Star Wars KOTOR #2: The Search for Bastila.

Last time we played this game we met some people...

"I'm Trask Ulgo, ensign with the Republic Fleet. Now hurry up, we have to find Bastila! We have to make sure she makes it off the ship alive!"

"This is Carth Onasi on your personal communicator"

We lost a friend to random explosions...

"...Another Dark Jedi, I'll try to hold him off, you get to the escape pods! Go!"

"Trask, no!"

And then we escaped from a space ship that was blown up as soon as we get out.

When this happens we get another cutscene that I can't take a screenshot of, for some reason.

The cutscene has the Jedi we're looking for, Bastila, fighting against a Sith. Nothing much is learned aside from Bastila's physical appearance.

After this, it turns out it was a dream sequence that Avren had while asleep.

I have no idea why he's having dreams about a woman he never met in his life.

If you remember last episode you'll know this is Carth Onasi, the person we escaped the Endar Spire with.

He also reminds us of this fact. Don't know why, since it's been like 5 minutes since we met so I haven't forgotten about him yet.

->"Right, I'm Avren Drath, by the way. How did we get here?"

"We're in an abandoned apartment on the planet of Taris. You were banged up pretty bad when our escape pod crashed, but luckily I wasn't seriously hurt. I was able to drag you away from our crash site in all the confusion, and I stumbled onto this abandoned apartment."

->"I guess I owe you my life. Thanks."

"You don't have to thank me. I've never abandoned anyone on a mission, and I'm not about to start now. Besides, I'm going to need your help."

Carth explains that the Sith fleet is orbiting the planet and declared a planet-wide quarantine; No one gets in or out. And our first priority is finding Bastila, for some reason.

Basically, he tells us that if we're going to find Bastila we'll have to do it by ourselves with no support from the Republic.

Avren a question that has been on his head for a while now.

->"Why is it so important to find Bastila?"

"That smack to your head did more damage than I thought. Bastila's a Jedi. She was with the strike team that killed Darth Revan, Malak's Sith master. Bastila is the key to the whole Republic war effort. The Sith must have found out she was on the Endar Spire and set an ambush for us in this system."

"I believe Bastila was on one of the escape pods that crashed down here on Taris. For the sake of the Republic war effort, we have to try and find her."

->"What do you suggest we do?"

->"How can one person be so important?"

"Bastila is no ordinary Jedi. She has a rare gift the Jedi call Battle Meditation. Bastila's power can influence entire armies."

Battle Meditation? What's that?

"Through the Force Bastila can inspire her allies with confidence and make her enemies lose their will to fight. Often, that's all it takes to tip the balance in a battle. Of course, there are limits to what she can do."

"From what I understand of her ability, it requires great concentration and focus to maintain her Battle Meditation. The attack on the Endar Spire happened so fast she probably never even had a chance to use her power. I'm guessing she barely got out alive, and now she's trapped here just as we are."

"The whole planet is under quarantine. No ships can land or take-off. So if Bastila's going to escape Taris, she's going to need our help. And we'll probably need hers."

->"Where do we start looking?"

"While you were out I did some scouting around. There are reports of a couple escape pods crashing down into the Undercity. That's probably a good place to start. But the Undercity is a dangerous place. We don't want to go in there unprepared. It won't do Bastila any good if we go and get ourselves killed."

->"The sooner we start looking for Bastila the sooner we find her. Let's go."

Carth then says to keep a low profile while we look for Bastila.

_Spooky.

Now we can finally control Avren again. This is our little base here on Taris. Not much we can do aside from talking to Carth or "upgrading" our gear. Since we have nothing else to do I'll just head out with Carth and start looking for Bastila..

As soon as we leave the room however...

The officer then shoots the alien.

So much for keeping a low profile...

These guys are really weak, they die in one hit. Two if they're strong enough.

And the one alien that didn't die thanks us for saving him.

Such a nice guy.

After we're done with this encounter we can finally begin exploring Taris, or the Upper City of Taris to be more specific.

The planet iself is divided in 3 different cities:

-The Upper City (where we are)
-The Undercity (where we need to go)
-The Lower City (the location in between the other two)

So to get to the Undercity we'll have to pass through the Lower City first, let's look for a way there then.

_{This is how the Upper City looks like}

I find one of the crashed escape pods right outside the apartment complex but I can't really do anything to it or the droids surrounding it.

After walking for a bit I finally find the way to the Lower City but I'm stopped by the Sith guard at the door.

Where do I get these authorization papers from?

"If you were supposed to have them you'd know where to get them. Now quit wasting my time and move along."

We can try asking him if he could answer our questions but he'll just say no, so we'll just leave for now. Carth whispers to Avren as soon as the conversation with the guard is over.

That we do Carth, but where exactly are we going to find a Sith disguise?

Since we can't get to the Lower City yet I decide to do what everyone does when they don't know what to do in RPGs: Talk to every single NPC I find. Luckily for us there's a cantina somewhere around here and since this is the Star Wars universe you'll know that plot convenience the force usually puts things (or people) the main characters need in cantinas.

There's the cantina and a guard too. Wonder if he'll stop me like his other buddy.

Thankfully, he doesn't care about us and allows us to enter the place. Inside there's some NPCs that play a cardgame known as Pazaak which we can play as a minigame, if we get a Pazaak deck first. Pazaak is apparently rigged in this game so we won't play it. Not if i'm losing money I don't have.

A little bit further inside of the cantina and I find another NPC I can talk to.

Let's see if she does anything else than just play Pazaak or something.

"Hi there – I haven't seen you around before. Of course they don't give us Sith officers from the military base much time off..."

Oh snap, she's one of them. Act natural Avren.

"I'm off duty right now, so I'm not in uniform. My name is Sarna – junior officer first class with the Sith occupation force."

Wait, no. She said uniform, maybe we can get some of those and use them as disguises...

->"I'm Avren, nice to meet you"

"I'm actually a little surprised you're talking to me at all... most of the people here on Taris can't stand us Sith. It can make this job pretty lonely."

Any interaction that Avren does after this line just ends up with her responding like this:

"Save the sympathetic best friend act. I'm not buying it. But I don't want to fill out a bunch of paperwork on my day off, so let's just pretend this conversation never happened. Now move along."

It has some variation depending on what exactly Avren says to her but it always ends with her being offended. The conversation ends at this point but I can talk to her again. Since we need the disguises I have no other option.

"Back again? Didn't I make myself clear enough? The senior Sith officers don't like us fraternizing with the locals. Besides, I don't need you lecturing me for my career choice."

->"Sorry – I'm not trying to judge you."

"Ah, it's okay. I might have overreacted a bit. But can you blame me? Everywhere I look I see one of you Tarisians glaring at me with hate in your eyes."

The trick here is to be as sympathetic as possible.

->"I'm not actually from Taris. Just stuck here until the quarantine ends."

"You're an off-worlder? Huh, I figured you'd be even more angry, being stuck on a foreign planet and all."

The conversation keeps going for a while.

->"Everybody has their ups and downs... it's how you deal with them that counts."

"Exactly! It's all about attitude. I didn't ask to be assigned to this backwater planet, but I try to make the best of it. It's pretty easy to get depressed on an assignment like this, but we do what we can to keep our spirits up."

->"It must be tough, being stationed on a hostile world."

"That's true. It's nice to meet someone who understands what I'm going through."

"I have to get going soon – I've got a shift at the military base. But some of us junior Sith officers are having a party tonight to blow off some steam. I'd really like to see you again. Why don't you drop by the party? I'll show you where it is on your map."

Let's see if attending this party gets us a little closer to finding a disguise...

"Don't be late. We're starting right after our shifts end. Most of us won't even be going back to the base to lock up our uniforms. I look forward to seeing you there."

Bingo. With this information we can leave the Cantina with Carth and head to the party. Finding the Sith party isn't difficult, but I do run into some trouble before getting there.

Wonder what's going on here...

"Davik doesn't like you missing payments!"

Oh I see, it's just some thugs threatening an old man because he's missed his deadline or something.

"Sorry, you're out of time. Now it's all or nothing. Davik can't have people not paying his debts!"

"But I don't have that much! How can I give you credits I don't have?"

"That's too bad. Davik's going to want to make an example of you! You're coming with us."

Carth has something to say about this.

Fortunately for this old person here, the thugs notice us.

"Hold on a second. Looks like we got ourselves a witness here!"

"Davik doesn't like witnesses."

The fight is fairly easy. This is after all the first "level" of the game so the difficult fights won't happen until later on.

"Now I can't pay him back. It's not good to owe a crime lord money. He'll just keep sending more bounty hunters after me until I'm dead!"

Right now the game gives us three different choices we can make: Threaten him so that he gives us all of his money or give him the money he owes.

Or we can just ignore both options and go full neutral.

->"I'm just glad I could help."

"I'm getting out of here before any more of Davik's goons show up. You should do the same."

I would if I could, trust me. Anyway, with this little distraction done we continue towards the Sith party. It's easy to find it, just listen for the music.

I'm not kidding, the game goes "untz untz untz" and everything.

"Hey, you made it! I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show! The party's in full swing – come on in. You have to try this Tarisian ale – it's fantastic! We should have conquered this planet ages ago!"

One of the party goers talks to Sarna before she starts drinking.

"Careful, Sarna. That wine's got quite the kick. A couple more bottles and we'll all be passed out on the floor!"

"Who cares? We're not on duty tomorrow – let's live a little! Come on – drink up!"

What's the worst that could happen?

Yup. That happened. Drink in moderation people.

There's a backpack on the other end of the room, if I'm right we'll find what we're looking for here.

How did I know I could find a suit of armor here? Well I've played this game before I just know.

With this perfect disguise Avren and Carth can finally get to the Lower City.

Avren looks just like a Sith guard, perfect.

And the guard doesn't suspect anything, despite the fact Carth doesn't have a disguise and we were here like 2 hours ago. Oh well, if it works it works.

---

I'll leave it here for today, next time we enter the Lower City and continue looking for Bastila. There's a lot of stuff I skipped as well so after we're done with that I'll do the things I avoided.

There's a lot of content in this game, if you know where to look that is. And even though I finished this game multiple times I'm pretty sure I missed some side quests here and there so I'll have plenty of stuff to look through.

Hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you next time!