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Comments
We can never be anything but enemies ever again.
Alex is on my side.
and as offended party I choose swords.
As spectator party, i demand both of you fight with nuclear bombs.
I don't have any of those things!
Yet!
Yeah man, total bros foreve--
Raise your steel, cuckold.
Kyle Katarn? Boring? SELF INSERT?
Aha! It seems the Sarlaac has turned!
-hefts up Steyr Aug 2000, then thinks better of it, goes prone and folds down the bipod, drawing a bead in Malk's face from across the oceans-
-somehow-
Name me anything about Kyle Katarn that differentiates him from Dash Rendar, Mara Jade, Corran Horn, or any other other of the regrettably dull characters polluting the Star Wars EU.
And being in a game that's decent doesn't mean they're not bullshit characters.
Also, that gun's never going to get my quickening.
Genre savviness. A sweet voice and characterization. And a better beard than you will ever grow.
No, they were awesome because they were fun and didn't take themselves too seriously.
Wait, wait...quoth the Gabe...
PFFFHAHAHAHA...
Look, I'll be the first to admit there's a lot of tripe in the EU, but this is one of the worse things you could hold up as the better half. Like, Callista-level worse.
>Genre Savviness
How does that differentiate him from Dash Rendar, Mara Jade, Corran Horn, or any of the other regrettably dull characters polluting the Star Wars EU
>A sweet voice
Bitch, first generation vocaloids have better voices
>And a better beard than you will ever grow
Bitch, my beard's sexier than his in a week.
^He also seems to thin Karen Traviss is a better writer than Troy fucking Denning.
Your what
An indestructible beard
Lightsaber roughly equal to Luke's. Self-taught as well. Kicked Jerec's ass only days after he got a sabre for the first time. The fight against him in Jedi Academy is exemplary of the man: he beats the shit out of you using fists, lightside, darkside and sabre, and when you finally "beat" him you just incapacitate him long enough to run away, scared shitless.
Clearly you've never seen Highlander. The advantage is mine.
In any case, all those things are cool, but they're all contingent on him simply being the protagonist of a game: an interactive medium. Nothing about it actually makes Katarn as a character interesting or compelling.
Kyle Katarn was an example of "Who's awesome? YOU'RE awesome! d-(^_^)z
I mean he was badass, but kind of generically badass. It was very appropriate for what they used him for, but he ain't exactly A-grade writing. He didn't really have enough non-gameplay time to have much writing.
I gotta change sides on the beard though. You don't knock the Katarn beard.
Oh, and I forgot beating a Kell Dragon to death with his bare hands.
You think your fangeekery can protect you from a .50 traveling at 1450/ms (+/- 10m/s, obviously) when it leaves the barrel? Hah!
Alright, consider the following: Kyle is one of the few Jedi who retains all of his badass, savvy characteristics throughout all of his appearances. Even when he's a Jedi, he's not all "wise and sagelike" like everyone else turns into. He actually remains something approaching approachable, unlike pretty much everyone else.
Also he's better than Mara because Jacen killed her but when he stabbed Kyle the guy just walked off whilst his back was turned.
^It's not that I don't like Katarn's beard. It's just... well, you didn't see the sexiness of college freshman Malk's beard.
and yeah, that's an issue I have with a lot of Star Wars EU beyond just the pointless complicating of the setting. There are so many self-insert characters with the most egregious being Corran Horn who got a card in the CCG that was modeled by the writer who created him. WHAT A COINCIDENCE!
^Every single argument of yours is how badass he is, not how good of a character he is. Just sayin'.
Kyle is entertaining because he says funny things.
More specifically, he says what the player is usually thinking in a sarcastic vocal tone, which validates my thoughts and makes me feel happy and amused.
why are you people measuring characters by their achievements and not by how much they contribute to the story
>Star Wars
>Story
I see my own beard everytime I look in the mirror. I am more than qualified on this matter.
>Disses Persona
>Says we shouldn't care about Star Wars' story in the same day
Your honor, there's no way this isn't justifiable homicide.
fuck, i don't care for persona and even i'm considering swimming to australia to kill him
temporary truce, Malk?
This, basically.
Come at me, gentlemen.
My post was halfway serious, by the way.
Kyle Katarn is written with the experiences of the players in mind, so he's empathic to your struggles via dialogue. This is probably a large part of the reason people like him -- he provides a more emotive link between the player and the game by joining the player in their feelings about whatever obstacles come your way.
He's not an especially unique character, no does he have particular depth. But he's an ex-Stormtrooper gone Jedi gone whatever gone Jedi again with the Best Beard, and he's thinkin' what I'm thinkin' more often than not. It's amusing and provides a more human touch to the games.
Madass has a very good point. There's something satisfying about opening a door to see a giant spinning contraption I'm going to have to jump on and run across in time to jump off the other side before I fall to my death and hearing Kyle verbalise what I'm thinking.
That might make him a good viewpoint for a player in a vidya, but it doesn't make for a compelling character in the multimedia franchise that is Star Wars.
I'd say the reason I personally find him compelling is because he's so different; a lot of the good guys eventually lose a lot of their initial charm as they "develop" into different characters as time goes on. Look at Luke for the biggest example: he was pretty naive and eager in the first film, but his heart was in the right place. Compare to even Return of the Jedi: he's matured a lot, wisened up and he's a lot more thoughtful. Kyle doesn't really do that. He's pretty much the same guy as when we first met him, or at least as he was in Dark Forces II; sarcastic, savvy, competent, friendly, and he still has those moments where he can absolutely lose his shit and wreck somebody (using both Light and Dark powers, natch). That really appeals to me, as, aside from Sora, Kyle was one of the vidja game characters I grew up with, and bitter, cynical Legionnaire always finds himself going "awwww shit yeaaah" whenever Kyle comes up in something new.
tl;dr legionnaire acts really gay and hasn't got any worthwhile opinions so just ignore him
Well yeah, but I think this is where a lot of people (including the vast majority of game designers) fall short on their perspectives about what makes an effective character in a video game.
The same way a literary character isn't necessarily a good cinematic one, or a good cinematic one isn't necessarily a good poetic one, none of those perspectives in writing guarantee (or even necessarily err towards) a good character in context of video games. I'd argue that while literary character theory can definitely be used to make a character strong in context of a video game, there's some method of use we're still yet to master.
Kyle Katarn is an excellent example of a character being used with the medium in mind. In a book or film, he'd be entertaining and likable at best. In a video game, on the other hand, he becomes one of the most well-loved characters of the early-2000s generation of PC gamers. He interacts with the medium in a way that makes him engaging to play as, and that's probably the most important factor in any playable character in a video game.
We should definitely be critical of video game characters, like characters from any medium, but we also have to realign our standards. We're no longer dealing with a set of scenarios that are 100% predictable and plotted for the audience -- the narrative is now variable, even in a very linear game. I think trying to apply standard characerisation approaches to video game characters is the major factor in most of them being pretty bad. A video game, barring a few specific genres and examples, is incapable of carrying the some kind of narrative a book, film, poem or whatever does.
Kyle Katarn is basically a decent, entertaining character on his own merits, but he's an excellent example of using one simple technique to bridge the gap. He's a character that can only really exist properly in a video game because his strength is that he uses the medium to connect to the player. Without that context, he's an okay copy of Han Solo with a lightsaber -- with that context, he provides some of the best gaming experiences of the late 90s/early 2000s.
/gamedesignwank
The problem is that Katarn's not really a character, even by vidya standards. He's just a sarcastic voice we can project ourselves onto. It might make for a good game experience viscerally but it doesn't make for a superior storytelling experience.
To know that, we'd have to define a good game experience and a good storytelling experience.
The issue is that the latter is subject to its medium, but the former can follow specific standards. Like I said at the beginning of my last post, what applies to other mediums doesn't necessarily apply to video games. This is the continuous mistake of game designers and game consumers alike. Video games are broad as a medium, and they can err towards the expression of other mediums, but they can never be entirely literary or entirely cinematic.
And you should probably play Jedi Outcast. He's by no means an especially deep character, but he's certainly a character -- far from a blank slate, in any case. Mind you, I've not read any books where he appears, and it's entirely possible he's a different character across mediums.