Akari

I don't know what date the official site will go live is. But from what I've been told by others here it looks really good. It has tidbits and pictures of all the potential party members, so all the mysteries around party NPCs will soon be resolved. Sort of... -Akari

Actually, I tend to be more amused by how accurate some speculations are. It's often the ideas that recieve the least attention. -Akari

I have no idea, unfortunately. I don't know what's going on with the manual. -Akari

Funny you should ask that...

Valor adds attribute bonus, the side effect of which is higher dex which may grant a higher dex bonus to your AC. I just tested it now and they all stacked fine, so there doesn't seem to be any hard cap. -Akari

Yeah, that screenshot isn't Atris. Though that potential party member does wear white clothing and has white hair... -Akari

Yes. I don't know the number off hand. -Akari

It looks like if you use both of them, you get a bonus of 10, yes. The breakdown in script is: +4 for Master Speed +6 for Force Armor So yeah, it'll add up to 10. Wearing a robe didn't seem to cut into the bonus though, I had the same +10 to Defense with or without the robe. Wearing armor kept me from casting Force Armor, so I was only able to get the +4 bonus from Master Speed. Hope that answered your question! -Akari

There are some limits to it though. If other party members are not participating in combat, Atton's survival feat doesn't kick in. And he does stay down for 5 or seconds or so, which is long enough for enemies to decide to go after someone else in the party instead of him. Survival is useful, but not game breakingly so. -Akari

I agree. I found this odd, considering the amount of important Jedi in the movies with beards. Obi-Wan, Qui-Gonn, etc. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yes, there are heads with beards this time. -Akari

I don't know what KotOR2 is releasing on. I bet it's CDs. CDs are still preferred for games because while everyone has a CD player in their computer, not everyone has a DVD player. I didn't have a DVD player in my computer until I bought a whole new computer last week. Some games get around that by releasing two versions (1 on CDs, 1 on DVD). I'm not sure if that's more expensive or what, but not too many games seem to do that. -Akari

Bao Dur is the zabrak, yeah. -Akari

Kreia starts the game with the Jedi Consoler class, I believe. But she doesn't start with a lightsaber in hand, so one has to be obtained. The little droid in that screen shot is probably just the 'Cheat Bot' we placed on levels early on to let us set/unset flags, warp around the levels, etc., during early stages of level design. Though I think we do use a droid that looks like that elsewhere as a character, T3M4 isn't that color. -Akari

Yeah, when I have time to play it someday, I'll let you know! Anyway, just thought I'd mention some things related to this thread: We haven't heard about any change in the PC release dates, so I don't know anything about that. Once LA announced that the PC version would be coming out in Feb, they stopped QA'ing the PC version to focus on the Xbox QA'ing. This means that the PC version hasn't been getting tested for the last two months or so. As a result, we won't be turning in the PC version at the same time we turn in the Xbox version. This will technically give us time to do some things with it that we won't have the time to do with the Xbox. I can't say with certainty what will come from this additional time though. PC testing will probably start up sometime real soon, likely within the next couple of weeks, which means that I'll be working on KotOR2 for a good while yet. -Akari

Got busy at the end there. Closing the topic for today. Thanks for participating. -Akari

I'm not sure if Mira has changed or not. I have no idea who she's based on, if anyone. That's a design question. Since the contents of your party depend on the path you take through the game, I can't answer one way or another what the gender breakdown will be. It will depend in large part upon you. No female droid that I'm aware of off hand. I believe LA gave us some vague guidelines, but the story is our own. I believe Avellone went into more detail on this question in one of the various interviews that've been around. I don't believe so, but I don't know for certain. We're doing what we can with the facial animations. I believe Darth Sion goes topless the whole time. I honestly have no idea on these three, sorry. I don't really know the answer to your art related questions. Designers or artists would have to answer those. As far as cheated duels, I also don't know. I suspect not, but don't know for certain. It will be at least 4 again. I don't know if it'll need more than that. I don't think it will. I believe the minimum system requirements aren't changing from KotOR1. If you could play KotOR1 on your PC, you should be able to play KotOR2. This isn't written in stone, mind you, but it's what my current understanding is. -Akari

Yeah... I talked to the designer in charge of making decisions like that. He said that if NPCs could be used to pass every skill check, then there would be no point in the player character leveling up their skills themselves. Whether or not one agrees with that point of view, that's how it is currently. There's some instances where only the PC can make the skill check. I don't know anything about the assassination function. You won't be able to select tattoo's, but that doesn't mean some characters might not end up with them, depending on how things go. There is a limit to Lightside and Darkside directions you can go, just like in KotOR1. But even if there wasn't, it wouldn't really mean anything beyond a certain point anyway. I mean, once you've established that you're one extreme or the other, it doesn't really make much sense to go 'more extreme' in one direction or another. One reason I can think of for having a limit is that it keeps you from going so far in one direction that your choices no longer matter at all. Like, if you were able to stack up 100's of 'lightside' points, you could then go around being a bastard for a long time yet your alignment would still suggest that you were good. I don't think Juhani makes an appearance, but I'm not 100% certain about that. There will not be a demo. I don't know when the game will be available in the UK. The appearance of the silver/gold armored guy has changed some over time. He definitely looks different than he did in early screenshots. But then again, so does Atton. Speaking of Atton, Atton starts off neutral. And yes, there will be an option to listen to the songs that you've unlocked from the main menu. Songs are unlocked simply by going to a planet where they are played. Not as of yet. -Akari

Good question, I don't know. I think that it won't make a difference, but I'm not sure. I'm afraid that I don't personally care too much. While I enjoyed the character interaction of KotOR1, I felt that the stories of the characters had been sufficiently told in that game that we don't need to revisit them time and time again. Much the same way I feel about Torment, in that I'd never really care to see those specific characters cast in another game. In the setup questions, gender is determined as well as whether Revan went Darkside or Lightside at the end, but I'm not sure what there is beyond that. I've not had time to play through that segment myself yet. The orb thing is a maintanence droid, found in Peragus. It zooms around repairing or healing your enemies as you fight, so it's a bit of a pest. When you kill it, it explodes, damaging everyone around it though, so sometimes it can be used as a creative bomb against the other droids. The beam you see there is it doing its maintenance thing on the droid. My favorite KotOR1 character? I, uh, actually enjoyed Carth as a character quite a bit. Out of everyone, he felt the most 'real' or believable to me, whereas some characters felt more like ideal archetypes. There's a couple planets back from the first game. I think if you look around in the planet-related threads you'll find nearly complete list of all the planets in the game. And I actually program during the week too. -Akari

Okay, back from lunch. That hasn't been decided by Lucas Arts yet. It's up to them. At this point the answer is undecided. The zabrak starts out biased toward Lightside. No comment on the force stuff. There's at least two alien NPCs, though they might be optional. No comment. I think I know which screenshot you're talking about. I'm not sure who the robed fighters are aligned with. The woman in that screenshot is not a party character, as some have figured out. I'm not exactly sure who she is, to be honest. The fighting stances? Some are focused around tuning your lightsaber use while others are better for those that rely heavily on the force powers instead of lightsaber combat. So different classes will benefit from different stances. No comment on the first two. As for the third, I think I'd be a bit biased. The color crystal can be changed by anyone like in KotOR1. So changing the hue is just a matter of obtaining the proper color crystal. I'm not sure where the Sentinal falls in terms of feats. But I did notice the last time I created a Sentinal in chargen, they have more class skills than any other class. I'm not sure if this is final though. Yeah, lots of debugging. Yeah, that was the screenshot I was thinking of. There's not a lot I can say about it, other than what I mentioned in earlier in this same post. -Akari

Something fast. I dunno. I haven't seen the demo trailer you're referring to. I don't have time to grab and upload screen shots right now. I've all but explained the pet thing in prior discussions, but I'm not going to say anything just now. Total number of Sith Lords? Hm... it changes over the course of the game, what there is at the start isn't how many there will be in total by the end. I'll leave it at that for now. -Akari

I'm not sure. That's always in Lucas Arts' hands. I'm good, thanks. I'd have to bounce that off our graphics programmer, but he's not here at the moment. I'm not sure about new planets. But I do think that you've got just about all the planets figured out. I was looking at a list in another post that theorized what the remaining unknown planets might be, and that list contained the rest of them... it contained some that were wrong too, of course. I have no idea what LA's marketing schedule looks like. I can't really answer any questions on that subject. A game programmer with my years of experience can probably expect to make between $40k - $60k depending on a number of factors. My salary falls in there somewhere. I don't mind answering questions. But I don't like repeating myself, so I prefer new questions. We earn our copy of the game via 7 day weeks at 12 hours a day, I think. A new character? Hm, I don't know about a name. But that green-skinned guy people have noticed in screen shots is a party NPC. He's also a Zabrack as some have noticed. He's also the owner of the pet-like thing the party gets. -Akari

Not yet, but soonish. It's too hard to tell at this point about the release date. It all seems doable at this point, but there's always the chance of unforeseen problems. As far as gender choices, I'm not completely sure. It changes the interaction you have with some of your party members fairly significantly (The romance angle like you mentioned), and there's at least one quest I'm aware of that can be solved a different way depending on gender... As far as the music goes, I haven't had the chance to listen to the new score. I'm not even sure what stage it's at right now. I know a few weeks ago we had all the prototyped music (i.e., not recorded by live instruments yet), but I don't know what's changed since then. I'm not sure, really. I'm not sure if it's as central to the game as it was in KotOR1. But I'm just not informed enough on the subject. -Akari

I've been working every weekend, but have been swamped on prior weekends so I haven't been able to spend much time here at all. But I'll try to answer questions today if possible. I'm not sure if there's a whole lot I can say at this point that I haven't already gone over in prior weeks, but I'm willing to at least take a look at what questions are on your minds. So feel free to respond to this thread with questions you have about the project at this point. -Akari

The little floating guys in these particular screen shots were in the E3 demo, actually. They're maintenance bots on Peragus that go around repairing your enemies. So no, those aren't the pet you're looking for. -Akari

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: This time it's not Knights of the Old Republic 1 -Akari