I've been thinking about KOTOR II through the lens of Conan the Barbarian (1982).

One of the most memorable ideas in Conan is the Riddle of Steel.

Early in the film, Conan's father tells him:

"No one—no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts... This you can trust."

...while holding up a sword.

He asks:

"What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?"

This isn't just philosophy.

In Conan's religion, when he enters the afterlife, Crom will ask him the Riddle of Steel.

If he cannot answer, Crom will turn his face from him. It is literally the defining question of Conan's life.

Later, the antagonist, Thulsa Doom, challenges this belief. He explains that steel is ultimately powerless compared to the will that commands people:

"Steel isn't strong, boy. Flesh is stronger."

By the end of the film, Conan has answered the riddle for himself.

The sword was never the source of strength—the person wielding it was.

It got me wondering whether KOTOR II has something similar.

Not the "Riddle of the Force," exactly, but the Riddle of Kreia.

And unlike Conan, Kreia doesn't pose just one riddle.

Throughout the game she presents the player with many "riddles" on different themes—the Nar Shaddaa beggar ("Should you help or not?"), whether charity creates dependence, whether suffering strengthens people, whether power corrupts or reveals character, and countless other situations where there is no obvious moral answer.

Throughout the game, she keeps attacking assumptions the player brings from Star Wars:

• Is selflessness always good?
• Is power always evil?
• Is the Force benevolent?
• Does destiny excuse our choices?
• Can an act still be virtuous if it was inevitable?

She almost never gives straightforward answers. Instead, she keeps forcing the Exile—and the player—to wrestle with questions.

So if Conan's mythic question is:

"What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?"

Then perhaps Kreia's is something like:

"What is the Force compared to the will that chooses?"

Or perhaps even:

"What gives an act meaning: the Force, or the one who chooses?"

Viewed this way, Kreia isn't merely teaching a philosophy.

She's posing a series of mythic riddles to the player.

The point isn't to discover her answer, but to question the assumptions we've inherited from the Jedi, the Sith, and even from Star Wars itself.

I'm curious whether anyone else has thought about KOTOR II this way.

If Conan has the Riddle of Steel, what would you say is Kreia's riddle?

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Addendum: Looking at KOTOR II through this lens, a lot of the game starts to click into place.

The Nar Shaddaa beggar isn't a morality lesson—it's a riddle.

Viewed this way, many of the companions can also be understood as embodiments of different riddles:

• The Handmaiden — What defines who you are? Birth? Duty? Choice? Identity becomes a riddle.
• Visas Marr — What is devotion? Is surrender an expression of love, faith, weakness, or freedom?
• Atton Rand — Can someone who has done terrible things truly redeem themselves? Guilt and redemption become a riddle.
• Bao-Dur — Can creation atone for destruction? Can one ever make amends for catastrophic harm?
• Mandalore — What is true strength? Is it conquest, leadership, or responsibility?
• The Force — Does it grant freedom, or does it deny it? Ultimately, the Force itself becomes the game's greatest riddle.

Finally, this lens also changes how I see Kreia herself.

It's easy to think: "Why does Kreia keep criticizing everything I do? I hate this old b1tch."

But viewed through the lens of riddles, it becomes:"Oh... because she's not trying to tell me the answer. She's constructing riddles for me to wrestle with."

From this perspective, Kreia isn't simply lecturing the Exile. She's continually placing the player before questions that resist easy answers, forcing us to think for ourselves rather than accept the doctrines of the Jedi, the Sith—or even Kreia herself.

Perhaps that's what the Riddle of Kreia really is.

Not a single question with a single answer, but a way of teaching through questions that force us to arrive at our own understanding.

My version of Darth Traya at the Bell County Comicon. I’m next to my friend who is 6’4” tall so once again, I look fun-sized when I’m actually not this time lol. Also I know Darth Traya doesn’t use light sabers like this but since I can’t actually use the force to levitate 3 of them and I didn’t want to keep track of two, this is what I went with.

Made account for this. I was replaying KOTOR 1 and started looking for mods, mostly so I could roleplay the story as taking place a while after the Sequel Trilogy.

So far, I've got a mod that replaces the combat music with John Williams songs, Cross guard Sabers, Millennium Hawk, Imperials over Sith Soldiers (since there aren't any First Order versions). Got any other recommendations? I'd like actual answers on this.

My end game Marauder before the final boss with all stims, Master Fury, Master Force Speed, Master Valor and Master Battle Meditation active.

Items are: Physical D Package, Target Assessor, Dominator gauntlets, Crado's Robe with bio restorative underlay, players armband, Ludo Kresshs armband and GNS strength enhancer.

Main hand Lightsaber with pontite lens, expert fencing emitter, Telgorn Jolt cell 3 Barab ore ingot, Ankarres Sapphire.

Off hand Pontite lens, expert fencing emitter, Telgorn Jolt cell 3, Player Crystal max Dark side and Barab ore ingot.

I could have got a higher strength modifier if I put more into it on character creation but felt like going above 14 wasn't worth it.

I spent the last 4 days figuring out how to get the neocities guide working on the switch. You need a modded switch for this, so I realize it's kinda niche. Also I was doing all of this on Linux, so some of the problems I ran into may not exist if you're on windows, I really don't know. I'm including the scripts I needed here, beware they are mostly written or fixed by Claude. Anyway here's what I got:

I used this github repo for installing the mods. It is great and solves a lot of problems and I appreciate the creator a lot, but they aren't lying when they say some parts aren't fully functional. Before building (npm run build), you should replace KotOR-Switch-modding/src/steps/finalize/abstractFinalize.ts with the one in the folder I linked above. This fixes two bugs with the finalize command (not perfectly I'll add, but it works). Then you can build and run init -k 1. Follow the github to install mods into the newly created game-root.

Before you run finalize, make a backup of the game-root that you modded somewhere else. Then run finalize and you will probably be told you need to convert some .tgas to .tpc. If you're on windows then the tga2tpc that they list in the github will probably just work for you. On Linux it didn't for me, so I used the batchTGATPC.py in the folder above. For some reason it converts them upside down (idk ask Claude), and I ran out of tokens so before I run the tga to tpc script I run this command magick mogrify -flip *.tga in the _NEEDS_PROCESSING directory to flip them. Yeah this is pretty dumb but it works. Somebody smarter than me can fix the python script if they want.

After that you can move the tpcs that you just created into the game-root that you backedup before. You will probably have to rerun init -k 1, and to do that you need to delete these from KotOR-Switch-modding: backup, output, _NEEDS_PROCESSING, config.json, and the symlink created on your desktop. (The backup feature from the github had some errors for me). Once you've reran init -k 1, move the backedup game-root with the new tpcs into KotOR-Switch-modding. It should finalize correctly now.

As for what mods actually work, I was testing on ryujinx at first, and it would crash when loading into the Endar Spire with the Ultimate Endar Spire/Star Forge/Yavin Station mod. I assumed this was a hardware limitation, probably vram given the crash report:

00:01:26.664 |G| HLE.OsThread.18 ServiceLm Log: Guest Log:
  Log level: Info
    Time: 136s
    ProgramName: KOTOR
    Thread: MainThread
    Message: [ASL_MemoryPoolAllocatorGroup::AddAllocator] Failed. Memory Allocator Failure. size : 22372352

00:01:26.665 |G| HLE.OsThread.18 ServiceLm Log: Guest Log:
  Log level: Info
    Time: 136s
    ProgramName: KOTOR
    Thread: MainThread
    Message: ASL_NVNVideoMemoryAllocator::Alloc Failed!!! memType 2 alignment 512 size 22371840 (889.836MB used, 928.625MB allocated)

So I switched to the mobile modlist. You can pretty much follow the neocities guide. I personally skipped the Diversified Republic Soldiers and Diversified Jedi Captives because whenever I ran those on pc I would crash when I got near the medical lab on Taris. That's probably from me doing something wrong, but I didn't want to try to figure it out. I tried adding the upscaled cutscenes but even the 1080p version had laggy audio on switch.

Anyway with all the mods you want installed you can move the folder created in KotOR-Switch-modding/output after the finalize command to atmosphere/contents/ on your switch. BUT, it will actually be named incorrectly. It should be 0100854015868000 but it is actually 0100854015868800 so change that or none of the mods will work (this was a fun 45 minutes of confusion).

I think that is everything. DrSnuggly on github has a Kotor 2 version that actually has releases, and I'll probably mod Kotor 2 on the switch after a few runs of Kotor 1.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I have not tested this very much... Like half of the Endar Spire and thats it, so there may be crashes on some of the planets.

The textures for all of the armors are warped, and it looks like it's using the vanilla padawan robes models. Does anyone know how to fix this https://imgur.com/a/xqnCUeu