TentamusDarkblade

first off, George Lucas is a one trick pony and a hack. He liberally ripped off Akira Kurosawa's "Kakushi toride no san akunin" (Hidden fortress) for Star Wars. His "original creations" episode I and II are atrocious. now that thats out of the way.... Kotor 2 is better than Kotor 1. I was on the Xbox cert team for the first KOTOR and i can safely say that Kotor 2's load times are better nearly across the board. Couple that with the fact that the game areas are generally larger with more active characters on screen and it's safe to say that engine-wise Kotor 2 beats kotor 1. Story-wise i enjoyed kotor 2 more, thanks to the more mature handling of the jedi/sith conflict, the inclusion of political intrigue, and a main character who wasn't just a walking cliche. Sure, there were some holes, but for the most part if you paid attention you could easily infer the information. 39 hours of solid enjoyment and an hour of 'meh" at the ending is a fair ratio in my mind. I enjoyed the DS element of Kotor 2. Kotor 1's darkside path was often silly and cartoonish. I didn't want to play a disney villian, i wanted to be a dark and evil sith. Kotor 2 offered that. I enjoyed playing as the Exile. Revan was, in my opinion, a weak character. Bioware was so heavy handed in how they handled Revan that you pretty much had everything figured out before you were even half-way to the end. The Exile at least kept you guessing and was a more believable character. Kotor 1's NPCs for the most part were dull and 2 diminsional. the only ones that were interesting at all were Bastille and HK-47, although HK was more amusing than actually interesting. The rest just felt like filler. The only NPC i found dull in KOTOR 2 was Atton, since he just seemed like the generic han solo character. All in all, Kotor 2 offered a richer game world to play in, richer NPCs to interact with, and more realistic grey areas to explore. Kotor 1 was enjoyable, but it tried too hard to play it safe with the storyline. I don't deny that there were bugs in Kotor 2 and i admit that i'm disappointed that the Droid World got cut. But that doesn't detract, for me, how good this game is. oh, and if you want a fair view of how this game is being recieved by reviewers check out GameRankings. It's tabulates all the various reviews across the internet and averages the score. So far Kotor is well recieved, with an overall score of 87.1%.

Just to but in here, but that's just stupid. If a game offers unlockable content, then judging it solely on a single playthrough is purposely being obtuse. It be like judging a meal based off of just the soup course. if you want to pound your chest and judge a game, at least judge it on what it offers. of course, you're going to rant and rave trying to justify your system. Save it, i'm tired of your hyperbole, doom, and gloom being posted everywhere. I just wanted to post my thoughts on your time/money spent ratio system. Also, BGDA sold enough units to qualify as a platinum hit for Xbox. MS has to judge a game a commercial success to make them into Platinum hits.

no, the back lash was that players wanted to play as the cool, macho main character of the orignal, not some effiminate, whining character we've never heard of.

folks are going to cry and whine, don't bother arguing with them. Their minds are made up that they're going to waste time on a forum bitching about a game that they didn't understand. screw'em. I'm on my third play through and i'm enjoying the hell out of it. I hope Obsidian makes bank from this and gets a shot at doing KOTOR 3.

hey Epiphany, great responses. your stunning examples simply blew me away.... man, i hate trolls.

Kotor 2 beats Kotor, easy... Kotor2 has shorter load times, better frame rates, larger worlds with more characters on screen making it feel more alive, does away with forced mini-games, give more/better interaction with NPCs, vastly improved on the workbench system, gave us more force powers, improved animations for combat, and gave us a story line that you didn't figure out in the first act (who didn't know they were Revan from the get go?) I realize that folks want to look back at Kotor with rose tinted glasses, but come on...Obsidian took everything Kotor had and made it better. The only screw up is the ambigious ending. Personally, i enjoyed it since i don't need a cheesy award ceremony to validate my gameplay experience. 38 hours of great and 2 hours of meh, seems like a pretty good ratio to me.

Dragon Age Jade Empire Bio-Shock Stubbs the Zombie FEAR I was looking forward to Dead Rush, but Activision cancelled it

Trayus academy Darth Traya i made the leap and figured that Kriea was the teacher at Trayus Academy.

i always considered Nihilius as the Exiles polar opposite. Nihilius grows stronger by draining the life from those around him, while the exile, through his/her force bond talent, seems to empower those around him. Both grow stronger through death, but the exiles power is a shared power with all who follow him/her. just a thought

nope, you're just a tool

the impression i got was that Revan never fell, only did what was needed to prepare the galaxy for the coming true battle. The Mandalorian war opened revan's eyes to how vulnerable the republic was and from there set out to forge the galaxy into something that could survive the coming sith empire. The players conversations with Kriea remark about it, as do conversations with Goto and other flavor bits you pick up here and there. Revan set alot of things in motion and i don't think we'll know the full extent of what that was until the next game.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! man, you have no idea how the game industry works do you?

Possibly a bad printing batch. Also, there are something like 20-30 different xbox configurations that have been sold. Different chips, DVD drives, etc. Most games get about a week getting randomly shuffled through the compatibility lab that houses these when it's tested for xbox certification. So some of the issues are going to be tied to the hardware of your xbox. Especially if you have a early release of the xbox, which were released with wonky DVD drives.

1) all console games release with bugs, just cause you personally don't see them doesn't mean they're not there. I worked at the Xbox certification lab, trust me...lots of games ship with bugs. 2) Xbox Live allows patching. I don't think they're allowed to call them patches, but "content Updates" or "Expanded Content" downloaded from xbox live will generally includes minor fixes and such in addition to the new content. 3) Releasing during the holiday season was a great idea. There are no other games in the same demographic releasing at the same time. They aren't going up against Halo 2, Half-life 2, Grand theft auto: San Andreas, or Metal Gear Solid 3....they are all in completely different demographic groups. 4) The vocal minority who post on troubleshooting forums and on fan forum sites do not represent the play experience of the general public.

Matrix Online. And Previously i was working on Fable over at MS.

what i've heard, take it or leave it, is that Bioware signed a sxclusivity deal with MS. MS throws lots of money at Bioware, Bioware only releases on PC and xbox. As far as crunch times go, there not as bad at some places, worse at others. Crunch time at MS is pretty bad, with long hours, insane requests, and no clear end in sight. the upside is MS pays pretty well. I work at Monolith and we're currently in Crunchmode now. It's no where near as bad as i had at MS or what i've read of EA. Sure, the hours are long, but the pay is good and everyone is there because they want to make a good game. So it really boils down to where you end up working at. There are good dev houses and bad dev houses. I'm sure through your online contacts that you'd be able to get the inside scoop about a place if you were going to try for a job there.

alot of pitch docs i've seen range from 7-11 pages at first. Then it builds dependent on what the dev/publisher wants to see from the pitch doc.

that would be pretty cool. I'd love to do some realm hopping. of course, i'd want to see Krynn, but i'm selfish like that.

i'm currently doing QA and i'm hoping to move up to junior designer on the next project. Some years of experience in design and maybe i'll get a shot at a spot with Obsidian or Troika. As for the "ideas guy" it's almost never just one guy. I'm the QA guy in charge of ability functionality on our current project so I'm in on the abilities meetings so i can weight in on testing apects of new/current features in the game. Even being the low man on the totem pole I've had a couple of my ideas/suggestions implemented into features for the game. Basically, anyone who is on the team will at one point or another have an opportunity to pitch an idea in.

slightly off topic, did anyone catch the CNN presentation last night "The fight over Faith?" it really scared the hell out of me. The evangelical christians are the most frightening thing i've ever seen. It's the worst of zealotry untempered by any form of tradition. They don't believe that they have to waiver or compromise on any of their beliefs because "they're right" and the rest of us "are going to hell". And to hell with agreeing to disagree... And the fact that they are the fastest growing religious group in the US, coupled with the political involvement they've shown in the last election, makes for a very unnerving glimpse at the possible future for all us non-born agains.

yep...Ghandi sure accomplished alot with his mad Kung Fu skills.... I bet Rosa Parks kicked the ever lovin' **** outta someone to get the seat on that bus.... Harriet Tubman pulled Chuck norris "Delta force" type commando raids to to get slaves north along the underground railroad.... These folks managed to affect change without violence, you dope. Violence changes nothing, standing up against violence does.

that might actually be one of the signs of the apocalypse.... seriously though, civil war won't happen and wishing that it does it both idiotic and short-sighted. If people feel that strongly about what's going on in modern US politics, then why don't you get involved in any number of progressive reform movements or political groups? Actually work towards change instead of just bitching about it... Black Box Voting Democratic underground Our Vote Fair Vote National Voting Rights Institute The Center for Public Integrity Common Cause Open Debates Reclaim Democracy FAIR People for the American Way I'm not advocating for any of these sites, only listing them as possible places to start if you want to actually take rational action instead of just standing around being whiners....oh hell, i think i just used a Volourn line

enjoy this read

Quality Assurance Tester for a moderately sized game studio

and this would be Pyronius handing 'JN his ass...