alanschu

Hades, how the heck did your ship do a "full reverse" from going in full throttle (like Luke orders) without getting blown away by Vader and his wingmen (or even a tower)?

It also has limited ammunition however.

I'm pretty sure that's the idea.

Although, I think one thing that can be mentioned about the "better things to do than have a romance" argument is that a lot of time the characters would spend together is not fully realized. When I say travel to place X in Baldur's Gate 2, sometimes that would be days of travel. Or sometimes resting would be for a very long time too. I easily hit triple digits for the number of days I was on when playing the game (although it's been so long I cannot remember the number). So putting me beside Jaheira/Aerie/Viconia for the better part of a year, and that would be possible. Same with KOTOR. How long does it take to travel from Dantooine to Manaan? The characters do spend a lot of time together over the course of the game if you start to factor stuff like this in. As for piping up moments before a big battle, little things like that are considerations for the programming/design team to try to make sure it is implemented correctly so situations like that do not happen. BG2 had the right idea, it just wasn't implemented thoughtfully enough (which is understandable I guess...it wasn't something really done at the time and it was such a huge project). KOTOR avoided the situation after the earlier parts of the game by not having the NPCs initiate any dialogue which, as you mention, has its own benefits and downfalls. However, because the implementations have not been perfect, I do not feel it is a good reason to remove the idea altogether. I agree that conversations like this shouldn't happen when preparing to fight a dragon or some other tense situation, and I did not mean to suggest that a PC initiating a conversation should happen at one of these points. I was just stating that a PC initiating a conversation on his/her own is not a bad thing, because as the PC I can choose to listen or tell him to be quiet or wait for later....just as you or I could do to each other if we wanted. In short...having someone start a conversation would be welcome.......just not to the point of it being excessive As for the Harper quest....that's quite the bug you found I'm not too surprised that it would be missed since doing the Harpers that late it the game would not be the norm. Certainly would be quite the inconvenience however :D

I would like to add one thing however.... Bab penalties or not for lack of feats, when I'm a Soldier or a guardian I almost always used a double-bladed weapon and never seemed to have that hard of a time hitting anything, although it was more difficult. At later levels, when combined with good crystals and high attributes, 5 attacks with the dualsaber was devastating. Also, I would imagine a lot of the abuses of the saberstaff were because in the X-Box version it didn't properly account for two-weapon fighting (if I am not mistaken).

Actually, it isn

You couldn't reflect the rockets in Jedi Academy...you had to use Force Push on them, and they would get pushed back towards enemies. So you could do it too.

Heh...that's just it. The invasion was done by the dude that started the thread..... They were here the whole time More of a Jekyll and Hyde thing

As for romances/friendships/whatever being completely side quests....look at how little sense that makes. You develop close friendships with the people in your party, maybe even some stronger feelings, but you don't want that to in any way affect the plot? First off, in order to have romances with any sort of depth (and that's not saying a lot....RPG romances are weak) that was a sidequest would require much MORE development time, since it would be entirely in addition to the main plot. Second, it ruins the immersion. If developing strong relationships (not even romances, but friendships) with my party members doesn't in some way affect the main plot, I would consider that to be a mistake. If I am well respected and admired in my group for being a champion of light and all that sort of stuff, if something really bad happens to me I want that person to speak up. If I'm a major jerk, I want the goody-goody person to give me crap about it (or something else perhaps). If a character "loves" me, I want them to act emotional when the villain tells me he killed my family (or some other atrocity). This sort of stuff lends itself to a much more enjoyable game experience than the mere powergaming romp. It's so much more than just doing the plot and going through the motions. There's no depth to it. Should they make your character's romance [essential] to the plot? No. And no game has done this. The rescuing of Bastila cannot be considered "putting your significant other at risk" because it's the first friggin' time you meet her (plus it fails to realize that Bastila is NOT the female PC's option). Baldur's Gate 2, KOTOR, or any other RPG that I can think of that has a romance, makes it entirely optional to the PC, which is just how it should be. But should the relationship be integral to the plot? Absolutely. Your romance is close to you, so however the plot affects you (unless somehow you're in a game where your PC has no bearing on the plot[???]) should also after your partner in at least SOME way.

A lot of the hype about conversations starting at inappropriate times are misleading, as there are many areas in the game where romance conversations simply could not occur (although oddly rooms with dragons in them generally were "appropriate" according to the code, which was kind of silly). The romances were triggered based on real-time, and there were areas (such as caves and dungeons) where the triggers could not be activated. So when the time limit on the triggers was reached, if the player was in an "inappropriate" location, the romance would remain queued until the player finally did reach a better location. This is why after adventuring in one of the dungeons all 3 of the romance dialogues would pop up pretty much one after another. I actually tested this by pausing the game in certain areas and coming back later. Immediately following a romance conversation I would pause it, go it dinner or something, and come back and unpause it, and the next stage of the romance would immediately occur.....after about 5 seconds of unpaused time. However, while in dark caves (including the Underdark), I was never able to initiate a romance dialogue. However, there were times that there would be action happening in an area that was deemed "appropriate" (like in Athkatla or the Elf city at the end, or in "Dragon Rooms"), which was silly. I just bring this up because this shows that it was something that Bioware was trying to avoid. On the other hand, there are times that I do prefer the NPC initiating a conversation and "forcing" it on you.....because that's what people do! In real life, anyone is capable of initiating a conversation, so why limit it to quest triggers (i.e. walking up to main boss and he talks to you before fighting) or just the PC. I feel this takes away from the suspension of disbelief. If Carth wants to say something, I think he should speak up. Instead of having "Carth looks like he wants to talk," they should have him say "Hey, can I speak with you for a moment?" or something, with an option of "Now's not a good time" if you don't want to talk. Creates a more real environment.

Well it's WIERD!!! First everything's all normal...Yay saberwhips....boo saber whips...a bit of discussion, and then BAM: "You're ghey!" "No you're ghey!" rabble.rabble.rabble.rabble. Or did I miss something??

Verifying whether or not Revan was a man or a woman could be used simply for he/she identifiers.

Seems odd to frequent a place that has information about a game that you simply do not care about. That bored?

But why frequent the KOTOR 2 forums?

The main reason why you never really "needed" skills is because they need to make sure the game difficulty is similar for people that do choose different skills. As for persuade, I'd say it was probably the best skill to have, aside from maybe some computer hacking (very useful to avoid fights and make things generally all round easier). With persuade I was able to get people to talk with me more, and give me much more sidequests and better rewards for them. Having said all that, I'm all for making skills more useful.

How the heck did this thread turn into a flamethowing fest? I just didn't see it coming at all?????

Ahem...that's Mortal Kombat j/k

Darker could also mean more difficult choices to make. Do you save a planet, or a friend/party-member? or something like that. I wouldn't mind it.....dilemmas can be neat and tend to add emotion to a game.

Maybe if the X-Box 2 comes out by feb/dec

I think it would be too difficult to implement at this stage of development. No netcode or any sort of connectivity even exist.

LOL

I wouldn't be surprised if some stuff might have to be omitted from the manual to prevent some sort of infringement......it would be wierd, but who knows?

WHAT??!?!?! Crazy talk!

I actually used the keyboard for it....much more responsive. In fact, I would bet that any problems computer users had with this minigame was the fact that for whatever reason the game cranked your mouse sensitivity down to the smallest number that is still greater than zero

I love HK-47. Dave Gaider did a sweet job with him. I love it when he says something like: "Appeasement: Yes master...good master."