I think the Jedi of Bane's time are weary and exhausted. They've been fighting the Sith for so long that they just want the battle to be over, so it's hard for them to accept that the Sith might still survive after the Battles of Ruusan. They're simply tired of fighting, and that makes them vulnerable to complacency. By the time of the movies, this complacency has become full-blown malaise, making the Jedi ripe for their fall. In contrast, the Sith are reinventing themselves during Bane's time. They are solidifying their power and building their strength so they can defeat their enemies, and the movies show the culmination of this process.
You're a novelist who has also worked as a computer game designer. Do you think these two forms are ultimately going to merge? Will we ever see a game with the complexity of a novel? Or a novel with all the choices of a game? And if so, how close are we now?
I think games and novels offer two very different experiences, and I don't see any reason to try and bring the two together. Games are all about the player being an active participant and controlling the action, whereas novels put readers into the role of a witness to the action. Neither is inherently better than the other, and I think each provides something that is unique. A good analogy for me is the difference between playing a sport and watching it on TV. You can love watching your favorite NBA team, and you can love playing basketball with your friends, but you get something different from each experience.
Having said that, I think you're still going to see an evolution in the storytelling in games. Books have been around for centuries; authors have worked out all sorts of techniques to tell a great story in a novel. Games have only been around for a few decades, and we're just beginning to incorporate the kind of subtlety and complexity you'd see in other art forms like books, movies, or TV.
What is the significance of Holocrons, and why is the creation of one so important to Darth Bane?
Both the Jedi and the Sith use Holocrons as a way to transfer not just the knowledge but also the personality of an individual down to future generations. Bane understands that recording his ideas and thoughts for future Sith is important, but it pales in comparison to creating a Holocron. Transferring facts and knowledge to someone is easy; transferring wisdom and true understanding is much harder. You learn a lot more from a good teacher than you do from reading a textbook by yourself. The incredibly advanced technologies of a Holocron are a way to allow Bane to continue as a teacher even after he is long dead.
What's next for the Sith?
I can't really answer that yet, but I'm hoping fans are interested enough that Lucasfilm will want to continue exploring the Sith line of succession established by Bane all the way down to Sidious and Vader.
What other projects are you working on, in terms of both writing and gaming?
I've always got a number of projects on the go. We just finished the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect last month, and I've already started working on the story, character, and dialog for Mass Effect 2. I'm also hard at work on a second Mass Effect novel coming out in spring of 2008 to go along with Mass Effect: Revelation, released last year. After that I'll be putting the final touches on an original fantasy trilogy I've been working on so I can start trying to find a publisher. And, like most writers, I've got a couple of screenplays that I'm kicking around, too.
Darth Bane: Rule of Two is available in hardcover from Del Rey Books starting December 26, 2007.
