Thoughts on Knights of the Old Republic

[Hassat Hunter]

I'd say it was better than ME2, except for the ending. Still think ME1 is the best.

 

And I don't remember if I knew the twist, kept Kashyyyk last, and that machine is a dead give-away so maybe I didn't. Really want to replay it once after 100 times or so KOTOR2 (the shock) but waiting for K1RP. Are these guys done yet? (Oh, the irony)

[HoonDing]

The Rakatan precursor race was a terrible addition to the EU.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I'd say it was better than ME2, except for the ending. Still think ME1 is the best.

 

And I don't remember if I knew the twist, kept Kashyyyk last, and that machine is a dead give-away so maybe I didn't. Really want to replay it once after 100 times or so KOTOR2 (the shock) but waiting for K1RP. Are these guys done yet? (Oh, the irony)

I don't think they're done yet, but a friend of mine used the mod in it's current state(0.9?) and said it's pretty stable and adds plenty of stuff.

 

Not sure if it holds up, I remember being somewhat unimpressed with the dark side path on my second attempt at a playthrough though. KOTOR2 managed to handle that(and pretty much everything else really) better.

[GhostofAnakin]

KOTOR -- the game that got me into the cRPG genre in the first place.  It satisfied my Star Wars fanboy need for a new game at the time, and despite all its faults, remains one of my favorite games of all time.

 

I wish they'd made KOTOR3 instead of a]that MMO version and b]ruining the characters in Karpshyshyn's (sp) book.

[hollowcrown]

The Rakatan precursor race was a terrible addition to the EU.

 

Yeah but Bioware can't write a game without a precusor race of ancients

[Rosbjerg]

Replaying it on the tablet and I have to say though - it's a tight game, the areas are just short and full enough of content, that you never really feel they are dragging on (except Taris if you replay too soon of course).

 

But I also find it interesting that there is so much underlying complexity that is never used, Juhani could easily have been a complex character like in KOTOR2 - they way they just brushed off the destruction of Taris with her and how angry she really should've been with you. With an influence system and more complex consequences to dialouge options, she could've been really awesome actually.

[Althernai]

This should probably go in the other forum, but for the sake of keeping things in one place, I’ll put it here. After reading this thread, I decided to play KOTOR II. My general impression of it is unchanged: it’s very disappointing. Judging by the first part, this could have been an incredible game, but as it stands, the first KOTOR is significantly better. Since I knew this before I started playing, I decided to cheat a bit: while the original was played as-is, for the sequel I used mods which try to restore some of the missing content: version 1.8.3B of TSLRCM and version 1.1B of M4-78EP. The mods are well done and they help, but it’s not nearly enough.

 

Interface, Combat and Loot

 

The interface and combat are mostly the same as in the first game, which is to say that the interface not very good and combat is mediocre. However, I was pleasantly surprised by quite a few small changes. For example, empty containers now show “Empty” upon selection while datapads have their own section and display upon being picked up. The basic system and all of its flaws are still the same, but these small changes add up to make it somewhat better.

 

On the other hand, there are also several less pleasant changes to the mechanics. For some reason, the developers decided to cut the duration of one of the more useful Light Side powers by almost a factor of two. Also, they introduced some unique Force powers with usage mostly specific to an interval of the main plot. In principle this is a very neat idea and they’re cool when you first get them… but because the interface is that idiotic list which must be traversed without the option to skip anything, they wind up cluttering it up for the rest of the game. They also tried to increase the value of skills, but mostly succeeded in making them more annoying:  you now need a “thief” type character to open locked “chests” without damaging the goods inside.

 

Much more importantly, they made most of the loot random which I found to be a big change for the worse because it ruins the atmosphere behind items. It is one thing to find a powerful item lost by a Jedi you read about on the corpse of a legendary beast this Jedi was hunting and quite another to find the same exact item on the corpse of some completely random enemy that doesn’t even have a name. And they didn’t even bother to check whether the item is already in your inventory so you’ll probably find multiple copies of items with descriptions that imply they’re unique (Nomi must have a had a whole closet full of identical robes). To compensate for the fact that the random number generator might not give you the stuff you want, a lot of items can be created in the Workbench and Lab Station (another attempt to make skills useful), but the only really good ones are upgrades and consumables.

 

Story and Characters

 

The story very clearly tries to be Darker and Edgier and probably succeeds at this too much for its own good. Star Wars is no stranger to darker sequels. For example, The Empire Strikes Back is significantly bleaker than A New Hope. However, KOTOR II goes significantly further: everywhere you go is in bad shape and you are rarely welcome. Furthermore, don’t expect any reasonable authority figures among the Jedi: they left out the Yoda-type creature from the original KOTOR not just from the present of the sequel (which can be explained by the story), but also from the Council flashback – Jedi such as that would not have allowed the events described therein to proceed.

 

I don’t know whether this darker tone would have ultimately worked or not because this game is well and truly unfinished. It starts off well with a nice scenario borrowed from the horror genre and a couple of the planets are quite good, but the closer one gets to the end of the game, the more obvious it becomes that not nearly as much effort went into the latter parts and the final sequence (starting from the completion of the final “spoke”) is very rushed indeed. The “restored content” is a double-edged sword here: on the one hand, it makes the game feel less empty, but on the other, it’s clearly missing some explanatory linking sequences and thus makes it even more confusing than it was.

 

The characters are pretty good, but again, they suffer from the fact that the game was not finished (most of them simply run out of things to say to you a little past halfway through even if you did everything right). The one that left the greatest impression on me is your “mentor”. Unlike in the original, it is not possible to recruit every character: you can only get one out of a pair based on the gender of the protagonist and one out of a different pair based on your alignment. On my first playthrough, the PC was male so this time around I used a female PC instead. It turns out that their dialog is not merely different regarding themselves, but they also result in gender exclusive content regarding other aspects of the story. I guess this is done for the sake of replayability and it could work in a game where a bit of story will not be missed. In an unfinished game like KOTOR II, it is a bad idea.

 

KOTOR II differs from the original in featuring an “influence” system. Whereas in the first one, the characters had a set of conversations that outlined their stories and, as long as you continued to talk to them and ask them to talk, they would give them to you. There were some exceptions (the romances needed the player to indicate an interest and HK-47 required a high Repair skill), but for the most part, even if they did not like your responses, the characters would continue to talk to you. In KOTOR II, this is not the case: each character has a parameter called Influence associated with them that is a prerequisite for later dialog and is affected by how you responded to the initial conversations as well as reactions to events while they are in your party. Playing KOTOR and KOTOR II sequentially led me to a realization: I really, really don’t like “influence” systems.

 

There are several distinct reasons for this. The most obvious one is that influence locks the player out of late-game content and, again, KOTOR II has precious little of such content to spare. However, this is not the worst of it: influence takes an experience that used to be analogous to reading a story and turns it into a mini-game – and there is no way to refuse to play without giving up on conversations altogether. Even if I resolve to roleplay my character my way and not pay attention to the system, I still notice the choices that are likely to result in positive or negative influence. It’s the same reflex action as thinking “8” when somebody says “3 + 5”. Finally, having to work this mini-game into dialog limits what the characters can say: for the game not to be random, they must have some predictable traits and the conversations are built around these. The system sounds like a good idea, but in practice it is very unpleasant.

 

Details and Conclusion

 

The mini-games are much improved: pazaak and swoop-racing are fundamentally better while the annoying frequency of the turret game has been greatly reduced. There are some hints of romances with two characters, but either this is bugged or it really doesn’t go anywhere (although the game claims that I’ve chosen one of them over the other) – in any case, it’s nowhere near as good as the original. Also, I can’t believe somebody played through that Malak cutscene victory and thought “Hmm… looks good, but you know what would be better? What if anyone could defeat the protagonist like that? Jedi, Sith, droids – it doesn’t matter that your character is basically invincible and does hundreds of damage per round, if the story calls for it, you’re going to lose.”

 

I’m not sure if I would recommend this one. It starts off great – many of the less pleasant aspects of the original appear to be fixed or mitigated – but the later parts of the game are very disappointing and the whole thing just leaves a bad taste. They made so many design decisions intended to enhance replayability, but, unlike the original KOTOR, I have absolutely no desire to replay this.

[Hurlshort]

Here is my impression of Athernal's font choice:

 

Bad

 

En Espanol:

 

Mal

[Guard Dog]

HK-47 made that game for me. KOTOR I was very good. Not great but one of the better games I've run through. KOTOR II had the potential to be worlds better but it was so chopped up, particularly at the end it just made the whole experience fall flat for me. Had they made the game they wanted to make it might have been one of the best RPGs ever.

[Orchomene]

KOTOR is flat and boring, never replayed it.

KOTOR 2 has among the best written NPCs in a crpg, I replayed it a lot even with the poor Malachor V.

[Hassat Hunter]

So, TSLRCM? Athernal? Anyone? Hello?

[Althernai]

Here is my impression of Athernal's font choice:

 

Bad

I didn't choose any font. I needed to turn off my laptop before finishing that long post so I copied it into a text editor. When I finished typing it and pasted it back, that's how it looked like -- and it appears I can't edit the post. Sorry.

 

KOTOR is flat and boring, never replayed it.

KOTOR 2 has among the best written NPCs in a crpg, I replayed it a lot even with the poor Malachor V.

I disagree. It's true that KOTOR is essentially a variant of the monomyth, but that story occurs so often across many cultures precisely because it only needs a slight variation in order to work. KOTOR is simple, but it does what it is aiming to do and it does it well. Also, I think the characters in the original are of comparable quality to those in the sequel. Again, most of them are archetypes with a slight variation, but there is nothing wrong with that. It also has HK-47 and Jolee who are pretty original.

 

KOTOR II attempts to tell a much more complicated story... but it doesn't do a very good job of it. It's not just Malachor V -- the entirety of the final sequence is lacking, the characters stop saying new things two-thirds of the way through the game and the content density is very uneven. Furthermore, the complexity of the story is its downfall: it's hard to screw up the monomyth too much because the audience can fill in any blanks whereas some aspects of the ending to KOTOR II are just plain confusing. I don't mean that in the sense of "I'm going to have to think about this to understand it," but rather in the sense of "There are definitely a few cutscenes and/or some dialog missing here." Finally, KOTOR II tries to be philosophical in the Star Wars setting which is akin to trying to swim in water that is one foot deep. It's not quite as bad as the midichlorian nonsense, but it's uncomfortably close.

[Althernai]

So, TSLRCM? Athernal? Anyone? Hello?

Yes, I installed both of the mods (restored content and droid planet). In one sentence, the mods definitely make the game better and I heartily recommend them, but they're not quite enough to fill all of the gaps. Here are a few more detailed comments on TSLRCM (some spoilers, but not too many):

• The HK Factory is great. I'm not too fond of combat with a single non-Jedi character, but the dialog and interactions there are very good. My main complaint is that it is complete non sequitur: you finish dealing with Atris and then suddenly you are HK-47 at the factory -- some transitional material would be helpful.
• Nar Shaddaa feels like it has a lot more content now. I went to Dantooine first, then to Nar Shadaa and by the end of that, I thought that either I was misremembering the quality of the game or the mods fixed a whole lot of stuff... sadly, this turned out to be more or less the game's high point.
• I liked the extra interactions between characters on the Ebon Hawk. They still wouldn't say much to me, but at least the game didn't feel as empty near the end. That said, some of them made a lot more sense than others. For example, the interactions between G0-T0 and the remote finally became something coherent whereas Kreia blasting T3 with lightning was just weird (it doesn't seem to have any consequences nor much of a cause -- beyond her disliking droids, I guess).
• Malachor V feels less empty, but more confusing. What is going on? How did everyone get separated? And what are half of them doing?

The droid planet was a bit worse, though still fairly decent. First, there are some fairly annoying bugs: after the radiation is cleared from the Industrial Zone, facing in a certain direction while in that zone causes the game to slow to a crawl -- not a showstopper, but annoying. Also, I chose T3 as the droid to clear the radiation and during one of the critical conversations, I accidentally chose a dialog option that exits the conversation. This results in the journal entry not being updated and going through that conversation again does not bring up the same option (I had to reload). Many of the quests didn't really click with me -- I kept trying what I think are reasonable solutions (e.g. why not ask the manufacturer droid to make some droid legs?), but it turns out that the game wanted me to do something else. And, of course, the planet's story is limited by having to preserve the status quo of the endgame, but beyond that the mod is pretty good.

[Hurlshort]

 

Here is my impression of Athernal's font choice:

 

Bad

I didn't choose any font. I needed to turn off my laptop before finishing that long post so I copied it into a text editor. When I finished typing it and pasted it back, that's how it looked like -- and it appears I can't edit the post. Sorry.

 

 

 

That's ok, it was early in the morning and I was just being snarky.      

[Hassat Hunter]

Also, I chose T3 as the droid to clear the radiation and during one of the critical conversations, I accidentally chose a dialog option that exits the conversation. This results in the journal entry not being updated and going through that conversation again does not bring up the same option (I had to reload).

Hmmm, which droid would that be, so I can check it out...

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

Not sure if it holds up, I remember being somewhat unimpressed with the dark side path on my second attempt at a playthrough though. KOTOR2 managed to handle that(and pretty much everything else really) better.

 

 

Yeah, Bioware in general has this weirdly judgmental stance of "oh yeah, we're totally going to provide you with the options to play a bastard, except we'll punish you every step of the way. Also, we'll make a mockery of the supposed underpinings of the philosophy your bastardness lies upon (the same philosophy we made up)."

 

I mean, KotOR1 gives you a perfectly good reason to go evil, then forces you to kill off almost your whole party for basically no discernible gain and with no alternatives if you do so. 

 

Seriously, the bit about forcing you to choose between killing both Mission and Zaalbar, or dominating Zaalbar into killing Mission while the latter is going on and on about how she believes in you and can't accept that you've gone full darkside is ****ed up.

 

 

Jade Empire presents you with the Closed Fist philosophy, ostensibly all about forcing people to find their own strength by refusing to help them, but which generally translates to "kick all the puppies" ingame, with very few options to do things that are actually in line with what you're supposedly all about.

 

And Mass Effect has the "hard man making hard choices"-esque Renegade path, which is revealed to be an utter farce upon replaying and seeing that basically none of those hard choices have yielded a better result than the alternative.

Edited March 25, 2015 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Malcador]

The interrupts didn't make that much sense either in 2 and 3. Hug Tali is..uh..Paragon ? Sniping a guy was Renegade ?

Renegade does give that one defenestration though.

 

What is wrong with killing Mission via the Wookiee, exactly ? To get that you've had to do 'evil' things to begin with. Only way to top that would have been MC'ing Carth to kill himself.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Malcador

[Althernai]

I mean, KotOR1 gives you a perfectly good reason to go evil, then forces you to kill off almost your whole party for basically no discernible gain and with no alternatives if you do so. 

 

Seriously, the bit about forcing you to choose between killing both Mission and Zaalbar, or dominating Zaalbar into killing Mission while the latter is going on and on about how she believes in you and can't accept that you've gone full darkside is ****ed up.

 

I think that is actually one of Bioware's better "evil" paths. It makes perfect sense that if you travel with a party of idealistic heroes and suddenly decide to become the new Dark Lord, some of them are going to turn on you and you will have no choices except to destroy them or at least run them off. There might be an argument to make regarding tying the choice to a single decision, but the consequences are well executed: being the Dark Lord has a price.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

What is wrong with killing Mission via the Wookiee, exactly ? To get that you've had to do 'evil' things to begin with. Only way to top that would have been MC'ing Carth to kill himself.

 

I dunno, if I'm Dark Lord of the Sith and have been travelling with resourceful people all along, I'd expect to be able to convince them to, at the very least, put their concerns at rest until we resolve the whole "Sith armada looming in the background" problem, if I had a sufficiently high Persuade score. The problem is not that you can be a bloodthirsty ****, or a sadistic ****; the problem is that the game only offers you those options and is severely lacking a manipulative **** path.

Edited March 25, 2015 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Malcador]

I guess you couldn't really sway Mission, she seemed the goody two shoes type. Granted, next to the them having watched you be a douchebag to people all game, that shouldn't matter (influence system works so much better). It does fit that in Star Wars, dark side folk tend to be pretty unsubtle in the evil so perhaps that is why Bioware didn't bother with you being a seductive corrupter.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

I guess you couldn't really sway Mission, she seemed the goody two shoes type. Granted, next to the them having watched you be a douchebag to people all game, that shouldn't matter (influence system works so much better). 

 

She also seemed pretty much predisposed to accept that you're not capable of turning to the dark side, hence convincing her that you haven't, or at least, not really, shouldn't even be hard.

 

 

It does fit that in Star Wars, dark side folk tend to be pretty unsubtle in the evil 

 

You mean like Palpatine, avoiding detection for decades?  I mean, I'm okay with force sensitives smelling the corruption on you, but you should be able to deceive the uninitiated.

Edited March 25, 2015 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Malcador]

No, not like him, but through out the games you mainly encounter them being outright **** to people and using power that way etc.

[rjshae]

 

It does fit that in Star Wars, dark side folk tend to be pretty unsubtle in the evil 

 

You mean like Palpatine, avoiding detection for decades?  I mean, I'm okay with force sensitives smelling the corruption on you, but you should be able to deceive the uninitiated.

 

Well, he was a typical politician working in a vile den of stinking corruption. *COUGH*Congress*COUGH* Perhaps that masked his 'true' nature?

[aluminiumtrioxid]

No, not like him, but through out the games you mainly encounter them being outright **** to people and using power that way etc.

 

What I was getting at is that it's an archetype with its roots harkening back to the movies, so I think it was definitely wrong of Bioware to not include the option.

 

Then again, that would have required some subtlety from them. Bioware was never really big on subtlety.

[Althernai]

 

Also, I chose T3 as the droid to clear the radiation and during one of the critical conversations, I accidentally chose a dialog option that exits the conversation. This results in the journal entry not being updated and going through that conversation again does not bring up the same option (I had to reload).

Hmmm, which droid would that be, so I can check it out...

 

It's IS-18 (the one standing in the ventilation area of the Industrial Zone). The correct way to deal with him is to always answer choose the first answer (1) until he tells you that he needs you to go to the Manufacturing Droid and get the number of droids in the colony and access to the terminal. On the other hand, if you input the sequence of answers 1-1-1-2, the conversation will terminate just before the final step. Talking to him about it again will result in some dialog about the reactor, but it quickly leads to a forced exit from the conversation without getting the journal update. Asking him about the planet in general does not help.