Why is Kreia so well liked? (Spoliers galore)

I only played through KOTOR 2 once, and that was in the last year so maybe I just lack the nostalgia, but with austin making the claim of her being one of the 'most interesting characters in star wars or games as a whole', I really have to ask...

How is that even possible?!

My memory of the game is imperfect and I never went down the evil rout, but nothing about kreia's character impressed me. From the time you meet her in the space station it's absurdly apparent that she's no good. (As blind, robed women in abandoned mining stations usually are.)

As the story progresses I realized she was actually a serious antagonist and I couldn't do anything about it which sucked. A dark lord of the sith got to just roll with me and my crew in the final missions of the game like it was nothing. I found that really silly. If the reveal of her as evil was her major plot point then it was very badly done.

Please enlighten me. I don't have a better character to submit at this time (Although Visa Marr was kind of cool if we want to discuss ladies-wot-are-of-grey-morality.) I just want to know what is so interesting about kreia of all people.

What! She tried to destroy the Force itself! Burned by the Jedi and the Sith, she was all "fuck those dogmatic assholes, I'm gonna take away their toy."

When the council turns on you and she shows up to simultaneously save you and reveal herself to be not quite good either, it was a way more intriguing turn than finding out you're Revan in KOTOR1 (but that was also pretty fucking rad). Speaking of which, she was also Revan's former Master.

So yeah, she's pretty goddamn awesome.

See... to me Revan's reveal, while not at all memorable, was a twist that I didn't see coming. Kreia killing the jedi masters, not a twist at all! From the moment she pops up you know she has bad intentions and yet you allow her to run with you because of a strong Force plot device between the player and her.

But i'm also realizing that I didn't clue into the nature of her plan for the force, I knew she didn't like it but I assumed she was just going to kill a bunch of jedi because of it. SO is there an ending where I just help her kill the force? Because that could be a cool ending.

You wanna bring up Visas as grey morality when Kreia is literally the walking embodiment of grey morality and calling her just a Sith Lord is a disservice to the character. Kreia is a character who becomes known as the Lord of Betrayal. You might think that is because she betrays people but it's because she's been betrayed multiple times. Revan, her pupil, betrayed her when he went off to fight in the wars. The Jedi betrayed her when they stripped her of rank after Revan peaced out. So she found the Dark side and two other Force Wounds, Sion and Nihilus, whom she trained. Sion and Nihilus betrayed Kreia and stripped her of the Force. Naturally this leaves Kreia rather pissed about the Force and those who use it. Kreia is someone who understands that the black and white morality of the Star Wars universe is incredibly idiotic and that the place would be better off without this supernatural power twisting and warping people. The Sith who use it are comically evil while the Jedi are no better than the Sith at being powerful assholes they just have the moral stick up their ass to assume that what they are doing is for the greater good.

Kreia then spends the entire game deconstructing and informing Meetra (that's you) about choice and repercussions and how simply breaking things down to 'good' and 'evil' is a childish way of looking at things. Sure, you can give the homeless guy money and feel good about it, but when the guy gets beaten and mugged because of your actions are you going to own up to that as well. Kreia is a masterful manipulator - she lies to you pretty directly early on because of how she phrases it, and then spends the rest of the game influencing you and your companions.

Kreia is not a villain. Nor is she a hero. She's a morally complex character constantly getting you to think and act critically. She's jaded, yes, but she never acts as some cliche evil villain or obviously evil thing like the other two Darths in the game. She knows that there's really no saving her at this point, but that Meetra can be her greatest success. And by the end of the game it becomes clear, both in story and in gameplay, that Kreia's point is right. That relying overly on the Force is itself a weakness as you, a character who willingly turned away from it, are overpowering people who drink the Force like it is Kool Aid. Yes, Kreia might be selfish, yes she's manipulating you for the entire game, and yes she will chastise you CONSTANTLY no matter what you do, but she's doing it because of her moral complexity and because she firmly and rightfully believes that her actions and endgoals are the right thing to do.

But she kills the Jedi masters you saved and is the final boss so nope, she's just a Sith Lord and evil.

@mikemcn: That's the thing though: you might expect her to be evil, but the surprising part is that she's maybe not that evil. Or at least she's not cartoonishly evil. Her anger at both the Jedi and the Sith I thought was conveyed well, especially when a lot of the events leading up to that moment put you at odds with both sides. She's very relatable; her ambition the result of frustrations taken too far. Good intentions and all that.

It's one of the great things about both KOTOR games. They got into the issues with all these codes Force-users live, die, and kill by. Revan always seemed like the posterchild for that, while characters like Jolee Bindo and Kreia more heavily delved into it in the games.

I dunno if there's an ending where you aid her, but there very well may have been one planned. KOTOR2 is maybe the worst/best example of a game that could've been truly incredible if they didn't have to cut content (and maybe also polished it up some).

The thing is she doesn't have bad intentions. The galaxy would absolutely be better off without The Force.

Maybe i'll do another playthrough looking for this stuff, clearly people are pretty keen on her.

Kreia is interesting because she doesn't view the Force as some mystical mumbo jumbo about bringing the universe together, how all living things are connected: she sees the Force as a cancer that is slowly killing everything by virtue of what Force wielders can do. She doesn't know if killing the Force is going to kill the universe, but she thinks she has to try, because she thinks that in a universe without the Force, people are truly free to claim a destiny of their own. In the universe she lives in, people are black and white and there is no room for nuance. A Sith Lord can never tell the truth, just as the Jedi can never lie. Sith Lords are always morally wrong, and every decision a Jedi makes is morally righteous, no matter how fucked up it might be. This kind of dogmatic thinking is what starts real wars in real life. She's essentially, through trying to kill the Force, bringing nuance to the universe. To open people's eyes and get them to think for themselves.

I don't think she wants the universe to end, but she's seen how the Force works in cycles and she's trying to break that by removing it entirely. Sith Lords rise to power, Jedis rise to stop them. Jedis reign over the universe, Sith Lords rise to conquer. It's never ending and she's tired of it. And the only thing that makes them fight in the first place is the Force (well, it's two very different ways of seeing the universe, but she's human and therefore prone to error). Take out the Force, take away the Force power, take away the Jedi and Sith's reason for fighting, stop a whole lot of wars and save a fuckload of lives. She's an Anti-Villain more than a villain.

That's my take on her anyhow, from what I remember of KOTOR II.

If this isn't an ending choice she seems a bit cutoff at the knees. Hopefully they worked that option in.

The "twist" of her being evil was easy to spot, because that wasn't the actual twist at all. I don't know how, but a lot of stuff flew right over your head, I guess. Sure, she kills the Jedi Masters, but more important is the "why." She didn't do it to achieve more personal power for herself, or out of raw anger. She is not a Sith.

It can very easily be argued that Kreia is the actual damn hero of the story while you're the naive goody-two shoes that ruins everything with your child-like concept of right and wrong that simply doesn't apply when reality comes knocking. At the very least she's grey as fuck. She's the only one that seems to have realized that all force users, Sith and Jedi alike, are actually really shitty asshole people that should really very much not exist at all, thank you very much. So, she decides to try and murder the force itself, since that's the only way to permanently get rid of these people who impose their wills and ideologies on others and have this weird supernatural power to back it up. She's 100% right in doing so, imo. She's less "Dark Lord," and more Peter Capaldi's version of The Doctor. She knows what's right, and what's ultimately best for the most people, and she isn't going to shed any tears about the people who have to die to get there, because why the fuck should she? They're all assholes!

Kreia is the best character in either of those games, and one of the best game characters of all time. You need to play through the game again. Maybe take notes this time or something.

@donchipotle: Fuck. After reading this post, I'm gonna have to go back and replay KOTOR 2. Last time I played it, I was maybe 15 and could not pick up on complex morality like that.

Just a pro-tip for gaining influence with Kreia, she doesn't care about Light or Dark side choices, she just wants you to learn from her and her lessons. Whatever answer you give her that's along the lines of "Yeah, you're right. I'll do that." or "I'll consider what you've said." will usually be your best bet. It took me a few playthroughs to really understand what her deal was.

I really regret that they've cut the possible ending with Atris. Would fit a lot better with the theme.

She's not evil.

I viewed that as her taking revenge for their behaviour (or lack thereof) during the Mandalorian Wars and them wanting to kill you/strip you of the force. If Kriea can be viewed as evil through her actions then the Jedi, with their bullshit about not involving themselves with the war, are just as guilty. I also viewed her as the last boss being her final sacrifice to make sure that as her pupil you passed her final test. It's one of those clichés that the student must overcome their master etc etc. To be fair I played it with the restored content mod so that may colour my thoughts on the matter

This is a good topic.

I'd still say she's morally grey. Her goal is most probably maybe a good thing. As far as I recall.

I don't remember seeing the twist coming - but I only played it soon after release.

I do however clearly remember seeing the Revan twist in KOTOR coming. But that was in some way more satisfying since I wasn't 100% sure, but pretty sure, and then I ended up being right. Looking back they make it fairly obvious on the end of the prison ship level, if you pause and think about it after that part you'd figure it out eventually.

Anyway, I like Kreia.

Also most importantly she "isn't" a Sith.

KotOR2 raises an important question after the events of KotOR1. What caused Revan to leave. Was it the allure of the Dark Side, or were the Jedi Masters of that era so terrible he had no desire coming back? Where the old teachings of that era so strict, so devoid of human understanding that they made the Jedi Order of that time a serious threat, because no normal humans could live up to the rules and regulations they demanded. That in it's own way, the Jedi Order of Revan's time was creating more Sith then any evil relics/ancient temples/evil threats by breaking it's students, then refusing to own up to the failures of it's own Masters, instead choosing to blame the Padawans/Knights for not meeting expectations.

Kreia wasn't evil. She didn't kill the Jedi Masters because she hated them, or wanted revenge, or anything petty like that. She killed them because in their arrogance, and refusal to adapt, they were a massive threat to the galaxy healing after the Mandalorian/Sith Civil Wars. Their outright refusal to understand what was happening, and why it was happening, instead choosing to stick to their guns was TERRIBLE for the galaxy, and she had to kill them to save it. Choosing to blame the Exile for their own failures, and yet again taking their frustrations out on her was just the last straw for Kreia, she realized the Jedi Order could not help save the galaxy, and was now just in the way, and needed to be dealt with.

To understand Kreia, you must look at her through the lens of what happened to her, and why she wants to train the Exile. She knows exactly what Revan found in the Outer Rim. She knows what twisted and corrupted his noble spirit, and saw what his true goal for the galaxy was ( preparing it for something. ). She knows that threat still exists, and still needs to be dealt with, and if anybody is going to do it they need to be taught how to do it. That's why she set up the events of the game. That's why she trained Sion. That's why she brought back all those enemies. That's why she took back the mantle of Darth Traya. Not because she wanted you to become Sith, but because she wanted to make sure she made you strong enough to face whatever hid in the dark places of the galaxy.

Even her most controversial teaching, that you must use your friends as human shields entirely makes sense in the context of what she's preparing you to face. You aren't going to be some podunk Jedi Knight going world to world solving problems, you will be facing down the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known, and of your party, only you can honestly handle it, being disconnected from the Force as you are ( you never really reconnect to the Force. As the game describes it, you can still use it, but you use it like a tool, like a gun or a sword, rather then a part of your body like it used to be. ). If you fall because you tried to save Atton, or Kreia, or Bao Dur, then you fail the entire galaxy, and now everyone must suffer the price of that failure. It's better to let them die now so you can finish your mission, then put yourself at risk before the final battle. She wanted to harden your heart now, so you could deal with the loss you'd inevitably face along the way, rather then potentially lose your cool.

She's not a nice character, but she's definitely not an evil character. Every single one of her goals, from her training, to her planned suicide existed for one purpose. To make you the strongest you could be, right before you took on the Emperor, in the hopes you'd actually be able to pull it off and save everyone.

@nals: Is any of this ever actually made clear, though? I've played KOTOR 2 a lot and I never remember it being very easily understandable exactly what Kreia's motivations were. What was present in the game was, instead, a perpetually grumpy and cryptic old lady who chastised you for virtually anything you ever did. She makes it clear later on that she despises the force, and why, but the larger explanation of a greater looming threat isn't really there, as far as I remember. Sadly half-assed, like much of KOTOR 2.

I don't even think Kreia's morality could be described as grey. It's just impenetrable.

I'm about 15 hours into the game now. Kreia is very difficult to read. Very mysterious and interesting. She's in a permanently bad mood, and has never said a single positive remark. So bitter. It's remarkable how disjointed and weird the storytelling can feel in this game, yet its so well written. I don't know if she's my favorite character, but she's the one I want to know the most about.

I think that Kreia is interesting because there are very few characters like her in the Star Wars universe. Star Wars, at it's core, is a fairy tale. There is good, there is evil. Good will vanquish evil and the day will be saved. Both Knights of the Old Republic games already subvert that by allowing you to choose one or the other and making evil triumph, at least in your own personal narrative.

Now Kreia. She says "fuck that noise!" and throws everything you knew about the Star Wars universe under the bus. There is no good or evil. To her the Jedi and the Sith are two powers who are equally damaging to the galaxy, locked in ancient teachings and refusing to learn from their mistakes, destined to manipulate the galaxy forever from either end of a binary moral spectrum. The source of their power, The Force, is something that Kreia must destroy so the galaxy can fall to a sort of moral equilibrium where arbitrary ideas of right and wrong could stop tearing everything to pieces which she witnessed through her own experience with the Jedi and her own students, Revan,Sion, and Nihlus, as well as the three wars that happen very close together in that era of the universe. If people were free to choose without the Jedi or Sith teachings influencing them and their morals, would the galaxy not be a better place? That question and the answer to it is the root of her motivations.

Kreia is attempting to teach The Exile, not to make him or her fall to the Sith or become a Jedi, but to make them realize that morals are more grey than Jedi or Sith .She probably knows full well that when she faces The Exile in battle she will die, and that the best way to get the Exile to fight with her is to revert back to Darth Traya since a Light Side Exile would see a threat to the galaxy and a Dark Side Exile would see a threat to their personal power. Kreia dies hoping that the Exile has learned that these Light and Dark binaries are not the truth of things, and that they will impart these lessons to others. I would guess it would be the reformed Jedi Order/Sith Lords that you have to opportunity to train throughout the game (Atton, Bao-Dur, Mira, Handmaiden, disciple), and through these teachings the galaxy would slowly reach that equilibrium state I mentioned before.

The game even does a good job of making Revan seem like a much more grey character than I expected it to. Revan was a Jedi, then a Sith, then (at least for me, by the end of KotOR) a Jedi who saved the Republic. Boom. That's it. Well.. no. Revan was displeased with the Jedi's lack of action and went to war with the Mandalorians. He saved the Republic by doing so, so was he not ultimately right even though he had to make some decisions that the Jedi considered evil? Well of course the Jedi would say no, he was not right, but the reality was not that at all. Thus begins the Jedi Civil War which was again dominated by the Jedi and the Sith when Revan was captured by Bastila Shan and Malak decided to go ape shit evil on everything. This was not Revan's intention, so after ending the war he leaves known space. All of this information is given to The Exile through Kreia. She subverts two assumed truths you have while playing The Sith Lords, one about the broader Star Wars universe, and one about the player character in a game that many people have a great fondness for.

It not like characters like Kreia haven't existed before, it just that Kreia exists in a universe that is defined by it's moral binaries. You have Luke vs. Vader, Obi-Wan vs Anakin. Everything in Star Wars is good and bad, and sometimes people who are good become bad. There's very little grey there. Kreia adds a refreshing amount or moral ambiguity to a universe that has almost none.

ADDENDUM: I do believe the Kreia is still a villain, just a morally ambiguous one. I believe she is just as selfish as the Jedi and Sith are. She wants The Force destroyed, regardless of the consequences so the galaxy can meet her ideal. An ideal she has concluded to be right though her experience, the same way the Jedi have, the same way the Sith have. I also believe she knows this, thus allowing herself to be slain by The Exile, hoping they will in some way take up her mantle. I may be reading into it in a weird way but it adds a level or irony to her character that I love.

@clairvoyantvibrations: I think my problem with this is that, while I love the idea (as someone who isn't a huge Star Wars fan, probably, more than anything else) of someone who dismantles the false dichotomy of "Light Side" and "Dark Side" as two boring, cartoonish caricatures, Kreia herself is a caricature. She's every joke about moral greyness in video games given human form, where instead of good and bad, it's shit vs shit. She is unhappy with basically every decision, she twists whatever your response is as something that actually does grievous harm to the universe. It becomes as predictable in its own way. I like the idea of Kreia, but what you're actually shown of her throughout the game is a grumpy old lady who talks in riddles. Any additional depth to her character is something people bring to it after the fact, based on things only vaguely alluded to near the end, and something you never see come to fruition.

Underdeveloped. Like the game itself.

There's a nice big info dump at the end with Kreia where some of that pops up. If I recall correctly, that's where she touches on Darth Revan having chosen to go Sith in order to reinforce the galaxy against the "True Sith" that were biding their time in Unknown Space. Granted, this was like a decade ago, so I might be misremembering. I just remember absolutely loving everything she said, even if it did sort of feel like "we ran out of time so here's a fuckton of dialogue."

Before her turn, I got the sense she was just a jaded old Jedi. Thoughtful and world-weary like Jolee from KOTOR 1. Not the usual self-righteous goody-goody, and certainly not a vainglorious and conniving Sith. By the time the scene with the Jedi Council happened, I wasn't all that surprised that she was opposed to them, but it was still a shock to find out she was straight up a bonafide Sith Lord. That bit seemed a little "it was me all along" at first, but that feeling fell apart once it squared off against what you learn of her background and the sense you already had of her beliefs (which isn't just thrown away after she goes all dark eyes, but instead is taken to its extreme). What you're left with is a surprisngly compelling character, let alone a "villainous" one.

For real though, she was pretty evil. She's not entirely Darth Traya, nor is she entirely Master Kreia, but destroying the Force like she wanted to probably would've had devastating repercussions for life in the galaxy. I'm not entirely sold on that whole scheme just being an elaborate ruse to make Meetra fully internalize Kreia's philosophy. That said, I like to think of Meetra as Kreia's way out of that nuclear option. While she was set to condemn the galaxy to becoming a peaceful void, the Exile represented to her a chance for that dogmatic galaxy to get better without potentially killing all life.

Ehh, I think the caricature aspect is fair near the beginning of the game, but her depth is derived from more than inspirations from vagueness.

She seems curmudgeonly during most of the early goings, but later that grumpishness takes on an almost nuturing role. Less of a "you're wrong as fuck" and more of a "hey dumb-dumb, consider this angle." But I remember a lot of her dialogue playing into the sort of descriptions you're reading here, and most of it in fairly certain terms.

The game's over a decade old, so maybe we're all giving it too much or too little credit for what's actually there. Either way, the game definitely felt like it had a lot of unrealized potential. I wonder how those efforts to "restore" all the cut content have gone.

Like many things in KotOR2, the explanations are all on the female path. The male Exile path is practically anemic in comparison, and I barely consider it the same game.

Atton has 5 additional conversations with the female Exile, all going further into his backstory. He has a significantly more fleshed out redemption/corruption arc if you go female. He has an actual ending if you go female. You can actually figure out what he used to do and why he used to do it if you are female.

Sion as a male just appears three times and is vaguely threatening. If you are female though, he goes deeply into his backstory, Kreia's backstory, and why he does what he does. His actions cease being that of a crazy Sith Lord, and end as those of someone desperately trying to protect you, and your friends from Kreia, who he views as a horrific monster. His boss fight is entirely changed, with him basically killing himself to protect you.

As a male you get Brianna, who has a few conversations about the Handmaidens and what they do. As a female you get the Disciple, who entirely figures out what Kreia was up to, tries to explain some of it to you, has his own plans/machinations in place, has a ton of exposition about the state of the Republic, and what it's trying to do right now, and basically lets you in on how the galaxy is faring. He's deeply tied into the Kreia arc, and expands on her motivations.

Kreia has an additional SEVEN conversations with the female Exile, going into more detail on how her lost connection to the Force, her connections with her companions, their connection, and partially even Kreia's motivations. She views you as the daughter she left behind ( who is ironically very likely the Handmaiden ), and even almost tells you as much along the way. This causes her to be more motherly/explaining then she is on the male Exile path.

In comparison, the male Exile loses all that stuff for....an extra conversation with Visas where she says she loves him, and the Handmaiden, who talks a bit about Echani fighting. That's it. It's completely onesided, and I've never managed to finish a male Exile game because of it. The game was obviously made for female Exile's first, with the male Exile as a complete afterthought.

I would agree that this game was underdeveloped. Had they had even half a year more after the release of the first game The Sith Lords could have been so much more than it is. The other poster who relpied to you has it right though. The female story is much more fleshed out, which is probably why they chose Meetra Surik to be the canonical Exile in the actual fiction. Still total bullshit that the male playthrough is missing all this information.

I think where we diverge on this topic is that I am a huge Star Wars fan. I believe Obsidian did a fantastic job fleshing out the universe in a way fans don't see very often, and Kreia is at the heart of it. Sure she kind of just points out the "shades of shit" but that's something that universe needed back in 2004 and I would say still needs now.

Kreia is nuance in a world that has been characterized by its adherence to false moral absolutes. She is an existentialist (almost nihilist) who encourages you to embrace the absurdity of it all and imbue meaning on your own actions yourself. Her philosophy is at odds with both the light and dark side of the force and for that reason she seeks to destroy the force itself.

She's super-interesting.

And on top of it all, her character VO is delivered impeccably by a Shakespearean actress.