PedanticTwit

The ... grey ... crystal? Wheee! A whole +5% effectiveness. ... PrC choices anyone? ... Let me put it this way, I felt more straightjacketed into the trichotomy of Naif/Jerk/Wuss by the dialogue options in the sequel than in the first. The next time I play through, maybe I'll figure out why. Furthermore, the third option in that trichotomy was reinforced in what actually happened throughout the game. How many times during that game did I feel as if I were being tied to a railroad car by an inexperienced DM? Oh, three or four off the top of my head. I'm sure there were more, but ... There is no excuse for forcing the main character to get knocked out on three separate occasions despite being immune to whatever trick was being used or just being too much of a bad ass for, say, Kreia to knock out with one shot. It's like the section in KotOR 1 where you first fight Malak. I am pretty sure that everyone who played that felt the same way about absolutely spanking him three times in the space of a minute and then being told to run like a little sissy. And anyway, if they had really been paying anything more than lip service to the notion of grey jedi, then there would have been a grey ending, a selection of grey PrCs, and some powers that actually are easier to use when neutrally aligned. For a game with a mentor who is outwardly grey until the end, they give you remarkably little reward for "playing into" the storyline. I didn't feel cheated by being grey in the first game. When I first got to Malachor without a PrC, I was totally confused. In fact, I was pretty much enraged by the fact that despite the manual's statement to the effect that the option to take on a PrC would be given at a crucial point in the story, it was actually entirely dependent upon alignment. I didn't finish the game for another month because the very thought of playing it made me angry.

Personally, I felt really, unmitigatedly evil from the beginning of the game, and I couldn't bring myself to do darkside stuff without turning off the sound and keeping my eyes shut until the end of the scene. The first time this happened was with the Ithorian that's getting beaten by kids. I had to turn away and ignore the encounter. With the killing off your party members thing, since it was forced upon me, I had to turn off the TV and sound system to get through it. Again, this goes back to one of my main beefs with with game's take on morality. If you're evil, then you have to be a mass murdering, power mad, totally wacko psychopath. You can't just be a Dracula style evil. Nope. You've got to be Hitler or Stalin. *grumble*

Going out on a limb here, I found that the KotOR was actually slightly harder on the grey Jedi than the first, which is one of the reasons I like the first better. While the sequel allows for attributes to lessen the cost of using opposed force powers, it seems that the designers assumed that players would, of course, choose at the outset* whether to play a naive, ideology blinded palatine Light-sider or a psychopathic, sociopathic, foaming at the mouth mass murdering, power mad Dark-sider, making every choice along the way follow that initial decision. This bothered me on multiple levels. It and the first game make the tacit assumption that to be Light-side means to be stupid and easily duped, while to be Dark-side means to be inconstant and power mad. They leave only one avenue open for evil: that of the tyrant. What if I prefer a more subtle brand of evil? As for Light-siders, why must I never make decisions that have a firm basis in game theory? The Kashyyk computer scene bugged many of my friends for that reason. They try to emulate Winston Churchill and get slapped with dark side points for their troubles? Apparently being good means being an idiot of a leader. If this is how the designers view alignment, I'd hate to be in an actual pen & paper RPG with them. They're the type that play "Lawful Stupid" paladins and "Psych(a)otic Evil" rogues. <_< The real kicker of a difference between the two games' takes on alignment was the requirement for PrCs. WTF is with shafting the greys from getting a PrC? Oh, well. C'est la vie. Other than that gripe, KotOR 1 had a more coherent final section more engaging repartee among characters more likeable characters (partially due to the fact that the sequel's characters were pretty much all either tightlipped or irritating) none of that stupid "automatic queuing up of a standard attack despite the fact that I ordered my character to heal" bull crap a final boss that didn't automatically save against everything that you could throw at him KotOR 2 could have been a better game than the first. It was actually very close to attaining that goal. If they had provided advancement options for greys, finished the end section, not screwed up the last boss, not screwed with the combat UI, and made the characters a wee bit less emotionally incontinent, then the game would have topped the first. *I played through both games the first time using my own moral and ethical compasses as guides. I still had more fun doing that than I did when I played through and got the four star treatment from the game by being an inflexible jerk.