The man in the iron mask

The problem for me would be this: at the end of KotOR, Revan was level 20. At the end of KotOR II, Exile was about level 27-28. Both characters already lost their connection to the Force once. It would be stupid to have either one of them be de-leveled and lose their powers again. I don't think you could make me a convincing case why either should lose their powers and/or abilities. Having said that, I would love to play either Revan or Exile in Kotor III. However, there would have to be a few conditions. First off, it would need to tie into both KotOR I and II. Events that took place in them would have to be specifically mentioned, and how you played the first two would have to make a difference. Since you would be playing as characters from the first games, it only makes sense that how you played through those games would make a difference as to how KotOR III played out. You would have to be able to re-create your character(s) from the previous game(s). At the beginning of the game, during character creation, you should be given the base character, and all the skills, feats, and powers to get Revan to level 20 and Exile to level 28. HOWEVER-- to use Revan as an example, you should NOT have to level him up 20 times! That's a pain and a waste of time. You should be able to choose your class split beforehand, (i.e. Soldier 5, Guardian 15, or whatever the case may be) and the game will calculate all the free feats/skills you get, give them to you, and allow you to choose the remaining ones all at once. In other words, choose your split, and level up from level 1 to level 20 in one shot. It would also be nice to have the option to import your character from the previous game, but that's not essential. Finally--KotOR III will have to be made for a very high-level character. If you're starting at level 20 or 28, then you shouldn't have to fight all those thugs and such that you'd be able to batter around the map with Force Ear Flick and Force Sneeze. Masses of cannon fodder will be unnecessary. It would be better to fight a few tougher opponents at a time that a mass of hired thugs. The storyline would have to be a little different in this case, because it won't be designed to bring a character from start to finish--it'll be more like midpoint to finish, by the time it's all said and done. These conditions would also make for a pretty long game. As you get more and more levels, it takes more XP to level up. Starting at level 20 or 28, it's going to be a while between levels. A game where you only gain 8-10 levels would not be fun. Starting at level 20, you should be able to get to level 35-40. That means Exile, starting at 28, should be able to get to almost 50. This constitutes a very long game. However, I think it can be done. The KotOR series has enjoyed extreme success, and I think it would be great to continue the stories of KotOR I and II. Oh, one last thing--both Revan and Exile are user-created characters. Neither can be incorporated as an NPC in KotOR III. the NPC may not fit the style the style the user roleplayed. If both are used (which would be great) it could possibly be done as two separate storylines that converge at the end. The user could then have a conversation with himself/herself with the two characters. That could be interesting.

Repeat after me: Keep the forums open! Keep the forums open! Keep the forums open!

Too much effort. F+ <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Effort schmeffort. A human-shaped blurring in front of your face doesn't take any effort to see, especially when it's moving, and you know the assassins have stealth field generators. Unless you're blind. Then you'd have to use the Force like Visas, and that probably takes some effort.

If you paid attention, you notice that you can see the shimmer of their stealth field when it's activated. Once you hit them, the cloak is destroyed. This was readily obvious on my first run-through. Questions such as this usually have obvious answers if you just pay attention. If they don't chances are it doesn't matter. Especially with something as mundane as this.

Ah HA!! I knew something was wrong. The sound goes funky sometimes when I've been playing for a while or I'm in a fight. At first I thought my computer was getting clogged with all the information, until I realized that the graphics weren't slowing down, just the sound. Nice job with the research. I agree that the sound quality is ridiculous, I just didn't realize how bad it was. Hopefully something will be done about this.

I was also unable to complete one of the races. Initially, I crashed, and it brought me back out and gave me the option to race again. So I did. The next time, I clearly finished, because the bike stopped on its own accord, and ahead of me was a blank wall. Clearly the end. Especially since I had finished other races and knew what to look for. Guess what? It kicked me back out and said that I had had an accident. Luckily, I didn't have to pay for this race, so I just tried again, free of charge. Again, the same thing happened. After 4 tries of this, I just gave up. That's something that needs to be fixed. I know it's not crucial to the plot, but it's kind of fun and a good change of pace. There's still no excuse for not having finished this part of the game correctly, just because it's not essential.

Hopefully it comes soon. I haven't had the horrible problems that I've heard about, but there have been enough quirky bugs that it's kind of getting annoying. You'd think that with all that extra time between the Xbox and PC releases that they'd get the game right. Unfortunately, not. KotOR II has, from what I can tell, far more bugs than the original, and since they're using the same engine, that's completely unacceptable. The bugs from the first should be fixed, not compounded and added to. I also notice that the Xbox version is mysteriously free of these bugs. I wonder why PC development wasn't as careful. Oh, wait. I know. It's because, as so many developers do, they said, "Oh, well, we can ship an incomplete version for the PC because we can just release a patch in a few months so all the players can download the fixes to the problems that should have already been fixed." Needless to say, we need this patch ASAP.

Are you referring to when, for example, you get DS points there's that reddish glow around the character's body and it plays a little tune that lends itself to the DS? If so, you do in fact get the tune on the PC. Both DS and LS. I've heard it many times.

Well, I can't say anything from personal experience (yet) as my copy has not arrived yet :angry: but I have read about the game in reviews and such. Personally, I think that there's no excuse for those bugs that you mentioned. Most of them were present in the original to one extent or another, and they should have been fixed by now. You also praise the fact that you only had 2-3 crashes in 50 hours of gameplay. Granted, this is a longer game with more content, but I had 0 crashes in 40 hours of gameplay with KotOR 1. There shouldn't be any problems with crashes. That being said, everything I've heard about the game is that it's good overall. And there's that fact that I have already ordered the game and am eagerly awaiting its arrival.

1. How could you skip them on the PC?? I think i tried just about everything <{POST_SNAPBACK}> All you had to do was click. You can fly between worlds in about 3 seconds if you skip all the cutscenes. Just be careful, because you might be thrown unexpectedly into one of those "shoot the Sith fighters" sequecnes if you skipped the telltale cutscene. What I do is let the cutscene start, and once I know that it's not the telltale one for the fighters, I just skip it. So far, the only things that I've found to be unskippable on the PC are some in-game dialogue cutscenes, where there's some sort of character movement that would cause the voices to be off from the action if it wasn't skipped. Example below: I know that wasn't much of a spoiler, but why not be careful of those on these boards who haven't finished the game more times than they'd care to admit to friends, parents, significant others, etc. Anyway, those scenes mentioned before were the only ones that I found to be unskippable on the PC. I feel for you guys on Xbox who can't skip the tedious flying sequences between planets. I mean, the scenes are visually quite attractive, but they're used over and over, and get old pretty quick. It's nice to be able to skip them, and it makes me think that the PC is superior to the Xbox. ...and then I think about the fact that KotOR 2 comes out 2 months earlier for the Xbox, and I get really mad that I don't have one.

That might work until, God forbid, the Ebon Hawk needs fuel, or repairs, or parts, or you need food, or water, or clothing, or other supplies, or...shall I continue? I also think at least some opportunity for a change of company would be necessary. The same people over and over again would get boring. Leave a couple of planets out there.

NOOO! What have you done to be cursed so?

Currently on my HDD: Age of Mythology Doom 3 Jedi Academy KotOR 1 Need for Speed Underground Neverwinter Nights, Shadows of Undrentide, Hordes of the Underdark No One Lives Forever 2 Starcraft, Broodwar Could be more, but I've recently uninstalled a few games that I wasn't playing much anymore. My games cycle quite frequently, so you never know. And all that with 25GB free on a 60GB HDD. A space-management wizard has emerged!

Huh? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I assume there is regions on the Xbox dvds <{POST_SNAPBACK}> For clarification: Modding the Xbox would allow it to play DVDs from other regions. That way, you can get the game and play it before it comes out in your region. Hence the necessity to import.

I definately support both CD and DVD versions for KotOR 2. Most current games require at least 2 CDs to handle all the content, and many, such as KotOR are on the order of 3+. Much of this is due to graphics upgrades, but there's also things such as cutscenes and voice acting to consider. KotOR had full voice-over for all the character interactions. This was a huge factor in furthering the realism of this game. You didn't have to read the dialogue as it was being spoken, as in many RPGs. I assume KotOR 2 will follow the same track. With graphics getting better and better (look at HL2) and voice-over becoming more and more common in games, the data required will keep getting larger and larger. That's not even considering engines for things such as physics and rag-doll effects. Computer hardware keeps getting upgrades for these types of things. Hard drives get bigger, computers have more RAM and faster processors, and video cards keep getting beefier. Eventually media storage will have to catch up. Although KotOR's CDs only had to be changed during installation, it would have been much easier to have one DVD for it. That way it's easier to keep track of the game disks. Not to mention the fact that a dual-layer DVD holds almost 12.5 CDs worth of data. Also, the argument that some people don't have a DVD drive does not carry any weight whatsoever with me. This is no excuse. People constantly upgrade things such as RAM and video cards, but never think to upgrade their optical drives, which is much cheaper. Most new computers come with DVD drives standard anyway. Nowadays computers don't last much more than 4 or 5 years, if you keep them well, and most people go through computers faster than that. If you are thinking of getting a new computer anytime soon and don't currently have a DVD drive, realize that you'll probably get one with the new machine. Suffice it to say, I believe that there should be a CD version for those who wish it, but digital media is going the way of the DVD, and I think that those who have the technology and want the conveniene of less disks that DVD offers should be able to elect this option over CDs. Enough said.

The only problem is the lack of a recent update. I would like some additional news as the game gets closer to release.

I thought the cutscenes were well done, although I agree that the quality should be upped for TSL. The only major complaint I have about the KotOR 1 cutscenes would be that they were unskippable. It got kind of annoying if, for some reason, you had to replay a portion of the game with a cutscene, and were unable to skip it and had to listen to the speech(es) again.

True, the short sabers did less damage than normal ones, but this was balanced by reducing the attack penalty of using an off-hand weapon. This may seem counterintuitive, but it actually makes sense. With the reduced penalty, you have a higher chance of scoring a hit with the off-hand short saber. Even though the hit does less damage, you hit more often, so it evens out in the end. In some cases, like with hard-to-hit opponents, it actually works in your favor, because a little damage a lot of the time ususally comes out ahead of a lot of damage a little of the time.

Connecticut, USA.

Nice. Thanks for the references.

Regardless of what happened to the Star Forge, I'm sure it will be explained before KotOR 2 starts. We already know that the fate of Revan and many of the other main characters will be revealed, so I'm sure the Star forge will be dealt with as well. Hint, hint, Obsidian.

I enjoy playing both sides. When I play LS, it's pretty much true to what I'd do in real life. I'm a good guy. I also like DS though, because it's the complete opposite of what I actually am, and it's kind of fun to use a video game to get away from who you really are for a while. Regardless of which side I play, I try to think of how that character would act, not how I would act. It makes it a lot more fun, and I thing I get a lot more out of it that way. I also think the DS powers are cooler, although the LS mastery bonuses are better (in KotOR 1 that is).

Same name in the BioWare forums. Never posted much though. I thought the KotOR forums would be somewhat the NWN forums, but it was just people asking about the storyline or comparing builds. It got boring fast. Also, the moderators in the KotOR forums locked every third thread over technicalities, while leaving the ones with blatant spoilers in the specifically non-spoiler forum open. I didn't get it. In the NWN forums, which I still visit often (also under the same name), the moderators only lock appropriate threads, and the atmosphere is better. There's also the fact that there's a variety of topics being discussed there.

Many characters (including non-important NPCs) have lookalikes. There are very few models in the game that are used only once, with the core characters being the prominent exceptions. This just illustrates the fact that just because you're playing a video game doesn't mean you can check your imagination at the door. It also saves a lot of space and code to use the same models over and over. Animations can stay the same, and there's less data to have to store. I personally don't mind it. I did notice it, but it's one of those video game things that you need to take in stride. It's not worth stressing over. Unless they're completely unimportant NPCs (like civilians that just walk around) they usually have different clothes on anyway, so you can tell the difference between them.

It would add a little bit of realism to the game. I mean, what kind of person only talks in a cantina? Sitting down over a drink is how you get to talk to people. It would allow you to get more information. Instead of giving money to the person directly to get info, you could spend a few credits to get them drunk and loosten their tongue. It would be fun.