Symorin Posted May 12, 2014 Share Posted May 12, 2014 Right, so this is my first post on the forums and... might be my only one. I was compelled to make this thread after being legitimately stupefied by the insanity of this quest. I want to hear what other people have to say about it, and whether the respective light side and dark side choices are really "justified". Y'see, on Alderaan an Organa commander has this daughter who's... rather young and reckless. She wanted to help the war effort and tried to "infiltrate" House Ulgo... with no formal training at all. You're given a quest to go rescue her from House Rist before they could "dispose" of her. He also requests that you try to turn her away from her path of reckless stupidity/insanity, after all he couldn't bare to lose his daughter after he lost his wife and son. After fighting your way through the compound, you finally run into the girl. It becomes immediately apparent that she has an ego bigger than Emperor Palpatine and is quite amateurish at work. When you finally rescue her and talk for a bit, she eventually says she plans to infiltrate House Thul next. ...And here's where the choice comes in. I'm given two options. The first is to let her go infiltrate House Thul (despite her being captured and nearly killed at her last "spy" job) and the second is to order her to go back to her father... ...I got 50 dark side points by ordering her to go back to her father. So... essentially... making sure a girl doesn't get killed in some bout of teen rebellion is considered equivalent to murdering a fellow/taking bribes. I've just got ask... why? HOW? I mean, even after I forced her to go back to her father she considers all the "other" ways she could help the war effort, with the heavy implication she was going to become a medic. How am I suddenly evil by keeping an inexperienced teen girl from getting herself involved in some "spy" games? Is there some crucial piece of dialogue I'm missing? Am I "evil" because I was "mean" to her? I can't exactly control how my character responds. I'm really, honestly wondering if this was some mixup over at the dev department, because I just can't see how letting a girl disobey her father and take on a legitimately dangerous job as a spy is remotely responsible, let alone "good". Did the person who wrote the quest just hate the light side and wanted us to make some dark side choices? Did they consider "light sided" to be "extreme doormat"? Anyone have any justification for this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osetto Posted May 12, 2014 Share Posted May 12, 2014 Light versus Dark side isn't about good versus evil. Its about freedom versus control, selflessness versus selfishness, and life versus death. This is why 'saving a single person now' is often the 'light' choice, even if the 'dark' one could potentially save more lives down the line. The Force doesn't care about 'potentially'. All it cares about is how you choose to act in the moment. For the situation you describe, the key word is 'forced'. You imposed your will upon someone, therefore its a dark side choice. That doesn't make you evil. It just signifies the minor shift in your action toward the end of a spectrum. It's the same reason sabotaging the Imperial aligned senator on Coruscant is a 'dark' choice, because you're imposing your will and putting yourself above the rule of law. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Symorin Posted May 12, 2014 Author Share Posted May 12, 2014 Light versus Dark side isn't about good versus evil. Its about freedom versus control, selflessness versus selfishness, and life versus death. This is why 'saving a single person now' is often the 'light' choice, even if the 'dark' one could potentially save more lives down the line. The Force doesn't care about 'potentially'. All it cares about is how you choose to act in the moment. For the situation you describe, the key word is 'forced'. You imposed your will upon someone, therefore its a dark side choice. That doesn't make you evil. It just signifies the minor shift in your action toward the end of a spectrum. It's the same reason sabotaging the Imperial aligned senator on Coruscant is a 'dark' choice, because you're imposing your will and putting yourself above the rule of law. Thing is, the girl's father wants her back as well... and even then it isn't a choice between "saving a few" and "saving a lot", it's a choice between letting an inexperienced girl go play spy or sending her back home. I mean, if we take "forced" as the sole reason it's a "dark" choice then by that logic the republic is wholly dark side simply by fighting against the empire. Heck, it would then mean that all the emperor would have to do is say "Would you kindly surrender?" to force any "pure" light siders to fall or put jedi down the path of the dark side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evil_Dave Posted May 12, 2014 Share Posted May 12, 2014 There are a handful of these questionable light/dark choices in the game. Another one that's always bothered me is during Black Talon. At the end, when you confront the General, you have the option either to hand him over to Kilran's goons alive (the light side option), or kill him outright (the dark side option). Personally, I've always thought that handing him back to Kilran was the more cruel choice, since one can only imagine what Kilran and/or his Sith associates would do to someone who deliberately betrayed the Empire and attempted to defect to the Republic. Yet letting him live is the quote-unquote 'good' option. Honestly, a game mechanic like light/dark alignment just seems to lend itself towards simplistic design and implementation, so I try not to read too much into these issues anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eldefail Posted May 12, 2014 Share Posted May 12, 2014 Light versus Dark side isn't about good versus evil. Its about freedom versus control, selflessness versus selfishness, and life versus death. This is why 'saving a single person now' is often the 'light' choice, even if the 'dark' one could potentially save more lives down the line. The Force doesn't care about 'potentially'. All it cares about is how you choose to act in the moment. For the situation you describe, the key word is 'forced'. You imposed your will upon someone, therefore its a dark side choice. That doesn't make you evil. It just signifies the minor shift in your action toward the end of a spectrum. It's the same reason sabotaging the Imperial aligned senator on Coruscant is a 'dark' choice, because you're imposing your will and putting yourself above the rule of law. I think in general the game does an okay job portraying this. However, in the case of the would-be spy I don't know that it's a matter of imposing your will so much as not letting herself get herself killed AND leaking potentially valuable information in the process when she's inevitably captured. There are examples dotting the game where the devs seemingly couldn't decide which was the dark side or light side choice, and sometimes I wonder if it was just "dark side goes to the worse of two "evils" and just for the sake of evening it out we'll make the other one light side." The end of the Black Talon flashpoint is a great example of this, you get LS points for sending a guy to be tortured when all the information he had could still be acquired just as easily after killing him and sparing him Imperial hospitality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osetto Posted May 12, 2014 Share Posted May 12, 2014 I think in general the game does an okay job portraying this. However, in the case of the would-be spy I don't know that it's a matter of imposing your will so much as not letting herself get herself killed AND leaking potentially valuable information in the process when she's inevitably captured. There are examples dotting the game where the devs seemingly couldn't decide which was the dark side or light side choice, and sometimes I wonder if it was just "dark side goes to the worse of two "evils" and just for the sake of evening it out we'll make the other one light side." The end of the Black Talon flashpoint is a great example of this, you get LS points for sending a guy to be tortured when all the information he had could still be acquired just as easily after killing him and sparing him Imperial hospitality. The main tenet of the light side is likely the preservation of life. As such, if given the option between purposefully letting someone live versus purposefully killing someone, the life option is going to be 'light' regardless of potential bodily harm. I think the only way the light/dark dynamic here switches is if the victim expressly states they prefer death over capture (like with one of the bounties the hunter goes after, I think). The Force is objective. A lot of the times, it seems like it doesn't care about particulars and circumstances. All it cares about is, did your actions cause the death on another person, did your actions rob another person of their free will, or did your actions benefit yourself at the detriment of another? And the life/death decision seems to outrank all the others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
septembersphinx Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 It's interesting, because I interpreted the dynamics of this quest fairly differently. I agree that Andra was a bit reckless in what she did, but she did get good solid intel before being captured. Data that was absolutely vital to the Organa war effort. Her father claims that it was incompetence/lack of training that got her captured, and we see that she's brash. We also see that she's quick thinking, clever, and passionate. I think this comes down to a difference in interpreting ages. It's a bit hard to gauge, but based on the fact that the other teenagers/children have somewhat weird body models, and that Mako has to be at least 18, it's safe to interpret her as being in the 18-25 age range. I really don't think the dialogue implies that she's any younger than that. That's old enough to try to do what you can for your nation, despite an overbearing and overprotective father who wants to lock you up in a box instead of giving you the training to make the best use of your talents. The Major's lines about not wanting to lose his daughter on top of the rest of his family made me read him as being too emotionally involved in the situation to be a good judge of his daughter's abilities. Some of his dialogue after the light side option supports the idea that she's gotten into, and out of, scrapes on her own before, and he really just wants her to be "safe and secure" rather than "strong and brave". I have some sympathy for the Major, but frankly, forcing her to go home struck me as all about supporting obsessive and unhealthy attachment/overprotectiveness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomiSotto Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 I agree with the OP. The female character should have by rights been killed and she will be the very next day, because her strategy is incredibly dumb. It's one of those completely arbitrary LS/DS that are actually Chaotic/Lawful (if it were reversed, nobody would have argued). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torquat Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 While I agree with the OP, I am afraid that I saw this through the lens of feminism. I don't think, in this enlightened age of ours, that Bioware was going to make a light side choice be the patriarchal option of enforcing a father's wishes for his daughter against her contrary desire. Thus the light side option was certain to be a message of female empowerment rather than a message of a father's judgment, experience, and love for his daughter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sangiban Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Well perhaps an even dumber choice (which really hits the nail on the head with this game and it's extremely simplistic view of light vs dark & good vs evil) is on Korriban. Lord Renning has been experimenting with the tuk'ata to discover more knowledge about the dark side. He made a mutated one who's brain is "perfect" that has escaped. He wants you to find it and bring the brain back, but only his apprentice, Malora, knows where it is. So you talk to her and she says that Renning is a fraud and is using the resources he's getting from the Dark Council to make himself more powerful. She wants you to bring the brain to her first, she'll tamper with it, and then give it to Renning. She wants to do this to "expose" him to the Council and increase her status. Given his dialogue and how Renning's obssessing over this tuk'ata, he's definitely not a fraud. Malora just wants to increase her standing. The really weird part is that giving the brain to Malora gives you lightside points (even though backstabbing someone for profit is not remotely light side), and giving the brain to Renning gives you dark side points. Frankly both should give you dark side points, but giving it to Rening should give you 50 or so, whereas giving it to Malora should give you 100. As much as I like this game, the dark vs light is extremely simplified down to the point of absurdity in most cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irongut Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 I totally disagree with the OP. Like septembersphinx that isn't how I read the situation at all. The girl is actually quite competent although a bit impetuous and reckless. She gets useful intel that helps the war effort. Her father is trying to control her despite the fact that she is actually an adult, he is being It has been a while since I last ran that quest so I can't remember if she had actually been captured & was in danger or if he just thinks she is because she (sensibly) hasn't been in touch for a while. If the former then her father does have reason to be worried but if the later then he's just being overprotective. I actually think this is one of the better moral choices in game because it isn't so black and white as the many "do you let these 50 people die to save time or save them and risk failing at something that will work out anyway" choices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomiSotto Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 (edited) She was captured and about to be put to the question and shot when you encounter her. Once she is released by your PC she immediately goes off on the same idiotic quest again. Without support and relying on nothing but her stupid luck. Well, the PC is not going to be there next time to bail you out, stupid. Feel free to die, brat. For me the one that takes the cake is the DK quest with the poison. Edited May 16, 2014 by DomiSotto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JackFrosting Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 One of the ones I never quite understood was in the Smuggler/Trooper starter area, the mission to return the medicine to the troops. Why is it giving the medicine back to the Republic(The people protecting the camp) is considered a Dark Side option, giving the medicine to the Cathar is just reckless, it can lead the already strained soldier supply line even worse. Seperatists could attack and without people to defend they won't have very much trouble taking over, or the people you stole it back from coming and raiding the base. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelefantos Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 (edited) One of the ones I never quite understood was in the Smuggler/Trooper starter area, the mission to return the medicine to the troops. Why is it giving the medicine back to the Republic(The people protecting the camp) is considered a Dark Side option, giving the medicine to the Cathar is just reckless, it can lead the already strained soldier supply line even worse. Seperatists could attack and without people to defend they won't have very much trouble taking over, or the people you stole it back from coming and raiding the base. Because you choose between giving the medicine to innocent civilians that currently need it or giving it to the Soldiers that will hoard it untill they need it (which is not the case at the time) and won't share willingly. Edited May 18, 2014 by Darkelefantos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YoshiRaphElan Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 Because you choose between giving the medicine to innocent civilians that currently need it or giving it to the Soldiers that will hoard it untill they need it (which is not the case at the time) and won't share willingly. The soldiers will hoard it until they need it "which is not the case at the time"? Excuse me? If you take it back to the Republic, the guy tells you that one soldier just went into shock and would've died if he hadn't gotten that medicine! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stormdrakelord Posted May 19, 2014 Share Posted May 19, 2014 (edited) Please, There are far dumber ones than that. One I can think of off the top of my head right now: This one quest on the Imperial side, where you are asked to steal some data. Turns out the data is for medical cybernetics or some such. Light side option is to leave the data so that it can get to the Empire. Dark side is to take the data anyways Then there is on Hutta, you are asked to destroy some eels so the smuggler with them can not get spice. turns out the smuggler works for the Empire, who discovered a way to turn spice into medicine. Light side is betrayal, and dark side is destroy eels which ones are right? Edited May 19, 2014 by stormdrakelord Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beniboybling Posted May 20, 2014 Share Posted May 20, 2014 (edited) "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." I think that quote is fairly relevant here. Clearly BioWare have differing perspectives here on right and wrong. Not that Light + Dark necessarily = Right + Wrong. I think they are trying to show, and have tried to show in the past (the final choice in ME3 comes to mind) that the line is more blurred and these guidelines may prove unhelpful. Edited May 20, 2014 by Beniboybling Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sidenti Posted May 21, 2014 Share Posted May 21, 2014 Right, so this is my first post on the forums and... might be my only one. I was compelled to make this thread after being legitimately stupefied by the insanity of this quest. I want to hear what other people have to say about it, and whether the respective light side and dark side choices are really "justified". Y'see, on Alderaan an Organa commander has this daughter who's... rather young and reckless. She wanted to help the war effort and tried to "infiltrate" House Ulgo... with no formal training at all. You're given a quest to go rescue her from House Rist before they could "dispose" of her. He also requests that you try to turn her away from her path of reckless stupidity/insanity, after all he couldn't bare to lose his daughter after he lost his wife and son. After fighting your way through the compound, you finally run into the girl. It becomes immediately apparent that she has an ego bigger than Emperor Palpatine and is quite amateurish at work. When you finally rescue her and talk for a bit, she eventually says she plans to infiltrate House Thul next. ...And here's where the choice comes in. I'm given two options. The first is to let her go infiltrate House Thul (despite her being captured and nearly killed at her last "spy" job) and the second is to order her to go back to her father... ...I got 50 dark side points by ordering her to go back to her father. So... essentially... making sure a girl doesn't get killed in some bout of teen rebellion is considered equivalent to murdering a fellow/taking bribes. I've just got ask... why? HOW? I mean, even after I forced her to go back to her father she considers all the "other" ways she could help the war effort, with the heavy implication she was going to become a medic. How am I suddenly evil by keeping an inexperienced teen girl from getting herself involved in some "spy" games? Is there some crucial piece of dialogue I'm missing? Am I "evil" because I was "mean" to her? I can't exactly control how my character responds. I'm really, honestly wondering if this was some mixup over at the dev department, because I just can't see how letting a girl disobey her father and take on a legitimately dangerous job as a spy is remotely responsible, let alone "good". Did the person who wrote the quest just hate the light side and wanted us to make some dark side choices? Did they consider "light sided" to be "extreme doormat"? Anyone have any justification for this? Yes. I submit that Bioware was operating under the auspices of . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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