FULL E3 REVIEW

[Craftsman]

It was the best RPG game for the X-Box ever. It was the best Star Wars game in years, it returned to Star Wars lovers the joy that was taken from them when the new trilogy started getting released. It was a masterpiece of a game created by Bioware Corp.

 

Now Obsidian has the reigns to create Knights of the Old Republic 2. I got to play the entire E3 demo for the game, get ready to feast your eyes on what I saw.

 

The special E3 presentation demo I was able to play was on the X-Box console at the Microsoft booth. There were two stipulations to the special demo. Stipulation 1 and best for me was that my character couldn't die so I could play through the whole demo without worry of having to restart, this won't be the same factor for the game's release. Secondly, the storyline and locals may not be in the released version of the game so don't worry about reading spoilers.

 

The demo had two pre-created characters that you can choose from, however in the finished version your chracter can be built from the ground up. The two choices were a light side Jedi called a "Jedi Weaponeer" or a Dark Side "Sith *something*". I believe the light is more powerful then the dark, so I chose the light side.

 

The game started off in a mining asteroid interiors. My character came across a distress signal from a woman trapped in the mine who's (ironically enough) in distress. After some branching dialogue I decide the best thing to do is come save her since she knows the way out (I could've come to kill her). Problem is there's tons of droids and mines in my way.

 

Game play has the exact same flavor from the first game, however I just have to comment on how excellent the in game control scheme was. On an X-Box controller, you can control the character's direction with the left anlog stick, and cycle through options with the left d-pad. The A button pretty much does everything else. If you need to go into the inventory, then you want the black button on the left side (I don't know what that button is called, I don't have an X-Box) which gets you to in game options. Left and right triggers cycle through the different menus, B quits, and the analog cycles through the different options on each menu. From here you can do pretty much all you could from the first game. Change a character's clothing, armor, weapons, sheilds, etc. The one enhancement is that you can stock in two different sets of weapons for each character, and these weapons can be changed on the fly before and during combat just by selecting the option "switch weapons" on the dpad menu in game. If you want to switch party characters, that's the black button on the right side. Pause is the white button.

 

Since my character was a Jedi, I stuck him with a trusty lightsaber and a Jedi Robe with a heat resist shield and a belt to help me disable the mines. (The demo kept it very simple, there was no leveling up and all your powers were automatically given to you)

 

My character was a pretty powerful Jedi, and I had plenty of droid fodder to test these abilities on. At first I decided to start hack and slashing with the lightsaber. They were standard lightsabers, so they really didn't do much damage, even though I had the range between "attack", "flurry" and "critical strike". Then I cycled through the force powers. Because the first level stuck primarily with droids, I couldn't use powers that didn't work on droids. However there was this one VERY powerful force move I ended up using a lot called "Force Storm" which works on both droids and humans, which involved calling up a sudden lighting strike from the sky that not only does a hell of a lot of damage but also attacks more then just the character you target, but also characters clustered around him (that are bad).

 

You still had your hacking stuff, throw in a few extra parts to fix droids and they will attack other chracters in a patrol mode.

 

Eventually I make it to a reactor. A few force storms later I disable the force fields around the various tunnels and send more droids in. After defeating them however I see fit (trying this, trying that, hacking here, etc) I moved into the tunnel to find a stash of rockets and armor. I can't use that stuff myself but eventally I move on to where the girl is being held in distress and safe her. She says there's an escape pod that's going to take us down to the surface, so she joins the party and I equp her with armor and blasters and we move on to the surface, a Sith infested world.

 

There was a CGI cutscene of the escape pod headed towards the planet when suddenly a bunch of turrents started firing at the pod. The pod finally went down and crashed landed. Party survived, but it raised the question what shot us down? There are no defences on the planet, all that's around are science facilities.

 

The planet was a lush jungle with weather that reminded me of my home in New England, it always rains damnit! The planetscape was full of different smugglers, but I was able to dispatch them pretty quickly with force storm and my new party member with her blasters. Soon we moved into the sith temple.

 

The dark side of the force was strong in there. So strong you could actually interact with different clouds of the dark side. If you try to control it, it will make you afraid, if you try to take it you will get dark side points, I tried to turn it to good but failed and decided to stay away from it. Eventually there were some Dark Jedi I had to fight (there's always Dark Jedi, ALWAYS Dark Jedi) I picked up one of the Dark Jedi lightsabers and started fighting with Two-Handed. This ended up being a lot more easier then in the first game.

 

After some fighting I entered an elevator where I witnessed the end of a sith ritual. The leader of the sith group offered me the chance to join him or I would perish. Of course I chose to perish but instead killed him and the rest of his group with my l33t Jedi Skills. After that I entered the undergroundentrace behind them, and the game told me "You've reached the Ebon Hawk, everyone is alive and happy, you've completed the demo" Then there was a CGI of the Ebon Hawk flying away to parts unknown. Now how the Hawk was able to get underground is beyond me, but I won't ask...

 

 

http://dynamic4.gamespy.com/~maxpayne/site...d=383&Itemid=38

 

Jade Empire watch out!

[Sonatine]

Good stuff B)

[Adria Teksuni]

BTW, this is NOT the AT you've been dealing with, this is the all new Non-Troll version.

 

Very nice review! Thank you for putting it up!

[Yoda Tokare]

Cool! B)

[Seth Tansill]

There's also a first impressions site at kotor fanfic...

 

http://www.kotorfanfic.com/

[Opus131]

Why do previews always have to be so press-release like, naive peices of political corrected garbage ?!?

 

I rarely read previews anymore.

 

Anybody NOT from the press who managed to play the game ?!?

[Raven]

Why do previews always have to be so press-release like, naive peices of political corrected garbage ?!?

 

I rarely read previews anymore.

 

Anybody NOT from the press who managed to play the game ?!?

all these previews suck, the best 1 was in egm. i mean, their just telling us the exact same thing. i mean, it seems that the people at gamespy and fanfic are saying the same thing with different words!

[Seth Tansill]

Why do previews always have to be so press-release like, naive peices of political corrected garbage ?!?

 

I rarely read previews anymore.

 

Anybody NOT from the press who managed to play the game ?!?

all these previews suck, the best 1 was in egm. i mean, their just telling us the exact same thing. i mean, it seems that the people at gamespy and fanfic are saying the same thing with different words!

Well, uhm, they *are* previewing the same product, what else do you expect?

[Raven]

Why do previews always have to be so press-release like, naive peices of political corrected garbage ?!?

 

I rarely read previews anymore.

 

Anybody NOT from the press who managed to play the game ?!?

all these previews suck, the best 1 was in egm. i mean, their just telling us the exact same thing. i mean, it seems that the people at gamespy and fanfic are saying the same thing with different words!

Well, uhm, they *are* previewing the same product, what else do you expect?

i expect them to do something more than just do a review on a kotor2 egm article and call it a preview of kotor2

[Guest Darth Banooby7]

HEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAUAUAUAUAUAUOUOAUOAUOUAOO!

[Meshugger]

The planet was a lush jungle with weather that reminded me of my home in New England, it always rains damnit! The planetscape was full of different smugglers, but I was able to dispatch them pretty quickly with force storm and my new party member with her blasters. Soon we moved into the sith temple.

 

The dark side of the force was strong in there. So strong you could actually interact with different clouds of the dark side. If you try to control it, it will make you afraid, if you try to take it you will get dark side points, I tried to turn it to good but failed and decided to stay away from it. Eventually there were some Dark Jedi I had to fight (there's always Dark Jedi, ALWAYS Dark Jedi) I picked up one of the Dark Jedi lightsabers and started fighting with Two-Handed. This ended up being a lot more easier then in the first game.

 

Is it just me, but that sounds like Dagobah

[Adria Teksuni]

It didn't remind me of a jungle so much as a rugged, hilly landscape with varying sized bodies of water, ponds to sea size. And I think it was Telos.

[Darque]

Interesting read.

 

 

@Darth Banooby7

 

You might want to reduce the size of your sig.

From what I hear, anything bigger than 5 *normal* lines will end up getting you a mod response eventually.

[Meshugger]

If it hasn't been posted already, go and read the E3-impression at kotorfanfic, very interesting read indeed.

[Retnuh]

Thanks for the preview. It didn't really give the information that I really wanted....but any information on KotOR II is new and good to me. The site that was posted (by a couple people), www.kotorfanfic.com, thats a cool site and thanks for posting it.

[pharcyde]

I took this guy seriously until I read "l33t jedi skills".

[Tricky William]

That preview sounds quite good - I'm definately looking forward to KOTOR II!

[Seth Tansill]

Thanks for the preview. It didn't really give the information that I really wanted....but any information on KotOR II is new and good to me. The site that was posted (by a couple people), www.kotorfanfic.com, thats a cool site and thanks for posting it.

Thank Adria, shes the one who wrote it

[Craftsman]

I hope that theres enemys you CANT beat through combat.

[Seth Tansill]

In what way would you suggest then? Puzzle based enemies i.e. trap an enemy then crush them with a machine or something?

[Gorth]

In what way would you suggest then? Puzzle based enemies i.e. trap an enemy then crush them with a machine or something?

I would like to study a Selkath in a decompression chamber...

[Adria Teksuni]

I hope that theres enemys you CANT beat through combat.

Agreed. Sometimes it is nice to have an enemy that you can't defeat by simple combat. As far as it being a puzzle based enemy *shrug*. I'll take anything at this point.

[EnderAndrew]

KOTOR had that in the Krayt Dragon, but it was TOO easy to kill it.

 

The first time I ran into a Rancon on Taris, I managed to kill it via combat, even though I was avoiding leveling up. My girlfriend however, had to sneak around it.

 

I laid a bunch of mines down, and used blaster fire to draw the Rancor into the mines.

 

I think that really powerful creatures should be killable via conventional means if you are clever enough to do massive damage, but there should be tricks to get around combat if you're so inclined.

[Dead Skin Mask]

The first time I ran into a Rancon on Taris, I managed to kill it via combat, even though I was avoiding leveling up. My girlfriend however, had to sneak around it.

 

I laid a bunch of mines down, and used blaster fire to draw the Rancor into the mines.

 

I think that really powerful creatures should be killable via conventional means if you are clever enough to do massive damage, but there should be tricks to get around combat if you're so inclined.

You knew you could just put the vile containing the Rancor musk and a grenade in the corpse pile and he would die immediately via cut scene after eating it?

 

 

Cheers!

[OLD SKOOL WHEELMAN]

the first time, i killed the rancor with a crapload of grenades and i got like 800xp, and then the next time, i didn't have a lot of grenades, so i did that little grenade and cologne thing and got less than 800xp, which i think was crap; but i could have gotten the figures messed up...