SteveThaiBinh

Which, in fact, you did.

Atton: That stupid T3 unit stole our ship! It's probably joyriding through the system right now, laughing at us. Laughing at me! Poor Atton, he's so easily threatened.

The HK-50 droids are working for Goto, aren't they? And he definitely wants you alive, to save the Republic. So they need to take you alive, which makes their choice of attack strategy at Telos (shooting down the shuttle) seem, well, overkill. Atton says it's only his flying skills that kept you from certain death. Still, I guess the HKs know their weaponry better than I do.

Beautiful ... bleak ... very expressive. Atton's mouth is nicely done - you can see the remains of a bitter smile, but he looks like he might be at peace...

Things I liked (far from complete) 1. Pazaak! (Is there a Windows version yet?) 2. Sara Kestelman's acting. 3. The journal not telling you exactly what you have to do at every moment. 4. Bickering and interaction between party members, in character, and directly related to your actions. 5. Lots of humour, especially the HK-50 droids.

I think the decision about whether you get Hanharr or Mira is made when you get the message inviting you to the Jekk-Jek Tar. I was playing as DS character, but trying to stay just neutral enough on Nar Shaddaar to get Mira. First time, I got Hanharr by mistake, so I reloaded a save game from before I got that message, did a couple of light-side quests, got my alignment up to just a little DS, and got Mira. I think it's based purely on alignment, not on whether you sided with the Exchange or the refugees, but I'm not 100% sure.

I was also confused by some of these early dialogues where it seemed my character knew about his past, but I didn't. When the Exile was asked about the past, I had two kinds of dialogue options: the very specific 'Ah, yes, I was at Malachor 5' response that your character seems very confident about, even though I've never heard of Malachor 5; or, 'I don't remember much about it', true for me, but seems to be a lie for my character. I hope that made sense. Looking back on it, I think the writers were doing something pretty interesting and innovative. I've never known a game that gave you so much control over the back story, both in terms of the Revan m/f/ds/ls options and your freedom to establish the Exile's motivation in following Revan. At the beginning, and later with Atris, and in the holo-recreation of your trial, you are in control. It beats the alternative, of having to sit through a long, fixed backstory. First time through, I probably worried too much. Every time I've replayed, I've really appreciated the freedom to role play the Exile as I wish.

Paint is usually in the Start Menu under Accessories. Pressing 'Print Scrn' doesn't actually create an image file: you need to paste the image into Paint and then save the file from there.

Press the 'Print Scrn' key, then open Paint (or other graphics programme) and Paste the screenshot.

I've played nearly through with three characters, but only finished once. Because I REALLY love the game, but I don't think much of the ending. So I play until the end of the part I like, then I start again. It works for me...

You'll get lightsaber parts wherever you go, though in Nar Shadaar it's probably easiest to get them, if you know exactly where to go and what to do. But I wouldn't recommend that for the first time you play - better just to let the game surprise you. A few people have experienced a serious bug when playing Dantooine first. I never have, but now when I do Dantooine first I always keep a save game from before I go, just in case.

The Prologue with T3 aboard the Ebon Hawk was very strong, with clear instructions delivered by voice-over to get you used to the basic controls. The developers obviously went out of their way to help players who were new to Kotor. I think they did a better job than Bioware, who plunged too soon into combat.

But if they close the forums, then more people will email the developers directly, because we can't express our opinions here. Unless they change their email addresses. If developers have been receiving a deluge of negative email, I feel very sympathetic towards them, but I'm not sure they've chosen a wise response.

Darth Oops, he's dead (from one blaster shot)

Closing/deleting threads like this is just such an odd thing to do: nothing is gained by it (since the forums are closing anyway), and people who contributed to them or enjoyed reading them will be annoyed. So why do it? Would the moderator (or whoever) who did this please respond? I don't think we have the right to expect Obsidian to appear here every day answering questions, but the moderator should account for this.

Why was the long 'cut-ending' thread closed? Sorry if this is wrong, but I thought that when the moderator closed a thread, they usually posted something to bring it to a conclusion or at least explain why it's being closed. Has someone posted an explanation somewhere else that I've missed? It's not that important, I guess, just seems a bit arbitrary to close it like this.

One of the characters (Atton, I think) refers to them having a 'colony', which confused me, because as the conversation continued they seemed to be refering to the Miraluka home world. There might be other planets where Miraluka live. Plus, in a galaxy as cosmopolitan as the Star Wars universe, there are bound to be thousands of Miraluka dotted around the place. In other words, they've wisely left the door open to reusing Miraluka in the future, without needing some implausible explanation for why some survived.

Obsidian should probably leave the two 'self-help' tech support forums open, at least until the patch is released. They've helped a lot of people to minimise the impact of the bugs and have a better playing experience.

A very small thing, but... When one character interrupts another in the dialogue, they actually do interrupt quickly, without a lame pause in the middle. I've never seen this done properly in a game before.

The 'lethal link' was a lie, pure and simple. She IS the betrayer, after all. The exile forms links with every force sensitive or force user he travels with, but only Kreia knows anything about force bonds. She uses that knowledge (and the Exile's ignorance) to cause pain when she loses her hand, then spins a story about how the Exile will die if she dies. The purpose: so that the Exile has to keep her with him.

This is a question for someone with experience in game development. I've been reading a lot in the Sith Lords forums and others about aspects of the game that people like or dislike. How much romance should there be? Should you go for linear plots with deep character development, or more freedom and less depth? How much should the sequel refer to 'Part One' (in this case, Kotor 1). My question is about how these choices are actually made. In particular, is formal market research used, either for the game you are developing or more general research about 'what game-players want'? If there is (reasonably rigorous) research into what gamers are generally perceived to want, is it publicly available? Or do designers rely on their own judgement entirely?

All my party members were telling me I had this 'kind of glow' like I'd hooked up to a force generator or something. I got confused, and ended up staring at my character portrait in the corner so long that I managed to convince myself that it really was glowing. Which shows the power of suggestion over weak minds. So why not have light-side characters really glow? Like the DS corruption, it would also provoke some interesting responses from the (non-party) people you meet.

I can't believe the voice actor for Disciple was the same guy who did Knox in Vampire Bloodlines. Knox had me in hysterics, but Disciple was just one long monotone. Awww maaaaaaan!

To get NPCs to react realistically to your character's sex/behaviour/alignment, the amount of dialogue needed for each character could quadruple. At the very least, every NPC would need a completely different LS/DS dialogue tree. This is certainly possible, but in order to keep the game manageable (and on budget) you'd need to lose other elements of freedom. You'd probably have to give up the freedom to take planets in the order you choose, and you couldn't have so many possible party members, maybe only two or three. Are gamers willing to make that trade-off? And would the game developers take the risk that reviewers might react badly to this, marking the game down for being too 'linear'?

Thanks to everyone for your comments and criticisms. You pointed out some important weaknesses in the case I was making, and it was great to get so many perspectives. I continue to believe that there are problems in the way women are depicted in all media, computer games included. And that while many individual examples found in Kotor 2 can be explained, when you look at the game as a whole, it does tend to reinforce rather than challenge cultural stereotypes. I think good sci-fi/fantasy can do better than that. And now I'm off to bed. 'night...