CrashT

Note, I never said I liked the idea only that I'd gotten used to it; and in fact having NPCs get annoyed was a little hard to adjust to with Morrowind. Which is weird given that it was handled in a more "realistic" manner. Maybe I'm just too used to games than the real world

Schazzwozzer, there must be some sort of script to check which weapons (Or at least which type) are equiped. Onboard the Endar Spire you cannot enter the bridge unless you have Melee weapons equiped and actually get stopped if you have a blaster equiped. There's also some points where you need to be unequiped for events to occur. I got over the whole thing of stealing from people and having them not notice. It's been an RPG staple for years, changing it now would somehow feel wrong. When you get into the possibilities of attacking everybody you have to worry about the possibility that the player could gain XP but murder everybody they met. My solution would be to give a negative XP for murder friendly or non-hostiles because it's not much of a challenge to murder people who don't want to harm you. Also you've got to worry about the story if you can simply attack and possibly kill anybody you like.

I agree that NPCS should show more reactions. However getting all of them to react if you were to start a fight in the middle of a crowded location could bring some issues. Do you have everybody running away? Which could look very odd. Do you make it so people don't like you so much if they've seen you fighting? But then what if you had no choice. Do you make them notice who started the fight and reacted based on their opinions of the people involved? Ideal, but possibly a lot of work and a lot of information to keep track of always a problem. I guess since KoTOR 2 will have full Voice Overs (Which seems likely), having NPCs that react to all the things you could do and all the people you might fight would get difficult. Of course they could solve the problem by making most of the NPCs aliens but that'd get old pretty quickly.

The MOD issue is a weird one. You can't really claim it's because of LucasArts as the Jedi Knight games have SDKs and Editors galore. You can't blame Bioware because they released the toolset (And made a big deal of it) for Neverwinter Nights; and you can't really blame the XBox as Morrowind is a PC and XBox title and that has an Editing Suite and a significant Mod community. There's probably some combination of them that added up to KoTOR not getting any MOD Tools. Also it never had a Demo either which always struck me as strange. 100 Guests eh? Well I did get links to this forum and the scans thread posted to the frontpage of EvilAvatar so maybe you can blame me for some of them...

Define "consistent" ? I'm guess he means if it happens to the Player and Party as well as enemies. That would just be annoying. I could accept being able to disarm (*Snigger*) somebody with a Lightsaber. It could just be worked so that dismemberments can only be done by Lightsabers and only if the other player isn't also wielding a Lightsaber. A minor adjustment to make it so Players and Party can never be dismembered, and that it only happens occasionally and it would look plausible. Every so often you get a Critical Hit with a Lightsaber on a non-Jedi and lop off and arm.

Eh. I really have no intention of bashing XBox. It's just there aren't any XBox-exclusive game that I absolutely must get my hand on, so... Like I said, nothing personal. I just get easily irked when it comes to this subject. I've spend a lot of time around the Ion Storm forums, where all the evils of the world are blamed on the XBox. Sorry for any offense. As for Halo, well it didn't help matter than the PC version really wasn't that special. My point was really that just because a game is "Exclusive" to one platform doesn't mean a different version is certain to never appear. Personally I'm not too bothered about Jade Empire being a XBox "Exclusive" as it appears to be more Console-centric than KoTOR was. There is a Bioware PC product in the works and that'll be a decent PC RPG I'm sure. Re the AD&D issue. I enjoy Forgotten Realms games, but as Berserk said there are plenty of other settings that would be ripe for CRPGs and have never been touched. Right now I'd rather see an entirely new setting than another AD&D RPG even if it was fantastic.

Why do comments like "I've nothing against an XBox I just don't intend to buy one" always seem iffy.. *Shrugs* Sorry, nothing personal I just get a crap load of similar comments for being an XBox owner. I don't hate AD&D it's just there has to be much more scope for RPG material than Elves and Dwarfs. For the record Halo was never "Exclusive to XBox only" it was "Exclusive for a certain period". Bioware have already said they are considering a PC Version of Jade Empire. But they also have at least one PC RPG in the pipeline already so that will probably come first.

Hmph, and there's me who thought the Power Attack animation was one of the better ones. Stlll Critical Strike was probably the best. Allowing Light Sabers to lop Arms off would be in keeping with the Star Wars cannon, as Obi Wan did it at least twice. Full on blood and gore would look stupid though; we're talking about Lasers and Light Sabers remember. When you get hit or cut by one of them it'll be a clean and cauterized wound. *Tries to ignore the fact KoTOR also have Vibroblades*

I'd rather have something like Jade Empire that yet another AD&D game. But KoTOR 2 being a Star Wars title will be a big seller.

I'd love to see some sort of "Hard Boiled" Detective RPG, something like a Maltease Falcon RPG. Since the Player would be a Private Eye the game would have to make heavy use of exploration and dialogue options.

2) In KoTOR 2 you party members will gain LS\DS Alignment points.

It's fair to say that KoTOR 2 won't be as deep story wise as PS:T simply because as somebody already pointed out (Forgive me forgetting names I'm new here), the dialogue will be recorded and trying to have audio lines for all the dialogue in a game like PS:T would not only be hugely time consuming but it would require a hell of a lot of storage space. However even from the relatively scant information in the scanned articles it looks like KoTOR 2 is going to be more complex and closer to a hardcore RPG than the original. It's going to be a game with Prestige Classes, whole Parties than can gain\lose alignment points; closer interaction between Skills and features like Weapon\Item Modification. All of these things add up to a game that's looking to be much deeper than KoTOR and if it can sell (Which seems likely if only on brand name alone) it should pave the way for more "Hardcore" yet "Mainstream" RPGs. If it takes a Star Wars franchise for it to work that's fine in my book. Jaesun, I remember hearing one of the Raven Developers (Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy) talk about Lucasarts and how they were generally fairly open to story development even to the extend of including it within the Expanded Universe. Remember Lucasarts made an expansion pack (Mysteries Of The Sith) around a character (Mara Jade) who first appeared in a book, and then later had that charcter marry Luke Skywalker in another series of books. I think they'd be open to letting Obsidian take the story where they wanted, within reasonable limits of course.