Scatter

I disagree completely, make it one year, five is the absolute maximum for the story to work. TSL already paved the way for the story of KOTOR III. You have a threat which needs to be taken care off and the protagonists who are going to fight it, waiting 50 years leaves the story and the fate of important characters completely open/unfinished. If the Sith are such a dangerous threat, they wouldn't wait for 50-60 years to attack, because by then, the Republic and the Jedi Order have rebuild completely. They spent the whole second game building up the true Sith, it wouldn't make much sense to not finish that story arch. And the only way they can do that properly, is by setting the game shortly after TSL. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> that's precisely the point though - at the end of TSL (no matter what side you took when playing through) both the Sith and the Jedi are in almost complete disarray and in need of time to rebuild/build a threat. by the time Traya dies at the end of the game, you've already killed (supposedly) one of the most powerful dark lords ever in Nihilus, and wiped out the near pyscopathic Sion and all of his minions. where is the threat coming from in 1-5 years from those ruins? what time have the previous two stories had to impact the KotOR universe in that time frame? the Revan and Exile plots are played through to conclusion well enough that they can be looked back on from afar and still have meaning. their actions can be the basis for a new story in the time frame i've suggested - hell, it's even possible to have cameos for both of them in my time frame, or make them central to the plot if you want. oh, and that's another thing... if it is now canon in the Star Wars universe that Revan was a LS male, and the Exile a LS female, then play it that way in the story for KotOR III - there's no need to have the players asking/answering silly questions about the alignment and gender of the previous two main characters. especially as 99% of players will have gone through the first two games using both genders with both alignments anyways.

hey peeps. noob poster, veteran lurker, blah blah blah. just spent the last... dunno... aaaaaaaaages reading through this thread. some interesting ideas, but i think i'm in the minority on what i want for K3. I agree with this line of thought more than anything in terms of the game world. I would rather have one planet - say coruscant for example - that is massive in its scope and explorable area, than five or six planets where you are hemmed into three or four small areas that take less than half an hour each to fully explore. two or three planets of substantial scope would be awesome. as for other things... Your Character Revan or exile as main characters? No thanks. Done and dusted with the pair of them. I'd actually much rather the PC not be the focal point of the plot this time. In the two games so far, the PC has been the plot. It'd be a nice change if the PC's fate wasn't somehow linked with the entire well being of the galaxy because of things he/she has done/forgotten/had erased from their memory. It'd certainly allow a greater scope for more believeable and surprising plot twists. Ideally, I'd like the PC to either be a Jedi who has just finished his apprenticeship (ie a newly conferred Jedi Knight), or even better yet, a Knight who has just taken on his first padawan - your character is the teacher rather than the student. Give the character a gender ambiguous name like Peret Dor or Li Ju San or something like that so as dialogue with/between the NPC's flows better. I'm all for player customisation, but not being able to choose the PC's name is no big deal. The Time Period 50 years after the end of TSL minimum please. Give the events of KotOR and TSL a chance to have ramifications before we dive into them again. That would probably mean we say farewell to the Ebon Hawk, but that's not really a big deal. The NP Characters A fifty year time frame all but rules out everyone from the first two games - save the two droids (who with the time frame I've mooted, if they're in the game, maybe we could find them deactivated amongst the ruins of a crashed/derelict Ebon Hawk as nice nod to the first two games. Having someone like Atton or Visas as a non-recruitable "Yoda type figure" of the Jedi Council would also be a nice nod to continuity as well. Throughout this thread most peeps have said they want more NPC's - I actually want less. Less characters with more depth/more stories to each >>>> lots of characters with little depth. I mean really, GO-T0 was one of the most pointless characters in either game. Aside from the fact he was almost universally hated, he really didn't bring anything to a party that couldn't have been done using T3-M4 (or some other similarly skilled NPC). Six characters should be plenty. As for romantic interests, either do it, or don't. If it's going to be a half arsed effort like the "romance" in TSL, then just don't bother. Avoid it completely. When done well, it can add emotional resonance to a story, when done poorly it just feels tacked on and cheap. The Mechanics Firstly, I don't think the Aurora Engine has seen its day just yet. The modified AE being used for The Witcher (screenshots: 1, 2, 3) shows the engine still has a bit of life left in her. I'd tweak the influence system... or more accurately, I'd scrap it for all but your Padawan (if following my earlier suggestion) and maybe any droids. The other characters should have and follow their own beliefs and agendas - something akin to Baldurs Gate: if you recruit fundamentally evil characters, you should expect some trouble within the party if you are a complete teachers pet goody two shoes and vice versa. Similarly it would allow for the acquisition of NPC's that have a very specific agenda or quest that must be met before they decide to stay with your permanently. If you stray from completing that quest then they'll chuck a wobbly and leave. I said earlier I'd like to see us restricted to a traveling band of six, but that doesn't mean there can only be five NPC's throughout the game - a choice of who to recruit and who to leave behind would be most welcome as it would add significant replay value. The only other significant tweak I'd make to the mechanics of TSL is the accessability to Force Powers and Level Up Feats. Tone. Them. Down. Even on the hardest difficulty levels, by the time the PC reaches level 30 or so in TSL he/she is an absolutely unstoppable force (scuse the pun :D ). Make the number of times you get to select new Force Powers much more infrequent - especially for a Guardian class - and the access to Dark Side Powers for Light Side Characters (and vice versa) not only cost more mana/FP to use, but much more difficult to select (eg Drain Life [a DS FP] is available to Dark Side characters at level 8, but not to Light Side players until they reach level 30). An alternate method for slowing down the accruement of Force Powers could be specialisation. For example, for Light sided Players, Heal could be available at level 2, Improved Heal at Level 8, and Master Heal at level 14. If a level 2 PC leans Heal, then he can't learn another type of Force Power until he has mastered Heal (at Level 14). All of a sudden, choosing Force Powers has an element of strategy about it as opposed to TSL where after getting the half dozen FP's I wanted, I was selecting FP's simply because I had to (and never used them anyway). And finally... Know Your Source "Always two there are. Never more, never less." - Yoda If there are four Dark Lords, then there should be four apprentices (like Bandon in KotOR for example), and that is it. That should be the sum total of all Jedi/lightsaber wielding characters you should fight. And they should be tough. Real tough. It's a bit farcical to have tens of Dark Jedi coming at you and being able to take them down with two uses of Force Lightning. Make the foot soldiers exactly that - Sith Soldiers. Fighting Dark Jedi should be a real highpoint of the game. Something rare and difficult to win. Also on that point, in every movie so far (especially TPM), whenever a Dark jedi crops up, every non-Jedi is politely told to P off while the Jedi takes them on. So if you have a party consisting of say the PC (a Jedi), another Jedi and a non Jedi, and they come across a Dark Jedi then the two Jedi in the party will step forward and say "We'll take care of this, you go and make sure quest X is completed." This again adds an element of strategy to party selections. When you know you're going to face a Dark Jedi, do you go with one Jedi in your party for the really tough fight, or do you go with two Jedi's leaving the one non-Jedi to complete a quest on their own (think ANH with Kenobi going and shutting down the tractor beam and distracting Vader while Luke, Han and Chewie rescued Leia)? The last point of this very long post is a minor one, but fits in this category as well as the party interactions: the use of Jedi mind tricks. Almost universally in the KotOR universe they are treated like some sort of Dark Side perversion by Light Sided NPC's. Canon strongly disagrees with this. QGJ tried to Force Persuade Anakins slaver to accept Republic Credits for the parts for Amidala's ship because it was for the greater good. OWK did similar with the "These aren't the droids you're looking for" and "You don't want to sell me any deathsticks" mind tricks. Contrast that with Onderon in TSL - trying to get past the Starport guards and LS Handmaiden chucks a wobbly while DS HK-47 practically falls in love with you just for force persuading the guards to let you in to a city where you KNOW Kavar is hiding...