"I am No Longer Like the Others..."

For the life of me I have never understood how anyone could say they have no regrets. The very  act of making choices leaves one with a road not taken. The very act of living entails giving something up. Regret figures heavily in The Last Unicorn, one of the defining traits of the Unicorn is that she feels no regret. It's part of what makes her other than human (you know, outside of being a magical quadruped). The Unicorn has a lot of negative experiences she one would think might cause her to regret her choices. However, it's only when she is takes on human form and then changes back into a Unicorn that we see her understand regret.

Initially, the change is a desperate attempt by Schmendrick to save the Unicorn. During her first encounter with the Red Bull, she freaks out and the beast nearly send her into the sea. It's a brilliant idea, as the Bull discards her immediately. The plan works and Amalthea, along with Schmendrick, Molly and Lir, find the Red Bull and confront him. Schmendrick returns the Unicorn to her natural form and she chickens out again. Lir tries to get between them and is mortally wounded. This causes the Unicorn to snap out of her fear and drives the Red Bull into the sea the way it did to the Unicorns. Her brethren take this as their cue to re-materialize out of the surf and stampede out of the sea.

The transformation from Unicorn to Amalthea interests me on multiple levels. First, it feels like a price she must pay to fulfill her quest. Second, it's fascinating how the 'fake' identity of Amalthea becomes real. The transformation starts on the outside and works its way in. It's as if walking around in a human body has given her a human heart and a human mind. Even King Haggard starts to notice. The first time he creepily gets in her space, he sees the Unicorn's home forest in Amalthea's eyes. The second time he accosts her he sees his own reflection, which pisses him off. Falling in love with Haggard's son, Lir seems to have helped things along. While it is may seem obvious that the romantic connection between the Lir and Amalthea is what makes her identify as a mortal being, I'm not sure it's that simple. Lir only loves her because she's a pretty, human-looking princess. Love, for all its poetry is a superficial process.

Now that she has regained her immortality, the Unicorn will spend that eternity wondering what might have been had she abandoned her people to their watery prison and walked away from her quest. She would have lived a finite human life at Lir's side... wondering what might have happened had she faced the Bull and freed the Unicorns.That is why I can neither accept nor believe those who claim to live without regret. Every choice great or small carries with it the weight of what might have been. What the Unicorn shows in her final conversation with Schmendrick is that she can carry that burden with grace and dignity.

"Is That What You Wanted to See?"

Everything 

But the Girl:

Amplified Heart 

This album is known for one thing more than anything else and I'll get to that thing in good time but I have to start this review with a pet peeve of mine. It annoys me to no end when recording artists put out records that amount to singles and filler. It's insulting when I put more thought into my bedtime playlist than a singer or band's team puts into their album. While I understand that this sort of thing is generally a result of the creativity vs. business cage-match,  it still sucks.

Which brings me to Amplified Heart. Everything but the Girl are every inch the album artist. Their records are truly coherent bodies of work that hold together nicely.  A mostly acoustic album, Amplified Heart features some of the best songwriting I've ever come across in my life. It is, of course, the album which yielded the duo's biggest hit. But that signature song is often remembered in isolation from the LP it was born into. I find that there is much more to it when considered alongside its siblings.

Rollercoaster opens the album with a languid and very British take on bossa-nova. The 'other' single from Amplified Heart, it's one of my favourite songs from EBTG. It sets the tone for the rest of the album with its combination of wistfulness and  longing. Troubled Mind is a jaunty mid-tempo ballad with some jazz guitar popping in towards the end. It speaks about the inscrutability of other people. This desire to get inside the head of another and the anguish at not being able to recurs throughout Amplified Heart.

I Don't Understand Anything  carries us into EBTG's trademark melancholy. Much slower and more deliberate than the previous two tracks, the song delivers a great deal of pathos. Walking to You  is a duet with Ben and Tracy singing either side of a bittersweet reunion between two exes. Get Me wonders aloud about ever being understood, its mercurial lyrics going nicely with a brooding cello.

Missing is the song that EBTG are known for. In terms of commercial success, it eclipses everything else that they have done. One can speculate why "Missing" blew up the way it did, or why it was this song and not, say, "Driving". But I, personally, am not qualified to know what made it happen. I will say that it's the acoustic, album version of the track that I fell in love with and listened to endlessly through high school. The complicated guitar riffs, the dramatic strings and the ever so slight bounce of the bass guitar all adding up to a plaintive account of loss and longing. "Missing" fits perfectly at the centre of Amplified Heart.

Two Star gives us one of the more complex entries on this record. It narrates someone who can't resist commenting on another person's relationship. It's a wince-inducing character-study brimming with resentment and bitterness. We Walk the Same Line is a more rootsy song about adversity and difficulty. It takes the perspective of one person reassuring another that they are not alone in going through tough times. The lyrics are especially resonant for me given some  of the things I've been through since the first time I listened to this song. 25th of December sees Ben Watt takes lead vocals on a simply arranged number with a haunting refrain.  Disenchanted is a quietly low-key closer which seems to sum up the experience of Amplified Heart. Tracy Thorn's intimate vocals deliver contemplative lyrics in the second person. A saxophone takes on the role of a duet partner adding a level of sophistication and wistfulness to the track.

Amplified Heart to me represents Everything but the Girl at their apex. Obviously the Todd Terry Remix of "Missing" took over the world for a year and a half but the real triumph in my view, is the creative accomplishment represented by Amplified Heart. It is no less than one of the most beautiful  albums I have ever listened to. Pop music that is truly mature is hard to come by. These songs touched me deeply when I was young and they still work for me to this day. 

A Plague Upon Your Houses!!!!: A review of the Jedi Consular Story part 8

So your new Jedi has been travelling the galaxy trying to stop a mysterious plague that's affecting various Jedi Masters, pulling them under the thrall of a Lord Vivicar. Each time you're confronted with a possessed Master, you have the option of either killing them or using an obscure healing technique learned on Coruscant to save them (I've been killing them).

Once you've completed the class quests on Alderaan, Taris, Tatooine and Nar Shaddaa, Master Syo Bakarn summons you to the Jedi home-world of Tython.  Things are bad. More Masters are being affected by the plague. You tell the council What you've pieced together so far:  all of the Masters initially affected were all stationed once on the planet Malachor 3 and the name Parkanus comes up a lot. As it turns out, the Masters who wound up on Malachor 3, stumbled upon the apparition of a dead sith and had to leave one their own behind i.e.,  Parkanus.  The poor guy was possessed by said Sith Lord and resurfaced recently with this plague as Lord Vivicar.  Yuan volunteers to try and contact Lord Vivicar telepathically even though that might make her vulnerable to the plague again. It does, Vivicar possesses her and you fight. At the end of the confrontation, you have the option of killing her or  using the healing technique on her.  Since I played my Consular dark-side, I killed her.

All is not lost however. Yuon was able to give us a location and so off we go to Lord Vivicar's ship.  The confrontation with him is the same as with all of the bosses so far but with an extra fight or two. The dialogue is either about vowing to put him down (dark-side) or offering him redemption (light-side). I frelling killed him. Unfortunately that meant that a lot of the Jedi Masters he had infected in the meantime died with him. You even get an e-mail from the Council with a list of all of these dead Jedi.

Having played this Darkside, I was disappointed that there were no consequences to having fallen. I mean it's not even a subtle thing. My dark-side Jedi was ruthless, cold, vengeful and without compassion. It's not like he saved the day either: a whole bunch of Jedi Masters have died not the mention the five my character killed for the crime of getting preyed upon by Vivicar. The most that comes of this obvious slide down the slippery slope is Grand-master Satelle Shan throwing some shade about 'your methods'.

Here's the thing: I appreciate what Bioware tried to do with the Consular in Chapter1 but it didn't work for me. It seems that the story was supposed to be reminiscent of KOTOR II. The Malachor system and  the search for Jedi Masters are obvious references to the darker story-line of the KOTOR II. One broad similarity between KOTOR II and the Jedi Consular story as a whole is the feeling of being behind the scenes. The events of the former game were taking place inside of a secret history that few people in the era of the Old Republic are even aware of.

Your consular, however you choose to play him or her, is dealing with issues that are not public knowledge, unlike the Jedi Knight who is more front and center in Galactic events. This crisis of Jedi Masters going crazy is, on the surface, perfect for that kind of story. But SWTOR and KOTOR II are completely different contexts for such similar events. In the case of the latter, the Jedi were almost extinct, the atmosphere was bleak and the story took place on the margins of Republic space. SWTOR features a more powerful Republic with a strong Jedi Order, evenly matched with The Empire and its Sith.

Here's an idea: if Bioware wanted to reference KTOTOR II in the first chapter of the Jedi Consular adventure, then why not do so more explicitly. Instead of all this nonsense about LordVivicar, why not have a character from  KOTOR II be the villain? Say, someone who could conceivably live on as a Force Ghost?

I sincerely hope that they at least tried to include Kreia but just couldn't swing it for whatever reason. Because this version of the story writes itself.  Kreia was a historian and a keeper of secrets. She discovered the Sith Academy in the Malachor system. She was a Consular, epitomizing the concept SWTOR described for the class.  She hated (and I mean hated) the Force and almost succeeded in making it inaccessible to Sith and Jedi alike. Attempting to do so again through the Consular in SWTOR would have been more interesting than the plague. What if she had possessed Master Yuan in an attempt to find the perfect apprentice? The best thing about her was her perspective on Galactic history, what might she make of what's happening in the 'present tense'? Didn't she foretell the Sith Empire returning? God help me, I might write a fan fiction myself just to prove how awesome it might have been.

Until then I have Chapter 2 to review. While I have been somewhat critical of Chapter 1, things improve quite nicely from here on out.  Stay tuned!!!