paul10000

I haven't been able to find the compartments either. maybe you need a certain level of awareness, or some other condition like that?

i've played through KOTOR 2 four times now, and each time I did a different planet first. I noticed that in every instance I got my lightsaber by about the time I finished the first planet I went to. Sometimes I'd start finding lightsaber parts on cannoks and all kinds of weird places. I think it's set up so that you can get your lightsaber by the time you finish planet #1.

I found the battle circle tough to finish on Dxun if I did Onderon first, although I don't play super combat oriented characters usually. My preferred planet order is Korriban first (it's quick and has good xp, and the hssiss arent too tough if you use mandalorian shields liberally), Dantooine second (for the light sabre crystals and XP buffet in the academy ruins), Onderon third, and Nar Shadaa last. I find that the Mira solo stuff isn't too bad as long as you avoid combat. She actually doesn't have to fight all that many opponents if you make a bee-line right for the escape hatch and let your main character explore the whole area instead.

I remember reading an interview with a production assistant who worked on Phantom Menace and Lord of the Rings. He said that when he worked on LOTR he went on to the set for Moria, and the entire set was constructed to look completely real to the point that he found, buried under some rubble on the floor, a rolled up peice of parchment, and when he unrolled it the parchment was covered in hand written dwarven runes. He then said that he went to the Phantom Menace set and the entire set was empty except for a giant green screen covering one wall. So if you're wondering why the Star Wars prequels look so computer-created and lifeless there's your answer.

Speaking of untranslated Sith language, I wish that we had a translation of what the Sith holocrons are saying to Atris on Telos. I was a bit confused by the storyline at that point. It seems to me that Atris has fallen to the dark side under the influence of the Sith artifacts that she had gathered, and that all those Sith voices were telling her to be evil and so forth. I wish that had been played up a bit more. Like maybe when you return to Telos you find all the handmaidens murdered by Atris and she's let for Malachor with Kriea, or anything to actually give some weight to the fact that she's become a dark jedi.

I'm just wondering what the relationship is between Obsidian and Bioware. I know that some of the developers at Obsidian have had past relationships through Interplay and Black Isle with Bioware via Baldur's Gate (unless I'm wrong about that), but it seems weird that Obsidian's first two games would be sequels to two successful Bioware products (I guess 'successful' is an unnecessary adjective when discussing Bioware, though). Just wondering.

Personally, I'd like to see KOTOR 3 be a bigger game than either 1 or 2 was. I'd love it if you'd start off as a soldier, scoundral, or scout (or possibly even a fringer or noble). After ten or fifteen levels that way you eventually become a Jedi guardian, sentinel, or consular. Then at about level 30 or so, you finally develop a presitige class. I can see a plot that starts out running simultaneous to the events in KOTOR 2. Perhaps your character is a gladiator-slave in the arena pits of Gamorr and hears about the Sith attack on Telos but can do nothing to help without first escaping enslavement. By the time you escape, the Sith invasion fleets from beyond the galaxy are invading, and your only recourse is to learn the ways of the force to combat the invasion.

Right, and that's the point. There would have to be a real plot option incorporated for people who want to be 'neutral'. Not necessarily meaning 'undecided' or 'apathetic', or meaning someone who swings back and forth between good and evil, but rather someone who doesn't agree with either Jedi or Sith teachings. In the PnP SW RPG, there's a Force Adept class that lets you play as a force user without actually being a Jedi. I can see something like that where Force powers are developed without a strong connection to a particular creed.

Well, KOTOR 3 will no doubt deal with this crazy extra-galactic Sith invasion that was alluded to a few times in KOTOR 2, right? So the next Darth would be the leader of a pan-galactic Sith invasion force that makes Nihilus's fleet look like the Little Rascals. I figure something like Darth Livion (derived from oblivion), Darth Geddon (from armageddon), or Darth Ohno (from oh no!). He'd have to be crazy crazy tough, like level 40 at least. Definately not human. I can picture something about twelve feet tall with three legs and three arms, one of his arms growing out of the center of his chest. But the cool thing is that his arms don't end in hands, instead they end in heads, all of them insane and just thrashing around screaming all the time. And then his neck ends in a big hand that holds some kind of crazy lightsabre on a chain, like a light-flail sort of, and when he fights he just spins around in a circle with this light flail swooshing around everywhere. or something like that.

Speaking of which, was that basically the same thing that Nihilus did to Kreia in the cutscene where him and Sion are kicking the crap out of her? I got the impression that that's why she starts off at level 1 at the start of the game even though she was some kind of Jedi master before. Maybe since you also went through the same thing it can't happen to you again.

Roleplaying games are about roleplaying, and KOTOR 2 (as with KOTOR 1) did a great job of letting you play as either a flaky do-gooder who does silly things like pay peoples' debts for them, or as an essentially psychotic murderer. Now that's fine, but the presence of attribute bonuses for only those characters who have become masters of either the light side or dark side creates a game where instead of being immersed in the plots and conversations, you instead search the dialogue threads for those options which correspond to your chosen alignment. Any deviation can very easily result in the loss of your attribute bonuses. I don't mind roleplaying extreme characters, but it would be great if the bonus system wasn't stacked in favour of only two alignments. How about a bonus (and plot options) for remaining neutral the way Kreia does. Or better yet, how about a continuous scale of bonuses present for all possible 'alignments' on the scale between light side master and dark side master. Maybe at DS master you have all physical bonuses, at LS master it's all mental bonuses, and in between depending on where your character is you'd have some sort of mix of the two. It's an idea maybe for KOTOR 3, and I think it would let players play the game in a more immersive and intuitive way.

Vrook was tough for me, too. My strategy was to hold him off until after Kreia teaches the new lightsaber form. After that dialogue he actually appears a few steps away from you, so hit him with an adhesive grenade and then just grenade him to death. boom!

What was that all about? Feel free to disagree, but when you start tossing insults it sounds like you're trying to start a flame war. Speaking of improper naming, did anyone else notice the thug on Nar Shadaa (across the hall from the Mandalorians) who was labelled -- I think it was 'gran' thug, when he is clearly a Mallastarian?

A lot of the plot holes can be filled in with some blanket assumptions made based on how you played KOTOR 1. First of all, Kreia is actually Bastila. That's why Bastila shows up as a vision on Korriban joining Malak in the Mandalorian war. So if you played as an evil Revan in KOTOR 1, then Nihilus is actually Revan gone mad with dark side power. That's why Kreia hates the force and why she wants to lure Nihilus to his death at Talos. All that stuff about Revan leaving the galaxy to prepare for a Sith invasion is just a cover for her own failure as a mentor to Revan as he regained his memories in the first game. UNLESS you played as a light side Revan in KOTOR 1, in which case Nihilus is actually Jolee Bindo driven mad by the dark side after the events at the Star Forge, and Revan really is off to fight the Sith. It's pretty cool, when you think about it, that Obsidian was able to make a plot that changes based on how you played KOTOR 1. Incidentally, Darth Sion is actually Zaalbar. That's why he's all fractured and messed up looking, he went crazy after the evil Revan forced him to kill Mission, and he had to get all mangled to become a Sith Lord. Unless you were a good Revan in which case Darth Sion is actually Mission. Everyone clear on the plot now?

yes but those don't affect the suspension of disbelief. No one in Star Wars claims to be speaking "english", they speak Galactic Common which had been dubbed into english for an english speaking audience. If Han Solo came on screen and said, 'i wish Jabba would just speak english' then I would agree with you. similarly, referring to some species as 'human' is just a translation of whatever galactic common term is actually used. In that same way we see the use of words like 'falcon' and 'dragon' even though in the Star Wars universe those terms only mean approximately what they do in the real world. the 'human' characters in Star Wars aren't actually human of course. Han Solo for example is a Corellian. He looks human enough that through translation we get away with calling him 'human'. And as far as the name Luke is concerned, there's only so many four letter combinations possible, so it isn't that hard to believe that some phonetics would end up being mirrored across different cultures. It happens on earth all the time. The Lunar Shadow thing is unacceptable because it's as glaring as calling a ship the 'Saturn Shadow' or the 'Jupiter Shadow' in the Star Wars universe. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hold on. Are you saying that Luke isn't unusual because phonetics can be mirrored across different culturers, yet the word Lunar cannot be mirrored across different cultures? And that while every other word in Galactic Basic is not actually English but a dub translation, "Lunar" is an actual English word used in Galactic Basic and not an English translation of its approximation in Galactic Basic? I'm afraid your logic eludes me. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Fair enough, my logic needs some more explaining. It goes like this, a word like 'luke' used as the name of a character, and I'm not saying that I agree with calling the character 'luke', but be that as it may, is pretty easily explainable as a phonetic coincidence. Now, you're saying, and a few other people have said, that 'lunar' could be just as easily a similar phonetic coincidence. And that's true, it could be. My argument is that given the choice between coming up with an original name, or using a name already present in the Star Wars universe, and transplanting a name from the real world that has real world significance, I would recommend the former as being more in line with creating a believable Star Wars story line. As I implied previously, writers could start using all kinds of real astological names for Star Wars locations. Maybe KOTOR 3 will feature planets called 'Saturn' and 'Mars', but I hope not, it just damages the believability of the genre.