Her name was Naresha.

When Knights of the Old Republic came to an end, and the redeemed Jedi Knight Revan stood before a cheering crowd of victorious Republic soldiers, I couldn't fathom what could possibly come next. The Star Forge had been destroyed, Darth Malak's reign had come to an end, and Revan and Bastila now had an entire future to look forward to. Bioware's epic tale had come to a gripping conclusion.

But I never would have guessed that it would end there.

I finished the game over four years ago, and for months afterward, I scoured the internets for any hint or rumor of a true sequel to KotOR (that incident with Obsidian Entertainment doesn't, doesn't count). Once a week, I would look over the biggest fan/mod page available to hear what was going on with Bioware and why they weren't making this thing!

Eventually, I would give up on any prospect of seeing the continuation of Revan's story. It was a slow death for me.

To keep the memories alive, I started working on a KotOR fanfic called Revan's Shadow, the story for which I had quietly been working on ever since I first finished the game. About one year and 90,000 words later, I'm fast approaching the publication of the last chapter. Thinking it might be fun to throw around a bunch of little references, I start looking over the Knights of the Old Republic page on Wookieepedia. And, to my surprise, there's an actual entry for KotOR 3.

"No way," says I, and immediately click on the link. What I find is information yanked from a recently published book on LucasArts called Rogue Leaders, and what I read absolutely breaks my heart.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 is a canceled video game in the Knights of the Old Republic series and is a follow up to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. According to designer John Stafford, "we got quite a bit of traction... we wrote a story, designed most of the environments/worlds, and many of the quests, characters, and items." However, when the game was close to starting development, LucasArts hit a difficult period in the company's history which led to the project being canceled.

I was devastated. Here, after four years of waiting, I was finally being told that not only had a sequel been in production, but that it had been CANCELLED as well. And they were basically saying, "Hey, we totally got everything ready and were THIIIIS close to making that game but...man...you know...shit happened." It was a terrible letdown. I can still imagine all that the game could have been. All that it could have accomplished and I hang my head in disappointment.

This should have been the game that we got instead of this MMO that Bioware is set to make a bunch of internet-money on. Maybe someday. If Sysyphus' punishment is to always push a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down when it reaches the top, then my eternal punishment will be to forever cleave to a small fragment of hope that we'll see Revan's story continued in some way.

And hopefully not in shitty comic form again.

Enjoy the picture I've posted above, because it is all that remains of the game that could have been Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3.

/cries

Mock Effect 2......

An announcement regarding 'Mock Effect 2' - my planned parody of 'Mass Effect 2'

I feel awfully silly making an 'announcement'... But this is my blog so I will prattle on for hours, going into far too much detail and getting vaguely emotional.

I'm almost certainly not going to write a second 'Mass Effect' parody. If I do it will be months from now.


About two years ago I wrote a parody script, full-length, spoofing the brilliant Bioware RPG 'Mass Effect'. I chose the very witty title 'Mock Effect'. Mirth Effect was also a contender. Seriously.

The parody format was based very much on my favourite ever piece of fanfiction - "Yet Another KotOR Parody" by Helena L.

http://hawk.kotorfanmedia.com/node/1593

It really was just an attempt to emulate the joy I got from that parody - in Mass Effect form.

Anyway, it went down extremely well among Mass Effect fans, and I got a ton of feedback - vastly more than I ever have for anything else I've written - most of it praising me highly. It was a big surprise for me. I even got a compliment on it from Helena L.

This feedback gave me confidence as a writer and the experience of writing it really improved things for me in general. After it was taken down from fanfiction.net (they don't allow scripts) it was given a new home by one Rascarin, who set up a forum to house it and other fanfic.

Rascarin's ME forum is now sooo much more - it houses lots of great fanfic, a lot of friendly, lively Mass Effect and game discussion, and a fantastic community. And it's where I've made some of my closest friends.

http://masseffectfanfic.proboards.com/index.cgi

And I always assumed there would be a 'Mock Effect 2'. After all, I really enjoy reading positive reviews telling me I'm funny! It rarely happens, except for Mock Effect.

Having now played Mass Effect 2 a decent amount, I've finally come to a decision. And believe me, I have been thinking long and hard about this.

------

So - there will be no Mock Effect 2.

It is mainly a time issue. I have a decent job now, and some other bits and pieces at home taking my time and effort. And I have an English degree coming up later this year, hopefully. All in all, I just don't have enough free time to write more than one thing at once.

And I want to write original stories with the time I have. I am trying to really learn and make it work as a writer. I need practice.

Also - I have to say - Mass Effect 2 is a really well-written game, with excellent dialogue and very few plot holes to exploit. With one or two exceptions, the characters are brilliant and perfectly-played. And while I feel the plot lets the game down, espescially at the end, there isn't a great deal to make fun of.

------

This decision has actually been made difficult because people (sometimes people I don't even know) have asked for a sequel, or wondered aloud when it will come or what it will contain.

To those people, and to anyone who read 'Mock Effect' - thank you! It means so much to me, as a would-be writer, to hear that kind of praise from peers and fans of the game.

------

So there will (very probably) be no Mass Effect 2 parody. If I can find a way to make time later in the year I will. But I don't see that happenning.

(waves hand)

You don't want me to write a ME 2 parody...







(Good GOD that was self-indulgent. Sorry.)

Writing Sub-Par Fiction Isn't How I Planned On Spending My Twilight Years, Shepard

There comes a point where you just have to say, "Maybe this isn't working out so well." And when I say "You," I totally mean Bioware.

See, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is still my favorite game/story ever. I still get excited thinking about it, even five years later. I have a $70 action figure of Darth Revan up on my wall for Christ's sake. And I can still remember the day when I, by chance, figured out that Drew Karpyshyn had been the lead writer on that game. I was so excited: mostly because I subsequently realized he had published some books in the Star Wars universe. This was like...Christmas x 1000 to me.

So, I bought the crazily named Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction immediately and began reading. Three chapters later, I sorta stopped. It was nothing like I had expected. There were no memorable characters. No fantastic, clever, and humorous dialogue like I had experienced in KotOR. There was none of that! Only a would-be Sith Lord who can't do anything right except lose. He wins at losing, I guess, which is...confounding.

Long story short: I did eventually finish the book a few months later and...eh, it was okay. It was no Shatterpoint by any means, but it was acceptable. I bought the second book just to see where the series would go from such an odd ending, but I was met by an author's apology and a book that I still have yet to finish to this day.

You'd think after two OKAY Karpyshyn books that I would have stopped there. But I didn't. I bought Mass Effect: Revelation not too long after failing to read the Bane sequel. It got some good reviews on Amazon, but I still don't understand the point of such a short novel, in which the villain isn't introduced until HALFWAY through the book! And the whole thing revolves around Saren and Captain Anderson, who are in Mass Effect: The Game so you know nothing bad happens to them. The book was a mess.

In short, Drew Karpyshyn is still one of the few literary heroes I have, but certainly not for his novels. But I can't exactly blame him. How does one find the time amist his job as Lead Writer for some of the best-reviewed and bestselling games of the decade to write SIX novels?! I don't know, but I would think it involves standing at a crossroad waiting to sell your soul to the devil.

This brings me to David Gaider: someone I never knew existed before the release of Dragon Age: Origins, but I would come to know him as the man behind the dialogue for Carth Onasi in KotOR, which instantly sent him tearing through the ranks of The Most Influential People of My Life. Carth was easily the best character in that game. That's not to demean any of the other characters, but his story of heartbreak and how well he was acted just allowed the game to hit home with me several times over.

After playing through DA:O, I had close to the same feeling I had when KotOR had ended. I felt sad; like I was leaving a world I had come to love behind (and I couldn't go back, explore, and finish my sidequests! Damn you, Bioware!). So, naturally, I was confused, but when I found out David Gaider's role in the game, I quickly downloaded his prequel to the Dragon Age storyline: Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne. This book I found to be much more interesting than Karpy's entries in the Star Wars universe; the characters were actually characterized and I could get a good feel of the world at times. And since it didn't so much rely on the event of the game, it didn't have that restrained feel to it.

I'm almost done with the book, but it still only amounts to an above-average fling. There's so much damn exposition in Gaider's prose that it rival's Karpy's. Neither of them allow their characters to breathe or interact. It's all interior, which gets annoying really quick. I mean...Jesus...these are men who are renowned for writing amazing dialogue, but there's hardly a trace of the stuff in any of these writers' books! C'mon!

I need characters that haven't miraculously gotten themselves into a position to save/enslave the universe. I just want simple adventures of a smaller scale, great characters, and conversations in between that I would actually want to take part in.

To sum this lengthy entry up: this is a plea to Bioware to hire people whose job is to write novels, and write them well. Your Lead Writers are busy writing games that take up days of my life, don't let them talk you into thinking that they can write entire books on the side that won't come out looking rushed or diluted. When Karpy has to put a foreword at the beginning of his novels more-or-less apologizing for the quality of his book...C'mon!

This is Chewbacca! This does not make SEEEENSE!

Look at the monkey!

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that these novels are a great opportunity to expand the much-loved lore of Bioware's games, and I think they need to be taken more seriously. They need to be more than just a side project. They need to be written by hardcore fans of their games that are absolutely drowning in the lore:

i.e. - Myself and Mister Buch, for your consideration.

THE END

Let's Try This Again

I recently saw Shutter Island at the theaters. Great movie. Wonderful acting and a story that kept me involved. I wanted to talk about it somewhere, but I couldn't here. I had deemed this place, in my mind, as a blog meant only to catalog my fanfiction adventures. Now, this had been a great idea in the beginning, but this also meant that when my interest in the genre took a dive, so did my willingness to blog. I mean, what was I to say. Nothing, that's what.

So, we've sort of repurposed this. Our blog will no longer be a landfill of our musings on fanfiction and all things related. Hopefully, if we can keep this up, it'll be so much more: a landfill of our musings on life, the universe, and everything--plus Shutter Island. Amazing movie.

Now I can at least say that I was able to see a Scorsese picture in theaters. Niceeee.

So, yeah, there's that. I'm at school right now and lunch is calling, so we'll pick this up again when I have time to write about something.

Until then: Stay Classy, San Diego.