Aegis

I wouldn't call a will to stay alive greedy. They are new and need to establish themselves. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the ethics and morals of most people will often find itself ignored in favour of such things as eating. So you base that on one game? The jedi knights games, for example, were no work of art. In fact, I can't recall a single game (with the exception of KotOR) since about 95 when the windows version of TIE fighter was released that was much to look at, or anything but clones of the exact same thing with different graphics.

I did some experimenting about that, and I came to the conclusion that it's your charisma that screw up their alignment. I'm not sure exactly where the critical point is, though (wild guess, around 100 or above). I don't remember the exact numbers, but I had the base set to 99 and also had a 43 point bonus to it. That gave me very odd alignments for my companions that changed a lot and often for no apparent reason. I then lowered it to 50, and everything seemed to work fine.

I've asked myself that question a few times as well.

They could've passed, but that would've been a bad idea regardless of the time fram. Obsidian is a new company, they need to get games out on the market ASAP. A KotOR sequel is too big to pass on. As for the time, LA would probably not have extended the time regardless of who asked them. If pressed, they would've asked someone else to do it. Offically stating that the time was too short? That'd be suicide. Blame your publisher, and you got a bad image. Not to mention that LA is more than capable of crushing you if they feel like it. I doubt anyone could've made the game much better unless LA had given more time. And they wouldn't have, they would've asked someone else to do it instead. LA is not exactly known for their desire to produce quality games.

Pretty much, yeah. I managed to get most of her history out of her by then. If there's any of her dialogue that you can't access with the influence you gain from conversations, I haven't seen it (even after several cut scenes and discussions about the force). While there were some things that I didn't know or wasn't sure of, I was quite certain of her motives (destroying the force in one way or the other). After the Harbringer, her relationship with Sion was not much of a mystery and her dislike for the Jedi was pretty obvious from her conversations. Other than that I suspect Nihilus was her apprentice at one point, I didn't know anything about that (though I'm hardly surprised given that by the end of the game, I still didn't know anything about him other than his power to devour planets that everyone seem to moan about constantly). Can't say I noticed any great desire to do anything to Atris either.

Yeah, well, I've never really liked the dark/light and influence system very much. A lot of it is wierd at times.

Not that I know of, no.

Praise without criticism is a waste, generally speaking. As is criticism without praise.

So? It's a ridiculously short time to develop a game regardless of when it was decided. I'm quite amazed Obsidian managed to do what they did, given the situation. If I tell you that you have until tomorrow to develop cold fusion, is it your fault if you fail?

There's a lot about it that doesn't make much sense. The bond, for example. But I must congratulate you on the title of the thread. Rarely have I seen someone manage to spoil something so utterly with so few words.

Wait until you get to the end. You may have a different opinion afterwards. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad game. But it's far from great. I'd say it's decent, I could've upgraded it to good if it wasn't for the fact that you know it could've been better. When I play it, I see so much wasted potential, so many places where I just know something was supposed to be but isn't. It's rather depressing, especially since I know Obsidian could've done better. Perhaps all they needed was Lucasarts to give them a few more months.

I voted no. Don't get me wrong, I'd love a better ending, but I would've wanted it with the release. For PC it could be fixed with a patch, large as it may have to be, but what about Xbox users? No, either fix both versions or fix neither. And before anyone come up with a clever remark, I'm playing the PC version. I don't even have an Xbox.

1) The way I see it, that'd be the result of Obsidian painting themselves into a corner by offering the player the option to choose Revan's gender and alignment. It's a thoughtful idea, but it's horrible for the plot. It'll take a lot of creative writing to fit Revan into this or a future game, unless doing what Obsidian did here and more or less ignore Revan's history and fate. Whether you picked male or female, light or dark, the end result is exactly the same except that people refer to Revan as she or he, as well as changing models and dialogue a bit so it's either Bastila, Carth or a new generic admiral that says more or less the same thing regardless of your choice. There's a lot of good writing to explain away the fact that no matter what path Revan chose, the situation for the jedi and republic is exactly the same. It's good, but I don't buy it. So in short, to make Revan play a significant role in the game with the player being able to pick gender/alignment, Obsidian would have to create at least twice as much content as the player will see (up to four times as much, depending on how it's implemented). The more important Revan is to the plot, the more work will they have to do for less benefit. 2) While I agree that the possible romances are not as developed as they should've, I found that they were handled much better than in KotOR (up until the point where they just stop, that is). Whereas you could pretty much do anything you wanted with Carth/Bastila up until that last conversation and you'd still make them fall for you, in this game you had to work a bit more and it was a bit more subtle. Having more than one potential romance is also something I prefer much over the first game. 3) That's one of your major complaints? 4) Yeah, I have to admit that the ending was rather bad and didn't make much sense to me. Many people (me included), believe that much content towards the end of the game was not included because Lucasarts wanted the (Xbox) game out before Christmas. Not much of an excuse maybe, but at least it's not Obsidian's fault entierly.

I've made them all jedi (with Mira, not Hanharr), as well as exhausted all the conversation possibilities for all characters that I'm aware of and still got two planets left. Well, except for T3, as the influence-related topic for some reason won't show up (and I'm not talking about that computer/repair stuff, that's done). It's bloody hard to get influence for some and all characters, though. It's only through trial and error, though I just managed to get GO-TO to spill his guts only by talking to him with no outside actions. I know it's possible with Mira, Kreia, and I think Atton as well (though you will need at least one trigger for Atton). As far as I know, you can also get everything out of Visas using only talking (not sure, as her dialogue doesn't seem to go anywhere. I might've missed something). It's not possible with HK-47, or at least very hard, and I don't think you can with T3 and Bao-Dur either. No idea about Hanharr, I haven't had him yet. In the end, I just accepted quests, saved, and completed it in different ways and different combinations of companions present. Sometimes one of them will be impressed enough to give me a point of influence, but I've found no logical pattern in it yet. Well, except that HK-47 likes evil stuff, Handmaiden likes good stuff etc. (though there are exceptions, like Visas who'll give you influence for slaughtering innocent people as well as being nice). The problem is that's it's too random. Even when you know that HK-47 likes evil stuff etc., it's not consistent. Sometimes he'll react well when I slaughter people, other times he will not. Sometimes I gain influence over HK when killing good people, other times when killing evil. There's just no way of knowing whether killing that particular person will give you a reaction. There's more scenarios that comes to mind with other characters as well, so it's not just HK.

With those options? 1) Atton. They could've been clones, but Atton is a bit less repressed than Carth. 2) Bastila. You just can't go wrong with Jennifer Hale as far as I'm concerned. 3) Visas. No doubt here, "countess" Juhani was getting on my nerves. 4) Kreia. Deeper character, though I wish some of that depth would be present in the game. 5) Mandalore. The armor was the catalyst. 6) Mira. He's a furball with five lines of growling. How much character did you get out of him? 7) Goto. Mission's obvious youth annoyed me after a while, and Goto is really quite interesting once you get to know him.

Erm, unless I'm mistaken, the engine used in KotOR2 is more or less exactly the same as the first game.

That'd actually be pretty funny.

Immunity to Attribute Damage means that your attributes (strength, dexterity etc.) cannot be lowered. Certain weapons or powers can temporarily lower them a bit, the immunity will prevent that.

Personally, I always thought that Kreia was intended as the neutral character, not very fond of either jedi or sith (I've recently read some things that makes me doubt that a bit, though). She said a lot to indicate that she didn't care for the sith philosophy either, but unfortunately she acted more evil than good. I think they should've given her more neutral morals. From what I've understood, her goals were not really evil. She was afraid of the force, or rather the control it had over people (and every living thing), and wanted to free herself from it. You know, create her own destiny rather than something that she, as she said, perceived as a sentient being. That's where the exile comes in, as (s)he had managed to sever him/her-self completely from the force. (S)he use the force, the force doesn't use him/her. And I don't think she loved the exile as a person, but rather what the exile represented; the possibility of freeing yourself from your destiny. Sort of like a mother, living through her children by making them enter pageants or stuff like that. The mother might think she does it for the child, but it's really just for her. Kreia's not evil, just hollow. She doesn't want control or make bad things happen, but she doesn't want to save anyone from anything either. She simply doesn't care (then again, some people does consider apathy evil, so I guess it's all relative). Then again, perhaps it's just wishful thinking from my side. It would be refreshing to see a bad guy that is not actually bad. I've studied philosophy and Kreia's morals is actually quite like my view on good and evil; somewhat simplified that no action is entierly good or evil and that neither can exist without the other. While I don't necessarily agree with her goal and her way to reach it (if I understood it correctly), at least it's something I can understand.

KotOR2 sadly have very few moments where I really got involved. However, there was one that I clearly remember when facing Nihilus. I don't think there are many people that see it the way I did, but I really liked it. I'll mask it, just in case someone hasn't done it yet and actually would like it as much as I did:

I don't think you should get everything for free, but I don't think you should have to play the game through ten times and then piece together the information to see the whole picture. It should be possible to get all the information you need in one go, but it should require dedication. One could argue that this is the case right now (I wouldn't entierly agree), but the dedication doesn't make much sense. As you said, influencing Bao-Dur without a walkthrough is hard. I have only found a few points where I could affect it, and even then only by saving/reloading and resolving a problem in a different way. It's just too random for my taste. The quests in the original KotOR was a good way of doing this, they were just a bit too easy and there was only one per character (if even that). Influence with Mandalore was implemented fairly well, though. .

Erm, you do realise that people working at Obsidian are behind games such as Fallout and Planescape: Torment, right? The Fallout series and Planescape are commonly referred to as some of the best RPGs ever made. The only game that comes even close IMO is Morrowind, and only because it's so friggin huge and with so many user-made mods that are easy to both create and install however and whenever you wish.

About his identity.

I'd say early 30's. That he's being referred to as young doesn't necessarily mean anything, since compared to the jedi council, pretty much everyone is young.