EnderAndrew

Oddly, I'm not concerned that it will be a FPS. Not with Troika making it. Both Valve and Troike swear that the engine is quite flexible. Valve designed it with modding in mind.

Don't give in to the dark side (ie, encourage trolls)

Coming to KOTOR:2 - Darth Dubya

I'll conceed that fictional sci-fi universes can have whatever technology they want. I just think that constatly trying to reach for Galactic Badness

I agree that Lucas should pay more attention to his own creation. But in one sense, he hired Steve Sansweet for that. He found a guy that knew more about Star Wars than him, and hired the guy. The problem is that no one stands up to Lucas and challenges him on ideas. In a sense you are right that Lucas is starting to contradict himself a bit in the prequels. It's hard to argue the need to keep the novels and EU consistent when the movies aren't even consistent.

I don't know how limiting the engine is for rewritting skills, but using skill levels as a flag to open up sidequests, or alternate sidequest resolutions should be simple enough.

I normally buy on PC if it's available to have the extra content and modding possibilities. All my friends bought Morrowind on the X-Box and I laughed. It was a good X-Box game, but I got the two expansions, and tons of plugins which greatly enhanced the game.

Vampire looks very interesting, but I don't know yet. I think Arcanum was great, and ToEE was pretty boring. Troika is batting .500 so far. Visually, the game looks quite interesting. The first Vampire game was like a 3D Diablo with a plot. You basically clicked and killed. Futhermore, it wasn't faithful to White Wolf's material. I prefer RPGs to be a little more interactive. I think the new Vamp game has a lot of potential, but I haven't seen a feature list or reason to start drooling yet.

I was in the Marine Corps, and have a little military knowledge. Despite the US military having large bombers, and umpteen million bombs, we bombed Viet Nam, Germany and Iraq for years without razing the entire country to the ground let alone the surface of an entire planet. And a Star Destroyer may be 1,000 meters long, but we're talking about a lot of surface area. Regardless, the OT is seen as the source of all SW cannon. ANH makes a point that the Death Star is unique in it's new and unparalled power. SW EU often mimics that power needlessly. That's my point.

I blame a lot of the book/cannon issues on Del Rey. When Bantam had the license, I read *every single* Star Wars book ever published to my knowledge, including old Del Rey books. When Del Rey took over and started the NJO, stuff went downhill immediately. Characters weren't consistent, authors didn't communicate eith each other, etc. The other problem was that the comics were never seen as cannon in Lucas's eyes and never supervised thusly. Heck, Marvel did Star Wars comics for almost three years back in the 80's without Lucas's permission, and got sued. Lucas hated the comic medium and was vocal about it. Lucas was vocal in describing his dislike for the Dark Empire plotline. Lucas told the authors to stay away from certain subjects because he wanted to keep everything consistent and cannon. Said topics included the introduction of Chewbacca to Han Solo, Boba Fett's origins, and cloning. Zahn has said in interviews that he had to get special permission from Lucas to use cloning at all in his novels. Later authors started quoting the comics in the novels, while the comics heaviliy utilized cloning, and Boba Fett's origins. Del Rey gets the book license, and then everything goes out the window. Lucas (or atleast his rep) made it a point to personally approve each author and plotline with Bantam had the license. A buddy of mine was a rules editor for West End Games, and they had a rep from Lucas that encouraged them to write sourcebooks for certain novels. They worked with the authors, and many of the authors colloberated with one another. Life was great for a while, and Star Wars was fairly consistent, largely maintained by fans, and overlooked by Lucas. When people ignored Lucas's basic rules, cannon became largely debatable. And frankly, I've played in many a Star Wars RPG game, and read a lot of bad fan-fic. You'll have a hard time convincing me that fans know cannon, or respect cannon. As a fan, you have the right to run whatever RPG you want, and enjoy it as much as you want. That doesn't mean you get to dictate cannon to the rest of the community. The concept of cannon means that a governing body of some sort makes certain aspects official. Lucas is that body whether people like it or not.

When playing KOTOR, I went with Soldier/Guardian because I didn't care for skill points. They seemed rather useless compared to feats.

I am really excited about KOTOR:2, but I'm with you that I would likely buy another good PC RPG (The Fall perhaps) before I bought KOTOR:2 on the PC. That raises another question, as I own both an X-Box and a PC. Which system to buy on? I've heard there will be X-Box Live content at Launch. KOTOR played fine on an X-Box controller. Will the content also be available for PCs on the Internet? Can a dev possibly answer this?

I'm not crazy on a shapeshifter PC, but I wouldn't mind another shapeshifter NPC.

The only dev comment I've seen stated that they didn't know who was scoring at this point.

Don't be so impatient for a trailer. I would much rather that the Dev team focus on making the best possible game rather than spend all day catering to creating hype material to keep us satiated until then. I imagine the game will have an official trailer, and yes I hope it is as good as the trailer from KOTOR. However, there is a lot of time between now and February.

Are devs still reading this thread or have the arguments chased them away?

I get the impression this game will have you going to level 25 or 30. You could see an original party member from KOTOR join you rather late in the game as level 20.

I think 100x100 is reasonable for avatars. I also don't understand why other people on the forum have larger avatars, but mine has to be shrunk to 64x64. It also seems silly to let larger graphics in signatures than you do for your avatar. Oh well. Que sera sera.

Amen to that!

In Star Wars galaxies, I'm all for it. KOTOR shouldn't try to be that game however.

I think that's a little assumptive. As far as PC RPG's go, I think there are plenty great games in the works. As far as console RPG's so, KOTOR:2 is the game to beat.

Turning the Jedi in your party is plenty enough. They are your followers.

One of my beefs with KOTOR's plot was having two worlds destroyed by an ancient fleet, and then having that fleet destroyed by the Republic ultimately. In ANH, Han Solo doesn't believe the entire Imperial Fleet could wipe out an entire planet. Many Star Wars EU sources feel the need to play on the same scope as a Death Star, but I don't believe it's necessary. The Thrawn Trilogy shows that a truly great Star Wars story doesn't have to involve Galactic Badness

I loved the Fallout series. As far as pen-and-paper roleplaying games, I tend to stick to dark games like White Wolf's World of Darkness. But from LucasArts, in a teen rated game (what KOTOR:2 is likely to get) I doubt we will get true evil from a PC. However, the devs may be on to something in the fact that you can turn your party members. Palpatine is a great character. He is an expert manipulator, and a subtle charmer. I see the makings of a Hitler-esque Empire builder in him. I think Palpatine's character in Episode 2 is Lucas's best writing (which isn't saying much). Evil could be more evil in KOTOR:2 while remaining subtle. Seduction, desecration, and temptation are valid forms of evil. Read "Night" by Elie Wiesel (spelling?) It's an accounting of the Holocaust that focuses on how this 14 year old kid was subtly and effectively brainwashed to despise his father, his people and his God while in Auschwitz. When we was "liberated" by Americans, he wasn't sure how to feel. The book has a eerie evil in the removal of a culture's identity that strikes me as worse than the death count.

I have to agree. Look, I'm an indie filmmaker. I study film a great deal. Lucas suffers from a lack of editorial process. He surrounds himself with yes-men, doesn't answer to a studio, is never challenged by anyone, and doesn't test screen his movies. He lives in a secluded Ranch, in Lucas world, and ignores the media at large. No one person makes a perfect product as their first draft. Episode 1 was greatly flawed on many levels. But the trailer for Episode 1 and the Duel of the Fates video both give me goosebumps to this day. Visually, 95% of the film was great. Episode 1 may have the best score of any of the Star Wars films. John Williams is pure genius. You take an editorial process to Episode 1, and you can easily change the film into a great film. Start with the script, and revise it a bit. The film is a series of meetings, where people sit around in chairs and talk with abrupt action sequences in between. Rule #1 of film making, show rather than tell. This flaw is most obvious in Episode 2 where we don't see the tuscan raider massacre, but rather hear about it later. That's weak filmmaking at it's core. But the concept and story element of the slaughter were good ideas. A small tweak, and you have a great scene. Next, remove midichlorians. In the original trilogy, Obi Wan and Vader both had a mystical sense of how strong Luke was. We accepted that. Keep with that. Next, have the aliens speak in alien languages rather than human dialects of English. It comes across as racist, is less immersive, and is inconsistent with the OT. Next, have someone do a dialouge polish. Take out the "yippee!" and take a page from Terry Brook's novelization of Episode 1. It's the same story, but exapanded and told much better. The events of the prequels are very much cannon, and still Star Wars. They are poorly told. I try to look at what the films could have been, and I see greatness. If only Lucas had let someone else pen the script for Episode 3, I'd have high hopes.