Adria Teksuni

I'll think I'll choose the "won't believe it until I hear it from the devs or the publishers" route...

There were many, many times in KoTOR when my PC would get stuck behind objects and not run where indicated. Wouldn't have been so bad but a lot of the objects were things like blades of grass and pebbles, once a small sand dune. During the demo, I also noticed the pathing was somewhat the same, particularly in the scene where you activate the central console in the control room and have to fight the droids. Often my character would refuse to run around the bend and simply stand there until I inched them forward enough to engage in combat. Bad pathing is a pain in the butt.

Excellent, quite excellent. Thank you! Hee hee hee, that Viconia dialogue is priceless! And agreed, Nightcleaver. Considering I do so much scripting work, I pay attention to the dialogues, but my husband, who wants to do the various quests, but gets tired of the "sort and click" of getting to them every replay, most DEFINITELY agrees with you!

Yeah, Mira seemed to have great potential in the demo, witty dialogue but not bitchy.

Which is a damned shame...ah well.

The wrist rocket launcher looked neat, and it had some pretty impressive-sounding rockets to go with it, but overall, in the demo, I was not impressed with it in combat. It didn't seem to do anymore damage than any other range weapon.

Which would be an excellent plot vehicle in that non-Jedi CRPG you're waiting for.

*blink* Well...yeah, but why does wanting a coop SW RPG and saying KoTOR doesn't fit the bill for that make me one?

Reality of a lightsaber does not make for good game balance.

I wouldn't mind an optional "build your lightsaber" type of thing, but I can also see it getting tedious on replay, which is why I stuck "optional" in there.

The KoTOR Thermal Detonator.... PC: *toss* Boom. PC and Surrounding People: Ooooh, pretty. *fighting recommences*

Anyhoo.... I can definitely agree with making double lightsaber or lightstaff usage a mastery feat, I was surprised when it wasn't, to tell you the truth. I think it was because you had waited so long to be a Jedi in the first place...

I did not vote, as the question is Most Important Features, not Most Important Features You Think Might Already Be In the Game. To me, as well, Story is King. Without a good storyline for an RPG, nothing else really matters for me. Immersion, yes, is very, very important to me as well, otherwise it's not as much fun getting caught up in that great story. Immersion to me isn't tidbits, that's more along the lines of good prop useage. To me, immersion is believable backgrounds and settings, dialogue, and character interaction. Good NPC Character Development is a must, but it kind of falls into immersiveness and character interaction. *shrug*

Let's face it, neutral characters don't lend themselves well to Westerns, which is what the Star Wars setting really is. Even in Ep. IV, the good guys wore white, the bad guys wore black. Star Wars does not lend itself to the anti-hero characterization very well, as someone pointed out, the Dark Side is just too strong, and would quickly devour any anti-hero type Jedi, their rage and anger (the typical hallmarks of an anti-hero) would just be too strong. A Snake Pliskin character just wouldn't last long walking the fine line in a Force Adept game. In a non-Force user CRPG it would work quite well, I think. That, and you do have to take into account the Force itself, biological symbiotes aside. There is no neutral aspect of the Force. You have the light side and you have the dark side. This isn't AD&D where you have a variety of aligned deities to help you with your alignment, and as a Force user, you don't have the choice as to what mystical discipline you use. The Force is going to ultimately push you to make that choice, whether you are light or dark. I didn't see Qui Gon as a neutral character, I saw him as a very strongly light sided character, who just happened to have a different definition of what constituted violations of the Code than the Council. He never strove for "balance" between the light and dark sides, which is what a neutral character would want to do (again, see Snake Pliskin reference). He did what he thought was right, and he did it trying to set aside any emotion that would affect his decision. Naturally, I wasn't that crazy about the vast oversimplification of light and dark in KoTOR, but there were a lot of limitations that didn't allow for subtlety in a lot of ways, or a lot of alternate, yet still viable light/dark options. I think Obsidian is working on that with making a less thuggish type of darksider. At some point in any SW plot, as a Force User, you will have to make that ultimate decision whether you will be Light or Dark. Aside from it being tradition, it's the way the Force works.

Oops, I clicked the wrong thing, so take off one for Yes and put one in No. While I would LOVE a coop multiplayer Star Wars RPG, KoTOR would not fit the bill.

LOL I always saw the double-bladed weaponry as belonging to a staff type of feat class, but, by the same notion, two-handed fighting is two handed fighting, and for simplification of gameplay, I can see why they did it the way they did it.

They had NPC initiated dialogue in Baldur's Gate II and it was (and still is) a nightmare for a lot of people. The triggers weren't very well defined and often the NPC would decide they desperately needed to talk to you about their feelings right before you went into battle with three vampires, a golem or two, and some werewolves. Personally, I like the fact that in KoTOR the NPCs would let you know they wanted to talk, and you had the option of when. You can, indeed, speak to them later after telling them no, you just talk to them and the "You have something on your mind?" type dialogue option would pop up along with the standard "What can you tell me about this place?" At least, it should. Some NPC dialogues are only good up to a certain trigger is reached, then it becomes moot, so the option goes away. If they'd worked on the triggers for NPC initiated dialogue, that would be fine, but if it was still as haphazard as in other games, definitely no thank you.

I agree with pretty much everything in this thread regarding not "adding" anything to what's already been said about the Force and Force usage in Eps. IV - VI. Anything that robs an inherently mystical energy of that mysticism is bad, in my humble opinion. Don't believe me? Watch "Highlander 2". Ick. Anyway, The Force is bad enough as is. Instead of inflating it with escalating factors, let's just use what's already there. There is plenty to go around!

It is indeed LucasArts that has dictated no SDK for the KoTOR series, even though a few of their other SW titles do have editing tools, although which ones particularly escape me. This was one of the reasons why Bioware had to create the Odyssey rather than just a rewritten Aurora.

Would we have an option to beat up Joe?

Considering the look in K1, I'll settle for decent looking headgear for K2...

What about squad based? Republic Commando is squad based. Oh, wait, that's right. You won't play X-Box, either.

Heh, for me, this is kind of a "well, duh" since they're not having to build the engine for the game. Still, it is very nice to know that they're going for substance rather than cosmetics.

Except the Jedi did fight in the Mandalorian Wars, Revan and Malak led them, remember? That was the start of the turning of Revan, when he defied the Council and went to go fight the Mandalorians against their wishes. As Fardragon said, many others followed. I haven't been able to find a "when" or "how" of the lightsaber loss yet for KoTOR II, but they did say that retrieving it will involve an optional quest, so (another assumption) you can either elect to just get it back or you can choose to do the quest to retrieve it. Unless you start on Dantooine (not an impossibility, but it doesn't sound like a mining asteroid thingie to me) if the Council took it I don't know how retrieving it could be "an hour or so" optional quest. Your Samurai analogy doesn't prove true. The Jedi are very capable in large groups as an effective force against a techically powered opposing group. Katanas couldn't deflect bullets, lightsabers can deflect blaster bolts. Samurai didn't have additional powers to assist them, Jedi do. Yes, they're better suited to surgical strike teams or other special forces units, but that doesn't mean that they can't hold their own in a large scale battle. Plus, they weren't on their own, Revan went to help the Republic, so it stands to reason the Jedi weren't out there by themselves, but as part of a regular army. Force support, perhaps? That's like saying a large group of Navy Seals wouldn't be able to do any good assigned to regular units in a big battle today.

Okay, cool. Still, I'd rather see some serious pnp type character development in KoTOR 2 than just more stuff, personally. Stuff gets boring after a while, but a good character can interest you for a very long time. They touched on it with Bastila, Carth, and even Yuthura Ban in KoTOR, and even the Candyman had his moments. Hopefully Obsidian will be able to deliver better development bang for the gaming buck, as they don't have the building of a new engine to deal with. Still, they did a good job with Nameless One in PS:T, I thought, so again, I'm not too worried.