CrashT

I could appreciate Darth Nihilus working as some form of "Red Herring", he's the obvious Enemy who isn't really the true threat. The problem is even if that was the intention he was still poorly implemented. Even after finishing the game I only have a vague idea of what happened between him Keria and Sion and how he managed to end up on board the Ravager and what the Nihilus Slaves on the bridge were all about. Also I have no idea how my character went from not knowing who Visas' master was to know he was Darth Nihilus and he was onboard The Ravager. If these problems had been resolved and had more explaination been given over to why Nihilus was weakened by trying to drain the force you (I mean I understand the idea he was essentially trying to drain the force from a wound in the force and it nearly killed him) and if that whole event had been given a greater significant then the confrontation with Darth Nihilus would have been significantly more satisfying. To have then had to go and confront Keria, the true enemy, would have made for a much more interesting ending.

Hypocrite.

So many good points and all of it ruined by three words: "big steaming crap"... *Sigh*

I said KoTOR 2, because even with it's numerous flaws it has a far more interesting storyline and concept that KoTOR had. I just wish it had been as finished as the original had been.

From what I could ascertain from ingame dialogue and loading screen messages was that Bao-Dur used some natural properties of the Malachor system to create an Artificial Gravity Well that was used to essentially tear the planet apart. The Mandalorians bombed and invaded worlds, but Bao-Dur basically destories an entire planet and everybody on it by using it's own gravity against it. The mandalorians destories cities and waged wars but they never destories an entire world. Only two people have ever really done that. Nihilus destoried Katarr and Bao-Dir destoried Malachor V.

Has anybody found any material making reference to Darth Nihilus, and what happened on Malachor V? It seems a little strange that you just know who is is when you return to Citadel Station. Maybe there's some remnants of dialogue left around somewhere that has the PC being told who Visas' Master actually as and that he's know as Darth Nihilus.

Some people enjoy playing in God Mode...

Which is precisely why it shouldn't have been used. Such a Basilisk would have made the entire concept of fighting your way to the palace pointless as you could just walk up there in that thing. I think the decision to change the Basilisk was correct but I also think the design they did use was just as silly as the original concept. The Basilisk War Droid in KoTOR2 fits neither the names Basilisk nor Droid.

Did the people who are complaing about the Yuuzhan Vong read the last book of the NJO? The Yuuzhan Vong aren't outside the force so much as they have been cut-off from it, in a similar matter to what appears to have happened with the Rakath (Sp?) [The creators of the Star Forge] in KoTOR. Overall I enjoyed the NJO books, but their main failing was the fact they seemed to go out of their way to show what was happening with every other planet ever mentioned in the EU. There was no real need to got to Bakura or Centerpoint or a half dozen of the other locations that were reused. In the end the NJO sufferes with the same problems as the rest of the EU, simply put some of the authors are not as good as the rest. Personal favourite Star Wars material is anything concerning Mara Jade or Corran Horn. "I, Jedi" is easily the best Star Wars book for me.

According to the fiction the Lightsaber is actually quite heavy but all the weight is in the hilt, so people untrained with it have a habit of chopping their own limbs off because they are not used to a melee weapon that has an effectively weightless blade. Thinking about it such a weapon would require both Strength and Dexterity, but it really depends on your style. Vader and Mace Windu clearly both rely on strength where as Obi Wan and Luke are show much more finesse. Dual Wielding would require much greater strength as you'd have to hold one in each hand. If you think a single Lightsaber is difficult to defend with, just watch how Count Dooku does it in Episode II. Jedi aren't "too good to be true" in most Star Wars fiction because they are usually holding themsleves back, because violence and aggression is not the Jedi way. When Jedi allow themsleves to be violent then they are almost unstoppable, I'm sure Episode III will show this quite well, as did The Clone Wars animated series. In a game like KoTOR you have almost free reign to be violent and aggressive and are not holding back so you do become a Jedi God pratically. The only way to combat that in a accurate way would be to have made non-combat options more useful than combat options, because a true Jedi would try to get through all confrontations without even igniting their Lightsaber. Even Luke tries to give Jabba a last chance to surrender.

KoTOR had a good ending??? A thirty second cutscene of either a speach or a celebration doesn't qualify as a "good ending" to me.

I'd wonder about that door as well. Would also explain why the HK-50 droids appear there apparently out of the blue... Also anybody know what the point is to helping the Czerka guy follow you out of the complex? (Ok technically wrong thread for it but anyway). EDIT: Does anybody have a page up with a complete\near-complete collection of the cut-ending material? I want to read all of it, but finding it all in this thread is taking a while. Cheers, in advance.

Whoever says this cut ending material is too Dark and Mature for Star Wars, clearly hasn't read any of the New Jedi Order books. Specially Star By Star, Dark Journey or Traitor.

Technically you can "ride" in a car. Though that's beside the point. A real Basilisk war droid would have been great. That said, the concept art of ones doesn't make sense as that couldn't enter atmosphere since the pilot would be burnt alive during reentry. The Valley you visit in Jedi Academy is a different Valley to that in KoTOR. At least it had a different name (Wastn't the "Valley Of The Dark Lords" called the "Valley of The Sith" in KoTOR?). Raven implied there were at least two Valleys, your character went to one Valley and Luke Skywalker went to another.

Combat was overall too easy. Weirdly some people still seemed to be annoyed that their Jedi character wasn't Jedi like enough... I mean I'm a Jedi Sentinal\Jedi Watchman and I'm pratically a god. But just about everything in KoTOR2 was a little too easy. I always had more money than I could every need, more Chemicals than I could ever use and more components than I could ever do anything with. But can I find a single Cyan or Silver Lightsaber crystal? Can I heck.

The Czeka compound on Telos seemed to be a special case problem with the AI, the enemies were just the wrong\right distance apart to cause my Party members to attack all the time. Usually though I had no particular problems. But the removal of the Defensive Stance does seem a little odd as it would have been particularly useful. In fact combat in KoTOR2 was often more interesting than in KoTOR1. I found myself using both Shields and Force Powers more often. Party members seemed to be much better at using Feats and Powers than they used to. I even found myself using Solo and Stealth mode more and I can't even count the number of times I used Mira to trick people into walking over Mines... lol Heck for some strange reason even T3-M4 was useful in combat in KoTOR2 and he was a charcter I never used in the first game.

When it having a Dev comment on their game go from being an interesting event to requirement?

Hmm... Now both KoTOR games adhere more to the Expanded Universe of Star Wars than they do to the films. Throughout the Star Wars books (Specifically those set between Return Of The Jedi and the New Jedi Order), there are characters who become Jedi essentially overnight and they are amongst some of the strongest Jedi of their generation. Corran Horn, and Mara Jade Skywalker amoungst them. Hell let's face it Luke Skywalker essentially became a Jedi overnight. Therefore it's not entirely unreasonable for character with latent force abilities like those in KoTOR2 to become Jedi with only marginal training. It would have been better if such characters had still been less capable than the likes of Keria and the Exile but the concept itself isn't so absurd. Dual Lightsabers, or a Sabre-Staff never seemed overpowered to me, but then I did make sure that any chracters that wielded single Blades were maxed out in Dueling which seemed to make sense, as anybody who used a single blade would train to be expert in it. In the Old Republic era there have been numerous ways involving Jedi (Revan\Malak, Exar Kun, Hyperspace War, Freedon Nadd etc), so it makes sense that Cortosis Weave would be common place because armies would pratically require it if they weren't to be entirely destoried on any battlefield of the time. The explaination given at the start of KoTOR about Shields also explains well why melee combat still exists. In the post-RoTJ timeline Cortosis Weave is rare probably because so much of it was used during the Old Republic era than none is left... lol There'll never be and RPG where Lightsabers are as powerful as they technically should be, because such a game would be incredibly difficult to balance. In a game like Jedi Academy balance doesn't matter so much because enemies are there to be struck down, they are Lightsaber fodder and little more. In an RPG the enmies need to be balanced otherwise the entire concept of stats becomes meaningless. Why bother improving at all if enemies can be torn apart once you get a Lightsaber anyway? It would be nice to see Lightsabers cut through some swords maybe but not all (Maybe only Vibroswords have a Cortosis Weave?). The problem is Jedi as a concept are inherently too good to be true. Like superheroes is accurately portrayed Jedi characters would be almost unstoppable, which is fun for a film or an action game but for an RPG it just serves to weaken the storyline as enemies and situations lose their damge and hence their associated fear and any emotion impact they may have once had. They become Lightsaber fodder. chibijulian, you took a purely combat approach to your character it seems, since you were a Guardian and then a Weapon Master. Now you must have been almost unstoppable in combat, because I am and I'm only a Jedi Sentinal\Jedi Watchman. I'm not sure how much more powerful you could get away with without making the KoTOR games little more than 3rd person action games. I agree that realistically Lightsabers should be Dex based (Which is why all my Jedi characters had Lightsaber Finesse), but being Str based is not so much a limitation of the engine as it is a continuation of a tradition started in the Star Wars Pen and Paper Role Playing Games, especially the D20 system. A ruleset the KoTOR games use (Yeah it's basically AD&D). Intelligence is your ability to learn. Therefore skills are based on it. Again the fault, if any, lies with the Star Wars D20 Ruleset which KoTOR (Appears to be) a representation of. Something that irritated me though was the entire concept of a Jedi Sentinel, the who "middle of the road" class seems almost like a cop-out. I'd have liked to have seen three clases based on something like the Sense, Control and Alter mechanic of the original Star Wars PnP RPG. Where one would focus on the force to improve their physical abilities (Control), one focuses on understanding through the Force (Sense) , and one focus on direct action through the force (Alter).

I don't see how NPC interaction in KoTOR2 is any worse than it is in KoTOR? In fact I'd say you've got it the wrong way around. But then I guess it depends on your definition of interaction. I haven't finished KoTOR2 yet (Just finishing up on a moon before I meet the last of the lost people *Spoiler Free Zone*) so I'll reserve judgement on the ending but the ending of KoTOR wasn't that great anyway, so it only needs to equal that. Regardless, KoTOR2 has been far more "Star Wars" already than KoTOR was in its entirity. Maybe I'm just a fanboy, but I loved KoTOR, and for me KoTOR2 is (Beside a few bugs) a more than worthy successor. It's darker, it's funnier, it's got a number of more interesting characters, it's got interface and UI tweaks that improve the playing experience significantly, and it's story (What I've experienced of it) is superior. I'd happily judge Obsidian on KoTOR2, and doing so I say I now can't wait for Neverwinter Nights 2, a game I was previously only mildly interested in.

Hey, good news. Anyword on the UK\European version? What's the current release date for it?

The ships in KoToR were designed the way they were for very simple reasons. The vast majority of people who played KoToR have no idea who Exar Kun et al are and probably never will. The ships were designed to be reminiscent of those in the Original Trilogy, so the Levithan resembles a cut down Star Destroyer and the Ebon Hawk is resembles an older styled YT-1300 ala the Mellenium Falcon. If you want to rationalise it however... As for the advances of technology, War has always been a source of great technological advancements. So given that the Republic was supposed to have been fighting the Mandalorians in the fifty years between TOTJ and KOTOR I can imagine a number of advancements being made. Military hardware has a history of starting to large and gradually getting smaller. Just look at American Warships of the past fifty years. On paper the Crusiers and Destroyers of the US Navy now are minows compared to the Battleships of the Second World War yet the modern generation of warships are probably a hundred times more capable. So I wouldn't really take size and out and out armament into consideration. Let's face it a Trubolaser circa BOY (-4000) is probably a popgun compared to a Turbolaser circa BOY. Outside of that Technology has a habit of improving in fits and starts, and it's not always true that the more advanced a technology is the faster it advances. Cultures often go through periods of little or no progress (ala the Dark Ages) followed by preiods of rapid progress (ala the Renaissance). Considering the plot outline for KoToR II, it's entirely possible that the Star Wars Universe entered a period akin to the Dark Ages were technological progression was very slow, even to the extent of some technology being "lost" only to be "found" again thousands of years later. With the Republic trying to recover from the events of KoToR I and II and without a specific enemy to fight it's plausible that they would have had little purpose to advance Military technology to any major degree. It might not have been until the star of the Clone Wars and the rise of the Empire that military technology became an important consideration again.

I had a dream like that once...

I'd rather be Obi Wan than any of them but that's beside the point. I think after KoTOR it's a given that the main character will be a Jedi. I agree that it' be great if you could choose to play a Scout or Soldier for the entire game but that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

The problem with having NPCs that react to the player is when to draw the line. If they just say "Hey stop nicking my stuff". That's good. But if you keep doing it and they keep saying that some people are going to shout that the game is broken because the NPCs only ever say "Hey stop nicking my stuff". So maybe you add in some additional reactions, so that if you keep stealing things or annoying people they get more aggrevated. But somebody will just try to push them too far and then what? In a game where the AI's react some people will always feel the reactions are wrong. I say just settle on a standard and stick to it. I say give the NPCs a couple of lines of reaction dialogue ala: Level 1 - "What do you think you're doing?" Level 2 - "Hey, stop that! That's not yours." + Character will no longer talk to you beyond "Get out!" Level 3 - "Right thats it, get out!" + Maybe Dark Side point. Maybe if you have some naturally aggresive character, ala Sand People, then they'll attack on Level 3. But players should always get a warning, becuase otherwise somebody is going to get annoyed about being killed merely for "looking". The problem is what if you steal stuff from a character important to the plot? Should they then not talk to you (Which would probably be realistic), or do you just accept that sometimes concessions have to be made for the sake of plot and ignore any "minor" issues there might be between the two of you?

I can only talk from personal experience. In most of the CRPGs I've played, the common behaviour is for people to not notice if I steal stuff from right under their noses. The nearest I usually seem to get is a situation where I can't sell stolen good at certain places, but I've only seen that rarely. Of course my experience with CRPGs is limited; I've been told the situation was fairly similar through most CRPGs. Hence it appears to be a "RPG staple." Maybe I've just been playing the wrong CRPGs.