Akari

Estimating game play length is a pretty tough thing to do. People play at varying paces and explore different aspects of what's offered to them. A lot of dialogs have an opt out with the 'I don't care, don't bore me with this' sort of attitude. If someone did that a lot, they'd definitely have a far shorter game experience than someone who thoroughly explores the dialogs. When I was playing around with the game a couple weeks ago, there was a sequence of cutscenes and dialogs that lasted for over an hour for me, because I was exploring every possible dialog path. I still don't think it's all the way up to 100 hours, but I'm not a very good judge of that. KotOR2 was a 60 hour game for me. I tend to play RPGs slower than the average person. I think I spent around an hour talking to Ravel in Torment as well. Then you have the other end of the spectrum where people can get through the games insanely fast. I believe the QA team for KotOR1 was able to get from start to finish in about 12 hours. My understanding is that it was about the same for KotOR2, but I don't remember for certain. There is a lot to do in the game, but people's play length times will definitely vary substantially. But we think on average, people will find the game about as long as KotOR1. -Akari

I don't see this thread going anywhere that it hasn't already gone. Locking it down. -Akari

It's the same rating they gave KotOR1. <--Token cat smiley. -Akari

Yeah... Here's what's in the game: Aggressive - This AI script is pretty much unchanged from the DEFAULT behavior in KotOR1. Ranged Support - This AI script makes it so that the character will stay close to whoever is leading the party. If you set them up with a Ranged Weapon configuration and a Melee weapon configuration, they will stick to using the Ranged weapon set unless they get attacked by an enemy using melee, in which case they will switch to their melee weapons to fight back (to avoid suffering the penalties of using ranged weapons when someone is hitting you with melee). After a round or two of being left alone, they will switch back to ranged weapons. Stationary - This AI mode will stick to using whatever weapons you have them set to use, and will not move from their spot once combat starts. Ideal for characters using ranged weapons that you don't want switching to melee under any circumstances. Grenadier - Same as in KotOR1. Jedi Support - Same as in KotOR1, except they stay within a limited distance from whoever is leading the party. Also, they should no longer keep using buffs over and over again when they've already cast a buff on you. Also, they should use more of the buffs that they've learned, rather than just a limited selection of them. -Akari

It's honestly just because the engine wouldn't lend itself to being on the PS2. KotOR is essentially a PC game engine, and it was coded accordingly. Which is to say that certain inefficiencies were allowed into the coding in favor of designer-friendly flexibility. This results in things like 10 meg large save games, the need for a hard drive to be able to cache data to, the larger amount of memory available on the XBox, among other things. If the engine had been written with consoles in mind from the beginning, then maybe it wouldn't have mattered which console(s) it came out on. But it wasn't. -Akari

Bao Dur's class is Tech Specialist. I'm not sure what all that entails, but needless to say, the Skills are strong with that one. -Akari

Handmaiden and Visas Marr are two unique individuals. Just to put an end to that speculation. -Akari

The sentiments are well appreciated, everyone. I just wanted to emphasize that this project isn't just all me. I just happen to enjoy game forum discussions more than the rest of the devs, I think. Anyway, the project is winding down here, yesterday was the last major crunch day. The Xbox version is essentially done, unless anything game breakingly bad comes up over the next few days. Guess I'll just sit back and finally play the game myself right now. Don't worry, you'll have your chance before long. -Akari

Whew. Okay, last post for me today. #400 for me! Some will. I notice that T3M4 is always scooting around weilding spots as if repairing places. Unarmed is very viable now. There are feats dedicated to improving the damage and such on it, to the point that you can do some hefty unarmed damage if you focus on it enough. Another ability Mira has is called 'Point Guard'. Whenever she's leading the party (I.e., you are actively controlling her), the party will not set off mines. Also, she will never set off mines herself, even when she isn't the leader. Bao Dur can be equipped with anything that you'd like to have him equip, limited only by the feats you chose for him. I'm not sure about the dialog options. I haven't had the chance to play the game normally enough myself to really know. But I do believe there are ways to peacefully resolve some situations, but don't expect to talk your way out of everything. I don't think you can craft any robes. So they're all things you'll need to obtain somehow. I don't know about subtle... but they're pretty evil. You can be a pretty cruel character. In very non-subtle ways. There maybe subtle parts as well, but I might not know about them since I haven't played the game normally yet. When you're controlling different party members when the groups are split, then the dialogs will be with them instead of the player character. The dialogs have been written with this in mind. There are 12 total possible NPCs. Of those you can end up with a total of 10. Well, the LA site sort've lets on about the apprentices stuff. Yes, there are apprentices. About the player's lightsaber, statistically, it's pretty strong as far as Lightsabers go. Story-wise, it's got its own place. I'm going to start playing that stack of games that have piled up since I haven't had time! Rome Total War Doom 3 Evil Genius More Planetside More City of Heroes Burnout 3 Other stuff... Anyway, this wraps it up for me tonight. I just wanted to say you're welcome for the few answers I was able to give. And I wanted to emphasize that just because I happen to post the most here doesn't mean there aren't a ton of awesome developers on this project. They're all working hard to deliver a good game and they all deserve credit for their efforts even if they're not so post-happy as I am. -Akari

You're welcome. I've enjoyed doing it. His arm allows him to 'bash' down certain force field doors quickly. His robot will help you in combat by shooting enemies or repairing friendly droids. He upgrades it over the course of the game. I've noticed in a lot of cutscenes, the PC is referred to as 'The exile.' -Akari

There was support for designers to specify these at one point, but they were causing too any problems over the last month or so, so they've been cut for the most part. I believe those are the voice actors. There will not be downloadable content. The first question is a design one. I imagine that the designers made the characters react appropriately in some places, but I'm not sure on the whole. I doubt anyone'll be calling you Padawan in any case. Regarding the second one, I don't really know about that. I don't believe any changes have been made with regards to the control of 'walking' verses 'running'. -Akari

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe Bao Dur has a new non-Jedi class. Should be better than the first for those that want to specialize in them. There isn't really even a schedule for it at this point. We need to get the Xbox version done right now. I'm pretty sure there will be. I really like some of the voices, while others I don't like so much. I like Kreia's voice just because it matches the character very well. I believe there are 3 levels of progression. -Akari

No idea on that at this point. You really don't want me to answer those. It'd be spoilertastic! I'm all good. I haven't heard from QA about game length. Just in the chats I've had with other people here at Obsidian, it would take 4 hours to get off the first planet if you just did the critical path and weren't reading the dialogs as you played. So it would presumably take a good amount longer than that to get off the first planet if you're actually playing for the first time. No idea on the total game length. Amongst ourselves, we figure it to be about the same length as KotOR1. I don't think so. They'll probably all use the same sound effects. I'm not sure about the end game stuff. I know there's a couple different movies and credits, but not sure what else there is. -Akari

Doing well. Ready for a day off soon. I think that'll be about it. The textures on the PC version are way higher resolution. Generally the interface is going to be about the same as the first one, in terms of how you control it. There may be some time to make changes, but I wouldn't bet on it. I don't design the interfaces, I just program what I'm given. I don't know about mouselook either. I'll bring it up at some point, but it'd be something I'd have to get someone's okay on before I looked into it too much. I'm actually not sure, sorry. Not. I honestly don't know. I wouldn't answer if I did though. The longer the wait, the more time we have to make the game better. Nope. They didn't make the cut, unfortunately. -Akari

He is the Mandalore. Don't know anything about the other two questions. I'm not really too knowledgeable on this topic, unfortunately. I do know that there are specific force powers for some of the prestige classes, but I'm not even completely sure which ones get what. Force powers weren't generally something I worked on. It's a percentage. The amount of the percentage goes up as Kreia goes up in level. The stages are 3%, 5%, 7%, the levels are at 1, 7, 13. -Akari

Appearances can be deceiving. Just because someone's not holding a lightsaber doesn't mean they can't be affected by the Darkside of the force. I don't know the exact details behind all those characters, but I do know that the visible corruption is appropriate for at least some of them. Correct. Odds are I'll be working on the PC version as interface stuff tends to be my area on this particular project. I'm not sure how many other people will be or who they would be. Yeah. The plan had been to do it, but there were a number of last minute technical problems that came up a couple months back that were going to consume a lot of our development time to resolve. There were also other issues outside of technical reasons that resulted in the decision being made to not create any Xbox live content. -Akari

This'll almost certainly be the last weekend I have to do this, so I figured why not. I'm happy to take a shot at some of the questions you all have, but I'm trying to be very careful from giving out details that would ruin the story for you in advance, which means I tend to have to stick to more boring technical things. Besides, I'm a programmer, so that's what I do best. Feel free to ask whatever, my responses might be scattered as I'm just going to pick and chose the ones to respond to today. -Akari

I don't think there's any actual -blood-, per say. But there are a couple cutscenes that are more violent than anything you saw in KotOR1, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what got that part added to the ratings label. -Akari

No, it doesn't happen with hostile attacks against her. It's more like buffs and the like. Any buffs cast on her are also cast on the player character. Not on other party members besides the player character (which would be all of one, I guess). That part of the description on the site was a bit misleading. She'll have her fair share of drawbacks though... You'll just have to see. -Akari

That's correct. You can't have all three of those characters at the same time. -Akari

My guess is that it's a 'title' or 'position', but I actually don't know. -Akari

I think so, myself. To this day, I still don't know the full story, but I've seen plenty of snippets of it while debugging cutscenes and the like and personally I think it's got a lot of powerful moments throughout it. But hey, I'm working on it, so I'm kinda biased! -Akari

Nah, Disciple is a specific character. -Akari

Er, hm, ah, well, it isn't an 'Either/Or' case. If I said anything else it'd be giving away some of the story. Though LA may release more on their website or something. -Akari

Hm... Well, if you go to the official Lucas Arts website, the woman in red with the veil over her eyes is voiced by Kelly Hu. I don't know any other names off hand. -Akari