Dark Wastl

They didn't really lose the force, just anyone who could use it. The ones who could, lost it because of the Star Forge, not because of anything they did. Only the real powerful force users can use the Star Forge without being destroyed by it. Bastila explains that in the Sith Holocron on Korriban, if you set Revan as a darksider. That's why no one could control it once ds Revan left. The Vong are outside the force, they are pretty much nonexistant in a way. The Rakata on the other hand, are very much part of the force, just like any other being in the galaxy.

I'd say it's because in NBA or Madden only 2-3 guys need to call someone by name, while your RPG-character talks to hundreds of people.

The force was long gone before Revan arrived, he had nothing to do with the Rakata losing their connection to the force. The only reason why they let Revan and Malak into the temple, was because they wanted them to destroy the Star Forge. They couldn't do that themselves, because only a force user could go into the temple. They tell your character that they wanted to destroy the Forge for years, but simply found no way to do it. And no, they are not like the Yuuzhan Vong, the Rakata simply had no one who could use the force. There are however some Rakata showing traces of being a force adept, "the One", for example. If the Rakata would be like the Yuuzhan Vong, Revan wouldn't have been able to control their minds and force basic into their heads.

I don't think the time period between Episodes III and IV would be a good setting for a KOTOR. The only way I think it might work, would be if you wouldn't be a Jedi, but then it wouldn't be KOTOR anymore. The big problem is, no matter how the game ends, it simply doesn't matter. It would have to be on a very minor scale, because your character couldn't win on a large scale, as Sidious and Vader remain in control no matter what happens. You might be able to do a more personal game, like KOTOR II, for example, but it still would be very hard to come up with a meaningful story, maybe harder than finishing the current storyarch. The only thing I could think of right now, would be that you protect a secret that might save the galaxy. But that only works for a lightsider and still leaves you without a real enemy to fight (unless you want to end the game by being killed by Vader, not something many players would like), not to mention that they currently have this story in a book-series. As for the pictures the blog is talking about; it is rumoured that they have to do with the Vader-game, as one of the pictures is the same as one in a LucasArts presentation about their next games. You never know, though. The pictures could be from different projects for all we know.

I don't mean random soldiers. Look at the crew in KOTOR II. Apart from Canderous and the droids it had nohting to do with the crew of the original game, yet you cared about them (or should have, for those who didn't). Revan had his crew, just like the Exile had his crew. If you play a new character in KOTOR III, you will have your own crew as well. Characters you care about, characters who are important to you. They travel with you all the time, unlike those from the old crews who don't. They are much closer to your character than anyone from KOTOR I and II who isn't in your party. In this case, these new characters play a much bigger role in the game than anyone from the old games not named Revan or maybe the Exile. As for fights like the one against Malak on the Leviathan or the beginning of the fight against Nihilus; I don't know if the game mechanics had allowed it, but I would have tried to make them basically impossible to beat. Triple their health or something like that. That way it doesn't look like it is easy. I mean, you are not supposed to beat them at that point, you don't need the game to act like you can.

Technical possibilities are only one part of the problem, though. I'm sure the PC could have handled bigger planets years ago. You need a reason why your character has to visit a certain planet and you need enough idea's to fill such a planet. More and bigger planets are only possible, if you spend more time on the game and have enough ideas to fill all the planets. The more time you spend on small sub-plots, the less you have for other parts of the game. If it had been possible to make the planets twice as big without making the overall product worse, they would have done it. Hardware might get better every single day, but it isn't able to slow down time or make humans more creative. Hardware might be able to pull of photorealistic worlds the size of Earth some day, but that doesn't mean that it improves the game itself.

You can kill some people off without touching the old crew for that There is enough time in the game to create interesting characters which are expendable. Most of the old party members won't be in the new crew anyway, so these new characters would be much closer to the things which happen in KOTOR III, their death would be much more meaningful for your character. Disregarding Revan, the Exile and Bastila, of course, as they have a big impact on the overall storyarch. But then again, you didn't have to lose any party members in KOTOR, so you don't necessarily need death if you want to create a fantastic story.

Yup, that's exactly how I see it as well. The story is what drives this series, it has to be top notch and I'm sure it will be top notch again, when KOTOR III comes out after "it is done". I'd love to see a Happy End for the lightside ending. And I mean a real Happy Ending, not one of the "half of the people are dead but at least it's over" ones. There is a time for such endings, but I don't think that it' would be a fitting ending for such a storyarch. In this case, I mean something like a reunion of Revan and Bastila (or Carth for the females) plus a survival of all the other crew members of KOTOR I and II. There has been quite a bit of war over the last few years in the story, time to end it. If it's possible, without anything that makes the game downbeat. As long as I get something like that, I'm happy

I don't think there are all that many clues about Kreia being Arren Kae. The only sure thing is that both were former masters of Revan. On the other hand, you have them leaving the Jedi/being exiled for different reasons. One left because she was pregnant, the other because of her teachings. I don't think that the timeline really fits if Kreia is Arren Kae. Brianna was born years before the Mandalorian war, she has to be, because otherwise she wouldn't be old enough when the Exile arrives at Telos. If Brianna was born that far before the war, and Arren Kae was exiled because of her pregnancy, how did the Jedi know that Arren Kae/Kreia fought in the Mandalorian war, if she was no longer part of the Jedi Order? Kreia says that she was Revan's first and his last master before he left the Jedi. How would she be able to do that, if she was long gone? Revan didn't decide to leave the jedi until way after Brianna was born. This discussion has been going on for something like 5807 pages and won't end until a developer finally chimes in or KOTOR III comes out and gives an answer, which likely won't happen for the next 5000 pages, either

Doesn't sound too bad, but I absolutely hate the idea of setting Revan as a darksider. I played Revan as someone who couldn't be more true to the light. He had some very tempting reasons to fall again, but he didn't, so he wouldn't fall later on for something less tempting. Almost the same reason can be used in the other direction, if someone wants to set him as a lightsider... As for him joining the True Sith, I don't think that it fits to the first two games. As it is explained in TSL, he went dark to protect the galaxy against the True Sith. No matter whether he is dark or light, he wouldn't join them now.

That's not quite true, the work on KOTOR II begun before the work on KOTOR was finished. The third game would have happened anyway, no matter how the second game would have ended. Unless they had done a completely different story.

Sometimes new drivers aren't the best. KOTOR and KOTOR II worked better on my PC when I used older drivers. Once I updated to the newest version the game would freeze now and then. I swichted back to old drivers and everything was perfectly fine again. I experienced the "disappearing characters" in KOTOR. The game needed a certain version of openGL and somehow my system was always reverting to an older version of it even when I changed nothing on my system. I simply reinstalled the driver and the problem was gone for a while.

I wouldn't base story-points on something that has to do with game mechanics. Of course your crew members have weak stats, if they wouldn't, they would destroy everything in their way while making Revan look relatively powerless and not as special anymore. That would be the same logic as stating that the Exile is more powerful than Revan because he can go past level 20, unlike Revan, which of course has everything to do with the difference in game-mechanics and doesn't say anything about the power of the two characters. As for the Exile, I'm pretty sure Kreia says that you indeed "leach of" from your crew members and everyone else you come in contact with. I don't see why that shouldn't work...

The only way to turn her to the ls, is if she considers you a friend. You need her to talk about her past, until she calls you a friend, only then will she think about turning. If you don't manage to do that, she will either return to the Academy or leave it without really turning.

Sorry, but it simply doesn't work that way. The "nucleus" as you called it, isn't the first edit of the original Star Wars movies, it never has been and never will be that way. You may think that way, but that won't make it the truth. The nucleus of everything which has to do with Star Wars, is the original synopsis Lucas wrote. This synopsis has Darth Vader as the Dark Lord of the Sith, and the Sith Order as the enemy of the Jedi Order. Both the first and the final script of the first movie say that as well, and it doesn't matter one bit, whether the word Sith was spoken in the movies or not.

And how does a normal person stop a Sith Lord, or any force user for that matter, in combat? The game is called Knights of the Old Republic for a reason. The only way it would be possible, would be a crew full of Jedi, but then you are an unimportant nobody who doesn't have anything to do. There would be no reason for those Jedi to travel with you.

I'm one of the "loved part 2, loves part 4" ones The only problem I have with the game, is the way the AI cheats. This has been done forever, although I didn't really notice it in Civ II. The most obvious were Civ IV and Colonization. I'm not talking about any kind of advantage the AI has with increasing level of difficulty, that has to be in the game, but the way the AI can create units at an enormous rate without anything else suffering because of it, how it has units appearing out of nowhere or how it can use them in a way you aren't allowed to, it's simply stupid. I actually used the map editor, to confirm the things I noticed. Like how the AI is able to use a trireme to cross the ocean, even though he shouldn't be able to... Still, great and very time-consuming games

Even if many people would want it, LucasArts wouldn't allow it. What kind off special edition would that be? "well we forced our developer to cut lots of interesting things to get this game out for christmas, how about you spend your money a second time, this time it will be the complete game, we promise!" They could have done that before anybody found out how much was cut, not afterwards. The only possibility to not look greedy would be to offer it for free or for a very low price, but no company would think about something like that, your employees don't work for free.

I never thought that Atris could be Nihilus, as they always had the light vs. dark picture going. In this case portrayed by Atris vs. Nihilus. Even if you didn't come to this conclusion, you still had the art, showing them in a lightsabre duel. Of course it would be possible to see that as some kind of metaphor, but there wouldn't ba any reason for it.

The Republic, or better the senate and the Jedi Council, would have done the same thing as in the last war, sit and wait. Revan knew fully well, that neither the Senate nor any Jedi would ever think about using the tactics necessary to beat the True Sith. It's always easier to win a war, if the leader is a master tactician and has full control over everything. You don't need to discuss anything, nor do you have to listen to anybody who doesn't like your tactics. Leaving planets without defense to strengthen more important ones, isn't something a Jedi would do, nor would the senate even think about it. The first thing they would have done, is to check if what Revan said is actually true. They wouldn't have build up to fight a war, nor would they have made a preemtive strike, if necessary. If Revan would have thought that the True Sith could be beat by his fleet, he would have tried it. The True Sith aren't some people hiding on a remote planet, they are strong in the force and actually have a plan to take over the galaxy. You don't do that, if you are weak. They didn't spend the whole second game to build up the True Sith, only to make them a simple enemy who can be beat easily.

Way too much data. Your character has close to half of the dialog in the game, maybe a bit less, because not every dialog is between your character and someone else. To keep it easier, I just say that it's half of the dialog. That means that you have to double the dialog by giving your character a voice. It's tripled, if you consider that there has to be a male and a female voice. If you want to give the player a choice, you need at least three voices for both genders, so you are now at seven time the amount of data that you have in KOTOR I and II. You would need a whole DVD just for the soundfiles...

Nihilus didn't look like e female to me, quite the opposite actually. There aren't many "normal" women, who are build like Nihilus as you see him in the video sequences...

Kreia is right. Revan didn't try to save the Republic, you can't save the Republic by changing it to something it can't be. He tried to save the galaxy. Basically, he tried to save the country and the nation, not the political form it has. The idea behind that is that the Republic, lead by the senate and the inactive Jedi council, would never react accordingly to an attack from the outside, nor would they use the tactics necessary to beat the True Sith. If there is only one leader, who doesn't have to listen to anybody, he could easily go to war. He wouldn't be reluctant like the Jedi or the senate, he would use tactics which the Republic wouldn't even think about (see the war against the Mandalorians). If he wouldn't be interested in saving the galaxy, why should he leave it and search for the Sith empire, if you play him as a darksider? He already controles the galaxy, why risk that by leaving everything behind?

Nope, not true... As you can read in quite a few quotes from Mike Gallo, the game was supposed to come out in February. There was never any word about a cristmas release, only a very imprecise "winter 2005" in the early stages of developement. Mika Gallo actually talked about them thinking long and hard about whether they could move the release date for Xbox to an earlier date. Which they obviously did.

Some comments: HK doesn't arrive at Malachor with lots of other HK's, from what I've read the HK-51's belong to Goto, they just don't obey him anymore. Or maybe they still do, but that is overruled by HK being one of them (after the events on M5). There were many different possibilities for the ending. In one of them - the one I've read the most about - Kreia beats all your Jedi and gives them to Sion. There is still a comment about it left in the game. It's when Kreia tells Sion that the Exile has a choice to make. You can either walk straight to Sion and Kreia or try to free your party members. If you don't free them, they die. In this case, neither of your party members attacks one of their own. It's impossible to say how the finished game would have ended, as you don't really know which events were supposed to be connected, In addition to that, not everything you find as cut material on the CDs, was cut because of time restraints. You might find many things that weren't supposed to happen in the finale, even before they decided to finish the game earlier.