Yes, that happens all the time. Persuades cannot be depended on to work. I know. But it was a little... odd... to have it fail on the Star Forge. I had my bit of fun kicking Bastila's @$$ on the Forge, and I got to the part with the cheesy love scene. So, I did the usual
[Persuade]Use our bond... (success)
and
[Persuade]I love... :p (failure)
and I hat Persuade at about 13-14. To my surprise, it failed completely, and I had to fight Bastila again, killing her. I reloaded a save from right before that battle - and my Persuades succeeded. I have tried time and again to reproduce it, having a persuade skill of around 10, or even 9, but it never worked. I've given up on that; my Persuades go up to 19 now. It was a phantom failre, and I was wondering if this happened to anybody else. Because I can't even get it to happen to myself anymore.
Yeah happened to me once. Never thought twice about it though... But now ya mention it...
persuasian is a random event outside of a game enviroment so perhaps the devs added in a random chance of failure to emulate this.
That is wierd, as you don't have to have a very high persuade to redeem her - quite the opposite, actually. I've redeemed her with a persuade level of 4...
Like I said, I have never been able to reproduce this. It was an odd fluke that I have never seen again. Yes, it is odd, but that entire game was off. You know, I never got the level-ups I wanted, a lot of my persuades failed, I got K-Oed a few times (kinda embarassing, they were easy fights) and I missed out on half the side plots. Kinda pissed me off. Then, to top it off, I had to kill Bastila! Augh!
And no, it wasn't a corrupt game, since I was able to load it up from only a minute before that.
You can still load corrupted games sometimes.
Not from my experience. When a game is corrupted, I know about it. Besides, the failure had dialog, and it had subtitles, so I don't think it was corrupted, and a bug. I think it was programmed in there, but I can never get it to work...
When one of my games is corrupted, it's usually my characters being replaced with blank boxes, the in-game models disappearing, and the names changed to "I am broken, so very very broken".
I can still load the file, it's just become useless.
That didn't happen, and BioWare seems to have allowed it on purpose. It was an odd quirk that it happened. Yes, I know about the corruption. If you will remember the thread I made which got moved to the Work Bench, where I was having trouble playing on Dantooine. I said I would try to get to Dantooine real quick, I called up my quicksave, left the Taris apartments, and bingo! It gave me the I Am Broken, So Very Broken message. A few seconds later, it crashed.
No, it's not a bug. You have to select very particular dialogue options or it won't work. If I find time and don't forget about this, I may look at it later.
I read something somewhere (maybe on gamebanshee) that said most dialogues have a setup like this;
1-5 Persuasion Skill = 10-30% chance of succeeding
6-10 Persuasion Skill = 40-70% chance of succeeding
11-15 or above Persuasion Skill = 80-100% chance of succeeding
The persuasion fails and success events are randomly decided just like the battle engine, a "rolling of the dice" if you will, sometimes you strike a critical blow (succesful persuasion). Unless you have something ridiculously high like Saberist said, its all up to chance. :)
Note: The above chart is from memory and doesn't include the charisma level of your character.
Actually, if I remember right, if you say the right things, you don't have to persuade. But you have to say it word for word. Most of the time I end up persuading her at least once. Thankfully, I think it gives you a little margin for error.
^No, you have to use persuade. If you don't you end up either having to kill her or you can't get the mushy romance novel ending.
Darth, I knew it wasn't a bug, since BioWare had support for it. But I don't think I selected anything out of the ordinary. Unless I srang for the love scene a bit too early... hm.
Thru previous trial and error I discovered how to convince Bastila to turn back from the dark side without using the PC's persuade skill. Assuming you're playing the PC as LS male and previously selected dialog choices fostering the romance between the PC and Bastila then the following steps should get Bastila to turn from the dark side so your PC doesn't have to kill her on the Star Forge.
When facing Bastila on the Star Forge select the following dialog responses and she will turn from the dark side.
2) I'll never give up on you, Bastila.
*** FIGHT ***
2) You've been consumed by the dark side...
2) You will accomplish death and destruction...
1) You're dooming yourself.
*** FIGHT ***
1) I have not faltered, Bastila...
*** FIGHT ***
1) Now you see the dark side is not stronger...
1) I could never kill you, Bastila.
2) I was redeemed...
1) You can't protect someone from the dark side...
3) Help us defeat the Sith, Bastila...
1) I trust you enough to leave myself open...
2) You won't Bastila. I know you still serve the light side...
After this last response Bastila will ask your PC if he still loves her, then you can pick whether to continue the romance with her or not. It doesn't matter which way you go with the romance choice because she has returned to the light side at this point and will be there after the fight with Malak to run with your PC back to the Ebon Hawk.
I've used these dialog choices 5 or 6 times and they've never failed to convince Bastila to turn from the dark side. And as you'll note none of the responses involved use the persuade skill... :D
Ah, thank you Hai Wan. I knew there was something like that but I just kind of do it by memory, and I couldn't quite remember what the choices were. I knew that there was a certain path you could follow. And no, Doctor, you don't have to use persuade. Try what Hai Wan said.
Never tried that before. Ah, the perils of a walkthrough, I never try anything else...