Jedi Survivor Rambles

spoiler warning for the ending of jedi survivor.

i finished the game and thought the ending sucked ass. i wrote a bunch to some friends and have adapted it to a longer rant here.

the game presents the jedi as unambiguously good (even when they have moments of "darkness"), and bode's betrayal as unambiguously bad (even tho he was caught in a bad system) which is not a coherent moral position or consistent with the rest of the game.

after killing bode and seeing the credits and then reentering the world, if you talk to merrin, cal says "bode says he did everything in service is protecting his kid" and merrin says "a poor excuse" and cal says "yep" as if he was secretly delighting in betraying them when we know he was not! he was deeply hurting and trapped by an evil system designed to pit people against each other.

cal is somehow righteous in anger that bode lured them to the imperial base to destroy the man who has trapped them when cal's entire story at the start of the game was a driving force of violence and destruction aimed at the empire???? bitch please, every dead imperial is a win! you know this, and demonstrate it by slaughtering roughly 5000 storm troopers in the course of the game.

don't give me that "cal learned his lesson" bs, at no point in the story did he learn that violence against the empire is bad, merely that you need to balance your resistance with community.

the final confrontation happens in front of bode's kid and while the game is very obviously trying to say that bode has fallen to the dark side, this is classic cop tactics of escalate a situation unnecessarily. why do they think confronting bode with weapons drawn IN FRONT OF HIS KID will make him see reason? they have the laser arrays, they can travel to tannalor at any time. bode has rejected his deal with the empire, so he can't betray them again without endangering himself.

give him some time, or if you absolutely must tell him you know the route, say so and then leave. cuz he also can't leave without you seeing. don't put yourself between him and his kid (literally the single reason he did any of this) and expect him to do anything other than fall apart.

they're fuckin holding their weapons and saying "put your weapons down, bode." fuck you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you want to come in peace, leave your weapons in the ship you fucking assholes!

okay so they decide to fight him, they go toe to toe and beat him. he pulls out a gun at the same time as cal and pulls the trigger but it doesn't fire. REMEMBER THAT HIS KID IS STANDING RIGHT BEHIND CAL. cal has him dead to rights and shoots him in the shoulder, knocking bode's gun away. cal could say "it's over, you're coming with us." but instead cal walks up and directly in front of the kid shoots him point blank to kill him???

and then the rest of the cutscene has kata not crying at all, acting pretty chill about the whole ordeal, saying "yeah i'm fine", and merrin giving a fine but wholly inappropriate speech her to about how hard it is to live with the loss of your parents and how you can still move on. like thanks asshole, i'm glad you murdered my dad in front of me, kidnapped me, and are now telling me to get over it.

so now what? they're just gonna raise kata as a kid? this terrorist/resistance fighter and his girlfriend who mostly do guerrilla warfare? or any of the drunks at the local bar? kata's life has become not just worse but completely fucked for the next 10 years.

the writers seem to think that this is sad but that the kid will bounce back quickly, when she's been deeply viciously traumatized and will likely never recover because star wars doesn't have a single therapist in the entire galaxy and her "parents" are emotionally stunted adults who had the same exact violence visited upon them as children.

it's hard to not read this as copaganda. the jedi really are cops and this ending is a perfect demonstration: blame people instead of systems, ignore your role in escalating, react violently at every opportunity, and then paint yourself as the victim.

the entire thing churns my stomach and has completely soured me on the series.