Mad_Scientist

The hopeful part of me says that they actually are doing a content patch, that this upcoming patch is a content patch after all, and that is why it is taking a while to finish. The cynical part of me says Obsidian only has funding to do one patch, period, so they really want to make sure they fix as much they can, because they won't get another chance after this, and that is why the patch is taking a while to finish. And then the two parts together say that neither of the above are true, that it is something different.

Gamespot just put up an article in which they discuss stories in games with "five master storytellers", one of which is Obsidian's own Chris Avellone. I haven't read it yet, but I'm about to. You can find it here.

Hmm... I'm not totally sure, but aren't Miralukas a species that first appeared elsewhere in the EU? Maybe someone with a good understanding of the EU could answer this question.

Why couldn't both be accomplished with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic III? It seemed to me that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords not only essentially just set the stage for the series becoming a trilogy, for resolution to be offered in the third installment, but also set the stage for what could be a very interesting adventure set in the Outer Regions. At this point, I feel like I would be very disappointed if Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic III didn't continue the current storyline at all. I wouldn't want it to skip ahead fifty years into the future and just forget about Revan and the Exile. It would feel a lot more empty to me than Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords's ending came even close to feeling, I think. Even if it didn't just forget about Revan and the Exile, but still took place fifty years into the future, I still would prefer it not do so. Even if it still took place in the Outer Regions, following in their footsteps to confront the "True" Sith Empire, I just think it would end up feeling too...detached, from the previous two installments, as well as sort of lessen the impact of the threat posed by the "True" Sith Empire itself. Hearing about Revan and the Exile as "historical figures" that existed fifty years ago would kind of lessen my attachment to their characters for the duration of the third installment. Personally, I would prefer that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic III simply move forward by just a few years or so, like the gap between the first two. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I agree. If they completely abanded the story of the first two games, it would just feel... wrong.

Wouldn't that require quite a bit of time and money? I think of expansion packs like HotU and SoU and figure each took a good amount of time to create, even if they are much shorter than the OC. Not to be skeptical, but I think the chances of a content patch are slim to none. Both time, money, and Lucasarts' unwillingness to be fan friendly make it an unviable option. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I wasnt thinking of any large expansion disk. (At least not for free) I didn't make myself clear. This disk would just have for the Xbox the stuff a content patch would have for the PC.

Hopefully this thread will remain more... civil... than the last thread on this subject.

Yep, Kotor 1 was Live enabled. Kotor 2 is not. Even if a patch was made, Xbox users would have no way to access it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> How about some sort of expansion disk? It could be included with a few different Lucasarts products as a bonuc, and made available on Lucasarts website for free. (not counting shipping, of course.)

He said they were proud of the work they did. There is a difference. Really, what are people expecting from an official response? "Yep. We rushed the game to get it out by Christmas 2004 on at least one platform. Thanks for the sales... suckers!"? I mean, come on, and be reasonable people. Though I do admit that this official respone really didn't seem to answer everything, and sidesteped a couple of things. But still, give Feargus a break, and realize that he a CEO with responsiblities to his company's employees, and coming out and saying "YES! Lucasarts rushed us, it's all their fault!" is probably not something that's going to help Obsidian's future relationships with publishers, even if it is true. Plus, for all we know, Obsidian is in the middle of trying to convince Lucasarts to fund a content patch and/or expansion pack, and therefore doesn't want to do anything to annoy them. Though maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

Still waiting......... :'( <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Chant with me: Sooooooooon, soooooon, soooon..... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> (Enters Yoga position. Begins chanting."Soon. Sooon. Soooon.") (Brother enters room. "Wha..? uh.... never mind, I don't want to know.")

I agree. KotOR II may be disappointing at the end, but it's still a great game overall, and if it is any indication of what Obsidian can do in about a year's dev time, I'm definitely going to be interested in their other game projects.

I agree. Despite the fact that I was very disappointed with the ending, I'm already replaying the game. I played KotOR about three times. Once as LS male, once as DS male, and once as mostly LS female. (I saved the game before the final choice so that I could try out both the DS and LS female endings. Poor Carth... hehe.) Yet with KotOR II, I have played LS male, am in the middle of playing DS male, plan on playing both LS and DS female, and also want to do another DS male and another LS male. Despite the fact that I'm disappointed in the ending, I will probably end up going through KotOR II twice as many times as the first game, so Obsidian must have done something right.

I too wish for a middle option on the poll. I wouln't really say "the ending sucked", but it definitely could have been better. When I say ending, I don't really mean the final movie, but rather, everything that happens after the Jedi council on Dantooine. It just felt a bit rushed to me. And then once I got to Malachar V, it felt very incomplete. It's not that I hate all cliffhangers or anything. It wasn't really that part of the ending that annoyed me. Let me briefly describe my thoughts during the ending sequences... "Well, that council sure went interestingly. Why did Kriea say that she killed me? She's planning something, that twisted little... Wait, if they take the Ebon Hawk, I'll be stuck!!" (I quickly run to the Ebon Hawk.) "Atton, you're wounded! Was there a battle? Did Kriea pretend to resist, maybe? Wait... how did she and Handmaiden head to Telos without a ship? And if there was a battle of some sort here, are my other companions ok?" (Scene between Visas and Exile..."At least I know she's alive." Scene between Atris and Kreia, Ebon Hawk arrives at Telos Academy, etc.) "Handmaiden's sisters, now this could be an issue... wait, how does the Handmaiden know Atris has been touched by the Sith? Maybe she saw Atris letting Kreia go or something. Ok, let's choose 'I won't fight you'... they aren't listening, looks like I'm going to be forced to fight anyway... oh, they're dead. Ok. Atris is coming..." (Fight between Atris and Handmaiden. I arrive to save her. "Did Atris kill Handmaiden?!! No!" I fight Atris, defeat her in the chamber with the Holocrons.) "Now, some answers at last. Interesting... wait! I'm stuck with either saying that I'm done with the questions, or that I'm killing Atris... I'm not done with my questions yet! Scripting error? Oh well... Handmaiden's alive! Good. Let's save Telos... wait, I never got my lightsaber." (We arrive at Citadel Station) "Ah, the party screen shows everyone but Kreia, so at least I know that nobody died during the fight that apparently occured on the Ebon Hawk." (I finish Citadel Station, board the Ravager, and prepare to fight Nihilus) "Ah, Nihilus! DIE! Funny that he'd be the Sith Lord I fight first... never would have thought that... He's dead!" (I talk with Carth, see Bastilla's cameo, and watch as the Ebon Hawk arrives at Malachar V) "Ah, finally, I'm going to find out what exactly happened here at M5. Ooh, nasty crash. I'm alive, but where's my party? Hello? Is anyone else alive? Hmm. Maybe they didn't come with me." (Fight my way through M5, still wondering about the fate of my companions. Various scenes occur. The Mira scene occurs) "So, Mira is here. But what Kreia just said implied she's the only person here aside from me... why the heck would I take Mira and leave everyone else behind? Maybe I tried to leave everyone behind, but Mira followed in another ship? Who knows. Ok, Mira's now going... somewhere..." (Remote and GO-TO scenes occur) "Remote! So I guess Bao-Dur is here... or is he? Why's he speaking to his remote by hologram? What are the Mass Shadow Generators? Hmm. Maybe once I power them up I'll learn more... GO-TO! So I guess he is here also..." (Final Academy fights occur. I kill Sion, and finally encounter Kreia. At sometime, though I can't remember exactly when, the Ebon Hawk plunges to it's apparent doom, and I am left wondering if any of my companions were still trapped inside it.) "Interesting... I'm still confused, though. Interesting. Die, Kreia, Die! Ah, the end... ok, I guess they are assuming by the ending speeches that I am going to follow Revan and leave everyone behind... ok. What if I didn't want to do that? What if I wanted to stay and teach others? What if I'm tired of wandering by myself in exile? Didn't Kriea say something about that... hmm. What if I'm stubborn, and don't want to listen to Kreia, and DO want to take someone with me on my search for Revan? Oh well. Rest, Kriea" (Ebon Hawk appears and rescues me. Malachar V is doing... something. End credits) "Wait... didn't the Ebon Hawk just plunge to it's doom a little bit ago? Wait... what about Remote and GO-TO? So did the Mass Shadow Generators activate? I guess I'm going in search of Revan." I'm hoping future playthroughs will help me understand parts of the end better.

I've noticed a rather large amount of duplicate threads lately, where a poster creates a new thread and somehow ends up creating at least two identical threads. This is happening rather often, so I'm wondering if it is the result of some bug in the forum software or something.

While I can understand why the council might want to cut you off, they were acting rashly, which is quite ironic. I mean, here they are, always talking about patience and reflection, and then... "Sorry. We don't care about all you've done to help, about all the good you've done since the wars, you're still exiled. Oh, we're cutting you off from the Force too." "Wait... give me a couple of minutes to defend myself... are you really certain you fully understand my nature?" "Sorry, we're cutting you off NOW! Don't worry, it won't hurt.... though it will sort of be like losing all your senses at once." They never really took enough time to study you and see if you were exactly as they thought. Why were your companions growing so much stronger if you were leeching strength from them? Is it possible that the bonds worked both ways, allowing you and your companions to share strength with each other when needed, increasing the power of all of you while doing so? They never considered that, they never gave you a chance. They let their fear of you rule their actions, which is something a Jedi is not supposed to do.

Influence isn't bad, but there are definitely some ways it can be improved in future games. It's a very nice idea, and I'm sure as Obsidian's experience grows, they will be able to expand upon it and make it something really, really cool. I think Orchomene has a very good point about spoken dialogue. While I love good voice acting in a game, it may sometimes tend to hold back a game's conversation complexity. In a game with little spoken dialogue, there is little limit to how long, complex, and varied conversations can be. But when every single line of dialogue has to be recorded... Some of these ideas I'm listing below aren't necessarily super hard from a programming or design standpoint, but they would greatly increase the amount of dialogue. Would they be feasible for a game with all dialogue spoken? I have no idea. One thing about influence that could stand to change is that, especially in some cases, it is too easy to unlock all of a characters conversation options very quickly. While KotOR I's "go up a level and hear more backstory" system may not have been the best, at least it did tend to ensure that the character development of your party members was pretty evenly spread out over a large portion of the game. So for future cases where some sort of influence system is used, it would be nice if there would be a way to ensure that you don't exhaust all your conversation options early. Perhaps level requirements or something similar. Or perhaps similar to the Handmaiden in KotOR II: she wouldn't answer your final questions until you had finished sparing with her, and you had to wait a while between each sparring match. Corrupting Mission Vao, or how I first thought influence would be: In KotOR I, there were several cases where certain conversation options with Mission implied that you were having an effect on her outlook on life. Or more specifically, there were several cases where it seemed like you could corrupt her. So when I played DS in KotOR, I made it my mission(no pun intented) to see if I could twist Mission from an innocent girl into a deranged killer. I had her with me when I was given the offer to betray Gadden, (Was that his name?) and also later when I did indeed kill her old mentor, I used her brother to increase her distrust and hatred. But sadly, none of these things affected her alignment, only mine, and at the end of the game I was still forced to kill her. So when I first heard about the influence system in KotOR II, I was like "Yay! Now I can corrupt my party members... err, and redeem them too." And while that is the case in KotOR II, and while the redemption of Visas was one of my favorite things from KotOR II, it didn't feel quite as involved as I would have hoped. Because once you get enough influence with a character, their alignment changes automatically based on your alignment. While this does make some sense from a story perspective, given the Exile's ability to make force bonds, as I previously mentioned, it doesn't feel quite as involved as I had first hoped influence would be. What I had really hoped for was something like with Mission in the first game, but expanded a bit and now actually effecting the alignments of party members. Let's use Visas as an example of how I imagine this might work. Let's say I've just gained some influence with her, and therefore, her alignment has changed a bit towards mine. But it's only changed a little bit. The really big alignment changes with Visas will occur because my influence with her has just started to unlock special conversation options with her. When I talk to her right now, for example, I notice this option: "[Alignment]You mentioned once that there are many types of hate. Tell me about your hate." This allows me to have a discussion with Visas about the nature of her hate, about how she feels, etc. This time I'm LS, so I start to help her let go of some of her hate. At the end of our conversation, the message "Light points gained: Visas" appears, and I notice that her alignment has now changed a decent amount. This actually isn't really that different from the current system. In the current system, as I gain influence with someone, their alignment will change toward mine quite a bit. In the system I'm proposing, as I gain influence with someone, their alignment will change towards mine a little bit, but I will unlock new conversation options that will cause their alignment to change towards mine quite a bit. Not really that different in effect, but it would make the redemption/corruption of party members even cooler, as well as provide a lot more depth to each party member. Of course, there are issues with this. While the actually scripting/programming of this doesn't seem like it would be that much harder than other conversations, (though making sure the options are unlocked at the proper times would take some refinement) the amount of recorded dialogue needed would increase greatly. Still, if Obsidian could do something like this in their future RPG's, I'd be very pleased.

As mentioned by some, there was a post by Chris in which he said something about how they would like to do a content patch or something. That post was in a thread that has since been deleted. But there is a big difference between saying they'd like to do a content patch and saying that they will do a content patch. That website seems to have misunderstood the post.

Right now I'm playing DS male in KotOR II there are a lot of interesting evil options I want to check out; I'm going to need several evil playthroughs to try them all.

A changing influence system might not even always be the blessing it would seem to be. I can just see it now... Poster-A: Ok, is this a bug? I'm playing LS male, but I've been trying to get influence with HK-47, just because he's so hilarious. I've got quite a bit, but I'm having trouble getting enough to unlock his final conversation options. So I figured I'd just take the DS hit and do one random killing or something. But whenever I do so, HK-47 comments on the killing and has a discussion with me on death, but I don't gain any influence. Is this some weird bug? Poster-B: You're playing LS and already have quite a bit of influence with HK-47? What's HK-47's light/dark rating? Poster-A: Uh, he's pretty LS right now, especially for him. Poster-B: That's what I thought. You can't get influence from random killings anymore. You won't lose influence or anything, (After all, this is still HK-47) but if you want to gain influence with HK-47 now, you have to do meaningful killings. Poster-A: "Meaningful killings"? What the heck? Poster-B: Yah, like when you come out of the caves on Dantooine and you find the mercs that try to get you to help them to attack Koonda. Tell them you won't help them, and you'll kill them. You'll gain influence with HK-47. Basically, whenever you kill evil people for a higher purpose, to protect innocents or to succeed in your mission or something, you gain inlfuence with HK-47. I'd check out an influence guide for help. Poster-A: What?! I've already been doing things like that, that's how I gained so much influence with HK-47 while still being LS. I checked an influence guide, and I don't have a single "meaningful killing" situation left! Poster-B: Well, then you're pretty much doomed. Unless... remove HK-47 from your party, than do a bunch of evil things. Because you have influence on him, HK-47 will head back down the dark path. It shouldn't take too long to get him dark enough, and then you'll be able to do random killings to gain influence with him again. Poster-A: You've got to be joking...

True! The new robes are very cool looking.

Influence is both really cool and really unfortunate. It has a lot of potential, but could have been implemented better. But it could have been implemented a lot worse too. It might have been nice if they could have had the things that affect influence with some of your party members change somewhat as those party members' allignment changes, but the amount of work that would have had to go into that in order to make it work well would have been huge. Plus, a lot of the influence things aren't even really based on dark/light.

Also, you can apparently find a pair of robes that once belonged to Jolee Bindo, and in the description of them, it mentions that his whereabouts are unkown.

Click on members at the top of the Obsidian forum page. Underneath the search and filter options there is a dropdownlist defaulted on All Members. Click the dropdownlist and you

Hey, I just thought of something... As we all probably know already, there were two paths through the Trayus Academy that would lead to the final chamber with Darth Sion and the door to the Trayus Core. One path was called "Trayus Proving Grounds" and the other path was called "Trayus Crescent". If you look at the actual Map when you're in the first area of the Trayus Academy, however, and you highlight one of the blue dots (nodes?) over one of the doors on the western side of the area (which led to what was called "Trayus Crescent" in the game), it listed the doors as leading to "Trayus Prison" instead. Perhaps a part of what would've originally determined whether or not the other heroes survived the adventure or faced death was going to be whichever path you chose to go through to get to that final chamber with Darth Sion: either the Trayus Prison/Trayus Crescent (to rescue them somehow) or the Trayus Proving Grounds (to abandon them to death and move on alone). I'm just thinking, maybe before these scenes were cut and everything, "Trayus Crescent" was originally going to be called "Trayus Prison" since of course, a "prison" might be where the other heroes were being kept in or trapped in or preoccupied in or what have you. Maybe after those scenes were ultimately cut, the name of the area was just changed to "Trayus Crescent" for the sake of it, but they left the original name on the nodes on the Map... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That seems pretty much certain to be true, because there was some cut dialogue found where Kreia describes a choice the exile has upon enterint the academy: :: When the exile enters the Trayus Academy, she will be faced with a choice. ::{:: One path, assuming she survives, will allow her to save her friends, but she shall be the weaker for it. ::} The Sith Assassins get up, and they begin to materialize off into the shadows.:: The other route will lead her directly to this place, through the ones that have hounded her steps through the beginning... and she shall have her vengeance.

Thanks for the update! Hmm... a few days from now we'll know... [Force Persuade]You will tell me when it's coming out, now. [Failure]Your jedi mind tricks are useless on me! [Persuade/Intimidate]You will tell me when it's coming out now, or I'll... I'll... do something! [Failure]What type of threat is that? Ha! [Persuade]Please.... pretty please.... I'll give you my firstborn... [Awareness]You don't even have a firstborn, do you?

I used Visas, Handmaiden, Kriea, and Atton in my party a lot.