Gotag

Now this strikes me as rather strange and somewhat er... I'm not sure how to phrase it. Duex et Machina? Cheesy? I've just completed Nar Shaddar and Mira joins the party. I'm LS male with LS mastery, so of course I chat her up a bit. Couple of dialogue trees and a short run later she's standing with me a newly minted Jedi WITH lightside mastery. Now, to give credit where credit is due, Mira is a great character and the voice acting with her is superb. She has a great story and some great lines. However don't you think they might have strung out the whole conversion a bit? Maybe required a few level triggers, planet hops or SOMETHING?? As it stands, I feel a big "so what?" Sigh...... There is a great game in here somewhere.......... Gotag

Thnks for replys. I guess the romance is so traumatic my PC was overcome and forgot it to spare himself. Kinda keeping in character I guess. " I got both force sight from Visas and turned Handmaiden into a Jedi plus whatever that skill is she gives you. Haven't done the med thingy with Visas so I guess I went too far with Handmaiden. (w00t) I suppose I'll have to be content with the "I'm your disciple" bit, although it leaves me feeling kinda um.... deflated. You know? There's a great game in here if they had only taken a tad more time to polish it up. Gotag

Regarding the romance quests with Visas and Handmaiden. About how far along in the story do you have to be before these are completed? Also while I know that with Visas you do the meditation thingy what is the result with Handmaiden? I'm finished Telos, Nar Shadar, Dantoenne, Korriban and the first half of Ondaron with only the return to Ondaron (and whatever happens after that) left to do. Am I just being impatient? Gotag

So, I'm running around Nar Shad with my all Jedi babe posse, Handmaiden and Visas. I'm so filled with inner goodness that Con-Ed could hook me up in case of blackouts and both of my honeys love me for it. Now I check on the character screen and all three of us have light mastery with bonuses. Nice!! Anyway, after a few encounters and whatnot I decide to grab Candyman to talk to those Mandalorians in the flophouse. I go back to the Ebon Hawk to get him because I want to see if a ship encounter is triggered. No ship encouter sadly but I grab Candy, go talk to the mandalorians who agree to follow him with my prompting (help). Now first, I gain no influence with Candy which is kinda stupid given the nature of this encounter but fair enough. Secondly, I also notice that Handmaiden has lost her lightside mastery bonus but she is still lightside enough to have it. This type of thing occurred to the PC occasionally in K1 so I guess LM and DM is buggy. Again no biggy. So I go back to the Ebon Hawk again (looking to trigger that damn ship encounter and again foiled, drat!!) to switch out Candy and grab Visas. I check both Visas and Handmaiden and neither has the LM bonus and not only that but Visas has dropped down in lightside too. Almost as if she had done a darkside deed while I wasn't watching (naughty naughty) Now no encounters I had had any dialogue with Visas or any announcment of influence loss so I was a bit baffled. Then though I decided to do some maitinence on the relatively unused NPCs in the party and swapped them in/out using the party composition screen without going back to the Ebon Hawk. I ended with Handmaiden and Visas to continue the game and lo and behold both are light masters again with all the bonuses. So clearly something is rather bugged here. It's almost as if entering/exiting the Ebon Hawk has a different character check that the party composition screen. Anyone else run into something similar? Gotag

Sorry if this has been brought up before. I tried a search and couldn't find anything relevant. On Nar Shadar a guy approches me and tells me he is the previous owner of the Ebon Hawk and the ship got stolen from him. I have a number of different options, one of which is to give him back the ship. I understand there are some possibly funny convo options depending on who you have in the party but does what you say actually affect anything? Plz, low on the spoiler info. If it is an important part of the story, I'll work it out for myself but if it's just fluff then spare me wasting some time plz. Gotag

Just want to save myself some reload grief. As a lightside male who all can I romance? Any preference from a dialogue standpoint? Prestige classes come from a sufficiently influenced Kreia or will I stumble upon it? Are prestige classes a given or can you blow it and finish without? I have a couple of settler bodies in inventory. Can I er... brake em down for chemicals, sell them or what? I finished the quest, got the mojo but I still got the bodies. Thnks in advance. Gotag

In Canada I got the game at my local EB today. It arrived at the store ~2:00pm. Installing it even as I type this. 4 CDs and one of the sorriest manuals I've ever seen. Compare to this one, the manual for the first was a friggen encyclopedia. Hell, the boilerplate and credits are over half the contents. Who cares though...... I'm off to save the universe!!!! Gotag

I dunno, this sounds like nothing more then word play to me. When I start this game, I won't know the PC's back story. There is not going to be some little history in the manual filling me in on my char. The fact that HE/SHE does and revels it thoughout the game via dialogue is kinda besides the point. I mean it's the PC right? MY in game avatar. If I don't know something it's rather odd that my PC does and just doesn't feel like telling me about it right now. The device used is that the PC is filling me in using dialogue with NPCs but how is this fundametally different then the NPCs filling me in via dialogue with the PC? It's not like the PC is going to give me hints on how they feel they should handle situations vis-a-vis their past. So from a game play standpoint, my PC might as well have ammnesia. I understand why this is done and I even to a point agree with it (a little info wouldn't hurt too much I believe) but if it walks like a duck....... Gotag

I'd bet one of the 300 odd lightsabres I have in my stash that there is no chance she's a sith lord. If it turned out she was, I would be pleasently surprised. Not because it isn't obvious possibility (it is of course) but rather because her voice is used for the light side option on the Lucas Arts web site and as every one knows, Lucas Arts is as about as subtle and sneaky as a fart in a small submarine. Make that 2 lightsabres. Gotag

Heya Hutt. Watching them in WMV format is kinda a pain. What you want to do is click the link, then when the media player popup comes up look at the bottom. It should say, "left click to download" click that line then another pop up comes up. Now that will have a link which says RIGHT click, do that and choose "save as". Now download the file and enjoy. Hope this helps. Gotag

First kudos for the find and linkage!! Very very interesting. The idea that an NPC might actually LIE to me is absolutely and utterly SWEET!!! Sounds like a lot more thinking is involved in this one which was kinda missing from the first. Cannot wait......cannot wait..... Gotag PS: the delete button is your friend

Actually there was a thread some time ago on Bioware similar to this, unfortunately I cannot find it so no links but one of the devs dropped in and explained Bastila's name (perhaps others but I cannot remember) Bastila was originally the name of the Juhani character. The root of the name is Bast, taken from the Egyptian cat goddess, which given Juhani's species is not too surprising. They like the name and decided to give it to the female lead. Actually Bast is not just the Egyptian Cat Goddess but also the Goddess of Love, Life and Sex so it works for me. Gotag

Forgive me but you seem to be worrying about one of the most important part of any role playing game, and that is meaningful choices. Forget for a moment about replay value and just look at it from a gameplay standpoint. If a character is all things to all situations or has cheese workarounds then what is the point of character development? In a good RPG, the player (you) should constantly be involved in making meaningful and HARD choices. If I take this I cannot take that, if I do this I cannot do that ect.... These choices should NOT simply occur during character creation but constantly throughout the game. That is what makes the game fun and allows different people to have completely different experiences in the same game. In addition think of the great arguments that will occur over, "my build is better" "No mine is you fool!" "My char could wax yours's butt" "Haa Haa I would so own Joo" The devs simply have to be careful that no matter how you develop/build your character (short of the moronic) you cannot "dead end" them leaving the game unfinishable. Anyhow, my 2cents on the subject. Gotag

You're reading too much into this. If by some chance I had actually found something that told what really happened to Revan then no way would I post anything about it. It would lessen the game for too many people. I would be bummed out just knowing myself. Speculation is fun, pre-knowledge isn't. I just thought it kind of neat that you can see the conversation tree that sets the later game story arc. As you say, we already know the gist of it, now we know the mechanics. I was curious to see how they (Obsidian) would do it. The way that the PC has been described up to this point makes him/her seem like they've been living in/on a/the bottle for the last few years. Now we know that he/she at least has heard rumours of events and by relaying those rumours to Atton, we set up the back story. Pretty slick if I do say so myself. Gotag

If you look at the latest Gamespot interview (here http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/rpg/kotor2/media.html ) there will come a part where you are talking to Atton. You'll see the question tree that comes up regarding how you played out KotOR. I don't subscribe so the quality for me is rather junky but I can make out some of the dialogue Atton: "Revan and Malek turned on each other, after they turned on the Jedi of course" Your replies: "The rumour I heard was that Reven defeated Malak, then went to Korriban to unite the Sith against the Republic"...... or "I was lead to believe that Revan saved the Jedi and... I cannot make out the rest of the dialogue after this despite considerable wear and tear on the eyes. If somebody has a membership and wants to download the high res interview (~140mb) then they can probably make out a few more juicy bits. Enjoy.. Gotag

That is Juhani. She is a Cathar. Killing her sets off a small side quest with Belaya (?). Belaya is the Jedi who talks to you in the courtyard of the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine and chides you for not wearing the proper robes. If you kill Juhani, Belaya gets upset and leaves Dantooine and you later encounter her on Korriban. You can then kill her. Gotag

Folks, give it a chance!! If done well, it will add a lot to both replayability and also make the care and feeding of NPCs a lot more important. Which IMHO is a good thing. NPCs who are as disposable as kleenex are the signs of a shabby game. Years ago I played a RPG called "Betrayal at Krondor". You had to play whole sections of the game without your avatar. It was both done well and pulled you into the story in a way that a single perspective couldn't. I too hated it at first but after a while, I came to appreiciate it. Now repeat after me.......Subplots are good, subplots are good Gotag

You're quite right of course but on the otherhand, well.... Spoiler alert!! If you repair HK in KotOR one you'll find in the few years between Revan sending him off and finding him again he's had no less then 3 other masters all of whom snuff it. Obviously it isn't that hard to start him up again. Who knows? They don't say in what state you actually FIND HK so he may well be shut down and you have to get him up and running again. Not a bad idea actually!! Gotag

I suspect that HK-47 is there as a simple plot device to fill you in on what happened to Reven. If he is a party member (seems unclear at this point) then you probably need to "repair" him like in the first game to get him to "remember" or perhaps in the late game an event trigger. Simple, slick and ah......done before. His presence though does not bode well for Reven's continued health. Oh well, Reven had his/her time in the sun. Gotag

Selling the guides before the games release is just good business sense. After game release, as somebody remarked, if you get stuck you can always go to a web site and find walk throughs, build help, strats ect.... This would naturally hurt sales. In addition, the guide no doubt offers a ton of information regarding story arcs, NPCs, items, feats ect... (You know the type of thing we are trying to figure out and pestering the DEVs about ) This information of course has a definite shelf life and once the game is released we can just figure it out for ourselves or visit web sites. Again this would hurt sales. Now for the less internet/gaming savvy, when the book is released will have no impact on sales. They buy the game AND the book at the same time if they were inclined to buy the book at all. Conclusion? Release the book before game release and you sell more books. Gotag

Personally that would be a little hard to take. I can understand if you chose D/S in KotOR then Reven+Bastila+Star Forge is a bit too potent a combo to write around. If alive and "intact" they would still represent the major darkside mojo and make the new group of baddies seem like bit players. In addition going D/S kinda "thins" the cast anyway. That being said though, simply offing them seems like poor plotting to me. Maybe a necessary evil however for the new story but I think I could do better. However playing Reven as L/S gives the writers of KotOR II a number of other options that don't require invalidating or at least neutering the first game. The galaxy is a big place and you can hide them pretty much anywhere if it's too complex to find them an innocuous place in the new story. Hell, a simple, "Reven and Bastila/Carth, weary from the battle against the dark side, retired to (insert out of way planet here) to shack up and raise babies" would probably satisfy most people. It would jar somewhat but would be a lot better then finding out they got snuffed before they had any time to enjoy the fruits of their labours. Heck with a bit of time I could prolly find a much smoother transition then that. Damn, KotOR II may be a great game and although I'm sure I will love it, I just hope it doesn't destroy my mental/memory pleasure in KotOR I in the process. Gotag

You're not frozen, just really, really hurt at the start of the game, and you wake up in a kolto tank (like Luke Skywalker in the bacta tank in Empire). You also don't have amnesia, although you're not exactly sure where you are at the start of the game. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Heya Chris, one thing I admit to being curious about is, are we going to know the PC's back story before the game starts? "We're really really hurt but no amnesia" tells me that we will. I can imagine that must have been quite a headache to create. (Never mind making it gender neutral!!) Too detailed is kinda anti-rpg. Too vague and it might as well be "You awake from a long sleep with no memory of who you are" which is so hackneyed and cliched a device that it's really starting to get old. You know, I really don't mind being told I am so and so with this past and these motivations. It can be fun role playing a somewhat canned character. You can always expand on the bare bones as you want. Heck, it's kinda like acting. Gotag

Whether or not they have an actual appearence doesn't much matter to me as I'm a different character. That being said however, I would be disappointed if we didn't learn at least a little of how things turned out for them. One of the marks of a good RPG is how involved the player gets with the NPCs. Do we like the "heros" and hiss at the "villains" (depending on one's view of course) In addition we have to like our own character and their place in the created universe. Since I did to both of the above, I am more then a little curious to see how they are doing. It would kind of funny to find out that Revan, sourge of the galaxy, cracked his noodle in the bath one day....... Gotag

Personally, I wouldn't be too worried about it. A number of things work in Obsidians favour. They don't need to reinvent the wheel as it were. The game engine is the same and while they will take the time to tweak it and add new effects, they have all of Bioware's documentation available to them should they need it. In addition they can simply pick up a phone and talk to KotOr's devs if they have any questions re the mechanics. This basically leaves two things, content and balance. Content side is the hard part and basically takes two forms. Story and candy. A few months to flesh out the story should be plenty of time. Dialogue, quests ect.... All that is needed here is a good imagination and between Lucasarts and Obsidian they shouldn't have any problems. Whether we love it or not, well, that is as much a matter of taste as anything else. They need to strike a balance between "freshness" and overworld consistancy with the emphasis on "freshness". Small inconsistancies will no doubt really grate on hardcore starwars fans but for 90% of the potential customer base they won't either know or care. To put is simply, a good story will make or break this game and there is no minimum on how long that takes to do. If they got it right then a couple of weeks is plenty of time. Candy side though is another matter. New skills, new powers, new feats these all require a fair amount of work. Implementing them within the engine is easy. The hard part is balance. You introduce a new power and perhaps all the rest are junk in comparison. That would really take the shine off the game. While I expect they will avoid huge imbalances, I don't expect miracles. Some skills and some powers will be almost mandatory. Ya, more development time would no doubt avoid or lessen this but realistically they have to get the game out the door sometime. This is somewhere where PCs shine compared to the Xbox. Patches can and should tweak balance to increase player build options. All in all though, if the bones of the story are good then the time they have had to make this game is plenty. Gotag