Drew Karpyshyn Leaves BioWare, Takes Company's Integrity With Him

What exactly is a "lead writer" on a video game? Well, if you have a room full of writers working on a video game, the lead writer is one of them - the one with the whip who keeps the story in line. They're essentially narrative designers, directors, and staff writers all rolled up into one. (Or, at least, this is how it was explained to me.) This is important when you think about general tone, when/how certain plot points emerge, how characters develop, etc. The lead writer has to keep track of all of this.

My first experience with Drew Karpyshyn's work was during Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the first game in which he was credited as "lead writer". I don't think I have to go back over how much of an impact that game made on my life. I can! But I won't.

...I totally could!

But I won't... Or, maybe... Nah.

His second game as lead writer was Mass Effect. Again, huge impact on my life. It was a fantastically imaginative game, with great characters and great sci-fi that harkened back to the classics of the genre. Mass Effect 2 is when Mr. Karpyshyn had to hand over the reigns, and I think anyone who pays close attention to these things can see that there was some definite change. Not for the worse or for the better, but definite change.

Mass Effect 2, while good, was a little formulaic. Character development occurred on cue and usually involved what you thought it would. When Karpyshyn was involved, these things were handled with a little more subtlety. Party members joined your crew more organically, and their stories unraveled at a more natural pace. You saw Garrus's discontent before you ever heard about Dr. Heart, and how it affected his handling of Saren's case. You sensed Kaiden's subdued personality before you ever heard about his time on Jump Zero, and what actually happened there.

Even going back to KotOR, connecting Carth's trust issues to Malak and Saul Karath was fantastic. It made sense because it had always been there. Even Bastila's parental problem was something I didn't see coming but made sense. Or, you know, how you don't think about why fourteen-year-old Mission Vao is hanging out with a Wookiee until you find out she'd been abandoned.

Let's face it, the writing on both of those games won't win the Pulitzer, but there's something to be said for writing that's a little more subtle, more human. Mass Effect 3 is looking like it'll have all the bombastic dialogue that EA/BioWare have encouraged out of the series of late, and, you know, whatever. But there's something to be said for subtlety. Dialogue doesn't have to be a series of exciting and loud one-liners to make an impact. I don't remember Kaiden saying one interesting line that I can quote endlessly. What he said over time is what made him interesting. His actions and the many conversations he had with Shepard are what combined to make him one of my favorite characters in the game.

Subtlety. I'm gonna type that a few more times, because I think that's what Karpyshyn encouraged while he was with BioWare. Because people don't naturally talk with extravagant rhetoric; sometimes you can talk to someone for a long time before they say anything interesting. That's what made the characters Karpyshyn oversaw a little more human, because they acted like it.

That's an element that I think will be sorely missed once we're finally up to our controllers/keyboards in the beautiful guys and gals of the Mass Effect universe. Time will tell. I've been overly critical of Mr. Karpyshyn's other endeavors, but his work at BioWare speaks for itself: subtly, without sex and explosions doing all the talking.

Thanks for the ride, Mr. Karpyshyn. And good luck.

Disingenuous Discussions: "Revan, Cover Art, and Kurt Russell."

Buch: So, today we're bringing back our Disingenuous Discussions column, because we want to complain about the cover for the new Star Wars videogame tie-in novel, Revan by Drew Karpyshyn.

Knight: Indeed. There is much wrong with this, and we want to tell you why you should be angry, as well. And then buy it, like we inevitably will.

Buch: I actually quite like bad book covers - sometimes I've deliberately paid more for a copy of a book with a silly cover. And compared to a lot of Star Wars books, this one is not too bad. But we do enjoy hating things that we financially support.

Knight: Right, they could've gone with the same artist that made up the nightmare-inducing cover for Darth Bane: Rule of Two.

Buch: Exactly. That was the same author, and it was easily the worst cover I've ever owned. But Revan here does look like he's holding onto the support railings on a bus.

Knight: It kinda looks like he's afraid of the lightsaber. Keeping it at arm's length, like Indiana Jones would hold a snake.

Buch: Looks like he's trying to read the serial number off the back.

Knight: So he can return it for the one he actually uses in the game.

Buch: To be fair, in the game, everyone just uses plain white ones in the wrong shape.

Knight: Yeah, well, I'm not here to listen to reason and logic. I'm here to trash this on the grounds of irrational nostalgia.

Buch: That's basically all we do. And Darth Revan is usually involved.

Knight: In some negative way. He's our President Obama.

Buch: Do you think Revan looks overweight in that picture?

Knight: Like he ended up eating the rogue gizka on the Ebon Hawk. In one bite.

Buch: I don't think there's any need at this point explaining why Revan is so important to us. But it is important to know that he's a really big deal and the two of us really care about his story. Here we have the writer who invented him, apparently continuing the largely user-defined and non-specific role-playing game character's story, but in a novel. On the one hand, I'm extremely excited to learn what happened next - the Knights of the Old Republic series always had an unsatisfying lack of an ending.

Knight: Agreed. No endings I could really latch onto. And Revan is a really big deal, you're right. His story was intriguing not only on its own, but because it was open to so many interpretations. Revan could be unique to everyone. So it's... odd, I guess, that they're deciding to so openly set his character in stone.

Then again, there's money to be had.

Buch: They've got to have money. And really, I think I'm glad about the book. Frankly, I don't rate Karpyshyn's previous SW and Mass Effect novels much at all, as much as I adore his work on the games. And as you know, I have a real 'thing' about going back to a story after it has concluded to my satisfaction. I think Knights of the Old Republic 2 was a disappointment. I like to leave stories alone - very opposed to sequels, especially after time has passed. But I'm excited to read this. I don't know why. You?

Knight: I'm excited to be given any reason to delve back into the "Realm of KotOR," I suppose. The Old Republic is three centuries removed, The Sith Lords focused on the Exile, and Bane was an idiot. This'll be the first real... anything to represent a true sequel to KotOR. So, I'm excited, even if the form this project eventually took isn't really to my liking. There were other stories to tell in that time period.

But if any of the original party members show up in the book, I will probably clap and scream like a girl at a showing of Twilight.

Buch: I am very attached to 'my' Revan - the girl with the blue eyes and black ponytail who looked a bit like Barbara Streisand, carried a yellow lightsaber and sometimes turned out dark side. It will be a stretch for me to accept Revan is now absolutely, no-arguments, officially a handsome, heroic white man, as I assume he will now be.

But yes - seeing HK-47 or Canderous or whoever will just be wonderful. And even seeing the classic Revan costume there - odd choice of lightsaber aside - makes me feel like this will be more of a sequel than anything. Which is probably why it's on that cover, despite the continuity questions it raises.

Knight: Either they know something we don't, or we know something they don't. Or maybe it's a case of, "It's Revan on the cover. They'll buy it anyway."

Buch: But if Revan weren't on the cover, or his armour wasn't there, how would you be feeling?

Knight: They could've shown Revan's face for the first time. In that case, I probably would've dug up my torch and matching pitchfork. So, it sounds like on a basic level, they were still thinking about the fans. However minimally.

Buch: I like that the armour is there. But I'm sure it makes no sense that he would wear it after the events of the games - after his return to the Republic. There is no denying that this cover is silly.

Knight: I agree. Maybe we make up a very small camp of folks (along with the KotOR fans back at the ME Fanfic Forum) that would actually get pissed at something like this. The lack of the Juyo lightsaber form on the cover, the green blade, the inexplicable lightning in the background, as you pointed out, makes it hard to even place this in the timeline!

Buch: He's at some kind of Sith reunion during an unbelievably heavy thunderstorm. On the Shadow Broker's spaceship. And it's windy out.

Knight: Everyone knows that wind is a severe problem inside... spaceships.

Buch: I just noticed that there is blue lighting above him and red below him - that's actually kind of a nice touch, considering that the character was constantly switching sides, and the game was largely concerned with which way the player chose for him. Reminds me of the level-up screen.

Would have been nice for his damned lightsaber to have been one of those colours, though.

Knight: There was pretty much only one color they could've picked for his blade that wouldn't have fit with anything we know about Revan. Green is that one color.

And purple. But Mace Windu's badassery was not yet known to this galaxy.

Buch: Green lightsabers are cool because Luke Skywalker's sword was green. Luke Skywalker is cool. I hate purple lightsabers.

Knight: I hate your cat.

Buch: And I think you'll find that Mara Jade actually invented the purple lightsaber. Plus - I hate all cats.

Knight: Mara Jade invented a weird way for a Jedi to die. That's her contribution to the New Republic, in addition to Ben Skywalker.

Buch: All silly things, I think. I don't like purple lightsabers, and I don't like sequels to Jedi. Where were we?

Knight: Uh.

Buch: We are ace journalists.

Knight: Dragon Age 2?

Buch: Dragon Age 2. Fuck that game.

Knight: Fuck that game complete.

Buch: Not complete. Two-thirds.

Knight: 66%

Anyway, Revan! So, all of that aside, Karpyshyn and the New Adventures of Revan. How about some closing thoughts?

Buch: I think I would have preferred that title: 'The New Adventures of Revan.' It would have been poor, but at least it would have been interesting. 'Revan' as a title just emanates laziness. 'It's a book about Revan - whaddya want? There he is, look - see the Revan costume? Yeahhh.' But really, as I say, Star Wars book covers are usually pretty lousy and involve someone we know, in a costume we know, holding a lightsaber in a threatening manner. That's how it goes. It's just not an encouraging sign.

Because Revan to me is more important than your Ben or Anakin Skywalkers - he's up there with Luke and Han (and maybe Gandhi) in the VIP Club. I'm 27 years old now, so I ought to have bigger concerns... but I really don't want Revan's tale to end badly. And I really don't want some endless series of diminishing sequels.

Knight: Right-o. I think in the six-or-so years after KotOR's release, we've both sort of settled on how we imagined Revan's story to continue, where it probably would've ended. This book's likely to end up being one big case of, "I'm not so sure that would've happened," since Karpy's probably going to try and link Revan to The Old Republic in some way. It might be a frustrating experience, but then again it might not be. This might be a good book, and maybe Karpyshyn took this as seriously as we would have. We'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

Buch: That's a good point. And maybe he had a great idea. He might just have a fun adventure ready for us here, involving closure for Revan and a cool sword fight in a thunderstorm.

Knight: Closure? When an MMO is involved? Stranger things have happened.

Buch: The MMO thing worries me, for sure. I feel like the old man from Big Trouble in Little China. 'You leave Jack Burton ALONE!' Except it's Revan.

Knight: Would you accept Kurt Russell as Revan?

Buch: What I really like about our friendship is that quite often you will type out, word-for-word, what I was thinking! :D

Knight: Haha! Fantastic, then we'll end on an agreement!

Buch: Normally we disagree more on these things! Dragon Age 2 next time, eh?

Knight: Aw, yeah.

Buch: 70%

Knight: 33%

That's how much of a game it was.

Buch: That's how much of a game your mum was!

Knight: I'm telling.

Review: Mass Effect 2

It's a late but thorough review of Mass Effect 2!

(There will be lots of spoilers.)


I'm not a very smart man, and there is little I excel at, but - Mass Effect 2 is something I'm extremely knowlegable on. And after playing it through twice, deliberately varying the games as much as possible, I have a lot to say.

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Now, I love this game. This blog is named after it, and it's almost all I talk about, even now. But I'm going to focus on the faults.

The professional reviews I've read rated the game extremely highly (awarding it 9's and near 10's) but I think everybody but me missed the following five big problems.

I think a lot of these are only 'problems' to people like me - big fans, who adored the original. And who are picky. But they spoiled the experience for me, so here they are.

1) Not enough inventory, too many guns.

This is the big one. Whereas Mass Effect was a 'shooter-RPG' which had difficulty drawing the line between the two genres, the sequel decides right from the start that it's more shooter. Way more shooter.

This time there is no inventory, levelling up is easy, quick and simplistic, and every single quest - EVERY single quest is solved by shooting a bunch of people with the new Gears of War-style combat. The quests are fascinating and well-written, but they always boil down to hiding behind boxes and shooting people. The worlds are small - quests are more like levels - albeit levels with a lot of interactive dialogue. And when the level is done, you get a 'level complete' screen and you return to the home base. No exploring, no looting, very few sidequests.

It's a genre change, not a fault. But I dislike it. What makes Bioware RPGs so fantastic is their seamless mix of dramatic, personalised story and fun gameplay. Here that divide is skewed much more than I like. I get the impression this is an attempt to sell more copies - everyone loves shooters, right? And that annoys me.

2) We Were On A Break... in space.

There is an issue with the 'romance quests' in the first game - in Mass Effect (as in most Bioware titles) you're able to fall in love and persue a relationship with certain members of your party. Mass Effect 2 - a direct sequel - begins with a huge explosion and then a '2 years later' tag. So naturally I was assuming my old squeezes would be dead and I could romance one of the many, many new characters with a thing for the protagonist. No worries.

The problem is that all three possible lovers survive, even going so far as not-quite-dumping-you when you are (finally) reunited. So if you played ME1 and you persue a romance quest in the sequel, you're pretty much cheating on your boy/girlfriend. It's just clumsy and confusing, and out of character for everyone involved. And it could have been fixed so damn easily!

It's possible that the writers have something planned for these characters and love affairs in the final part of the planned trilogy. We will see.

3) Probe away.

The 'scanning minerals' mini-game is abominable. Bioware have a history of bad mini-games, but this one really is awful.

4) Achievement unlocked: Kinda.

The plot, no matter how hard I try, didn't grip me. The first game introduced an incredible, rich new SF world, allowed you to become a secret agent, command a battleship, fall in love and save all life in the galaxy from complete destruction.

The sequel's plot consists of stopping the evil aliens who are kidnapping human colonists. There's little in the way of investigation: we know immediately who did it, and how to reach them. So you spend the next 40 hours building a team to stop them, then you take that team to their dungeon, and an hour or so later you're done. You didn't really rescue anyone, but you stalled the enemy a bit, and you've prevented further humans from being killed. As excellent as the writing is, this just doesn't feel suitably epic for Commander Shepard.

The plot is on a much smaller scale. Again, this isn't necessarily a flaw - it's not bad writing, it's just hard to care about 'slowly gathering a team and briefly avenging some dead people' when last time I was saving the world with my beloved at my side.

5) The character death issue.

Depending on seemingly-insignificant and unrelated decisions you make throughout (and especially in the endgame) - members of your party can be killed - permenantly - at the game's climax. This suceeds in making you pay attention to the characters and your governing of them - and certainly makes the endgame extremely tense - but for the wrong reasons. I lost my favourite character for the simple reason that I picked a soldier instead of a veteran soldier to lead his team. And I only figured out what I did wrong by scouring walkthroughs online for hours. It just ruined the ending for me - 'We won! But... this guy is dead because I made a tiny error in judgement... yay...'

Similarly, a large number of my crew died because of another random, unrelated error - which my crewmen strongly encouraged me to make!
This concept of your people's lives being in genuine danger could have been a wonderful device - but all it did was irritate me and break my immersion in the story.

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Those are the noteworthy flaws, right there. Just five, but each one was such a blow to me, considering how good every other aspect of this game is.

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Small-scale and episodic as it may be, the plot is magnificent. This has to be the best-written videogame I've ever played, and the voice-acting is even better. I haven't found ANY bad acting in this - not one line - and this is two discs' worth of acting. Even Mark Meer (who plays the male lead in both games, and whose earlier performance seemed flat and unimpressive) does beautifully here - he has really made the character his own, and this improves the experience a great deal.

The new plot doesn't just give us 'more of the same' but takes daring leaps, bringing big plot twists, entirely new sapient species (only one of which is Baraka), new enemies and very different allies. Shepard's standing in the galaxy has drastically changed, and you're visiting very different places this time.
Some of the short quests were incredibly engaging, one or two were powerfully emotional, and absolutel every one was memorable and unique.

A lot of games claim to have 'Hollywood-movie-quality writing and acting' - this exceeds most movies on both counts.

The voice cast, incidentally, includes some proper, profesional actors (including Martin Sheen of all people, and Seth Green performing miiiiiles better than he does in the movies.) This trend seems to be growing, but you know Bioware were always doing it! They even had Nathan gorram Fillion once.
Now they're allowed to get the likes of Sheen - and it seems to have made every other actor involved up his or her game.


The biggest complaint I had about the original Mass Effect was the fact that the 'paragon and renegade' (i.e. good and evil) choices were poorly balanced: whilst the paragon Shepard came off as a brave political idealist (I loved this version of the character) the renegade seemed like a foolish, near-sighted schoolyard bully. Saving the day by making silly threats and commiting petty crimes.
In the sequel, this has been addressed perfectly - and I actually enjoyed the renegade Shepard a little more! Now s/he genuinely is a 'renegade' - a tough, hard-hearted bastard, selfish and maybe even kinda racist, but one who gets superior results by sacrificing heroism. It works like they clearly intended it to in the original.

For all my complaints about the Gears of War-style combat taking centre stage - that combat is very good fun. A lot better than the first game, where fighting got old fast. Now there are more weapons, ammo, all sorts that keep the endless third-person gunplay very fresh and exciting.

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Mass Effect 2 is a brillaint game, and a milestone for story and writing in the medium. It's just a shame it's not the masterpiece it could have been with a few better decisions.

Before it came out, I was very doubtful. I heard about the changes / flaws I detailed above, and saw the new characters, and decided I would hate them all. (There's a tank character named 'Grunt'? Evil characters have red eyes? Garrus is a love interest? Garus Vakarian? And what the hell is a space hamster?!)

But like Garrus and the hamster, the game forced me to love it through sheer cuteness and effort. Mass Effect 2 defied my curmudgeonly determination not to have a good time, beating back every criticism mightily, if not quite destroying them all.

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There's more combat than role playing, but both of those elements are hugely improved.

There's a couple of issues with continuity that make the story and the world fiddly and inaccessible - but when you try to figure them out you accidentally unlock the details of a brilliant sci-fi saga.

The mineral-scanning is awful, but it's worthwhile.

The plot is more like a series of episodes than the epic adventure of the original - but every one of those episodes is a work of art.

And the ending... is kinda disappointing. But everything that comes before it surpasses expectations.

Plus - this is the second act in a trilogy. I suspect the third one will end better!

Bioware, and lead writer Drew 'The Karp' Karpyshyn, will have a very tough job: making the plot more satisfying than that of Mass Effect, and making the game more fun than Mass Effect 2.

8/10

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

Bane of the Sith: A Most-Kindly Retort

Thought I'd throw in my thoughts on the this Karpyshyn talk we've had, because this author is one of two really noticeable enigmas that I've kept my eyes on; the other being Orson Scott Card.

Karpyshyn's impact on my life, and I can only assume on Buch's as well, is indisputable and, possibly, unmatchable. As the lead writer for two of Bioware's most renowned products, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, I assume he was responsible for the genesis of both Darth Revan and Commander Shepard. Both of these characters, as ambiguous as they might be, are most certainly two rather big inspirations to my writing. Therefore, it's so damn hard for me to reconcile those senses of wonder, horror, amazement, fear, anxiety that I felt through playing these games with what I read in books like Star Wars colon Darth Bane colon Path of Destruction.

He's obviously a talented writer, and deserved every inch of success his games have received, but I have no idea how he could go from writing KOTOR to The Marvelous Misadventures of Darth Bane. I realize this is the title of our fanfic, but come on, that's what I was thinking the entire time I read it.

I hated the fact that the majority of the story takes place in a SUPER SITH ACADEMY, yet, we learn almost nothing about the Sith, besides the fact that they're real pricks of Malfoy-like proportions.

I mean, come on (again!), Darth Bane was supposed to be a major influence on the likes of awesome Sith Lords like Darth Sideous and Darth Vader, because I haven't read an EU book in that time period where Bane isn't mentioned. But Bane is the worst goddamn Sith I've ever read about. Not to say the book completely sucked or anything, but Bane himself is just a shitty kind of Sith. I've yet to see him win a lightsaber duel. The last one I saw, he was fighting with his old weaponsmaster, and Bane very nearly lost, but managed to use the Force to collapse a temple on the poor man's head.

Sure, this can be justified: the Sith are just a bunch of cheaters, anyway. They must win by any means possible. But that doesn't mean you have to be a bitch about it. If you can't win a lightsaber duel with an old master, then what right do you think you have becoming the Sith Master?

Much sense, this does not make.

To wrap this up here before I make my way down to a rant about airline food, Karpyshyn needs to start taking his novel career seriously, or not do it at all. I'm tired of reading his introductions in which he pretty much apologizes for any mistakes therein, since he's burdened with so many deadlines. I have no doubt this is seriously the case, but there's gotta be a time when he can take a step back and seriously crank out an original novel of his own.

It's only because I worry.

Bane of the Sith

I'd like to announce the newest fanfiction Knight and I will be working on together. It's going to be a parody of Drew Karpyshyn's 'Darth Bane' book/s. The title is 'The Marvellous Misadventures of Darth Bane'.

This post will likely double as a little review for the books and a discussion of Karpyshyn in general. He's the head writer at Bioware, the games studio who made our beloved Mass Effect and our even more beloved Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. As such he is a genius. Both of those games utterly sucked us in and turned me into a videogame fan and a Star Wars fan all over again after I had successfully given both up. Really, the quality of the writing in those games is superb. It's a popular saying among fans that the Star Wars game is better-written than the newer movies, and I agree.

On the sucess of these, the giant machine that makes the decisions at Lucas Arts commissioned Karpyshyn to write a Star Wars novel set in the distant past, like his game. And so we at last have a fully fleshed-out biography of Darth Bane, the Sith Lord who introduced the idea that there should only ever be two Sith at any one time. Personally I find this 'Rule of Two' idiotic - what if one of them dies? What if both of them die? And how much of a massive drain on the master's time must this apprentice be?

Anyway, if you suspend your disbelief about that, then Bane is kind of a legend in the SW lore. He has a silly name, too. You have to suspend your disbelief a lot when it comes to Star Wars novels.

The first book was good, but perhaps took too long to get going. The second book was also good, but was clearly rushed. The structure is all over the place - it's more like a series of short stories than a novel - and certain characters (including Bane, who is almost relegated to a supporting role in his own book) are a little two-dimensional. Both were great fun, though - epic and exciting and full of unique and imaginitive new lore. Better than a lot of Star Wars titles.

But! The problem we both had with the first book is that the legendary Darth Bane comes across as a bit of a stooge. The first book starts with his unhappy childhood then goes onto his sucky life in a mining colony, his prowess in cheating at cards, his accidental manslaughter of some guy and subsequent freakout... he is a lot less driven and dominating than one would think. When the other characters almost force him into the Sith, he spends the next 100 pages at school - he's the new student at the evil wizards academy, and as such gets picked on by everyone and keeps getting beaten up and losing his nerve. After this a new girl starts - and she makes a fool of him too. In the third act he finally gets his act together by studying really hard and kissing the girl - then he kills aaaaall the other Sith so that he can rebuild them with this whole 'two people' thing. Again, this sounds a like a very silly plan to me, espescially since he's still brand new and has barely learned anything... but you know.

The second book - I won't spoil it but suffice to say, he comes across as an utter idiot. During many of the chapters about him, I was laughing out loud at his neverending incompetence. In one chapter he crashes his own spaceship because he was too busy yelling at hallucinations to drive. In another he spends five years building a holocron then smashes it by mistake (I was howling with laughter when Drew described his reaction).

(I should point out that most of the ridiculous episodes are not really Drew's fault. The book is apparently based on the aptly named short story 'Bane of the Sith' by Kevin J Anderson - and the majority of Bane's greatest failures can be attributed to this. Similarly, I think the stupid name 'Bane' is the fault of Terry Brooks, who wrote the dodgy Episode 1 novelisation.)

The guy achieves literally nothing in this book, except training a more useful apprentice during the 'Ten Years Later' period. All we see him do is bugger things up over and over again while she picks up the pieces and furthers the plot.

So - yeah. Darth Bane was apparently a bumbling fool who only rebuilt the Sith order by pure luck and with great help from more sensible people, like a bartender and his own apprentice.

Hence the parody. Although we love Drew Karpyshyn deeply, we're going to make fun of these books. Should be a laugh for anyone who has read the books. This is one that Knight is already working on and I've just joined in with some ideas. I've read what he has so far and it's very funny.

Coming soon!