Ivan the Terrible

Evil may be difficult to depict, but evil in Bioware games almost always comes off as if they didn't even try. Case in point: think Baldur's Gate 2. The very beginning of the game, you have to rescue Jaheira from a cage after being freed by Imoen. I remember thinking my first time through, 'ok, this is the part where the game will let me choose if I played the game as a good guy or bad guy based on my conversation choices.' Nope. Jaheira goes on to relate your history, in which you and she have been acting as heroes and saving kittens from trees for the entirety of the first game. You have the option to be a jerk, but in that case she just acts like you're displaying totally new behavior and says you've 'turned' as she feared you might. Then, virtually every 'evil' conversation choice in the game amounts to little more than 'HEY, GUYS! LOOK HOW MEAN I AM!' What I really want to see is evil along the lines of Planescape: Torment; evil in which you can say the exact same thing as what the 'good guy' might say, but there's a little tag in front of the dialogue option identifying it as either 'Truth' or 'Lie' to make it clear when you're being a manipulative bastard. Capturing long-range Darth Sidious-style evil is nearly impossible in a game, but that, at least, would be a start.

No. I think that should be a golden rule of RPGs: if you have a different character being played between the original and the sequel, never have the original game's character make anything but the most cursory appearance. If I talk with Revan or interact with Revan, and s/he is nothing like the character I imagined when I was playing, it comes across as less exciting and more irritating.

1000 generations.....Ahhh. I misremember, then; I thought he said 1000 years, which is far more reasonable. The Star Wars galaxy must be a pretty dull place if really important, interesting events only happen once every few millenia (though, when they come, they do seem to come in force.)

I don't know about LucasArts and WotC, but the 'evil' game for Bioware games has historically been almost universally lame. They almost always hinge it on a plotline for which an evil character wouldn't give a damn, and your options for being 'evil' usually just amount to being a petty jerk who steals credits and says mean things to people. Disappointing, to say the least.

Ahhh. Got it. Thanks.

I agree. In fact, KOTOR 1 makes absolutely no sense if you play straight Dark Side; your companions watch you murder, torture, and brutalize people the entire game, and yet they all still act like you're interested in saving the Republic from the Sith? The Jedi Council watches you wreck havoc across the surface of Dantooine, and yet just lets you go ahead on a mission on which the fate of the Galaxy hinges? No. I always play my Dark Side games as Light Side up until the revelation of your true identity, after which I use that (and Korriban, my usual fourth planet) as a jumping-off point for a headlong plunge into the Dark Side (after all, the Jedi Council destroyed my life!) That way, the surprise of your eventual betrayal is a little more believable. Hopefully, KOTOR II will allow us to avoid jumping through so many hoops just to play a believable Dark Side game.

Hmmm......I looked under edit, but didn't see the option. Checking again.

20,000 years of star travel and they haven't even moved up to DVDs?

True. On the other hand, I think he's responsible for the whole idea of the Republic being 25,000 years old, something which has always struck me as lame. Guess you have to take the good with the bad....

From what little I've read of the EU..... No, I don't particularly like it. In particular, the Yuuzhan Vong feel totally and completely out of place and I prefer to pretend they haven't been written into the 'official universe.' Also, what the hell is with the Emperor cloning himself endlessly? Kinda takes the punch out of the final scenes of ROTJ when the only thing Anakin Skywalker managed to do was slow the guy down for a little while.

GAAAHH! Sorry, folks, kept giving me an error message so I thought it wasn't posting. Mods, if you're out there, please delete the duplicates.

Yes, I know the Designers have made an effort to make every skill more useful. Yes, I know this time around Treat Injury or Demolitions won't just be a laughable waste of points due to the godlike power of Force Heal and the underwhelming power of mines. The real question I'm asking is: which skills will let me see new dialogue, new character development, new and interesting things story-wiserather than gameplay-wise? I like being able to disassemble old inventory for parts as much as the next guy, but what I always enjoy most in any RPG is storyline, and therefore I want to know which skills will let me see as much of that nifty stuff as possible. Take an example: Planescape: Torment. Yes, you could play the game as a Fighter or Thief, and see lots of cool stuff, no problem....but without being a mage for at least awhile, the entire Dak'kon conversation string involving the Circle of Zerthimon was locked to you. That was, IMHO, one of the coolest parts of the game....and, frankly, I want to unlock as much of that nifty stuff as possible when I play. Or Fallout 2; if your skill in Science was high enough, you could not only humiliate Myron with your superior knowledge (especially fun if you're playing a woman), but could find a cure for Jet and make it so Vault City could win Redding (though who would want that to happen?) So what about it, designers, if you're out there? Any skills you would specifically recommend we focus on for someone looking for story development rather than simple gameplay stuff?

One major battle doesn't win a war. The destruction of the Star Forge might have slowed the Sith down, but by this point they had been winning battle after battle for nearly two years. It's entirely possible that the Sith would still have the advantage in numbers and power, Star Forge or no Star Forge, owing to the desperate situation of the Republic. Nah. If it were that complex, they would have just picked an ending and gone with it. Really, all they need to do is find some way to make the two endings culminate in a similiar conclusion; Revan missing, the Sith winning the war, and the Star Forge gone. How they do that remains to be seen, but I doubt we'll see differences amount to much more than a few characters appearing or vanishing based on your choices.

If Dustil is the Masked Sith guy, then I'll wonder how he survived my letting Carth gun him down.

Yep. Doing the same; whenever I play a sequel to an RPG, I always enjoy playing the original again as my sort of 'official version' of what happened. Now playing as a male Scoundrel (without levelling up past the Endar Spire), going to switch to Guardian later, starting out Light Side but intending to slip to the Dark after the revelation on the Leviathan (thus letting me play Korriban as an ultra-nasty type and get well into the Dark before the temple.) Currently using that bald Ming the Merciless-looking guy who looks damn menacing when fallen to the Dark Side and dressed in Revan's robes, wielding dual sabers with the Heart of the Guardian in one and the Mantle of the Force in the other.

I know I've always preferred the Dark Side ending. But, frankly, the Dark Side up until the decision on the Temple is one of the weakest points of the game. You don't come across as a Darth Sidious, a mastermind of evil; you come across as a petty, snot-nosed punk being a jerk just for the sake of being a jerk. The 'evil' game has never been one of Bioware's strengths.

That's kinda stretching. The game probably just wants to know Revan's gender so they don't have to refer to him/her as 'them' or 'they' all the time.....and since Revan never said anything except when he/she scored a critical hit, Revan may end up completely silent for the game, if he/she shows up at all. No, there's still (unfortunately) a better than average chance that Revan is a moldering corpse. Or perhaps festering.

I'm not surprised. The original game just seems to flow a lot more naturally for a Light Side Male. There are no complications with characters referring to Revan as a 'he' or otherwise implying very strongly that Revan was of the testicular persuasion, the Bastila romance is much more important within the plot than the Carth romance, and the Dark Side game of KOTOR is incredibly weak until the very end. Everything just seemed to hint at the game being designed for a male, light side Revan. Since most gamers are male, and most people play the game as a 'good guy', I don't think anyone should be taken aback at that.

Oh, yeah. At least in Kansas City, the winters are freezing cold and the summers boiling hot. Probably why it's so cheap to live here. And this confuses a lot of people, but despite the name, the overwhelming bulk of the city lies in the neighboring state of Missouri, not Kansas (though it's right on the border so that some of the city ends up in both states.) An important distinction, because Kansas sucks.

Kansas City, Missouri, United States. For foreigners and the geographically ignorant, that's essentially right smack in the middle of the country. And it's cold right now.

Yes, but you could make the same argument about the Jedi. Fear of slipping to the Dark Side, fear of being controlled by their emotions, fear of using their power in all its glory for anything other than 'helping people'; really, if you want to accomplish something and there's a nagging feeling that you won't (or can't), it's only natural to feel fear. But as I've heard in Rome: Total War about a gazillion times now, 'there is no shame in fear, there is only shame in letting fear rule you.' In this case, given that Palpatine was confident enough to try and turn Luke rather than just kill him outright, I think it's pretty fair to say that the Emperor's fear was secondary to his arrogance and overconfidence.

I'm not a girl, but I would rather claw my eyeballs out than marry anyone with the personalities displayed in the Star Wars universe, man or woman. They're painted with broad strokes, with very little subtlety, which makes for fine Space Opera but would become extremely boring and/or irritating over time.

What I really want to know; will the voice actors/actresses of returning characters from KOTOR be heard? Will we have to endure a non-Jennifer Hale Bastila, for example? Bastila without Jennifer Hale would suck. <_<

I'm pretty certain that it's been confirmed Palpatine and Yoda will have a lightsaber duel. That isn't really a big problem; after all, Sith Lords have had plenty of lightsabers, even in the movies.