An ego which was ultimately their downfall.
Of all the things the prequels did, making the Jedi surprisingly weak and gullible is one of their more interesting sides. I wonder if it was deliberate or a side effect of bad film making? I quite like it, thinking after Return of the Jedi that "Aha! Luke Skywalker is a Jedi now! The galaxy is saved!" and then realizing that actually, Jedi are still very fallible and, in many ways, closed-minded.
The Jedi are by no means perfect and in some ways are just as bad for the galaxy as the Sith/Dark Side. I wonder if they will explore in any depth any negatives of the Light, and whether embracing both Light and Dark together is actually a better way to go than being 'fully Light' or 'Fully Dark'.
Films love 'third way' solutions to things, anyway.
One of the very few things I liked about the expanded universe were the type of Force users that incorporated both the Light and Dark side of the Force into their practice. I think one of Luke's kids basically went, "Welp, my family has a history of bouncing back and forth from the Light and Dark, so why not both?" It more or less makes a Force user act like a normal person, rather than a monk or a sociopath.
It's like a bad game mechanic. I think KOTOR suffered with this and I know Mass Effect did, where the systems would basically force you (hah) to go all good or all bad, as that would unlock you cool stuff on the good/bad skill trees. So if you weren't either a total saint or space hitler you were playing the game inefficiently, which is pretty awful when you're trying to bill it as a 'moral choice' system.
Tl;dr - I agree, middle ground is important and makes for more interesting and believable human beings.
Pardon me for going vaguely off-topic in a Star Wars thread, but I actually rather enjoyed going full-on paragon in the Mass Effect trilogy. I did the occasional bad-ass renegade prompt (as long as it only killed bad guys anyway) which was fun, but I basically played full on space saint throughout 1, 2 and 3.
Being good is, well, good, but I feel like in Star Wars, the Light is seen as a beacon of justice, which can be misleading. I'm sure there must have been bad Jedis who have done questionable things. I don't like the essentialist dualism that Light = Good, Dark = Bad, I guess is what I'm saying. Being all Light and Jedi-like is fine, as long as that doesn't lead to a complacent assumption that means you are automatically a good person.
The Shin Megami Tensei series, from what I hear, does interesting takes on morality as well.
Oh yeah there's nothing wrong with choosing to go all out goodie-two shoes, but it's a shame when a game forces you down that route. For more middle of the road players like myself (I roleplay the trout out of these things, so I always do what I think is contextually the best thing at the time, which sometimes involves going a bit renegadey) it makes things more difficult.
And in Star Wars, it would be cool to have a few fully light, pure, Jedi like they had in the Republic, but maybe some more leeway for some middle of the road types as well. I have a hypothesis that maybe if they embraced that a little more, they wouldn't have to worry so much about the Sith. When you set such high standards as the Jedi do with no compromise, if you fall you're probably gonna fall all the way. I think if they were a bit more open, more forgiving, it would be harder for the likes of Sidious to tempt the likes of Anakin in the first place. I always felt Luke Skywalker got it right at the very end of Return of the Jedi - he used his anger to beat Vader down, but then he refused to turn to the dark side.
That to me seemed far more constructive than the 'bottle up your dark feelings and try to wish them away' attitude of the old Jedi order.
Strong, yes. Superior? Very questionable. He was persuasive enough to seduce Anakin to the dark side, but that's more charm than power. He claimed he learned how to preserve life before killing his master. Sith lie, and we never saw it happen. We can't even argue Plagueis really knew how to do it since there's no canon books to back the claim up. All we really know is that he could make force lightning and he was cunning. However, Yoda and Obi were strong enough in the force to become ghosts.But plenty of Jedi are totally irrelevant when the master of the Sith has manipulated the force so much that he alone is able to use it to perfection (or pretty much) and is superior to the Jedi.
Luke told R2 to activate because Rey was there Both guesses fit together into a single solid reason.Rey was there. She hadn't been there yet. It supports the Rey = Luke's daughter thing. He wasn't on before, but when Rey was in the area bleep bloop he's back. R2 was there to lead Rey to him not anyone else. Or that's my theory.
OOC: I hate paragon playthroughs in Mass Effect. They're so obscenely candy sweet that it makes me sick. I do prefer middle of the road choices, but I'll take renegade over paragon.
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