Peragus Viewed Through the Lens of Design Intent

1. Unceremoniously dumps the player into an unfamiliar situation with no known allies, where the only two living beings they encounter are of suspect natures and loyalties;
2. Continually suggests the possibility of further human interaction to the player, only to continue pushing it further and further away, eventually revealing it was never possible at all. This also serves to make Peragus into a 'ghost station', where your only human interaction besides Kreia and Atton are the holo-logs of people you will never meet--because they died before you even awoke--speaking with great anxiety about the terrifying last days of their lives;
3. Goes to great pains to ensure that every victory is immediately followed by a defeat: you open the holding cells, but the admin terminal is cut off; T3 unlocks the mining tunnels, but is immediately ambushed and eliminated; you get through the mining tunnels, but the airlock is shut against you; you breach the airlock and enter the dormitory level, but the miners are all already dead, and the turbolift is sealed against you; you unlock the turbolift and can use the Harbinger to get to the fuel depot, but now you are on another ghost ship, with Sith present and hunting you; you reach the fuel depot access, but Kreia is badly wounded en route. At no turn do you feel in control of anything, often feeling as if you're just barely staying ahead of disaster;
4. Systematically removes pillars supporting the player, including the "death" of T3, the revelation that the HK-50 unit which was supposed to be your property was the architect of your capture, and Kreia's departure from the party and wounding by Sion;
5. Sequentially ambushes the player with unexpected encounters at extremely high threat for their level, eventually moving all the way to stealth ambushes by Sith Assassins.

1. Trauma and wartime PTSD, with an emphasis on redemption and/or coming to terms with one's past
2. Isolation from an in-group (Jedi), society as a whole (you are treated like a Jedi, even though the Jedi refuse to claim you), and the self (the loss of the Force and the Exile's inability to grasp what happened to her)
3. The failure of authority figures and systems to adapt to change or challenge without repression
4. Betrayal, both of ideologies and individuals, by superiors and juniors/inferiors, and also the self (Atris is queen here)
5. Self-Reliance and Actuation
6. Despair and Hopelessness
7. Disdain and/or disregard for common people's suffering

1. There is hardly a module in Peragus where we don't see a betrayal. Excluding the ubiquitous presence of mining droids--whom we are constantly reminded betrayed their handlers through the presence of corpses, blaster scarring and holo-logs--there is also HK-50, who betrays the crew of the Harbinger, as well as the station administration and Coorta through his play-acting as the maintenance officer, as well as his "master" the Exile; Coorta, who betrays the station administration and his own boss, Sien, whom he indirectly murders; and Sion, who betrays Kreia once more on the Harbinger (though of course, their exact relationship is not known to the player at the time). Although no direct betrayal occurs through them, Peragus also contributes to an overall atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust by cultivating a mysterious veil around the pasts of Atton and Kreia, forcing the player to question whether or not their own companions can be trusted.
2. Virtually the entirety of Peragus is done entirely in single-player, placing the Exile (or T3) alone against the unknown, and often truly dangerous, threats of the station. Even during those sections where you play as another character or gain additional party-members, these companions are lost suddenly twice: once when T3 is ambushed by HK-50, and once when you are ambushed by Sion. It also focuses somewhat on actuation, with the Exile starting to recover her connection to the Force, beginning her journey to come to terms with her past almost from the moment she awakes.
3. Despair and hopelessness is the big one. Peragus is deliberately devoid of human life, but the station was almost paralyzed by indecision and concern even before the fatal mining accident occurred, with different staff at each others' throats; mounting casualties from sabotage; and even more mundane (yet still consequential) concerns about the fate of the Republic and their fuel shipments to Telos. The hopelessness of the people on the station before they died well-complements the player's own hopelessness, as they are continually thrust into situation after situation where, despite their best efforts, matters always seem to be beyond their control. The almost endless sequence of "just one more try" attempts to resolve your situation hammers that hopelessness home fiercely, to the point that, when you encounter all the miners already dead, you might want to just sit down and give up yourself. It helps (or doesn't, depending upon your view) that Peragus is deliberately designed to encourage the player to think that absolution is just around the corner: everything is brightly-lit, well-maintained and clean, excepting those few areas where droids have damaged equipment. You keep thinking that you will find other people any minute, but they're never there. Instead, you just have an eerie, empty, doomed station filled with enemies and constant, mounting failures to escape it.
4. While not necessarily obvious, I think disdain for common people is another major theme of Peragus. HK obviously cares nothing for the miners and kills them all to get to you, as does Sion for the Republic soldiers on the Harbinger, but I would argue these are only the most obvious readings of the situation. The sleeper angle here, I think, is the Peragus administration: they don't care about their own mining staff enough to stop drilling, even as they are dying left and right. They constantly try to memory wipe the droids even when it's clear it isn't working, and issues are only mounting. They start to pull double-shifts to keep quotas up as more people die, instead of going into lockdown to try to salvage the situation. It's the first time we don't see clearly "evil" forces casually throw people away, but simply misguided, fatally aloof people. It's an important strike against the black-and-white morality system of the original KOTOR, and it comes nigh-instantaneously.

Does it Work?

Criticisms of Peragus and their Validity

Fun?

The Poison Pill: The Divide Between Expectations and Intent

Conclusion