A Few Thoughts on Dustil...
ellewood117 said: Oh god, Dustil and his whiny bitch ass self. What are your thoughts on that whole dynamic between Carth and Dustil when they first meet again and everything you have to go through? I love your Mass Effect/KOTOR rants/explanations. :)
I'll have to admit that the first time I played the game and ran across Dustil, my reaction was "WTF is wrong with this kid? Can't I just force persuade him to wise the hell up?" ... but after really thinking about it, I can't really fault Dustil. If he had been a grown man, then he honestly should've known better; but the fact is, he was just a kid when everything went to hell on Telos.
A traumatic incident, followed by a healthy serving of Sith brainwashing/indoctrination, followed by a whole lot of misunderstandings. And unfortunately, Dustil is definitely Carth's son; he's clearly just as passionate as Carth is, to a fault. His impassioned personality at a younger age makes him snap easily at people and make rash decisions. He's basically like if Carth let his emotions go and never restrained them. Carth is also guilty of being quick to anger, but because he has experience and wisdom for his older age, he can keep himself in check... or at least better than his son at any rate, lol.
The only thing I didn't understand is why he didn't try to find his father... Carth didn't know if Dustil survived, but Dustil knew Carth had. Was he that upset at his father constantly leaving to fight battles that he wouldn't even try to reconnect with him? Apparently so, I guess. Carth at least actively looked and made inquiries about his son, so it's not like he didn't try to find him.
The positive thing about the run-in with Dustil is that he's not so far gone that he doesn't give Revan and Co. a chance to show him proof of the Sith's evil, and that when they do come back with that proof, that he's somewhat mature enough to accept it and not keep living in denial.
My only complaint with the whole Dustil subplot is that it ends so abruptly. He does a complete 180 way too quickly once he's presented with the incriminating datapad. I would've liked to have seen a longer scene with a better illustrated turn from the dark side... for all his angry tirades at the beginning of the quest, he forgives and relents far too quickly to be satisfying to me. Maybe a time-elapse in there... like Carth says "we have so much to talk about," then a fade to black and then when the scene comes back it's indicated that they've at least had a bit of time to talk things out a bit more. That's not a great solution, but I think it would've helped. The other thing is he mentions he'll stay on Korriban a bit more, potentially to help with any information gathering that he can... but for the life of me I can't remember that ever coming up again later (no holocall from Dustil or whatever) confirming he really came through on that.
So yeah, you know? I dunno. My initial reaction to him was some real irritation, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn't really blame him. Poor kid was tossed a bad hand, and was too young to really know how to deal with it properly. Not to mention Carth might've been guilty of not being the best communicator either, since the kid clearly didn't understand why his father kept leaving them. Not ragging on Carth, but it was probably just something he didn't realize at the time.
... but if there's one thing I'm glad wasn't in the final games, it was the whole dead fallen Dustil subplot in KOTOR 2 (the infamous unnamed dead jedi in the tomb in the released game). Now that would've been a huge fucking downer.
