Light Side Choice was not bad?
“Giving up your ghosts is a bad choice for any Sith who cares about power. That particular Light Side choice is not the correct one.”
I cannot tell anybody to not think or say things like that, but for me personally it’s wrong statement, which comes from not accurate approach to the idea of power shown in the Sith Inquisitor storyline. It’s subiective, so don’t mind me. I will not call out to you to change your mind if you really think that Light Side choice was a bad choice. I am mostly writing it, because I want to convey my point.
Coming back to me and how I see things... for me the Light Side choice, which ends with Sith Inquisitor setting Force Ghosts free or letting them finally die, isn’t inherently a bad choice, especially if your Sith cares about power, because of the different approach to the idea of power.
From my point of view the most important thing, which SI storyline teaches us is not that the amount of the Force Ghosts, which you posses, makes you powerful, but rather that the knowledge that we gain thanks to the Force Walking ritual makes us powerful. Because for SI knowledge is the power.
THE TRUE IMPACT OF THE LIGHT SIDE CHOICE
Now, when we look at the Light Side choice we see that we just set free the only beings in the Galaxy, who lived before us and were still somehow available to approach, which can be considered as bad, but in the end isn’t. They are basically better than the library or anything, which we use to store data, because they not only know things, which we don’t know - thanks to literally seeing them or participating in them, but because through Force Walking they became part of our characters, which means that they still gave us those informations.
It may seem as bad interpretation as long as we are strickly following the game logic, but because game didn’t really show us any other use for the Force Ghosts than tormenting our mind via endless bragging and making us glow, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider them as more useful in the broader sense.
THE HANDLING OF THE FORCE GHOSTS
Because I really care of the proper use of the trope I personally like I dare say that the way of handling Force Ghost presented in the game is just inherently incorrect. Mostly because of the fact that we bonded them to our character’s body.
The correct way of seeing them assumes that after binding they became part of your character. Part, which shares body, mind and soul with them. It can be said that they are like another personality, but hidden and mostly inactive, because they shouldn’t be able to take control over character’s body.
This approach changes the whole way, in which Force Ghosts are currently seen, because it means that your character (even if they don’t actually talk) is constantly learning from them. But considering the fact that our character at least should talk with them to get the proper access to the informations they have I want to establish that in this scenario we have to spend at least a few hours talking with them (for example during meditation sessions) to gain this kind of valuable knowledge, which we would never be able to learn on our own.
The problem is that game doesn’t really show any of that to us... and that’s why I am not satisfied. Developers never gave us even the tiniest glimpse of the information about our conversations with the Force Ghosts. Nor even a proper cutscene.
When it comes to the Force Ghosts rumored (but never properly tackled) usefulness we also should consider the so called “being possessed tactic”, which like I said before never was used in the game, but could and should have been used, because from the logical point of view it should be available for the Sith Inquisitor as the class in the first place.
However I don’t talk here about the type of possession, which Valkorion showed us on Ziost. I rather have in mind the kind of possesion, in which the Force Ghost "merges” with your character’s body during combat - their spiritual body moves alongside your character’s body and guides its movements without taking over said body. It’s one of these useful tactics, which used during combat confuse your opponent and give you some kind of advantage over them for a while, simply because of the fact that your movements suddenly changed.
What’s more this type of possession could also make your character to learn the ancient ways of the lightsaber combat directly from the source by mimicking, which I always liked, because it’s the type of knowledge, which you are able to learn through your body instead of your mind.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE SICKNESS
The most important topic here though is the sickness caused by bonding too many Force Ghosts at once. Sith Inquisitor becomes sick mostly because of the fact that their body cannot handle such amount of energy in the form of the Force Ghosts, which in the end forces them to seek the cure.
Cure however isn’t as easy to obtain as they think, because it require to cure not only their body but also their mind. In the end though Sith Inquisitor gains both. First through Mother Machine on Belsavis and the second thanks to the Forbidden Ritual of Healing on Voss. Both of which can be considered as enhancements, because Mother Machine augments SI’s body in a way, which allows them to handle more energy than it was previously possible (with not properly stated limitations), while healing ritual forces our character to face “their demons” and thus helps them learn how to better control their own mind. It means that they found not only the new strenght of the body, but also of the mind.
Force Ghosts in all of this play the role of the catalisator, because if SI never bonded too many of them, they would not have the motivation to seek those enhancements in the first place. It’s even possible that they would never learn about such things like Forbiden Healing Ritual or Mother Machine, because they didn’t need to or would do it later in their life. But my point here is that we don’t really know the impact of those two things on SI and we can only assume/theorize how much their life truly changed after that.
MOTHER MACHINE DID... WHAT EXACTLY?
Does Mother Machine only enhanced SI’s stamina (in the meaning of “stamina” as “the capacity to store energy in your body”) or it did something else to them too? It’s the question, which I always asked myself from the very moment I saw Mother Machine, because it’s truly intruiging. Mother Machine is in the end truly amazing piece of technology. We don’t really know how it works, but we know that it basically can recreate your body without harming neither the soul of our character nor the Force Ghosts, which are bonded to said character. Which is stunning, because how do you recreate a body without harming basically anything connected to personality or consciousness of the person?
I also wonder if Mother Machine only made SI the “bigger container for the energy storage” or rather the “bigger sponge”? This metaphor is useful here mostly thanks to the fact that we truly don’t know how Mother Machine works and even how the Force Walking works. We don’t know if our body is just a hermetic container for the energy of the Force Ghosts or it works more like a sponge, which always sucks up the liquid around it to the point of not being able to do so anymore, but when we try to dry it... no matter what we do the remains of the liquid will always stay inside of the sponge.
Whatever is the answer to that weird question, it’s undeniable that thanks to the Force Ghosts Sith Inquisitor became stronger. Mostly thanks to the fact that even if ghosts were set free, SI still should have gained some knowledge and thus was not left empty handed.
It’s of course true that we never saw it in the game, but for me Force Ghosts always will be capable of something more than just fueling the violet glow or blowing things up like in Valkorions case. Mostly because the alternative, which we all got in the end, is just too boring and also incorrect.
