Stick it up your Lookass

Thinking to knock out another leaden oldie before moving back to newer games, I decided on Knights of the Old Republic, which I skipped the first time around largely because I'm not a Star Wars fan and the praise around it felt more like LucasArts marketing and fanboy hype than honest evaluation. Still, while Star Wars in general has never struck me as more than lowest-common-denominator science fantasy drivel (first movie was fun enough but after that... enough!) Star Wars video games ever since the '90s have distinguished themselves as adaptations which don't trash their source material. Sure, that source material is very "fire laz0rz, pew-pew" video game friendly to begin with, but still... Jedi Knight, X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, KotOR... no matter the genre, LucasArts have generally been either inspired or lucky to pick crews who'll treat them well.

 

Long story short, a full discussion will have to wait until I finish, because KotOR's not as bad as I thought it might be.

 

I'm doing my usual back-row support schtick, deliberately making minimal use of lightsabers. Suck my iconoclasm. Blaster rifle and disabling force powers, with the infinitely regenerating Canderous as melee point. Made my way through Taris, Dantooine, Kasssshhyyyyyyyyykk and Tatooine. After killing my three dozenth Sand People... sand person? sillycoid-American? exited Sandman? something finally struck me as odd.

Or for that matter, wicker baskets?

Why not gaffi flint or gaffi obsidian or gaffi glass or gaffi bone or gaffi leather whips or gaffi giant scorpion tails or gaffi tire irons or gaffi golfi clubby? But anyway. Yeah. Sure, it's not hard to come up with some bullshit explanation for where they got the wood, or maybe they're made of metal... but why use the word "stick" at all? No more thought seems to have gone into it than that they're a primitive tribe and primitive tribes hit things with sticks, end of story.

Could you have fired up just a few more neurons to light up your world-building? Or was insulting your plebeian audience just that much more important a marketing device?