ntime60

Hmmm, I have only played through 2 times LS/DS. That is kind of sad to know.

Not all big companies are evil. The PC industry just has more than its fair share of them. I will admit that in the last few years it seems that many large companies are becoming more predatory in their practices, which is what I thought the SEC was built to prevent. I can only guess at the reasons why. Gobble or be gobbled. When quality dies we all lose. Monopolies are not known for quality as it eats into profits to produce quality products. Got to keep those share holders happy right?

My personal favorites are Consular/Jedi Master or Consular/Sith Lord. The latter is waaaay overpowered. Force focus and force wave is almost unstoppable. There is no end to the force points and the destruction is massive. I use force wave to clear whole rooms with 3-4 force waves. What doesn't die in the first or second wave is stunned and helpless.

EA is evil. EA is responsible for buying quality (well known) development houses, stripping them down and ruining thier reputations. Their sports games are ok IF that is what you are into; for all but a very few titles they serve up products that are hurried to market way before their time. EA rarely makes a complete game. Westwood, Maxis, Origin, Criterion, Dice and a plethora of others. EA is doing to the gaming industry what Microsoft has done to the PC industry. Monopolies stiffle the competition by using their monopoly to dictate to the retail outlets and consumers. Monopolies ARE BAD no matter how you slice it. I personally will not buy a beta or imcomplete game. EA like Microsoft is great at marketing, hype and FUD. MS and EA quit making quality products many years ago, about the same time MS fully bought into the idea of planned obsolescence. It is really too bad the rest of the consumer market hasn't figured it out yet and start holding these companies accountable for thier obvious disreguard for quality and very questionable business practices.

I would agree to a point. Writing a book usually takes me about 8-18 months per book of around 75-100,000 words.. Publishers usually like a writer to have 2 complete works and a thrid started if the book will be a series or trilogy or two complete spearate works.. This way the books can be released on a decent timetable and helps with the typsetting requirements for book runs.. Books usually have thier bugs fixed by editors, even then some bugs/typos still exist. Computer games aren't necessairly more expensive than say a medium to large budget movie to produce. The problem with computer games, is that as computers have evolved so have the games. All of us in-turn with more powerful systems have demanded better looking realistic games. We also demand deep gameplay, an epic story and unusually high expectations to out do anything else on the market. In my mind this causes some issues. The current trend in the computer publishing industry seems to be - Come to concept, design/develop 12-15 months, 3-9 months test to delivery. The profit point is 100,000 units sold in 90 days. Figure out the numbers based on unit price. I personally believe it is unrealistic to think that a high quality product cam be produced in that time frame. There is just too much code and much of it being experimental in the first place. There WILL be bugs. If we could get the publishers to lighten up a bit then I believe we would see a better products. It didn't used to be that way. Graphics were good enough, the stories were better and gameplay was exceptional and deep in many cases like the original Tie Fighter vs X-Wing games, Wing Commander (except for IV), K2 has great game play, much better than K1 me thinks, yes there are a few bugs, the story could be tightened up a bit - but over all a good game. I think if it had been released with the March 05 timetable then we would have had a better game. There are places very near the end that just look rushed to me. Sorry Devs, I know it probably wasn't your fault. I just believe in the it will be done when it is done and not a moment sooner philosophy. It might be better if the computer games industry would adopt more of a book publishing attitude rather than the movie industry attitude. Complete works first, not the we can patch it later or incomplete. <soapbox off>

In movies and books I don't mind cliff Hangers because the development to market time is so short. In computer games I prefer tidy endings. Keep each game within its own story arc. It generally takes 2 to 4 years to develop sequels and depending on new technology like Doom 3 and Half-Lif2 2 considerably longer like 6 years. It is way too long to wait to see the end of the story. What to the rest of you think?

I still have mame on my gaming system and have collected many old arcade games like Zaxxon, Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Centepede, Joust, Battle Zone, Galxia, Galaga, Space Invaders, even before them were text based games on my IMSAI 8080z, Advent, Wumpus, Zork, horse race, sub hunt, Startrek. xxxxx xxx*x xxEx Command? (A,M, F, U,D) Before these in my teens I played Avalon Hill games like Midway, France 1940, Battle of the Bulge, Stratego, Waterloo and many others. When the computer revolution started with pong and Pacman at the arcades - I gave Pacman wrist a new meaning. I cannot begin to count how many quarters I fed to those machines. My first console was an Intellivision from Mattel. Great games like AD&D, Armor Battle, B-17 Bomber, Defender, Donky Kong, River Raid, Tron (Deadly Disks), Stampede, and yes Commando, and a huge list of other great games. The intellivision was the first 16 bit console, with intellivoice. I ended up modifying the Intellivision so I could get to the BASIC root prompt, so I could mod the game parameters. I eventually graduated to the ADAM TV computer, where I first tried my hand at BASIC programming. As PCs evolved, my first real computer game was The Bards Tale in all of its EGA glory. EGA was a definite step up from 4 color CGA. Computers I have owned - IBM PC-XT, IBMPC-AT, a couple hundred IBM clones or what are know now as white box systems. and my favorite for many years, my Amiga 2000. It was way ahead of its time. So yes I have been around the block a time or two. One thing I have seen as a recent trend is that publishers want to push the devs to market new games too fast and rarely allow for a complete game to be made. Which is sad. KotOR 2 is as I expected it to be, nothing more nothing less. I would have liked a better ending and a little more character development on the dark side. I am not saying it is a bad game because it is not. What I am saying is that the publisher should have made the March 2005 delivery and delivered a more solid product. This is not Obsidians fault. They did a good job for the time they had allotted to them. Actually I think they did an outstanding job considering the development time they had. It could have been better.

Ask me when I turn 50 next year. I have been gaming since before the PC and I am still going strong. As long as there are good games I will play and I do not see myself giving it up anytime soon.

The same held true for Revan, he chose to fight the Mandelorians because he felt that if they waited then the Republic would be speaking Mandeloian. He truly felt that he was taking the correct course of action and was probably right at the time. Initially it was for the greater good.

Kreyia actually makes a good point on Nar shadda, about why you should not be charitable all of the time - when you give 5 credits to the beggar and shows you a possible outcome. She always seemed to preach , being aware of the choices that you make. I really feel that we should not be confined to light and dark/right or wrong/ black and white. Real strength comes from helping ones own self through your own times of crisis. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Being grey is about choices. As drcloak pointed out - you could just walk away and not be involved. Using the robber scenario, by leaving the victim alone then you are not supporting either side. Your choice my result in a shift in either direction depending on the outcome. Who knows the victim may survive and become a procesecutor and later get revenge on the very thugs that robbed her in the first place - then again they could kill her leaving orphans to grow up to become the next Lord of the Sith. Apathy is a choice of nonchoice. If you do not like the choices offered then you can choose to support neither side, thereby remaining undecided. We see it everyday, why should the SW galaxy be any different? If the light cannot survive without the dark or if the dark survives because of the light then there should be a balancing point some where if the universe does seek balance - thus grey. Wouldn't it be ironic to find out that there were grey masters that actually sought to balance the entire universe? That they manipulated events behind the scenes from both light and dark to ensure the balance of the universe was maintained. The truth always lies somewhere between light and dark.

Lets just say for the sake of arguement that you could get the best of both sides by walking down the middle road. The only thing is we need a sorty and ending to go with that. I think that discovering a whole new set of Jedi masters that started out as exiles would be an interesting story or set of stories. For example having Revan or the Exile as a master or Jolee even. My mind just spins with the potential [ossibilities. The Exile or grey side would present a clear and present danger to the teachings of both the light and dark.

I do too. Which is what gave me the idea in the firstplace. I think it would be cool to have a grey ending to go with it.

I think it could be an interesting game if we were to discover yet another side to the galaxy. Not light yet not dark but grey. Those who shunned the teachings from both sides - ones who realize that all life is connected and one must embrace the light and the dark at times, in order to survive. This would be a scenario where the light and dark sides both want to end the greys existence because they are an evil to both. I think it is an interesting concept anyway. The universe does seek balance and what better way than to embrace both?

I am still in the midst of tmy second time through on the DS. I cannot begin to count how many time I played K1, so let us say a lot. K1's endings were better, the story was coherent and flowed nicely. The game just felt short. Sure the endings were cliche but it was fun. I still like the DS ending better., just because it has a sense of accomplishment to it and all those sith bowing to their master and chanting your name. It was very gratifying. TSL to me is so much better on so many dirrerent levels. No - it doesn't have that end finality, but does it need it? The environments are highly varied, but a tad small. The dialogue was hugely expanded and I really likesd the whole influence system, even though in some cases it appeared to be broken. It gave the game an interesting feel as it made you think about what you were doing and made you chose your words carefully, this is a very good thing. The lab/workbench system is good, I personally would have liked the ability to make combinations of stuff that would result in unique items. It added a good element to the game. The story is good and there; but you must look for it, via interaction. I am still undecided about that point. In the end I feel that neither should be compared as they both stand well on their own merits. K2 is an echo of K1 as I expected it to be, by being done by a different developer., you have different perspectives. Does that make it a bad game? I vote no, I still ike it as much as the first for entirely different reasons. I do hope K3 comes out and my suggestion would be from a totally different perspective yet. Allow both the results of K1&2 to influence the history of K3. - much like K1 to K2 did. Let us see the galaxy in another 5 - 10 years and see how it all turns out in the wake of K2. I am curious to understand why they took the perspective they did on the outcome from K1. Yet another idea would to have three totally different endings, One for the LS route, 1 for the DS route and one for the grey route. Oh I almost forgot it would be nice if the devs on the next one would poll the players to see which ending was preferred to get a consensus as to the real outcome of the previous game. Just a thought.

Hi all, yes this IS my first post After finishing the game on LS, I found it to be a solid game. as well. Sure there are a few glitches here and there but no real show stoppers from my perspective. Story wise I have to give them a thumbs up! The story is all there, you just need to go look for it. Could the LS ending be better? Simply yes. Please do not misunderstand me, I liked the game a tremendously. So much so that my wife thinks I left her for a week and more or less I did. The game has a certain pull to it, I just simply like playing it. I do think it is time for a new engine though as it is begining to show its age. There arent many companies that will still make 35+ hours of playtime for 50 bucks a pop. Heck I'm going back in to do a DS campaign just to see the alternate ending, as soon as I finish this post. I think that Obsidian did a good job on KotoR II while maintaining the old engine. I would like to see them do it again with better directing and editing. But turning it out on the short track is nothing more than a phenominal job on the part of the Obsidian team. Good work all! Now please work on KotoR III and tie up the plot holes that you opened.