On the surface Kreia seems like just a darksider, beneath that however is a more complicated character with a philosophy that deviates heavily from Jedi and Sith teachings, and beneath THAT, she's just a darksider
To me she sounds like a crankier Jolee who just so happens to be a dark Jedi. By that I mean she always seemed like a grey Jedi who didn't like the force.
"I hate the Force, I hate that it seems to have a will, that it would control us to achieve some measure of balance when countless lives are lost". - Kreia (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II)
Your analysis of Nihilus consuming worlds and leaving "peace and order" as part of the deep anti-imperialism at the heart of Star Wars is one of the many reasons I always come back to this channel. Also, a beautiful exploration of why Traya was wrong; we live in a world devoid of the Force, or anything like it, so far as we can tell. We are still all unavoidably interconnected. KOTOR 2 is radical, it's critical, but it's Star Wars all the way through.
Was she tho? She loathed the force for controlling/influencing destinies and outcomes. Not solely bc it connected living beings. Living beings are natrually connected thru circumstance, proximity, mutual understanding, a mutual friend, grlwing up in similar circumstances, commenting on the same youtube video, human DNA, all these invisible threads we don't see that connect you and me amd everyone around us and everyone around them and everyone who ever lived into one big web of existence. The consequences (foreseen or unintended) of NOT ONLY our own decisions, but everyone else's as well, good AND bad, all add together into one lump sum to equal just the life and times we live in, and this is all before we ever get supernatural energy fields involved. She tried to teach the exile this very concept in multiple ways, understanding the galaxy as things are when the force is removed, because she had been forced to live without it herself at one point. She was wrong and overstepping in her belief that she could destroy the force itself. It amounts to arrogance. The wrongs that had been done to her forced her into a bitter, cynical outlook. She grew hateful, but pragmatic enough to not ever really see it as hatred. One could interpret that she herself failed to see that the force itself was leading her down this path, for a reason.. But the real-life reason the character is so beloved is partially BECAUSE so much of her wisdom was spot on, and applicable to our daily lives
"Devoid of the force" Well, that's debatable, lol. Since a lot of cultures believe in subtle energies, and some psychologists believe in the collective unconscious, haha. But good point nonetheless. :)
KOTOR II to this day still sending ripples in the SW lore. Nihilus and Sion are kind reminders what the Dark Side does and how much has to be sacrificed for the ultimate self. Exar Kun believed if he could control and understand the Dark Side, he'd understand both sides of the Force. His mistake, is that that Dark Siders don't control the Dark side. The Dark Side controls them.
The real difference between the sides of the force is whether or not you are controlled by it or you allow yourself to be controlled by it. I think after years of learning about the force that there isn't really a dark light side, there's just the force, and if you try to bend it to your will it will have repercussions. On the other end if you allow it to direct you but only in a certain way it will leave you blind to the universal truth
KOTOR II is, In my humble opinion, still one of the coolest starwars games ever made, even if it's visuals have aged and mechanics seem clunky, the story is just so darn cool (and I love T3-M4 and HK-47)
Addiction. To me, that is what the dark side is. It pulls you in, destroying your relationships and your life, but you can't resist the lure of its power. And, the only way out, is a clean break, and the hard work of making amends to those you've wronged. Another fantastic video.
I agree %100 and addiction can affect anyone. It doesn’t prefer people in specific regions, religion, diet, social status… it can strike anyone. Just like the dark side.
This is possibly the most accurate depiction of the nature of the Force, and very neatly explains many if not all plot points in the original 6 films: the fall of the Jedi Order, Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side, Palpatine’s manipulations, Luke’s final victory over the Sith, etc.
The end state for Kreia’s philosophy is what the Yuuzhan Vong were. An entire species cut off from the force who destroys all life they consider weaker.
To be fair being refugees with major PTSD would do that Had the two android civilizations not been warlike and instead traded with the Vong they wouldn't be invading refugees
The end state of Kreia's philosophy is our world. Star Wars is a fictional deep history of our universe, it's the first line of A New Hope. We don't have the Force irl, therefore someone eventually did what Kreia wanted, and proved that life could flourish without the influence of the dys-pan-theist Force
I told this to a friend who didn’t know about KOTOR II. Mentioned Nihilis. He called it “another example of Disney sh**ting on Lucas,” because making Nihilis the “most powerful sith” diminishes palpatine as a threat. This conversation made me realize how fortunate we are that KOTOR II came out when it did. Imagine what it would be like with today’s online discourse.
I mean, I just found out about that stuff and my immediate reaction was that it was rad, even though my initial reaction most Disney era SW has been bad. Honestly, depending on how you started explaining it, I could see somebody not giving it the necessary time and assuming it is a lazy story, but I watched a video like this explaining in depth with imagery. People have been burned and have developed a defense mechanism to find problems quickly so they don’t waste their time and get set up for disappointment.
Show only became disenfranchise with the Force in General after being betrayed and cast out by Nihilus and Sion. Before that, she was committed to destroying the Jedi.
@@jahlaniwilliams2468 Even after that. Treya literally did kill many of "last" masters in the game. It is just that she see Meetra Surik (who become Gray Jedi) as perfect Force user. Anyway I refuse to recognize canon ending of this story. Meetra Surik should be the Outlander.
@@Force_user57 Even Obi Wan was a Gray Jedi. To be clear it doesn't mean throwing lighting bolts (Luke Skywalker is actually a Sith). But rather being ally of light side, instead the slave. Basically only Gray Jedi survived the purge.
Case in point, no one in KOTOR II explicitly mentions the name "Darth Nihilus." Apart from the name "Nihilus" appearing in some journal logs, he is mostly referred to as "Visas' master" or the "master of the ship" (the Ravager).
This has to do with the development process though, Kotor 2 was heavily rushed and the nihilus stuff wasn't properly fleshed out. Same with scion tbh, the end of his story is super anticlimactic
Geetsly really just blessed our weekend with a 1+ hour documentary on the Dark Side, the Sith and KOTOR 2's philosophical undercurrents. *That's what I'm talking about! That's why he's the MVP! That's why he's the GOAT, the GOATTTTTTTT* 😂🔥
Darth Nihilus always freaked me out when i played KOTOR. He was just like a black hole of darkside energy. Litterally made up of pure Dark Side. And his VOICE! Awesome character I hope when they do this they do this RIGHT!
I’ve been looking for more sith lore for days and I finally got it. Old Republic sith and ancient sith are my favorites. Their power was so raw and immense, not even Sidious rivaled MOST of them.
True. Sidious and then Vader were the last true Sith. Maul was almost a sentinel, a weapon for Sidious. But Vader was sidious bane if you think about it. After vader killed Sidious, then died himself, that ended the curse and legacy of the Old Sith.
“If you were to face an ancient Sith Lord in combat, you would learn that we are as children playing with toys compared to the prowess of the old masters.” - Kreia
I love how the Disney sympathizers (not enjoyers mind you, each their own), legit still don’t want these games being canon. Some of them rather Disney…bastardized the time time period with new stuff… I’m sorry but the writing in them is just…some of the best in entire IP, and Disney basically be making a printing press if just leaned into it and gave right people the reins to make content from it.
you could say that about most of the old EU, at least i had nothing but immeasurable love for most of the franchise before 2014. when disney bought it all they had to do was translate the already successful stories (nearly every star wars eu novel was a bestseller) and put them on screen as a film or show, no writers needed, minimal effort, printing essentially infinite money farming the last 40 years of content before anyone would even need bother making new stuff, so they could take their sweet time plan stuff out for decades before introducing new stuff so they could make sure it was up to standard. but they threw all that away because they "could obviously do better" that they "knew better" and could "write better" than all of them. pure f-ing hubris. personally i hope their whole company burns, goes totally bankrupt and closes down forever for what they have done to star wars. its no less than they deserve.
One thing I find really striking is the part of the Sith code "The Force shall free me" and how KOTOR 2 juxtaposes that with both the Jedi AND Sith. "Take the greatest Jedi Knight, strip away the Force and what remains?" - Just a person, utterly crippled from having relied on a power that was never theirs. Then we have Darth Sion and Darth Nihilus, two incredibly powerful Sith who've achieved feats and grasped power others could only dream of. But they're slaves to the Force. Strip the Force from them and they cease to be. Then we factor in that the Force has a will of its own, and a dark side that counteracts itself in an eternal struggle for self balance. The Force is not good, benevolent or merciful. It is just a force. And its dark side destroys everything but itself, yet diminishes in power when it has destroyed everything it can. Ebb and flow.
Vader fell to the dark side to save the ones he love from dying Nihlis just wanted a bite to eat. A bad reason to fall to the dark side, but it get stuff done! Whole planets? Eaten. Dude got hungry that he fell to the dark side!
Naga Sadow: I want to expand the Sith Empire. Exar Kun: I want to bring the Sith Golden Age back to galaxy. Darth Nihilus: I just wanna stay home and eat chips.
Thank you for such an interesting Analysis. TBH, I have played the game several times, yet failed to truly make the connections you have highlighted here. The hints and the teachings given in the game, were in fact, quite subtle, just like Lessons from Kreia. It turns out that the game in itself was some sort of lesson to players. Subtle. Obscure. And Yet quite deep. It must be said, that this game stands above every other SW game, in turns of depth and philosophy, almost to a degree of an Art piece.
I do love the way Revan and Meetra compare and contrast each other: Revan saved the Galaxy by slaying its enemies and winning the war. Meetra saved the Galaxy by healing its victims and winning the peace.
Kreya really is such a complex character that challenges the simple light and dark of the franchise. Unfortunately she fell into the “I’m evil, but I want to do it MY way.” Category, which ultimately placed her right back into the black vs white scale lol
You would make an excellent Jedi with your understanding of light side and dark side history and philosophy, and how it affected everyone and everything.
Sion is an interesting character and one of my favorite sith. I cosplay as Darth Nihilus since my friend already took Revan 😂 the morph suit mask sometimes sticks to my eyes
@@Darth-Nihilus1 Revan and Nihilus are definitely among the best dressed sith so I can imagine they are fun to cosplay. Wish I had the body to do a good Sion cosplay.
@@rojaws1183 the hardest part about Sion is having to wear all that makeup and foam or whatever they use for movie props. You got to find something you wouldn’t mind wearing all day. I do Halo ODST with my real tactical gear from the station but I now have separate gear for my ODST armor but it’s even still after all the plates and equipment that I need so I can fix my gear on the go plus I have a water pouch in the backpack and I have MRE’s and toilet paper since the guys and I also airsoft on the side of being firefighters and a few are cops. Like my gear is NIJ rated in the front and back for 30.06 AP and the side plates are NIJ .44 mag. The helmet is just airsoft with its own AC system and has or better yet had a radio headset that connects to my portable but now I’m looking into Bluetooth headset for con and airsoft
Kriea never followed revan to battle she stayed and the jedi council blamed her teachings for revan and banished her. Then she found a sith temple and learned what she could find there tried to remake the sith order again was betrayed again by her students and this made her into the lord of betrayal. Where did you get your info?
And Nhilus was born from the mandalorian wars. Honestly too many people look down on the sith Triumvirate and only talk about the lord of hunger but gloss over the lords of pain and betrayal.
No one glosses over Traya, she just is a pretty bland character compared to the "technically" immortal duo consisting of a literal force vampire and a literal force zombie.
What an awesome video. Best Star Wars lore channel for me. Now for a fun question, who would win? Nihilius or Mngall-Mngall, an immortal parasite whose only goal was self amusement trough the control and suffering of others?
Excellent video, thanks for making this. The philosophy of Star War was so developed before Disney bought it -- it's a shame they're not building on this.
Great video! And your assessment was of Treya, dark, light and connections were all great! Also, i have come to really love the ithorians. They have consistently grown among my favorite species.
My view is that someone truly neutral in the Force would be someone who was completely asocial. No desire to form bonds with others nor to dominate others. Someone for whom a life of total isolation was bliss.
No they aren't. Those are Dark Jedi. Grey Jedi are those who form attachments, and view the force not as two separate sides, but as a complete whole. It's actually harder for them to fall to the dark side if they learn to keep themselves in check vs Jedi and Dark Jedi. Dark Jedi view the force stronger by using the dark and this are more likely to become sith. @@elpsykoongro5379
Betrayal is the way of the Sith, and one of the people you'll inevitably betray is yourself. That's the trap of the Darkside, it's why "let the past die" is such a horrifying statement. The person who wields that power won't be you anymore, and that person won't so much wield it, as be wielded by it.
it's brilliant that you see balance as mutual thriving and the dark side as individualism. now the Jedi just really must stop being cops if they are to aspire to their pretended ideals
If, IF you apply Kreia's criticism of the Force to the 4th wall, you realize that her condemnation of the Force and how it creates conflict is also a condemnation of us fans who inject conflict into the Star Wars Universe for our own entertainment. We want Force sensitives, we want space battles, we want all that conflict. We're the Force and Kreia hates us for how flippantly we treat the people in her universe.
Read a fanfic recently and in it, a character posits that the Sith code's "passion" doesn't mean the modern definition, but the old one from before the 16th century. Passion used to mean 'suffering', from the Latin word 'pati' which means 'to suffer'. So the Sith code actually says, "Peace is a lie, there is only suffering".
Darth Sidious did in fact have Unlimited Power, he succeeded the Rule Of Two, and achieved a mastery of its practices like no other, he was its greatest practitioner.
@@joshpatillo9515 KREIYA WAS TALKING ABOUT HOW THE SITH WEREN’T RULERS ANYMORE AND HOW THEY HAVE TO HIDE AND GAIN POWER IN THE SHADOWS WHEREAS THE SITH BEFORE WERE RULERS! THE NOVELS BLATANTLY SAID THE SITH GREW STRONGER OVER THE YEARS LEADING TO THE PHANTOM MENACE!
@TheMightOfGeburah first off chill out you bum.....Kreiya FOR SURE says that ancient Sith would make Sith lords of that time look like play things. Naga Sadow was able to perform a ritual that was able to use solar energy as a weapon. NO OTHER SITH HAS DONE THAT BEFORE. The novelisation your talking about is references the GROWING strength of the Sith from what they once where. it never implies that the Sith of the modern era were stronger than ancient Sith lords when the actual Sith still lived.....come on my dude do better.
@TheMightOfGeburah your mistaking actual power to the universal threat of the balance of political and planetary power. Savage Opress was weaker than his brother Maul those two where embarrassed by Sidious by light saber duels alone and Sidious is stated to be one of the most powerful Sith ever. And even his powers didn't come close the to scale of dark lords like Sion who literally was immortal and had to be defeated by the plot armor of love because of his infatuation with the jedi exile, who was able to convince him to finally die....stop the cap.
Do a lore video on one of the aliens or other Star Wars species. Id be interested in you deeper discussing old mando sith + jedi ships as well as empires
Nobody can attain unlimited power. If you were to attain unlimited power you would have not had the power before. Thus, the power is limited by a beginning. If the state of having the power can change it will inevitably change back. You will definitely loose the power. If one always had unlimited power one could never change. If one does not change one cannot perform any action. To do anything one needs to start, do and end an action. Whatever one does is not perfect. If an action was perfect one would not start or end doing it. However, there’s nothing that can be done at all that is truly perfect.
Something to note, it’s implied and explained by kreia that Nihilus does not drain the life of these planets exactly, but rather drains the force. He severs the individual from the force and consumes it, thereby killing all life which is connected to it (aka all living things)
That like saying you didn't kill someone, you just stopped their heart... if he drained the force from them, and they need that for life then yes, he drained their life. Your argument is like saying not to say kill, because it's manslaughter, while ignoring that manslaughter has 'to kill' in the description, it's semantics, not a correction.
think you lost the trees through the forest there at the end. kreia didn't do all that for power she didnt do what she did to pursue power for herself or to allow others some "true" pursuit of power, she did what she did because to her it is better to die free than live a slave. so if killing the force means 90% of the galaxy dies with it, so be it, because everyone left will finally be free. she had rejected power for its own sake, and instead focused on the chains breaking part, so long as that is achieved the power did not matter. effectively a rejection of the sith pursuit of power, and instead a focus on the end goal of freedom. look at it this way, if all she cared about was power and didnt care at all about others in the way, she wouldn't care so much about you running around killing people so long as her goals were achieved in the end. but she does care. she hates it if you kill or help them, because you take away their freedom in doing so. but when you deceive them or manipulate, in the end it was still their choice to do what you wanted them to, and if they find out later that they should have chosen differently, then they will be wiser for it, increasing their freedom rather than destroying it. so basically, kreia does not really care about power at all, she only cares about freedom. she isnt dismissive of your companions because she sees them as potential tools and nothing else, but because so long as the force exists, they are all literally just tools of the force. until the force is killed free will can not exist and that is "abhorrent." she only talks to you because only you have free will, and so only you are an actual person. she even explains that she herself is is not a person as she is still bound to the force. so until she has true freewill she herself is nothing more than a tool. which is why, antithetical to sith thinking, she is more than willing to off herself if it means the death of the force. because until she or anyone else has freewill life itself has no meaning.
It is interesting to me that Darth Traya equates “freedom” to being “free from any influence”. However, it is a proven fact that no matter the influence acting on a person due to their connections, they can with great effort still defy those influences and do what they want, and face the consequences of that choice. In a galaxy bound by the Force, you can still defy that Force if you so desire. You don’t lose the ability to choose your path just because X choice has Y consequence because of Z complications due to A, B and C bonds forged through the Force and whatnot. The choice to walk that path, or walk a completely different path, is still present. You must deal with the consequence of that choice, but you can always make that choice if you want to do so. You are already free, even when chained against your will by circumstance and reality. It’s your choice how you respond to those chains, and how you solve your current conundrum. Just because there is an “optimal” route doesn’t mean you have to take it, either. If you don’t like the “most efficient” solution, then feel free to struggle with your preferred way of doing things. It’s up to you. No amount of Force bonds is going to change that fundamental freedom to live your life the way you want to live it. Thus, even with that nuance, Darth Traya is still wrong. She thinks she is enslaved just because she is tied to the Force. She doesn’t realize that she chose to see herself as a slave because of her negative bias against Force connections. This distorted her view of the truth: she could always choose her fate, if she had the strength to face the consequences of her choices. Cutting off the galaxy from the Force would not lead to more freedom; she was already free, but simply believed she wasn’t because of her distorted perspective. Her choice to view herself as a slave and tool of the Force and nothing more doomed her to destruction and failure.
@@boomkruncher325zzshred5 you too are missing the forest through the trees. my response was a response to the notion in the video that kreia too did what she did solely to gain power, the notion that she fell victim to the same dark side trap all other sith fall to. whether or not she was right or not does not matter. the fact remains that she forsook power for the sake of freedom, which is antithetical to the thesis of the original video. hence my whole original comment, that you completely missed the point of. that being said, only because you felt the need to say kreias choice was wrong as a reply to a comment expressly to counter the video calling her normal sith. im going to call you wrong just to annoy you. you presume she is wrong and that the people of the star wars universe do in fact have free will. however, all evidence supports the contrary. none of the characters we see in any star wars media have any free will. the force influences all people and events for the sake of its own balance. its the reason for everything. its the reason Revan survived to defeat malak, its the reason the exile conveniently is discovered at just the right time to save the republic, its the reason for everything. its the reason nearly all sith become consumed by their own pursuit of power, as in their attempts to break their chains by funneling more force power into themselves they only bind themselves more strongly to it, kreia knew this and it is the foundation of her actions. and in the end she failed not because she had free will already, but because only the exile had free will, not her, meaning that even in her attempt to kill the force to free herself, she would inevitably fail because the will of the force would prevent her from succeeding. she even explains it at the end of the game after defeating her. as you traveled the will of the force placed every strong force sensitive left in republic space in your path, knowing you would train them to be the next generation of jedi. it could not influence you directly anymore so it put people it could in your path knowing it would steer you in a direction that would result in kreia's failure. even then, regardless of the actual events clearly seen being influenced by the force depriving people of their own will and predetermining fates. it was the prime focus of the meta narrative of kotor 2. the whole story was about how video game mechanics and structure would translate to reality. kreia in effect was aware she was in a game, that her will and that of all characters you meet have no will of their own, only the will of the writers, and only you the player characters are capable of making actual choices. speaking strictly objectively no one in the star wars universe has any free will at all. not only because the force dictates fate, but even speaking in terms of meta narrative, because they are all characters written in a fictional universe. as a result they objectively do not have free will.
@@e.corellius4495 I will counterpoint you not out of annoyance, but because I’m curious where this conversation will go :3 It’s a basic media literacy technique to “suspend disbelief”. Of course Star Wars is a fictional setting and its characters don’t actually have free will. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask “if it WAS real, would it work like X?” Because this is a basic assumption underlying all storytelling since the dawn of humanity’s sentience, I genuinely don’t think it needs to be repeated every time such stories are discussed! In the spirit of imagination then, IRL let’s consider “free will”. Will is “the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.” In short, it’s how people choose what to do and be motivated to start their chosen action. So “free will” is Will that is free of outside influence, choices that come purely from yourself and not others/circumstances. However, there is a twist to this. Consider this scenario: someone points a gun at you and demands you obey them or they will shoot you. Let’s assume you choose to obey them so you don’t get shot, but secretly you want to destroy this criminal with every fiber of your being. On the surface, you have no free will: you were influenced to do something you didn’t want to do, thus your will was not free. However: HAVE YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS ABOUT THE GUNNER CHANGED? They have not. You still are angry at the gunner for forcing you into obedience by threatening your life. You still desire to wreck their shite with all your might. The source of your free will, your thoughts and feelings, have not changed, regardless of your outward behavior. In much the same way, you don’t magically become less of a human being just because your mouth is gagged shut, leaving you unable to speak. You don’t cease to have your own thoughts and opinions just because you are conditioned to follow the rank and file. You don’t lack the ability to think independently just because there are influences like gravity or electromagnetism or complex quantum physics acting on you that you would be completely ignorant of if you were not alerted to their presence by some outside knowledge or instrument or force. Just because you cannot act on your free will doesn’t mean you don’t have it. The source of your free will, your internal thoughts and feelings, will always be independent of the outside forces and influences acting on you. You can easily reject all outside influences that say “You should think X” or “You should act like Y” in your own private musings and emotions, no matter how loud and insistent those external forces might become. You could be externally the most enslaved person on the planet: internally, you could see yourself as living just another Tuesday, imagining all sorts of things at your whim and desire. You could be the freest person in the most secure of prisons inside your own mind. So, going back to Kreia: what she truly wanted was the freedom to express herself the way she wanted to express herself, without any outside influence on her. After all, outside influences are a shackle that keeps her thoughts and feelings from fully manifesting IRL the way she wants it. A shackle means you don’t have the power to be free of the shackle, and the most basic and fundamental Sith doctrine uses power to gain freedom. Thus, the fact the Force is a shackle means that she will always be a slave to the Force, and have no freedom. She failed to see that the source of her free will was never taken away in the first place, merely sealed due to her circumstances and the relationships she had. So what if she was shackled? She could still freely think and feel just as deeply and powerfully with or without the Force. Her power was never taken away, it was just bottled up. She has the ability to be as free as she could possibly want inside her own mind and heart, regardless of her external reality. She failed to see that due to her Sith bias and indoctrination. Thus, Kreia was wrong in her insistence that ripping the Force out of everyone was the only way to true freedom, and that the power to rip the Force out was the means to accomplish that freedom. The freedom she wanted was always hers, even if externally it would look like she didn’t have it. By fundamentally misunderstanding free will in the first place, she failed at the end to realize the truth. Your turn now, if you wish :)
@@boomkruncher325zzshred5 still has nothing to do with the video and my response to it... but ill humor your philosophical debate. its interesting that you mention reading comprehension when it seems ultimately that is where the disagreement lies here. effectively i agree with everything you said until your conclusion in the last two paragraphs. you look at those and determine two things, 1. that free will exists, and 2, that kreia had free will the whole time. however as these are presented in universe, the evidence points to the opposite. in our world i personally feel that you would be absolutely correct, i believe that we have fee will. ( though rather or not we actually have free will is actually up to much scientific debate even in our reality) but this ignores the existence of the force, and the will of the force. something seen to be very real in that universe. an all encompassing presence found within all living things taking on the collective "will" of all life, thusly influencing events and outcomes according to that will. its will is in essence an in universe explanation for plot contrivance. why did they show up at exactly the right moment to save the heroes? because the force willed it. everyone in the star wars universe is beholden to the will of the force. in your gunner scenario you suggest that ones internal beliefs remain unchanged even when taking action they would rather not, i believe thats true in our world. but in kreia's those actions were not you choice even if reluctant, they were the will of the force, and even if you in all situations would have chosen to attack the gunner and go down fighting instead, the will of the force demanded you acquiesce to their demands , perhaps years later you would be vital to saving some kid who would later save the galaxy or whatever reason, the force made certain that those would be the actions taken to guarantee its desired outcome not yours. this is antithetical to free will. if at any moment, or perhaps all moments, an omnipresent force dictates peoples choices and outcomes of those choices, then fundamentally those people do not have free will. kreia, was definitely not someone "indoctrinated by Sith teaching" as you put it. she spent most of her life as a jedi chronicler. a historian who had read over the vast majority of jedi history and lore, and by default knew a great deal more about the force and its nature than most. (she was a chronicler from even before the library at ossus fell, she probably knew more about the force than anyone alive up to that point or after) she only spent about 10 years as a sith, only to ultimately reject that too, understanding that the mad path to power for powers sake was a trap of the sith that ultimately sapped away your free will even faster, turning you into something driven only by hunger like nihlus or a puppet like sion. as a true master of the force (she was so adept at manipulating the minds of people as to rival the force itself, she could stand in front of a jedi master and that master would be unable to perceive her unless she allowed it. she was able to convince sith lords to spare her life even after having been cut off from most of her power. power over the mind little different than that of the force's will ironically enough. and thats just what we see in game) she saw the ripples caused by every decision, every action and realized the truth about the universe. that the light side demanded obedience to the will of the force, and the dark side sapped away your will in exchange for power. either direction was a path that lead to the destructions of ones own will. hence why she took the path she did, and why the exile having truly severed themselves from the force was so "beautiful" to her. an opportunity to free herself from the all encompassing influence of the forces will. the evidence that she was correct, and that the force on a massive scale directly manipulates people is overwhelming throughout all star wars media, (even more so in the disney garbage) in our force devoid world its even unclear if we actually have free will. in theirs its certain they largely influenced by the forces will.
@@e.corellius4495 Very good points! Just to clarify further my opinion, perhaps I explained it poorly: the source of free will comes from something internal to you. The power source, so to speak, is your thoughts and feelings. Just because the source is cut off or is only allowed to flow in X or Y or Z direction because of physical circumstance or some all-powerful Force does not mean the power magically ceases to exist. It just means you can't act on it the way you want to act on it, you don't get to have it flow the way you want it to flow. This means that a core component of free will, acting on your thoughts and feelings and manifesting them into the world, is what is prevented. I argued that just because the Force dictates what the "correct" channels for Light or Dark side usage are, it doesn't mean your power source is magically depleted or ceases to function just because you want to act in a completely different direction. You don't lose the source of free will, but you are prevented from expressing it. However, a thought just occurred to me: what if you aligned your power source, your free will, to the Will of the Force? THEN your power would flow, and you would be able to manifest what both you and the Force want, because both you and the Force want the same thing. The Jedi seek such absolute alignment of free will that they become part of the Force itself. This means a Jedi will always have no conflict with the Will of the Force, whatevadaheck it might be, and that means AS LONG AS THEY DO WHAT THE FORCE WANTS (and they are free to make that choice, as unless they genuinely wanted to do what the Force wants in their thoughts and feelings they would be in opposition to it and would thus end up sealed) then their free will gets exercised. Kreia would say "That's just slavery under a different name." And yes, she knows both sides of the Force, so she would have this perspective. While I dislike the idea of "This is just a lore explanation for the meta truth of Player Character vs. NPC", it is technically true, but that's just not interesting to me at all. Like, who cares if the puppet show has puppeteers? Was it a good puppet show? Did it have a lasting impact on your psyche? If so, why? Just because a "meta narrative" is possible doesn't make it canon unless it is explicitly stated, and at best in KOTOR 2 it's implied and not explicitly stated that "We Star Wars characters are just pixels on some view monitor in a completely different reality that functions entirely different from our own". Because no character outright says "We are digital toys for the entertainment of our human creators and programmers", there's nothing really more to say other than "Huh, that's sorta neat that the parallel is there. ... That's it? Does that change the story at all? Does it change our understanding of the characters or their circumstances? Does it make the story better? Maybe a LITTLE bit because it's masterfully written, but what's interesting is NOT the meta parallels. What's MORE interesting is the story itself." At least, that's how I approach it 😂. I also argue that Kreia was still wrong, because again she believes that she has no choice anymore. In reality, she always had a choice: follow the Will of the Force, whether it's Light or Dark, or be sealed and prevented from doing anything. This meant the only way she could exercise her free will was via what the Force wanted. But just because the Force had that absolute a hold on her, it doesn't mean she was deprived of the ability to choose. She always had the choice, even if she disliked both choices. Her search for an alternative was fruitless, because even the main character could not permanently isolate herself from the Force. They canonically healed the wound in the Force, coming back to the thing they had torn themselves from to survive. Ripping themselves out of the Force was an act of survival more than anything. Perhaps the Force orchestrated all of KOTOR 2 to reveal to Kreia that even in this edge case, even with someone completely isolated from the Force, the Force was still so completely and utterly absolute that the Force was still able to dictate what your character could and could not do. Then Kreia would be forced to reckon with that truth. Even in the ending where your character and Kreia make the wound in the Force bigger to eventually render the entire galaxy devoid of it, as the video mentioned, the connections between people which is the foundation for the Force's incredible power are still very much intact. In time, the Force would return and heal, regardless of what your character and Kreia might do. Kreia gave up trying to choose, when faced with the grim reality that the only way to exercise her will was through the ways the Force allowed. And thus, she failed, because she misunderstood the truth: the choice was always hers. Obey, or be sealed. You want to exercise your will? Do it in X ways, or you will be shackled and unable to act. You have the freedom to choose. If you want to act on that choice, you're limited by your surroundings, the reality of your existence. Kreia thought that the limitations meant freedom was impossible; she was always free to choose.
Lord of hunger, I believe is well beyond the bounds of humanity or any other living being we know of. And I think the old sith Lord from that game had a point. He's a wound in the force like a black hole and if left unchecked I think he would eventually suck all life out of the universe. He's almost like an anti-force
Nihilus was cool, but when i pmayed through Sion was my favorite character, being functionally immortal is the end goal of most sith anyway, a means to continue gaining power. Sion achieved that.
Yet he was trapped by his own mind. All that an he couldn't even beat kreia, got bullied by nihilus and was never strong enough to take the empire from revan or malak...so weak as to not even be mentioned or even noticed by Revan or Malak. Then he simps for meetra and likes being under the boot of kreia as much as he pretends he doesn't He's a slave and a true Sith lord like sidious wouldn't even call him a sith
This my guy is a truly impressive deep dive and dissection. Very enjoyable. However, I do have a slightly different point of view. It wouldn’t be Star Wars without these different points of view (makes you wonder why the fandom is so toxic, or is that just because almost all of Star Wars fandom don’t really understand Star Wars 🤭). Anyway, Nihilus is the strongest Sith ever. The farmer, the man, is immaterial (sorry) really. He was just another victim of the entity that IS the Sith, Darth Nihilus. In my humble opinion Darth Nihilus was briefly a tangible presence but he is pure dark force. Further, it is immaterial whether the force itself, light or dark, has sentience (I believe it doesn’t, it just is), the fact it acts on the universe, the galaxy, every living being is what matters. That is what makes the dark force entity, that crossed over to living world for a time, the most powerful and devastating Sith there has ever been. Nihilus’ first victim, the farmer, is what resulted in him becoming a Sith. The entity exists with or without a living host to destroy. You were lyrically poetic when you likened Nihilus to an Empire without the facade. That is exactly it. Nihilus is dark force, infinitely powerful, perhaps no sentience to actively choose to be a compulsive bringer of death through a hunger that is never satisfied. The entity does not have weaknesses, nor realisation that a facade is necessary to gain enough power to become self-reliant. It simply is self-reliant and powerful than all. What gives the entity Nihilus substance is the fear and all conquering effect it has on life, the transfer of life from victims to it. Nihilus is essentially the perfect evil, unfettered by pride, having no weakness or feelings, possessing vast force power. The most successful Sith ever. Single focus, never distracted, always gets the job done. It doesn’t change anything that there is nothing to rule over once all has been consumed. Ruling over anything was never a goal, the consumption is the goal with a 100% success rate. No need to worry about not getting recognition for his prowess, that is a weakness suffered by lesser beings. I suppose it’s possible that Nihilus, having consumed the farmers soul, was like adding sentience to a force entity. This could be the source of its seemed desire to retain a foot in the living galaxy. Realising its host body was being destroyed, it imbued its uniform with its spirit. This could be argued to be the entity’s desire to be seen to be feared. A dark force entity can drain the life of everything, but where is the fun in that if they can’t see you coming? Much better to instil great fear prior to certain death, to sweeten the kill?
14:30 How is that not human? Its one of humanity base needs. Hunger. It would be like if he became the embodiment of fear, and going "totally not human."
The crazy thing about the power of the Dark Side is it's limits. In raw power, it seems limitless, but in truth, it comes at a huge cost physically, mentally, emotionally, and the materialistic power that is gained will never be satisfactory to the user. It's a constant state of suffering, and it actually enslaves it's users despite the Sith doctrine believing that their chains are being broken with that power. Where it ultimately leads is death by the sword, and usually the sword of ones own apprentice. The more powerful a Dark Side user becomes, the more they degenerate physically as well. Also, it comes with a constant paranoia, and the fear of death itself. The Jedi make peace with life, death, and their own limitations. In fact, they embrace the realities of nature, and fight against their darker desires instead of giving in to them. Even the best Jedi are just as flawed as anyone else, but they accept it, and constantly work to become better Jedi spiritually, and that goes far beyond following the Jedi Code or dogma. That's partially why Qui-Gon was the ideal Jedi. The Force in Star Wars is not about Dark vs Light. There is no reference to a Light Side in the original or Prequel trilogy films. It's more like a case of corruption vs nature. Living within the natural progression of life, and not being weighed down by ones more primitive (lizard brain) desires, urges, or emotions is what George Lucas meant by finding balance in the Force. The Dark Side is a perversion of nature. It would be similar to a terminal disease. The Sith have a parasitic relationship with the Force itself.
Eh, I don't think there's anything inherently primitive about corrupted desires - not many lizards have died of hubris, and in fact, that might be a uniquely human (and thus incredibly advanced) cognitive ability. The Enlightenment idea that progress is inherently good is deeply flawed. But other than that, I completely agree with everything you said.
i personally think that je'daii and the pre ajunta paul sith and what i recall of the witches of dathomir likely had the best view of the dark side not as some evil aspect of the force or just a tool to control or destroy but more a aspect of nature/life and such where the jedi made the corrupted view of the darkside became the norm and widely spread
I personally always subscribed to ideas in which both the light and dark side are viewed as apart of life. 2 sides of the same coin, something that will always be (meaning no true destruction to either side) and the best way to deal with it is from a place of balance.
@@Eli-akad . Yep least in mind set sure the Sith pure bloods were specialized in the Darkside for the most part but their mind set was still grey where look what happened to the je'daii when they lost the grey mind set and became the Jedi massive amounts of conflict and if I recall right had to abandon tython due their purest light side views causing tython to reject them if I recall correctly
@@dragonlord498 To be fair, Tython was engineered by the Kwa to protect their Great Temple, which could be used to near-instantly teleport to anywhere in the galaxy or destroy entire planets (maybe star systems), from the Rakata. The Je'daii (or the people who would go on to found the Order) were put on the planet as part of that project. And whatever special property Tython had that made it react to imbalance, it was clearly a temporary thing, as the planet did not react when the Jedi Order returned to Tython after the Great Galactic War.
@@samueldimmock694 those Jedi were more grey then some other Jedi such as those who started the witch hunts against ajunta pall and his followers from my understanding
@@dragonlord498 I can't comment on that, though I do question your description of the Hundred Years' Darkness as "witch hunts against ajunta pall and his followers." It was a massive war, plus nobody knows who started it. But those Jedi who went to Tython aren't the only evidence I have that Tython had changed. During the New Sith Wars, a Sith Lord made her home base on Tython, and that fortress was still there, and a dark-side nexus point, when Darth Bane visited much later, suggesting that if there were force storms, they were fairly weak in response to a very strong imbalance.
20:11 what would happen if Nihilus ever found the queen of the stars Aboloth? Would she take him under her wing, would he ally with her, would they try to destroy each other?
Tough question. We know force/life drain works on her even from a user with less power in that field. But then, perhaps abaloth could use a mental trick on someone already basically broken to his own hunger.
Depends. Nihilus probably has lost all reason. Nihilus and Abeloth are both black holes. They would probably cancel eachother out. But Abeloth would probably win.
@@darkones4370 I'm not sure Nihilus was really as far gone as Kreia claimed, at least not mentally. The evidence I saw indicates that he is a cunning tactician and somewhat of a scientist, though crippled by his near-inability to focus on something so small and inconsequential as an individual - which would be no problem against Abeloth. I think that the initial clash would leave both of them shocked and frightened (either that or Abeloth would resist Nihilus, and he would just die), and each would seek to grow in power before fully committing to another attack. Who would win that conflict in the end, I'm not sure - Abeloth can be in multiple places at once, but she gains power from fear and suffering, and those Nihilus has consumed feel neither - but I guarantee you that everyone else would lose.
Minor Spoilers for the expansions for SWTOR ahead: I always found Darth Vitiate/Sith Emperor's conception of an alternative way to align yourself within the Force to be incredibly interesting. As explained, it seems that it could be summarized as devotion to a conviction or ideal; the greater the will power and the stronger the belief, the more capable one could potentially become. What is interesting in his new philosophy is that Light vs Dark side is, in his view, a naive and limiting false dichotomy: his perspective is that it's all the Force, and one should use the appropriate method of channeling it as the situation demands, whether through passion, or through calm, meditative focus. This is why his new Empire was capable of housing those we might call "Grey Knights" all together in wildly differing viewpoints and methodologies but were capable of coexisting perfectly fine.
Kreia's perspective on the force makes it seem like the force is comparable to SCP-5000. That thing that shows some eldritch entity or horror is behind the human subconscious and is connecting everyone together / the reason for everyone's empathy. And her approach to it is very similar to the foundation's approach upon discovering that. Lol. Makes me wonder if KotOR was inspiration for SCP-5000 now that I think about it.
Kreia and Abeloth are very similar but in complete different ways. Both are in some way in the dark and light side but in the end they became the greatest enemies of the force itself. Abeloth in creating pure chaos and Kreia in a destroyed force.
I will say it again your videos are so dam great you do stuff noone else does there's like 4 channels and they all do the same videos just change the title
Darth Sidious seems to be the only Sith Lord who actual enjoyed life. He enjoyed to torture people and dominate their minds. Every living being was a toy for him to play with. This is why it's clear to me that it was not anger and hatred that feed his powers in the dark side but rather his high force sensitivity and genius level of intellect that allowed him to study and master the powers in the dark side to perfection. He was even able to perform force healing. IMO he became what Krea would be proud of it because he was the ultimative Sith Lord that was not destroyed by his own power.
@@CookiePieMonster He did not made Vader who he is. Vader betrayed his master because his love for his son was stronger which returned him back to the light.
Malak would have beaten nihilus. Nihilus wasn't that powerful at all. Sure his potential was unlimited but he never got there And before anyone trie to say his force drain would kill malak just remember. Nowhere and I mean nowhere in kotor does it ever say it's can't be resisted. Also let's remember that anakin and dooku each were able to stop an equally powerful force drain ability in their own day
I think its safe to say that the force is inherently a good thing, while its dark side is a perversion of its will. However, I'd argue that despite what the sith "believe", the force also manipulates them, perhaps even more so than the jedi (the illusion of control is what I'm referring to). I am however completely enthralled with the idea of living independent of the force, and the hypothetical idea of killing the force is even more intriguing. It seems that theres a path there somewhere without the disregard for life that seeks independence and peace while not forcing the utter destruction of the force itself. Complete detachment. However the force is an ambiguous thing and its not clear if the force in each being is the equivalent to a "soul". What happens when you are severed from the quintessential things that influencea and shapes all life? I'm not sure. For one you would be utterly undetectable to force users, which may be a great advantage (unless they know what they are looking for and are skilled enough to sense a "void" when not actively engaged in looking for it). Its a neat idea and i never considered thay this was a darkside path
I don’t think it’s safe to say that at all. I do not believe the force is in and of itself moral. It’s just force, to be bent either way. I see no reason why the dark side is any more a perversion than the light side, outside of the fact that _I_ think the dark side is bad
@@christianmccauley7340 I would say that engaging in the destruction of sentient life just for the pleasure of it or for the pursuit of power, is not a good thing. Destruction itself is not necessarily bad, and is often necessary for life to prosper. When the ideology of the Sith/Jedi is applied, there's certainly a difference. The Jedi "obey" the will of the force (whatever that means) and the Sith see the force as something to bend to their own will. So either the force doesn't have a will (fits more with the Sith) and the Jedi are delusional, or the force has a will (the Jedi are correct) and the Sith either go against it's will or the Sith only believe that it's their own will when in fact the force uses them just as much as the Jedi.
@@christianmccauley7340 objectively though... You are correct. Destruction does not equal bad, and creation does not equal good. They are opposites that are necessary for each other to have balance
Weird opinion, but Sidious didn’t win due to the dark side. Take away his force abilities and odds are he still could’ve become emperor and wiped out the Jedi. The only time he actually showed that he was a Sith Lord was when he schooled Maul and Savage. He only won because the people around him were idiotic bureaucrats. Replace him with any pre-bane era Sith however…
Exactly! Anyone who is smart enough can be Deceptive and treacherous. There is no need to even use the Force... Well, if Palpatine was non-force sensitive, he must not be Weak-Minded or the jedi would sense and foresee his Goals regardless. It must've took palpatine a while to climb through the ranks of Naboo's Goverment to eventually climb the Ranks of the Galactic Senate. Also yeah, don't be mistaken, there were plenty of Sith Infiltrators Pre-Bane, Especially between the KOTOR and SWTOR eras, where Vitiate sent Tons of Infiltrators ahead to prepare the galaxy for the True Sith Empire's Return... Like Softening up the Republic in the Senate, Sealing Tombs of Ancient Sith Lords, even Infiltrating the Jedi order itself. The Sith have always been the masters of Betrayal and Deception, no matter what era.
@@galacticfirefly6060 Quite so. Though in those cases I imagine the force actually mattered (mind tricks and all that). Those eras did have fairly robust governments.
well, thats probably true for disney wars, but in legends he did alot more than just normal schemes. alot of what he did was use the force to gaze into the future to determine where to take the war and who to send there to create the right ripples for his ends. in two specific instances he actually forced CIS forces to retreat and sent commandos to save particular jedi because he foresaw that if they died right now that the jedi would discover his plots before it was too late for them, and the second time, because the jedi would be able to rally and escape before he could finish them off because the death of that jedi too early would mean dramatically greater caution from the order. the details about the one were particularly sad. basically, obi-wan was about to be killed and Palpatine had a vision of the good timeline. obi-wan dies, which leads to Anakin discovering Sidious plot, rallying the jedi, defeating Palpatine and preventing the empire from ever happening. lets also not forget he was the only force user in history to be capable of galaxy wide battle meditation. so basically palpatine, was constantly using the force to predict the future and influence people galaxy wide almost non-stop to keep the right people alive and winning at the right times, and loosing and getting killed precisely when optimal. way more complex than just scheming around "idiot bureaucrats"
This is true to a small degree. Sidious still utilized his abilities in the force to help achieve his goals. The most obvious and straight forward examples were shows of power to place fear in his subordinates to ensure they remained in line. There are also smaller nuances to his abilities that assisted him being able to successful carry out his plan, however I can not give specific examples on this without going back to certain reference material. However I would say to look it up. Ur are mostly right, however the dark side definitely helped play a role. Remember it was the dark side of the force that kept the vision’s of the Jedi clouded so they couldn’t figure out what was going on until it was too late
Sidious did used the force but what makes him such a genius IMO is that he used it in the shadow such as clouding the visions of the jedi and telepathic force corrupt the minds of people to support him. After he became emperor he used a combination of telepathy and force dominating mind to control the imperial crownies from his palace while he dedicated himself to advance his powers in the dark side.
He can only eat a planet if there is enough force users there increasing the intensity of the force on that planet. Conflict drives force powers to be stronger, the greater the light the stronger the shadow.
On the surface Kreia seems like just a darksider,
beneath that however is a more complicated character with a philosophy that deviates heavily from Jedi and Sith teachings,
and beneath THAT, she's just a darksider
To me she sounds like a crankier Jolee who just so happens to be a dark Jedi. By that I mean she always seemed like a grey Jedi who didn't like the force.
🍹😗😐😑😮💨😌
"I hate the Force, I hate that it seems to have a will, that it would control us to achieve some measure of balance when countless lives are lost". - Kreia (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II)
Life of betrayal do be like that
Your analysis of Nihilus consuming worlds and leaving "peace and order" as part of the deep anti-imperialism at the heart of Star Wars is one of the many reasons I always come back to this channel.
Also, a beautiful exploration of why Traya was wrong; we live in a world devoid of the Force, or anything like it, so far as we can tell. We are still all unavoidably interconnected.
KOTOR 2 is radical, it's critical, but it's Star Wars all the way through.
Was she tho?
She loathed the force for controlling/influencing destinies and outcomes. Not solely bc it connected living beings.
Living beings are natrually connected thru circumstance, proximity, mutual understanding, a mutual friend, grlwing up in similar circumstances, commenting on the same youtube video, human DNA, all these invisible threads we don't see that connect you and me amd everyone around us and everyone around them and everyone who ever lived into one big web of existence.
The consequences (foreseen or unintended) of NOT ONLY our own decisions, but everyone else's as well, good AND bad, all add together into one lump sum to equal just the life and times we live in, and this is all before we ever get supernatural energy fields involved.
She tried to teach the exile this very concept in multiple ways, understanding the galaxy as things are when the force is removed, because she had been forced to live without it herself at one point.
She was wrong and overstepping in her belief that she could destroy the force itself. It amounts to arrogance. The wrongs that had been done to her forced her into a bitter, cynical outlook. She grew hateful, but pragmatic enough to not ever really see it as hatred. One could interpret that she herself failed to see that the force itself was leading her down this path, for a reason..
But the real-life reason the character is so beloved is partially BECAUSE so much of her wisdom was spot on, and applicable to our daily lives
KotOR especially the second one, is best Star Wars ever made!
Folks! today is a new day, let it be a new start for you with the Almighty Jesus Christ. God awaits you✝️
"Devoid of the force"
Well, that's debatable, lol. Since a lot of cultures believe in subtle energies, and some psychologists believe in the collective unconscious, haha. But good point nonetheless. :)
@@autistinquisitor9441I think he literally meant the force
KOTOR II to this day still sending ripples in the SW lore.
Nihilus and Sion are kind reminders what the Dark Side does and how much has to be sacrificed for the ultimate self.
Exar Kun believed if he could control and understand the Dark Side, he'd understand both sides of the Force. His mistake, is that that Dark Siders don't control the Dark side. The Dark Side controls them.
Whenever anyone says "the Dark side is good".
Sion and Nihilus come into mind
I was just hungry okay 😂
@@Darth-Nihilus1 Know your place young disciple
The real difference between the sides of the force is whether or not you are controlled by it or you allow yourself to be controlled by it.
I think after years of learning about the force that there isn't really a dark light side, there's just the force, and if you try to bend it to your will it will have repercussions.
On the other end if you allow it to direct you but only in a certain way it will leave you blind to the universal truth
KOTOR II is, In my humble opinion, still one of the coolest starwars games ever made, even if it's visuals have aged and mechanics seem clunky, the story is just so darn cool (and I love T3-M4 and HK-47)
Addiction. To me, that is what the dark side is. It pulls you in, destroying your relationships and your life, but you can't resist the lure of its power. And, the only way out, is a clean break, and the hard work of making amends to those you've wronged.
Another fantastic video.
Great analogy
Bro im trying to escape reality please stfu
Very true. George Lucas himself admitted the same idea in multiple interviews.
I agree %100 and addiction can affect anyone. It doesn’t prefer people in specific regions, religion, diet, social status… it can strike anyone. Just like the dark side.
but noone speaks about addiction to money
Nihilus consumes Force energy, then Vitiate said hold my beer
Vitiate never came close to what Nihilus achieved. Like at all...
This is possibly the most accurate depiction of the nature of the Force, and very neatly explains many if not all plot points in the original 6 films: the fall of the Jedi Order, Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side, Palpatine’s manipulations, Luke’s final victory over the Sith, etc.
The end state for Kreia’s philosophy is what the Yuuzhan Vong were. An entire species cut off from the force who destroys all life they consider weaker.
To be fair being refugees with major PTSD would do that
Had the two android civilizations not been warlike and instead traded with the Vong they wouldn't be invading refugees
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The end state of Kreia's philosophy is our world. Star Wars is a fictional deep history of our universe, it's the first line of A New Hope. We don't have the Force irl, therefore someone eventually did what Kreia wanted, and proved that life could flourish without the influence of the dys-pan-theist Force
Vader fell to save his love
Palpatine fell to live forever
Nihlus just wanted some lunch
Nihlus: Nom Nom Nom 🍴💀
Aye bro lemme get a bite
Humgy
When the munchies just aren't filling enough
You're not you when you're hungry.
I don't know man... Palpatine was able to have a daughter who destroyed the entire franchise. That is some 4th wall shattering level power.
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I told this to a friend who didn’t know about KOTOR II. Mentioned Nihilis. He called it “another example of Disney sh**ting on Lucas,” because making Nihilis the “most powerful sith” diminishes palpatine as a threat. This conversation made me realize how fortunate we are that KOTOR II came out when it did. Imagine what it would be like with today’s online discourse.
I mean, I just found out about that stuff and my immediate reaction was that it was rad, even though my initial reaction most Disney era SW has been bad. Honestly, depending on how you started explaining it, I could see somebody not giving it the necessary time and assuming it is a lazy story, but I watched a video like this explaining in depth with imagery. People have been burned and have developed a defense mechanism to find problems quickly so they don’t waste their time and get set up for disappointment.
Unlikely, KOTOR is too long written, dry and requires investment to play. Things casual gamers are not interested in.
nihilus and sion being the perfected dark side users shows how far treya failed in her teachings of trying to end the force.
Show only became disenfranchise with the Force in General after being betrayed and cast out by Nihilus and Sion. Before that, she was committed to destroying the Jedi.
@@jahlaniwilliams2468 Even after that. Treya literally did kill many of "last" masters in the game. It is just that she see Meetra Surik (who become Gray Jedi) as perfect Force user. Anyway I refuse to recognize canon ending of this story. Meetra Surik should be the Outlander.
Meetra wasnt a gray jedi,they don't even exist in the EU.Meetra was a full light sider otherwise she wouldnt have become a force ghost
@@Force_user57 Even Obi Wan was a Gray Jedi. To be clear it doesn't mean throwing lighting bolts (Luke Skywalker is actually a Sith). But rather being ally of light side, instead the slave. Basically only Gray Jedi survived the purge.
🍹😗🙂 I was just hungry
Case in point, no one in KOTOR II explicitly mentions the name "Darth Nihilus." Apart from the name "Nihilus" appearing in some journal logs, he is mostly referred to as "Visas' master" or the "master of the ship" (the Ravager).
This has to do with the development process though, Kotor 2 was heavily rushed and the nihilus stuff wasn't properly fleshed out. Same with scion tbh, the end of his story is super anticlimactic
" Babe, come over, let's cuddle."
"Sorry i have to work"
"GEETSLY just dropped tho..."
🚗 ☁️
😂 working a double
Darth Nihilus, “I am unlimited power.”
Darth Sidious, “That’s cute, because I am the Senate.”
*Insert crazed screeching and Ancient Sith ranting here*
Darth Vitiate, “ you presume limits to my power they are none”
🍹😗
Mace Windu: Not yet.
Sidious: You're right. I am all the Sith!
Lol, sorry. I had to go there.
Darth Nihilus: “Is that another word for Food?”
Geetsly really just blessed our weekend with a 1+ hour documentary on the Dark Side, the Sith and KOTOR 2's philosophical undercurrents.
*That's what I'm talking about! That's why he's the MVP! That's why he's the GOAT, the GOATTTTTTTT* 😂🔥
Darth Nihilus always freaked me out when i played KOTOR.
He was just like a black hole of darkside energy.
Litterally made up of pure Dark Side.
And his VOICE!
Awesome character
I hope when they do this they do this RIGHT!
I’ve been looking for more sith lore for days and I finally got it. Old Republic sith and ancient sith are my favorites. Their power was so raw and immense, not even Sidious rivaled MOST of them.
True. Sidious and then Vader were the last true Sith. Maul was almost a sentinel, a weapon for Sidious. But Vader was sidious bane if you think about it. After vader killed Sidious, then died himself, that ended the curse and legacy of the Old Sith.
“If you were to face an ancient Sith Lord in combat, you would learn that we are as children playing with toys compared to the prowess of the old masters.” - Kreia
I love how the Disney sympathizers (not enjoyers mind you, each their own), legit still don’t want these games being canon. Some of them rather Disney…bastardized the time time period with new stuff…
I’m sorry but the writing in them is just…some of the best in entire IP, and Disney basically be making a printing press if just leaned into it and gave right people the reins to make content from it.
you could say that about most of the old EU, at least i had nothing but immeasurable love for most of the franchise before 2014. when disney bought it all they had to do was translate the already successful stories (nearly every star wars eu novel was a bestseller) and put them on screen as a film or show, no writers needed, minimal effort, printing essentially infinite money farming the last 40 years of content before anyone would even need bother making new stuff, so they could take their sweet time plan stuff out for decades before introducing new stuff so they could make sure it was up to standard. but they threw all that away because they "could obviously do better" that they "knew better" and could "write better" than all of them. pure f-ing hubris.
personally i hope their whole company burns, goes totally bankrupt and closes down forever for what they have done to star wars. its no less than they deserve.
One thing I find really striking is the part of the Sith code "The Force shall free me" and how KOTOR 2 juxtaposes that with both the Jedi AND Sith.
"Take the greatest Jedi Knight, strip away the Force and what remains?" - Just a person, utterly crippled from having relied on a power that was never theirs.
Then we have Darth Sion and Darth Nihilus, two incredibly powerful Sith who've achieved feats and grasped power others could only dream of. But they're slaves to the Force. Strip the Force from them and they cease to be.
Then we factor in that the Force has a will of its own, and a dark side that counteracts itself in an eternal struggle for self balance. The Force is not good, benevolent or merciful. It is just a force. And its dark side destroys everything but itself, yet diminishes in power when it has destroyed everything it can. Ebb and flow.
"I've always hated the colour blue... Y'wanna know why!? No reason..." - Darth Sion, probably
Vader fell to the dark side to save the ones he love from dying
Nihlis just wanted a bite to eat.
A bad reason to fall to the dark side, but it get stuff done! Whole planets? Eaten. Dude got hungry that he fell to the dark side!
Naga Sadow: I want to expand the Sith Empire.
Exar Kun: I want to bring the Sith Golden Age back to galaxy.
Darth Nihilus: I just wanna stay home and eat chips.
Thank you for such an interesting Analysis.
TBH, I have played the game several times, yet failed to truly make the connections you have highlighted here.
The hints and the teachings given in the game, were in fact, quite subtle, just like Lessons from Kreia.
It turns out that the game in itself was some sort of lesson to players. Subtle. Obscure. And Yet quite deep.
It must be said, that this game stands above every other SW game, in turns of depth and philosophy, almost to a degree of an Art piece.
Still the absolute Apex of Starwars games for me without doubt, no matter how old the mechanics and graphics look
I do love the way Revan and Meetra compare and contrast each other:
Revan saved the Galaxy by slaying its enemies and winning the war.
Meetra saved the Galaxy by healing its victims and winning the peace.
Kreya really is such a complex character that challenges the simple light and dark of the franchise. Unfortunately she fell into the “I’m evil, but I want to do it MY way.” Category, which ultimately placed her right back into the black vs white scale lol
Remember kids, don't overeat.
And pain sucks. Don't linger on it.
🍹😚😙😗😐😲😁 I was just hungry
A fine addition to my watch later playlist
Palpatine: As you can see, I have UUUUNLIIIMITED POOOWWWEEEEERRRR!!!
Nihilus: Actually, I'm the one who has it.
Palpatine: What!? NoOooo… NOOoooo!!
🍻😉
Welp, I guess I have a new video to leave on while I sleep (literally, it's 2 am for me lmao).
You would make an excellent Jedi with your understanding of light side and dark side history and philosophy, and how it affected everyone and everything.
Always nice to hear more about Sion, one of the more interesting sith in my humble opinion.
agreed
Sion is an interesting character and one of my favorite sith. I cosplay as Darth Nihilus since my friend already took Revan 😂 the morph suit mask sometimes sticks to my eyes
@@Darth-Nihilus1 Revan and Nihilus are definitely among the best dressed sith so I can imagine they are fun to cosplay. Wish I had the body to do a good Sion cosplay.
@@rojaws1183 the hardest part about Sion is having to wear all that makeup and foam or whatever they use for movie props. You got to find something you wouldn’t mind wearing all day. I do Halo ODST with my real tactical gear from the station but I now have separate gear for my ODST armor but it’s even still after all the plates and equipment that I need so I can fix my gear on the go plus I have a water pouch in the backpack and I have MRE’s and toilet paper since the guys and I also airsoft on the side of being firefighters and a few are cops. Like my gear is NIJ rated in the front and back for 30.06 AP and the side plates are NIJ .44 mag. The helmet is just airsoft with its own AC system and has or better yet had a radio headset that connects to my portable but now I’m looking into Bluetooth headset for con and airsoft
@@Darth-Nihilus1 Got to say it sounds more fun to cosplay as sithlords than Halo Spartans.
No, no he said POWDER, unlimited POWDER. Cocaine gave Sidious lightning fingers.
Me too lol
37:38 Scion's anger and hatred drove him toward a single goal: Violins.
Artistic fellow, this Scion was XD
EXCELLENTLY chosen artwork!
Kriea never followed revan to battle she stayed and the jedi council blamed her teachings for revan and banished her. Then she found a sith temple and learned what she could find there tried to remake the sith order again was betrayed again by her students and this made her into the lord of betrayal.
Where did you get your info?
I never was this early, 40 seconds since release, nice.
My guy, Sion was born from Exar Kun's war. Only a small nit pick.
And Nhilus was born from the mandalorian wars. Honestly too many people look down on the sith Triumvirate and only talk about the lord of hunger but gloss over the lords of pain and betrayal.
No one glosses over Traya, she just is a pretty bland character compared to the "technically" immortal duo consisting of a literal force vampire and a literal force zombie.
@@matthewchristian9591😮 I blame Revan for why I’m an empty pit of despair
What an awesome video. Best Star Wars lore channel for me.
Now for a fun question, who would win?
Nihilius or Mngall-Mngall, an immortal parasite whose only goal was self amusement trough the control and suffering of others?
Excellent video, thanks for making this. The philosophy of Star War was so developed before Disney bought it -- it's a shame they're not building on this.
I returned to KOTOR 2 last week after 20 years of not playing it and boy did i miss so much stuff when i was 7
Great video! And your assessment was of Treya, dark, light and connections were all great!
Also, i have come to really love the ithorians. They have consistently grown among my favorite species.
My view is that someone truly neutral in the Force would be someone who was completely asocial. No desire to form bonds with others nor to dominate others. Someone for whom a life of total isolation was bliss.
I'd love to be a Grey Jedi, just me and The Force baybeee!
@@CookiePieMonster
Grey Jedi are literally half way to become sith
No they aren't. Those are Dark Jedi. Grey Jedi are those who form attachments, and view the force not as two separate sides, but as a complete whole. It's actually harder for them to fall to the dark side if they learn to keep themselves in check vs Jedi and Dark Jedi. Dark Jedi view the force stronger by using the dark and this are more likely to become sith. @@elpsykoongro5379
Wouldnt that be a lack of force? If force is connection, the desire to not be connected would be the desire to purge the forge from you
Bendu from starwars rebels
Betrayal is the way of the Sith, and one of the people you'll inevitably betray is yourself. That's the trap of the Darkside, it's why "let the past die" is such a horrifying statement. The person who wields that power won't be you anymore, and that person won't so much wield it, as be wielded by it.
"One so angry he refused to die."
Kratos, what are you doing here?
it's brilliant that you see balance as mutual thriving and the dark side as individualism. now the Jedi just really must stop being cops if they are to aspire to their pretended ideals
If, IF you apply Kreia's criticism of the Force to the 4th wall, you realize that her condemnation of the Force and how it creates conflict is also a condemnation of us fans who inject conflict into the Star Wars Universe for our own entertainment. We want Force sensitives, we want space battles, we want all that conflict. We're the Force and Kreia hates us for how flippantly we treat the people in her universe.
very good breakdown, in the vein of the "philosophy of Kreia".
Nihilus is why I became interested in star wars lore
Read a fanfic recently and in it, a character posits that the Sith code's "passion" doesn't mean the modern definition, but the old one from before the 16th century. Passion used to mean 'suffering', from the Latin word 'pati' which means 'to suffer'. So the Sith code actually says, "Peace is a lie, there is only suffering".
Darth Sidious did in fact have Unlimited Power, he succeeded the Rule Of Two, and achieved a mastery of its practices like no other, he was its greatest practitioner.
Except the fact he's not as strong as ancient Sith like these guys here. And even Kreiya admitted that even they weren't as strong as ancient Sith.
@@joshpatillo9515 KREIYA WAS TALKING ABOUT HOW THE SITH WEREN’T RULERS ANYMORE AND HOW THEY HAVE TO HIDE AND GAIN POWER IN THE SHADOWS WHEREAS THE SITH BEFORE WERE RULERS! THE NOVELS BLATANTLY SAID THE SITH GREW STRONGER OVER THE YEARS LEADING TO THE PHANTOM MENACE!
@TheMightOfGeburah first off chill out you bum.....Kreiya FOR SURE says that ancient Sith would make Sith lords of that time look like play things. Naga Sadow was able to perform a ritual that was able to use solar energy as a weapon. NO OTHER SITH HAS DONE THAT BEFORE. The novelisation your talking about is references the GROWING strength of the Sith from what they once where. it never implies that the Sith of the modern era were stronger than ancient Sith lords when the actual Sith still lived.....come on my dude do better.
@@joshpatillo9515 Savage Opress is stated to be a Universal Threat and Maul beat him, Dooku beat him and Sidious bodied him.
@TheMightOfGeburah your mistaking actual power to the universal threat of the balance of political and planetary power. Savage Opress was weaker than his brother Maul those two where embarrassed by Sidious by light saber duels alone and Sidious is stated to be one of the most powerful Sith ever. And even his powers didn't come close the to scale of dark lords like Sion who literally was immortal and had to be defeated by the plot armor of love because of his infatuation with the jedi exile, who was able to convince him to finally die....stop the cap.
Nihilus just needed a snickers
Infinite Snickers.
Scion was literally too angry to die and that's borderline hilarious lmso
Do a lore video on one of the aliens or other Star Wars species. Id be interested in you deeper discussing old mando sith + jedi ships as well as empires
Nobody can attain unlimited power. If you were to attain unlimited power you would have not had the power before. Thus, the power is limited by a beginning. If the state of having the power can change it will inevitably change back. You will definitely loose the power. If one always had unlimited power one could never change. If one does not change one cannot perform any action. To do anything one needs to start, do and end an action. Whatever one does is not perfect. If an action was perfect one would not start or end doing it. However, there’s nothing that can be done at all that is truly perfect.
Assuming, of course, that time is an absolute reality. Which may or may not be true.
Something to note, it’s implied and explained by kreia that Nihilus does not drain the life of these planets exactly, but rather drains the force. He severs the individual from the force and consumes it, thereby killing all life which is connected to it (aka all living things)
That like saying you didn't kill someone, you just stopped their heart... if he drained the force from them, and they need that for life then yes, he drained their life. Your argument is like saying not to say kill, because it's manslaughter, while ignoring that manslaughter has 'to kill' in the description, it's semantics, not a correction.
@@teslafreeman life drain is different from force drain in the lore, so no it’s not just semantics.
@@teslafreeman also, in the game life drain and force drain are two different abilities, of which nihilus uses the latter.
Darth Nihilisus used a combination of the high level Force Drain Technique: Death Field + Consume Essence
think you lost the trees through the forest there at the end. kreia didn't do all that for power she didnt do what she did to pursue power for herself or to allow others some "true" pursuit of power, she did what she did because to her it is better to die free than live a slave. so if killing the force means 90% of the galaxy dies with it, so be it, because everyone left will finally be free. she had rejected power for its own sake, and instead focused on the chains breaking part, so long as that is achieved the power did not matter. effectively a rejection of the sith pursuit of power, and instead a focus on the end goal of freedom. look at it this way, if all she cared about was power and didnt care at all about others in the way, she wouldn't care so much about you running around killing people so long as her goals were achieved in the end. but she does care. she hates it if you kill or help them, because you take away their freedom in doing so. but when you deceive them or manipulate, in the end it was still their choice to do what you wanted them to, and if they find out later that they should have chosen differently, then they will be wiser for it, increasing their freedom rather than destroying it.
so basically, kreia does not really care about power at all, she only cares about freedom. she isnt dismissive of your companions because she sees them as potential tools and nothing else, but because so long as the force exists, they are all literally just tools of the force. until the force is killed free will can not exist and that is "abhorrent." she only talks to you because only you have free will, and so only you are an actual person. she even explains that she herself is is not a person as she is still bound to the force. so until she has true freewill she herself is nothing more than a tool. which is why, antithetical to sith thinking, she is more than willing to off herself if it means the death of the force. because until she or anyone else has freewill life itself has no meaning.
It is interesting to me that Darth Traya equates “freedom” to being “free from any influence”. However, it is a proven fact that no matter the influence acting on a person due to their connections, they can with great effort still defy those influences and do what they want, and face the consequences of that choice.
In a galaxy bound by the Force, you can still defy that Force if you so desire. You don’t lose the ability to choose your path just because X choice has Y consequence because of Z complications due to A, B and C bonds forged through the Force and whatnot. The choice to walk that path, or walk a completely different path, is still present. You must deal with the consequence of that choice, but you can always make that choice if you want to do so.
You are already free, even when chained against your will by circumstance and reality. It’s your choice how you respond to those chains, and how you solve your current conundrum. Just because there is an “optimal” route doesn’t mean you have to take it, either. If you don’t like the “most efficient” solution, then feel free to struggle with your preferred way of doing things. It’s up to you. No amount of Force bonds is going to change that fundamental freedom to live your life the way you want to live it.
Thus, even with that nuance, Darth Traya is still wrong. She thinks she is enslaved just because she is tied to the Force. She doesn’t realize that she chose to see herself as a slave because of her negative bias against Force connections. This distorted her view of the truth: she could always choose her fate, if she had the strength to face the consequences of her choices. Cutting off the galaxy from the Force would not lead to more freedom; she was already free, but simply believed she wasn’t because of her distorted perspective. Her choice to view herself as a slave and tool of the Force and nothing more doomed her to destruction and failure.
@@boomkruncher325zzshred5 you too are missing the forest through the trees. my response was a response to the notion in the video that kreia too did what she did solely to gain power, the notion that she fell victim to the same dark side trap all other sith fall to. whether or not she was right or not does not matter. the fact remains that she forsook power for the sake of freedom, which is antithetical to the thesis of the original video. hence my whole original comment, that you completely missed the point of.
that being said, only because you felt the need to say kreias choice was wrong as a reply to a comment expressly to counter the video calling her normal sith. im going to call you wrong just to annoy you.
you presume she is wrong and that the people of the star wars universe do in fact have free will. however, all evidence supports the contrary. none of the characters we see in any star wars media have any free will. the force influences all people and events for the sake of its own balance. its the reason for everything. its the reason Revan survived to defeat malak, its the reason the exile conveniently is discovered at just the right time to save the republic, its the reason for everything. its the reason nearly all sith become consumed by their own pursuit of power, as in their attempts to break their chains by funneling more force power into themselves they only bind themselves more strongly to it, kreia knew this and it is the foundation of her actions. and in the end she failed not because she had free will already, but because only the exile had free will, not her, meaning that even in her attempt to kill the force to free herself, she would inevitably fail because the will of the force would prevent her from succeeding. she even explains it at the end of the game after defeating her. as you traveled the will of the force placed every strong force sensitive left in republic space in your path, knowing you would train them to be the next generation of jedi. it could not influence you directly anymore so it put people it could in your path knowing it would steer you in a direction that would result in kreia's failure.
even then, regardless of the actual events clearly seen being influenced by the force depriving people of their own will and predetermining fates. it was the prime focus of the meta narrative of kotor 2. the whole story was about how video game mechanics and structure would translate to reality. kreia in effect was aware she was in a game, that her will and that of all characters you meet have no will of their own, only the will of the writers, and only you the player characters are capable of making actual choices. speaking strictly objectively no one in the star wars universe has any free will at all. not only because the force dictates fate, but even speaking in terms of meta narrative, because they are all characters written in a fictional universe. as a result they objectively do not have free will.
@@e.corellius4495 I will counterpoint you not out of annoyance, but because I’m curious where this conversation will go :3
It’s a basic media literacy technique to “suspend disbelief”. Of course Star Wars is a fictional setting and its characters don’t actually have free will. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask “if it WAS real, would it work like X?” Because this is a basic assumption underlying all storytelling since the dawn of humanity’s sentience, I genuinely don’t think it needs to be repeated every time such stories are discussed!
In the spirit of imagination then, IRL let’s consider “free will”. Will is “the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.” In short, it’s how people choose what to do and be motivated to start their chosen action. So “free will” is Will that is free of outside influence, choices that come purely from yourself and not others/circumstances.
However, there is a twist to this. Consider this scenario: someone points a gun at you and demands you obey them or they will shoot you. Let’s assume you choose to obey them so you don’t get shot, but secretly you want to destroy this criminal with every fiber of your being. On the surface, you have no free will: you were influenced to do something you didn’t want to do, thus your will was not free.
However: HAVE YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS ABOUT THE GUNNER CHANGED? They have not. You still are angry at the gunner for forcing you into obedience by threatening your life. You still desire to wreck their shite with all your might. The source of your free will, your thoughts and feelings, have not changed, regardless of your outward behavior.
In much the same way, you don’t magically become less of a human being just because your mouth is gagged shut, leaving you unable to speak. You don’t cease to have your own thoughts and opinions just because you are conditioned to follow the rank and file. You don’t lack the ability to think independently just because there are influences like gravity or electromagnetism or complex quantum physics acting on you that you would be completely ignorant of if you were not alerted to their presence by some outside knowledge or instrument or force.
Just because you cannot act on your free will doesn’t mean you don’t have it. The source of your free will, your internal thoughts and feelings, will always be independent of the outside forces and influences acting on you. You can easily reject all outside influences that say “You should think X” or “You should act like Y” in your own private musings and emotions, no matter how loud and insistent those external forces might become. You could be externally the most enslaved person on the planet: internally, you could see yourself as living just another Tuesday, imagining all sorts of things at your whim and desire. You could be the freest person in the most secure of prisons inside your own mind.
So, going back to Kreia: what she truly wanted was the freedom to express herself the way she wanted to express herself, without any outside influence on her. After all, outside influences are a shackle that keeps her thoughts and feelings from fully manifesting IRL the way she wants it. A shackle means you don’t have the power to be free of the shackle, and the most basic and fundamental Sith doctrine uses power to gain freedom. Thus, the fact the Force is a shackle means that she will always be a slave to the Force, and have no freedom.
She failed to see that the source of her free will was never taken away in the first place, merely sealed due to her circumstances and the relationships she had. So what if she was shackled? She could still freely think and feel just as deeply and powerfully with or without the Force. Her power was never taken away, it was just bottled up. She has the ability to be as free as she could possibly want inside her own mind and heart, regardless of her external reality. She failed to see that due to her Sith bias and indoctrination.
Thus, Kreia was wrong in her insistence that ripping the Force out of everyone was the only way to true freedom, and that the power to rip the Force out was the means to accomplish that freedom. The freedom she wanted was always hers, even if externally it would look like she didn’t have it. By fundamentally misunderstanding free will in the first place, she failed at the end to realize the truth.
Your turn now, if you wish :)
@@boomkruncher325zzshred5 still has nothing to do with the video and my response to it... but ill humor your philosophical debate. its interesting that you mention reading comprehension when it seems ultimately that is where the disagreement lies here. effectively i agree with everything you said until your conclusion in the last two paragraphs. you look at those and determine two things, 1. that free will exists, and 2, that kreia had free will the whole time. however as these are presented in universe, the evidence points to the opposite. in our world i personally feel that you would be absolutely correct, i believe that we have fee will. ( though rather or not we actually have free will is actually up to much scientific debate even in our reality) but this ignores the existence of the force, and the will of the force. something seen to be very real in that universe. an all encompassing presence found within all living things taking on the collective "will" of all life, thusly influencing events and outcomes according to that will. its will is in essence an in universe explanation for plot contrivance. why did they show up at exactly the right moment to save the heroes? because the force willed it. everyone in the star wars universe is beholden to the will of the force.
in your gunner scenario you suggest that ones internal beliefs remain unchanged even when taking action they would rather not, i believe thats true in our world. but in kreia's those actions were not you choice even if reluctant, they were the will of the force, and even if you in all situations would have chosen to attack the gunner and go down fighting instead, the will of the force demanded you acquiesce to their demands , perhaps years later you would be vital to saving some kid who would later save the galaxy or whatever reason, the force made certain that those would be the actions taken to guarantee its desired outcome not yours. this is antithetical to free will. if at any moment, or perhaps all moments, an omnipresent force dictates peoples choices and outcomes of those choices, then fundamentally those people do not have free will.
kreia, was definitely not someone "indoctrinated by Sith teaching" as you put it. she spent most of her life as a jedi chronicler. a historian who had read over the vast majority of jedi history and lore, and by default knew a great deal more about the force and its nature than most. (she was a chronicler from even before the library at ossus fell, she probably knew more about the force than anyone alive up to that point or after) she only spent about 10 years as a sith, only to ultimately reject that too, understanding that the mad path to power for powers sake was a trap of the sith that ultimately sapped away your free will even faster, turning you into something driven only by hunger like nihlus or a puppet like sion. as a true master of the force (she was so adept at manipulating the minds of people as to rival the force itself, she could stand in front of a jedi master and that master would be unable to perceive her unless she allowed it. she was able to convince sith lords to spare her life even after having been cut off from most of her power. power over the mind little different than that of the force's will ironically enough. and thats just what we see in game) she saw the ripples caused by every decision, every action and realized the truth about the universe. that the light side demanded obedience to the will of the force, and the dark side sapped away your will in exchange for power. either direction was a path that lead to the destructions of ones own will. hence why she took the path she did, and why the exile having truly severed themselves from the force was so "beautiful" to her. an opportunity to free herself from the all encompassing influence of the forces will.
the evidence that she was correct, and that the force on a massive scale directly manipulates people is overwhelming throughout all star wars media, (even more so in the disney garbage) in our force devoid world its even unclear if we actually have free will. in theirs its certain they largely influenced by the forces will.
@@e.corellius4495 Very good points! Just to clarify further my opinion, perhaps I explained it poorly: the source of free will comes from something internal to you. The power source, so to speak, is your thoughts and feelings. Just because the source is cut off or is only allowed to flow in X or Y or Z direction because of physical circumstance or some all-powerful Force does not mean the power magically ceases to exist. It just means you can't act on it the way you want to act on it, you don't get to have it flow the way you want it to flow.
This means that a core component of free will, acting on your thoughts and feelings and manifesting them into the world, is what is prevented. I argued that just because the Force dictates what the "correct" channels for Light or Dark side usage are, it doesn't mean your power source is magically depleted or ceases to function just because you want to act in a completely different direction. You don't lose the source of free will, but you are prevented from expressing it.
However, a thought just occurred to me: what if you aligned your power source, your free will, to the Will of the Force? THEN your power would flow, and you would be able to manifest what both you and the Force want, because both you and the Force want the same thing.
The Jedi seek such absolute alignment of free will that they become part of the Force itself. This means a Jedi will always have no conflict with the Will of the Force, whatevadaheck it might be, and that means AS LONG AS THEY DO WHAT THE FORCE WANTS (and they are free to make that choice, as unless they genuinely wanted to do what the Force wants in their thoughts and feelings they would be in opposition to it and would thus end up sealed) then their free will gets exercised.
Kreia would say "That's just slavery under a different name." And yes, she knows both sides of the Force, so she would have this perspective. While I dislike the idea of "This is just a lore explanation for the meta truth of Player Character vs. NPC", it is technically true, but that's just not interesting to me at all. Like, who cares if the puppet show has puppeteers? Was it a good puppet show? Did it have a lasting impact on your psyche? If so, why? Just because a "meta narrative" is possible doesn't make it canon unless it is explicitly stated, and at best in KOTOR 2 it's implied and not explicitly stated that "We Star Wars characters are just pixels on some view monitor in a completely different reality that functions entirely different from our own". Because no character outright says "We are digital toys for the entertainment of our human creators and programmers", there's nothing really more to say other than "Huh, that's sorta neat that the parallel is there. ... That's it? Does that change the story at all? Does it change our understanding of the characters or their circumstances? Does it make the story better? Maybe a LITTLE bit because it's masterfully written, but what's interesting is NOT the meta parallels. What's MORE interesting is the story itself." At least, that's how I approach it 😂.
I also argue that Kreia was still wrong, because again she believes that she has no choice anymore. In reality, she always had a choice: follow the Will of the Force, whether it's Light or Dark, or be sealed and prevented from doing anything. This meant the only way she could exercise her free will was via what the Force wanted. But just because the Force had that absolute a hold on her, it doesn't mean she was deprived of the ability to choose. She always had the choice, even if she disliked both choices. Her search for an alternative was fruitless, because even the main character could not permanently isolate herself from the Force. They canonically healed the wound in the Force, coming back to the thing they had torn themselves from to survive. Ripping themselves out of the Force was an act of survival more than anything.
Perhaps the Force orchestrated all of KOTOR 2 to reveal to Kreia that even in this edge case, even with someone completely isolated from the Force, the Force was still so completely and utterly absolute that the Force was still able to dictate what your character could and could not do. Then Kreia would be forced to reckon with that truth. Even in the ending where your character and Kreia make the wound in the Force bigger to eventually render the entire galaxy devoid of it, as the video mentioned, the connections between people which is the foundation for the Force's incredible power are still very much intact. In time, the Force would return and heal, regardless of what your character and Kreia might do.
Kreia gave up trying to choose, when faced with the grim reality that the only way to exercise her will was through the ways the Force allowed. And thus, she failed, because she misunderstood the truth: the choice was always hers. Obey, or be sealed. You want to exercise your will? Do it in X ways, or you will be shackled and unable to act.
You have the freedom to choose. If you want to act on that choice, you're limited by your surroundings, the reality of your existence. Kreia thought that the limitations meant freedom was impossible; she was always free to choose.
6:45 - You know this is a great channel when he doesn't spoil this. If you know, you know.
I love the underlying messages of these stories.
Will you make a video on the overall structure of the Jedi Order or a video on the Light Side like this one?
Lord of hunger, I believe is well beyond the bounds of humanity or any other living being we know of. And I think the old sith Lord from that game had a point. He's a wound in the force like a black hole and if left unchecked I think he would eventually suck all life out of the universe. He's almost like an anti-force
7:00 and yet years later, there are hundreds if not thousands of Miraluka by the time of Darth Malgus and SWTOR.
Nihilus was cool, but when i pmayed through Sion was my favorite character, being functionally immortal is the end goal of most sith anyway, a means to continue gaining power. Sion achieved that.
Yet he was trapped by his own mind. All that an he couldn't even beat kreia, got bullied by nihilus and was never strong enough to take the empire from revan or malak...so weak as to not even be mentioned or even noticed by Revan or Malak.
Then he simps for meetra and likes being under the boot of kreia as much as he pretends he doesn't
He's a slave and a true Sith lord like sidious wouldn't even call him a sith
Finally, a good video topic not RL world problem based and it's an hour long. Much needed for my Sunday! Thank you for the drop!
I shall watch this video when i play kotor 2. Brb
how's it going?
This my guy is a truly impressive deep dive and dissection. Very enjoyable. However, I do have a slightly different point of view. It wouldn’t be Star Wars without these different points of view (makes you wonder why the fandom is so toxic, or is that just because almost all of Star Wars fandom don’t really understand Star Wars 🤭). Anyway, Nihilus is the strongest Sith ever. The farmer, the man, is immaterial (sorry) really. He was just another victim of the entity that IS the Sith, Darth Nihilus. In my humble opinion Darth Nihilus was briefly a tangible presence but he is pure dark force. Further, it is immaterial whether the force itself, light or dark, has sentience (I believe it doesn’t, it just is), the fact it acts on the universe, the galaxy, every living being is what matters. That is what makes the dark force entity, that crossed over to living world for a time, the most powerful and devastating Sith there has ever been. Nihilus’ first victim, the farmer, is what resulted in him becoming a Sith. The entity exists with or without a living host to destroy.
You were lyrically poetic when you likened Nihilus to an Empire without the facade. That is exactly it. Nihilus is dark force, infinitely powerful, perhaps no sentience to actively choose to be a compulsive bringer of death through a hunger that is never satisfied. The entity does not have weaknesses, nor realisation that a facade is necessary to gain enough power to become self-reliant. It simply is self-reliant and powerful than all. What gives the entity Nihilus substance is the fear and all conquering effect it has on life, the transfer of life from victims to it. Nihilus is essentially the perfect evil, unfettered by pride, having no weakness or feelings, possessing vast force power. The most successful Sith ever. Single focus, never distracted, always gets the job done. It doesn’t change anything that there is nothing to rule over once all has been consumed. Ruling over anything was never a goal, the consumption is the goal with a 100% success rate. No need to worry about not getting recognition for his prowess, that is a weakness suffered by lesser beings.
I suppose it’s possible that Nihilus, having consumed the farmers soul, was like adding sentience to a force entity. This could be the source of its seemed desire to retain a foot in the living galaxy. Realising its host body was being destroyed, it imbued its uniform with its spirit. This could be argued to be the entity’s desire to be seen to be feared. A dark force entity can drain the life of everything, but where is the fun in that if they can’t see you coming? Much better to instil great fear prior to certain death, to sweeten the kill?
14:30 How is that not human? Its one of humanity base needs. Hunger. It would be like if he became the embodiment of fear, and going "totally not human."
When you say embodiment, you make it human. He isn’t the embodiment of anything, he just Is Hunger
The crazy thing about the power of the Dark Side is it's limits. In raw power, it seems limitless, but in truth, it comes at a huge cost physically, mentally, emotionally, and the materialistic power that is gained will never be satisfactory to the user. It's a constant state of suffering, and it actually enslaves it's users despite the Sith doctrine believing that their chains are being broken with that power. Where it ultimately leads is death by the sword, and usually the sword of ones own apprentice. The more powerful a Dark Side user becomes, the more they degenerate physically as well. Also, it comes with a constant paranoia, and the fear of death itself. The Jedi make peace with life, death, and their own limitations. In fact, they embrace the realities of nature, and fight against their darker desires instead of giving in to them. Even the best Jedi are just as flawed as anyone else, but they accept it, and constantly work to become better Jedi spiritually, and that goes far beyond following the Jedi Code or dogma. That's partially why Qui-Gon was the ideal Jedi. The Force in Star Wars is not about Dark vs Light. There is no reference to a Light Side in the original or Prequel trilogy films. It's more like a case of corruption vs nature. Living within the natural progression of life, and not being weighed down by ones more primitive (lizard brain) desires, urges, or emotions is what George Lucas meant by finding balance in the Force. The Dark Side is a perversion of nature. It would be similar to a terminal disease. The Sith have a parasitic relationship with the Force itself.
Eh, I don't think there's anything inherently primitive about corrupted desires - not many lizards have died of hubris, and in fact, that might be a uniquely human (and thus incredibly advanced) cognitive ability. The Enlightenment idea that progress is inherently good is deeply flawed. But other than that, I completely agree with everything you said.
28:00
What is that from? I could swear I've seen it somewhere.
i personally think that je'daii and the pre ajunta paul sith and what i recall of the witches of dathomir likely had the best view of the dark side not as some evil aspect of the force or just a tool to control or destroy but more a aspect of nature/life and such where the jedi made the corrupted view of the darkside became the norm and widely spread
I personally always subscribed to ideas in which both the light and dark side are viewed as apart of life. 2 sides of the same coin, something that will always be (meaning no true destruction to either side) and the best way to deal with it is from a place of balance.
@@Eli-akad .
Yep least in mind set sure the Sith pure bloods were specialized in the Darkside for the most part but their mind set was still grey where look what happened to the je'daii when they lost the grey mind set and became the Jedi massive amounts of conflict and if I recall right had to abandon tython due their purest light side views causing tython to reject them if I recall correctly
@@dragonlord498 To be fair, Tython was engineered by the Kwa to protect their Great Temple, which could be used to near-instantly teleport to anywhere in the galaxy or destroy entire planets (maybe star systems), from the Rakata. The Je'daii (or the people who would go on to found the Order) were put on the planet as part of that project. And whatever special property Tython had that made it react to imbalance, it was clearly a temporary thing, as the planet did not react when the Jedi Order returned to Tython after the Great Galactic War.
@@samueldimmock694 those Jedi were more grey then some other Jedi such as those who started the witch hunts against ajunta pall and his followers from my understanding
@@dragonlord498 I can't comment on that, though I do question your description of the Hundred Years' Darkness as "witch hunts against ajunta pall and his followers." It was a massive war, plus nobody knows who started it.
But those Jedi who went to Tython aren't the only evidence I have that Tython had changed. During the New Sith Wars, a Sith Lord made her home base on Tython, and that fortress was still there, and a dark-side nexus point, when Darth Bane visited much later, suggesting that if there were force storms, they were fairly weak in response to a very strong imbalance.
20:11 what would happen if Nihilus ever found the queen of the stars Aboloth? Would she take him under her wing, would he ally with her, would they try to destroy each other?
I think Nihilus would see an opportunity for a snack and Abeloth would defend herself. As to who would win in a fight? No idea
Tough question. We know force/life drain works on her even from a user with less power in that field. But then, perhaps abaloth could use a mental trick on someone already basically broken to his own hunger.
Depends. Nihilus probably has lost all reason. Nihilus and Abeloth are both black holes. They would probably cancel eachother out. But Abeloth would probably win.
@@darkones4370 I'm not sure Nihilus was really as far gone as Kreia claimed, at least not mentally. The evidence I saw indicates that he is a cunning tactician and somewhat of a scientist, though crippled by his near-inability to focus on something so small and inconsequential as an individual - which would be no problem against Abeloth. I think that the initial clash would leave both of them shocked and frightened (either that or Abeloth would resist Nihilus, and he would just die), and each would seek to grow in power before fully committing to another attack. Who would win that conflict in the end, I'm not sure - Abeloth can be in multiple places at once, but she gains power from fear and suffering, and those Nihilus has consumed feel neither - but I guarantee you that everyone else would lose.
23:40: Galactus never established an empire. BTW the introduction of him as a natural selection trial was fully unreasonable.
Minor Spoilers for the expansions for SWTOR ahead:
I always found Darth Vitiate/Sith Emperor's conception of an alternative way to align yourself within the Force to be incredibly interesting. As explained, it seems that it could be summarized as devotion to a conviction or ideal; the greater the will power and the stronger the belief, the more capable one could potentially become.
What is interesting in his new philosophy is that Light vs Dark side is, in his view, a naive and limiting false dichotomy: his perspective is that it's all the Force, and one should use the appropriate method of channeling it as the situation demands, whether through passion, or through calm, meditative focus. This is why his new Empire was capable of housing those we might call "Grey Knights" all together in wildly differing viewpoints and methodologies but were capable of coexisting perfectly fine.
Kreia's perspective on the force makes it seem like the force is comparable to SCP-5000. That thing that shows some eldritch entity or horror is behind the human subconscious and is connecting everyone together / the reason for everyone's empathy. And her approach to it is very similar to the foundation's approach upon discovering that. Lol. Makes me wonder if KotOR was inspiration for SCP-5000 now that I think about it.
Kreia and Abeloth are very similar but in complete different ways. Both are in some way in the dark and light side but in the end they became the greatest enemies of the force itself. Abeloth in creating pure chaos and Kreia in a destroyed force.
15:02 ANA THEME 🗣🗣🗣🗣
I'm so happy to be convinced that Traya was wrong all along. It enriches my real life
I will say it again your videos are so dam great you do stuff noone else does there's like 4 channels and they all do the same videos just change the title
Nihilus is basically The Lord of Frenzied Flame and Sion is The Dung Eater, that's what I've learned
Darth Sidious seems to be the only Sith Lord who actual enjoyed life. He enjoyed to torture people and dominate their minds. Every living being was a toy for him to play with. This is why it's clear to me that it was not anger and hatred that feed his powers in the dark side but rather his high force sensitivity and genius level of intellect that allowed him to study and master the powers in the dark side to perfection. He was even able to perform force healing. IMO he became what Krea would be proud of it because he was the ultimative Sith Lord that was not destroyed by his own power.
Except he literally was. He made Vader who he is and Vader destroyed him. And yes, Vader destroyed Sideous. Idc wtf the friggin mouse says.
@@CookiePieMonster He did not made Vader who he is. Vader betrayed his master because his love for his son was stronger which returned him back to the light.
Shaping the Future is True Power. You don’t solely need the Dark Side for this
Bro sounds like capitalism 24:24
🤡🤡🤡🤡
@@darmhokThey hated Jesus because He spoke the truth.
Malak would have beaten nihilus. Nihilus wasn't that powerful at all. Sure his potential was unlimited but he never got there
And before anyone trie to say his force drain would kill malak just remember. Nowhere and I mean nowhere in kotor does it ever say it's can't be resisted.
Also let's remember that anakin and dooku each were able to stop an equally powerful force drain ability in their own day
19:03 hey! Vsauce here 😂
23:46 Kraya feeling kinda cold 👀
Please do a video on Jason solo or Darth cadus
Great episode.
One's more the sith will rule the galaxy and we shall bring peace
I think its safe to say that the force is inherently a good thing, while its dark side is a perversion of its will. However, I'd argue that despite what the sith "believe", the force also manipulates them, perhaps even more so than the jedi (the illusion of control is what I'm referring to).
I am however completely enthralled with the idea of living independent of the force, and the hypothetical idea of killing the force is even more intriguing. It seems that theres a path there somewhere without the disregard for life that seeks independence and peace while not forcing the utter destruction of the force itself. Complete detachment. However the force is an ambiguous thing and its not clear if the force in each being is the equivalent to a "soul". What happens when you are severed from the quintessential things that influencea and shapes all life? I'm not sure. For one you would be utterly undetectable to force users, which may be a great advantage (unless they know what they are looking for and are skilled enough to sense a "void" when not actively engaged in looking for it). Its a neat idea and i never considered thay this was a darkside path
I don’t think it’s safe to say that at all. I do not believe the force is in and of itself moral. It’s just force, to be bent either way.
I see no reason why the dark side is any more a perversion than the light side, outside of the fact that _I_ think the dark side is bad
@@christianmccauley7340 I would say that engaging in the destruction of sentient life just for the pleasure of it or for the pursuit of power, is not a good thing. Destruction itself is not necessarily bad, and is often necessary for life to prosper. When the ideology of the Sith/Jedi is applied, there's certainly a difference. The Jedi "obey" the will of the force (whatever that means) and the Sith see the force as something to bend to their own will. So either the force doesn't have a will (fits more with the Sith) and the Jedi are delusional, or the force has a will (the Jedi are correct) and the Sith either go against it's will or the Sith only believe that it's their own will when in fact the force uses them just as much as the Jedi.
@@christianmccauley7340 objectively though... You are correct. Destruction does not equal bad, and creation does not equal good. They are opposites that are necessary for each other to have balance
AAH-NA-FEH-MAH.
I admire you to make this Video most only see Kotor as unchangebl and foremost Keira as an selfless character. Thank you to debunk this.
Man literally too angry to die taken to the next level
Weird opinion, but Sidious didn’t win due to the dark side. Take away his force abilities and odds are he still could’ve become emperor and wiped out the Jedi. The only time he actually showed that he was a Sith Lord was when he schooled Maul and Savage.
He only won because the people around him were idiotic bureaucrats.
Replace him with any pre-bane era Sith however…
Exactly! Anyone who is smart enough can be Deceptive and treacherous. There is no need to even use the Force... Well, if Palpatine was non-force sensitive, he must not be Weak-Minded or the jedi would sense and foresee his Goals regardless.
It must've took palpatine a while to climb through the ranks of Naboo's Goverment to eventually climb the Ranks of the Galactic Senate.
Also yeah, don't be mistaken, there were plenty of Sith Infiltrators Pre-Bane, Especially between the KOTOR and SWTOR eras, where Vitiate sent Tons of Infiltrators ahead to prepare the galaxy for the True Sith Empire's Return... Like Softening up the Republic in the Senate, Sealing Tombs of Ancient Sith Lords, even Infiltrating the Jedi order itself.
The Sith have always been the masters of Betrayal and Deception, no matter what era.
@@galacticfirefly6060 Quite so. Though in those cases I imagine the force actually mattered (mind tricks and all that). Those eras did have fairly robust governments.
well, thats probably true for disney wars, but in legends he did alot more than just normal schemes. alot of what he did was use the force to gaze into the future to determine where to take the war and who to send there to create the right ripples for his ends. in two specific instances he actually forced CIS forces to retreat and sent commandos to save particular jedi because he foresaw that if they died right now that the jedi would discover his plots before it was too late for them, and the second time, because the jedi would be able to rally and escape before he could finish them off because the death of that jedi too early would mean dramatically greater caution from the order.
the details about the one were particularly sad. basically, obi-wan was about to be killed and Palpatine had a vision of the good timeline. obi-wan dies, which leads to Anakin discovering Sidious plot, rallying the jedi, defeating Palpatine and preventing the empire from ever happening.
lets also not forget he was the only force user in history to be capable of galaxy wide battle meditation.
so basically palpatine, was constantly using the force to predict the future and influence people galaxy wide almost non-stop to keep the right people alive and winning at the right times, and loosing and getting killed precisely when optimal. way more complex than just scheming around "idiot bureaucrats"
This is true to a small degree. Sidious still utilized his abilities in the force to help achieve his goals. The most obvious and straight forward examples were shows of power to place fear in his subordinates to ensure they remained in line. There are also smaller nuances to his abilities that assisted him being able to successful carry out his plan, however I can not give specific examples on this without going back to certain reference material. However I would say to look it up. Ur are mostly right, however the dark side definitely helped play a role. Remember it was the dark side of the force that kept the vision’s of the Jedi clouded so they couldn’t figure out what was going on until it was too late
Sidious did used the force but what makes him such a genius IMO is that he used it in the shadow such as clouding the visions of the jedi and telepathic force corrupt the minds of people to support him. After he became emperor he used a combination of telepathy and force dominating mind to control the imperial crownies from his palace while he dedicated himself to advance his powers in the dark side.
Great power, without the ability to control it, is not power at all. It's a liability
He can only eat a planet if there is enough force users there increasing the intensity of the force on that planet. Conflict drives force powers to be stronger, the greater the light the stronger the shadow.
Do a video on vitiate pls ❤
Read his force is connected to his mask. Mostly a dark sith ghost but alive
If I was force sensitive I'd def be a dark spider, unfortunately
I swear to God George Lucas was a Buddhist hippie, smoked a lot of weed and took Buddhist philosophy and turned it into science fiction.
I always thought that the ultimate goal of the dark side was to perfect the ultimate chocolate chip cookie? 🤔