.





Too late, Carth.





This is kind of a nice callback to Trask sacrificing himself on the Endar Spire, but this time it's a character that is actually... well, a character, and someone we care about so it lands much better.







Bastila sacrificed herself so we could get away. We can't let her sacrifice be in vain! Come on!



We want to help Bastila but there's apparently nothing we can do, except hope that Malak still wants Bastila alive and doesn't kill her immediately.



The Ebon Hawk is ready to go, so let's get the hell off this ship.



The Leviathan fires some half-assed turbolaser shots in our general direction, but the Ebon Hawk is far too nimble for any of those to hit. I'm still wondering about that tractor beam, but clearly it's not active at the moment because we didn't immediately crash and burn.



And we're away.



Well, almost. Still got some Sith fighters to deal with.





Now we should be home free.



Gotta say one thing, though. This debriefing is likely going to be very, very interesting.