Darth_Schmarth

Very impressive how all those smilies really made your message come across. Especially the last five or so.

I think they'll make the patch for KotOR3 before making the actual game, so that this time they'll already have it done when the arrows start flying.

It paved the way for some poor story telling too. I mean, I don't really wish to go into another the-ending-sucked rant, but they had built it up to seem like a much longer game than KotOR. When I was finished with the planet-hopping and went to see the Jedi Masters I thought "Wow, I've still got a long way to go, let's see how they propose we stop the Sith!". Then I got into the Enclave and they said "We gotta strip you of the Force, sonny", after which Kreia appeared and killed three Jedi Masters outright with a little wave of her hand. Need I say that I felt cheated? The Nihilus thing is also depressing. Here they have a really cool guy from all over the cover and concept art. Now unless you get really chatty with Kreia you will know virtually nothing of this guy. Just a cutscene and some conversation upon acquiring Visas. Obsidian said they wanted him to come across as a mystery guy, but there wasn't anything mysterious or eerie about him. He was just underdeveloped. All the concept art fooled you into thinking the game would be about something completely different than it was, which could have been a good thing if the game hadn't been so confusing and unclear. Now you just sat there in front of the screen going "oh well...".

The thing is also that if you take a closer look at the two titles, they aren't so different. In KotOR it is "do a few things to gain exp and you'll unlock some information on your NPCs". In KotOR2 we have "do or say something in the presence of character 1 to gain some influence points to unlock some information on said character 1".

Well, Kreia herself is a character who seems to be able to "choose" which side of the force she's currently on, which kind of proves the point I was trying to make in the first place. I think you are right in what you're saying, but it just feels like Obsidian messed around a bit too much with the Star Wars concept. Not that their idea is inherently wrong, it just doesn't fit very well with KotOR1, despite being a direct sequel to it.

Dead on. Shouldn't I? No, much of its "goofyness" is down to Obsidian trying to create something they didn't have the time to create. I want to remind you that if fixed, the influence system could have potential. As it is, it's flawed. I disagree that KotOR was bad. KotOR had a nice setting and good feel. It lacked the depth of a larger RPG, and I thought it felt too short, but overall it was a good game. KotOR2 was an attempt at squeezing two years worth of work into one year. Bad idea, and it's a shame how it turned out. To me, KotOR1 is the better game, but if KotOR2 had reached full potential it might have been even better. We will never know. My bad.

Nope... You'll simply have to open the game and listen. :D I could, however, send you the two cantina songs from A New Hope. Best SW music EVER!

The very same books that Mr. Star Wars himself always claims that he doesn't care about. :cool:

Meaning...? I haven't played any other RPG with an influence system. In fact, the only RPGs I have really played apart from KotOR 1 and 2 are Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. But with this game there is a hell of a lot of flesh to the story in particularly Kreia's dialogue. What if I completely disagree with Kreia and do the exact opposite to her teachings the whole time? Well, then the game ends up feeling outrageously... unfulfilling. Then I have another point on what I said before about the lure of the dark side in Freedon Nadd's tomb. When I played DS I didn't have any influence with Handmaiden because I thought it natural for my character to treat her harshly. As we all know a Sith Lord's corruption will cause characters with low influence points to go very LS. I did, nevertheless, send Handmaiden as party leader to the tomb and had her "succumb" to the dark side in the final conversation with the Sith Masters. As I got back she was all "How did it go in Iziz? I was so worried!" (well, sort of) and two seconds later she was all bitter "I have nothing more to say to you" again with her LS points going through the ceiling. This is another point to strengthen my sound argument that the influence system is seriously flawed and in need of fixing (or complete removal). I once again wish to stress that just because I found it hard to conceive how a person who dislikes a game so much spends the necessary time to post over 4000 posts on its boards (or rather its sequel's, but they're not THAT different), you don't have to snap at everything I say, m'kay? Let's be friends!

Am I the only one who thinks they look like KotOR Mandalorians (or rather vice versa).

I think that the XBOX version had it too, but I haven't played it so I wouldn't really know. The trick is that in KotOR the bonus was "hidden" (i.e. it didn't explicitly state that you'd gotten a bonus, but if you checked your stats you'd see it).

I do roleplay, and the game becomes shorter since much of the storyline is buried in the dialogue. It also causes large and ugly holes in the plot, which you may indulge if you already know your stuff, but if you're on your first playthrough you're not so impressed. You can't deny that the big trick with gaining influence apart from the odd on-ship conversation is bringing the right NPC (BUT in most or all cases only ONE of the NPCs with influence potential) to the right location and do the magical influence-gaining deed. Besides, please don't become all touchy towards me because of one remark.

I don't see what's so great about the influence system. It just forces you to do and say exactly the same things in connection to your NPC every time you play the game. And once you've done that, they have nothing more to say for the rest of the game. I must say I prefer experience to unlock the backstory of a character, and that doesn't need to have anything to do with characters changing or being dynamic. You can have dynamic characters without having to cuddle them everytime you speak to them. For instance if I want to keep a good relation with Kreia and still be a Good Guy, I know that I can't bring her to the Refugee Sector on Nar Shaddaa. Then again if I'm a Bad Guy, there is much temptation in her tagging along to that place for some easy influence points. I say flush that system down where it belongs.

In a neat connection to the original topic of the thread, I have to say that this bit too suffered from the game being rushed. I mean, that Freedon Nadd tomb on Dxun actually allowed your makeshift PC to embrace the dark side, but when he or she got back they were still very much in the light if you were playing LS (or in my case Sith Lord with zero Handmaiden influence, another aspect I don't like about the influence system: BE NICE TO EVERYONE...). That whole darkside stuff had zero impact on the character.

If you actually think KotOR outshines just "very few games", I find your amount of posts on this board... disturbing.

OK, this is my first post, but I've been following this forum since the release of KotOR2. Beware a slightly long post, but this is my take on this whole business: First off, to me Knights of the Old Republic III is a non-game until I am convinced otherwise by an official statement by either LA, Obsidian or another developer. I do, however, wish to vent my thoughts on how to proceed with a third installment to the series. The game should definitely pick up from where number two stopped. The reason I feel this way is that KotOR1 really had its own closure, but with KotOR2, Obsidian decided to build on KotOR1 without really adding anything. They just came up with this very non-Star Wars Revan-didn't-really-fall-to-the-dark-side-he-just-went-Sith-to-improve-the-Republic bollocks, and it didn't really make much difference whether you said that he was LS or DS in the beginning of the game. Then the whole game was about another character (namely the Exile) who, in the LS ending, essentially just went after Revan wherever he was. The whole issue with KoTOR2 kind of screwing the series up was obviously Obsidian trying to do something different and time consuming despite being given a very short amount of time to do it in. The idea was promising, but the result a confusing mess. Don't get me wrong here, I like this game and have played it through three times, but there are some unforgivable mistakes they made, that sort of has the whole 'saga' left dangling. It's not just the ending (which was very abrupt and crippled), but the whole idea of making the game keep focus on Revan when in fact Revan is nowhere to be seen in the game. They essentially decided to continue Revan's story without actually telling us anything. The only thing they told us was about his past, where they basically just changed the whole KotOR1 storyline. My DS Revan fell to the dark side on Korriban, corrupted by the dark side. He wasn't some sort of