I’ve been looking forward to the Leviathan part of the game since the very start because it’s when everything changes and it hits me in the feels every damn time. This is the part of the game that completely blew my mind when I was 14 years old and I still love it to pieces over a decade later.
Everything starts when you leave whatever planet had the third Star Forge map piece and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Saul Karath’s ship, the Leviathan, yanks you out of hyperspace and everyone on the Ebon Hawk is about to be very screwed. We get about five minutes to come up with an escape plan aka: picking a teammate to come save our skins. I think that I usually use Canderous or HK-47 here but I made Twitter pick for me this time so Jolee got his marching orders. He wasn’t quite as easy to use for this as the tank that is Canderous but I just whirlawinded everyone who got in my way and ran away when there was too many of them and it worked out just fine.
But before that… torture! Because how else will we know how evil Saul Karath is now? No but for real, I like playing through this section even though it’s just dialogue choices. Karath pulls aside Bastila, Carth, and my character for special attention and interrogation. I’ll have you know that I walked a fine line between being defiantly snarky but also a good little light-sider. It’s harder than you’d think in these games. Watching Carth get tortured also hurts my heart a lot because HE’S MY SPACE HUSBAND and Saul Karath is a Very Very Very Bad Man.
It’s all okay though because Jolee saves us and now the trio is marching off to the bridge because of… some convenient plot reason and Canderous is leading the rest to get the Ebon Hawk. EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE FINE. (It’s not.)
Obviously Saul Karath is waiting for us on the bridge and it takes a few tries but we kick their butts and then, with his dying words, Saul Karath ruins everyone’s day. Namely Carth’s. Like… really ruins his day. He’s poised to completely lose it when Bastila convinces him that we really need to leave now before Malak arrives and—oh wait. Darth Malak gets there and then he ruins my day.
I WAS REVAN THE WHOLE TIME. :O
Listen. It’s cheesy and blindingly obvious in hindsight but I will insist that this was amazing and completely blew my mind when I first played this game as a teenager. A lot of that had to do with gendered expectations that (at the time) the genre had repeatedly reinforced. Guys got to be the big heroes and had the larger roles while women were supporting characters. It never occurred to me that the game, which allows you to pick your character’s gender, would reveal that your character was the big bad Sith Lord that half the galaxy feared and the other half worshipped. That would just be crazy talk. This, by the way, is why I will always insist that KOTOR is a better story when Revan’s a woman. It’s more unexpected and more interesting for the brilliant and inspiring Jedi General who wins the war and then falls to the dark side to be a woman. It’s so good, folks. It’s just so good! (The Jedi Council is still super screwed up though. That never changes.)
Obviously I have to duel Malak and it’s not terribly tricky because he gets hurt and runs away and then fights you again and Bastila bursts in like a Big Damn Hero and holds him off so that you and Carth and the rest of the gang can get away so Carth’s Really Bad Day can continue. Once we make the jump to hyperspace, there’s a team meeting and the revelation comes out that I’m Revan. Basically everyone handles it fine. Mission, Juhani, T3, and Zaalbar are surprised and then move on. Canderous’s lowkey hero-worshipping intensifies. Jolee laughs because he knew the whole time. (Also he was still in his underwear during the conversation, oh video games.) HK-47’s programming reveals that he used to belong to Revan and that Malak was the original meatbag. And then there’s Carth. Carth Onasi who feels so hurt and betrayed even though it’s not your fault the Jedi Order messed with you. Eventually he grudgingly accepts it but he’s not pleased about things. It’s going to be okay… it’s just going to be really awkward for a while.
Whew. And with all of those revelations done… we still have to find the last piece of the Star Forge on Korriban. Korriban, by the way, is the Sith world. How could this possibly go wrong?
