Welcome to another episode of "Star Wars KOTOR", I'm your host guubadoop and I'll proceed to ramble on about everything that happens in this game while I play.
Today's episode is all about companions, the dysfunctional band wholesome group that follows our protagonist, Avren, to every corner of the galaxy!
Pic unrelated, the lizard just looks cool...
Why dedicate an entire episode to these companions you ask? It's simple really, I get a lot of screenshots of some of them giving their backstories to Avren while doing quests and I never have a moment to show them, mainly because it disrupts the "flow" of the episode.
Something like this: "Okay, now that we killed this giant dragon, let's talk about Bastila's mother!"
See? It just feels weird to me.
So I decided that this episode will be all about the companions, even those that haven't yet told me about their own life, each one of them will get their own little section here, so that all of them get a chance to "shine"
Our first companion today is Carth Onasi!
Carth is the second companion you get in the game (if you count the guy that sacrifices himself for you at the beginning that is).
His backstory seems simple: a space army man who saw some stuff and is now deeply traumatized.
Here's Carth, looking ridiculous with those space glasses of his.
Carth's character doesn't really appear until you leave the tutorial planet and start working on the game's main quest, at that point the game will probably prompt the player to talk to him.
It's from these interactions that you learn poor Carth is actually a very distrusting person thanks to the fiasco of the war against the Mandalorians and what followed after, events that happened right before the game begins.
At this point in the game the player can learn several things from Carth:
1- That he served in the Mandalorian Wars alongside Revan, the Jedi that turned evil and then turned back on the republic.
2- That he also served during the war where Revan turned on the Republic, in the Republic's side and lost his entire family (and planet) during this event.
3- That he was betrayed by his commanding officer, who was a very close person to him and, in fact, the guy who went and bombed his planet.
All of this made Carth into a very uneasy and distrusting person who will always (at least in the beginning of the game) question the player about themselves.
He doesn't trust the player, Avren in this case, but slowly starts to accept and trust them if the player keeps doing good deeds and tries to get on his good side.
The poor guy isn't really trying to antagonize anyone, he's just scared that someone else will betray him, like his friends did and just like Revan did the entire Republic.
Poor guy can't get a break...
At this point in the game, Carth has already told Avren about his past and the reasons why he was so distrustful of him.
He tells Avren about his wife and son, who were lost when the planet was bombed, he talks about how he holds his wife on her hands while she dies because there's too many wounded people and not enough medics to attend to them...
Like most companions Carth has a personal quest which begins after the player asks about the character's backstory.
The next part of the quest will begin only after the player talks to the companion in question a lot and manages to earn their trust, for example:
Carth's quest starts as soon as he tells Avren his story and when the party makes it to a landing area in any planet, a random NPC will come up to the party and talk with the character in question.
Looks like someone recognized Carth...
However... this story is for another episode...
Our next companion is Bastila Shan.
She's the McGuffin person you have to rescue during the "tutorial planet"
Bastila becomes a member of your party right after finishing a series of quests in Taris, getting her in the party finishes the first part of the quests in Taris and begins the other one, escaping from that place.
She's the first Jedi to enter your party and uses a double lightsaber (the one where the laser comes out of both sides so it looks more like a lightpole than a lightsaber)
She's... a little more complicated to understand than Carth, she's very rude to the player character as soon as she starts talking to them and acts as the leader of the group as soon as everyone starts thinking "what do we do now?" (To be fair she was actually the leader of everyone right before the game started)
She calms down shortly after that however and becomes a more "chill" person, at least when compared to Carth, but she will go off again if she's present when the player does evil stuff.
Whereas Carth is a soldier that has a hard time trusting people, Bastila is just a grown woman going through a Jedi phase equivalent to her teenage years: The phase where they start to question themselves and say "Hey, maybe the space monks with super powers aren't really that good? ...Nah, can't be"
Seriously, you ever seen the movies? The reason why episodes 4 to 6 happened is because of this exact same thing.
But seriously, Bastila questions a lot of her decisions which depend a lot on what the Jedi Order teaches. As you talk to her you'll realize she has her doubts on the system the Jedi have going but she immediately backpedals and tries to reassure herself that "No, the Order is always right"
The real depths of her character only really appear after the big reveal in the game, but her personal sidequest becomes avaliable before that. In fact, it's recommended that the player finishes it before "The Point of No Return"
Again, we could go on about this quest of hers but that will not leave me with enough space to talk about the other companions...
Next on the list is Mission, and Zaalbar. Because they're a package deal.
...
Well we would talk about them, if i actually remembered to take some screenshots with them.
The next episode has a lot of involvement from Zaalbar, so I figured it's better to talk about them in that one.
Instead, we'll talk about Canderous Ordo!
Canderous Ordo in the flesh -er, pixel flesh that is.
Ordo is a soldier, much like Carth, but unlike Carth he's a Mandalorian, that means that being a soldier is in his blood and that he was on the other side of the Mandalorian wars.
That also means he's a badass.
Canderous will mostly tell the player about the different things he did on the battlefield, kinda like a grandparent telling their grandchildren about the war they were in, except that Canderous enjoys it.
The only reason he follows the player is because he expects great things to happen (a good fight) if he follows them.
Again, most of the interactions with him that end up triggering his personal quest is just sitting down and listening to him as he gives the player tales of mass murdering and destruction.
...Hey now that I think about it Carth and Bastila seem to be the only characters with a lot of depth, I wonder why...
Next is Juhani, a Cathar (that's an alien that looks like a cat person)
I will never get used to those eyes of her...
She's a companion the player can miss out on, because before she joins the party she's a boss that the player can kill, it's recommended to keep her alive because she has force powers and those are always a big help in your party.
Whereas Bastila questions the Order's decisions Juhani questions her own decisions, see back when the player meets her she's "turned to the dark side" AKA: got angry at her master and hurt her too bad and ran away in fear, she joins the party looking to repent for that accident and to grow as a Jedi.
Most of the interactions the player will have with her will be about her past life, her home planet and how she came to idolize the Jedi.
The player can also talk to her about the dark side, as her fear of turning back into it is a big part of her character.
Like everyone else in this group, once you talk with her enough times her personal quest will become available to you. Like most companions in my playthrough so far, I haven't been able to get that far yet.
Finally we have the droids, HK-47 and R2D2 T3-M4.
Just pretend that there's a picture of T3-M4 here instead of HK-47
Unlike most companions, the droids themselves don't have their own personal storyline that culminates on a quest. Instead, they... just exist.
T3-M4 is the first droid the party receives, and he doesn't really add much to it.
Most of his dialogue is just a combination of beep bzzzoot bwoop
On the other hand, HK-47 is way more vocal...
He will always complain whenever the player wants to solve a problem peacefully. HK-47 is a robot made for killing and will be really annoyed with you if you decide not to kill meatbags.
Of course, he won't do anything to the player because they're his boss but will display his annoyance nonetheless.
He, alongside Canderous, is the evil companion who will, for the most part, enjoy the evil things the player does.
However, he will happily follow any player even if they never kill anyone or anything.
Again, pretend there are some pictures of T3-M4 here.
If you've made it this far, then congratulations! This covers all of the companions in Avren's party so far, well most of them anyways.
Originally I intended to cover a lot more about each character, but trying to do that without spoiling the rest of the game proved to be very difficult.
Not to mention that I would also have to write a lot more, which would probably bored people...
In the end I tried to write as much as possible of each party member, but that was also difficult for me.
You see, I wrote most of these out of what I remember from the last time I played and from what has happened so far in the game. For some reason, that proved to be way more than my little human brain can handle and I found myself being tired and bored while writing most of this.
Despite that, I tried my best and I hope you found these ramblings of mine a little entertaining.
Next episode should be like all of the others, with the party running around and doing quests and saving people.
Until then, thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a fantastic day!
!discovery 40
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