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Role Playing (Games)

KOTOR II Pushed To Retail Too Soon? 96

Gamespy has a Resident Cynic column, detailing his opinion that Knights of the Old Republic II was released prematurely. He has some good points to make, and interesting "could have been" details to share. From the article: "I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, nor even dwell too much further on what exactly the issue is, but believe me, it's there. I'm not talking about leaving the story open-ended in order to facilitate sequels. That's fine and I can thoroughly understand it. The problem is that they waste one of the creepiest bad guys in recent history, then promptly send your character off on a series of solo missions, and actually forget to even explain what's happening to the sidekicks you've spent so much time training and equipping."
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KOTOR II Pushed To Retail Too Soon?

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  • by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @03:44PM (#11715674) Journal
    The problem is that they waste one of the creepiest bad guys in recent history, then promptly send your character off on a series of solo missions, and actually forget to even explain what's happening to the sidekicks you've spent so much time training and equipping."

    Obviously, this guy is talking about my job, not some silly game.
  • I agree... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I haven't even finished the first one yet.
  • Phew! (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday February 18, 2005 @03:51PM (#11715765) Homepage Journal

    Thanks! Based on that review I've stopped my torrent download.
  • by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @03:56PM (#11715816) Homepage Journal
    they waste one of the creepiest bad guys in recent history, then promptly send your character off on a series of solo missions, and actually forget to even explain what's happening to the sidekicks you've spent so much time training and equipping."

    Sounds like a true "Star Wars" product... they had to stay true to the Genre!

    But I bet there were alot of cool special effects, and a cute robot or two.
    • and a cute robot or two.

      I think HK-47 is adorable...but I wouldn't say that to his face.

      HK-47: Explanation: There is a 98% probability that that this Jawa meatbag is searching for his missing companions.
      Jedi: What about the other 2%?
      HK-47: That he is looking for trouble and should be blasted right away. But that is just wishful thinking on my part.

      HK-47: Advisement: Evisceration works well. Electrocution, blunt trauma, and decapitation are also effective, I understand.

      HK-47: Would you

  • Ati video cards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phoenix.bam! ( 642635 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @03:59PM (#11715860)
    My roommates bought the game, crashes and freezes on his ati card. Forums are saying it is happening quite a bit on ati cards. Seems like the developers didn't take into account half the video card market.
    • Re:Ati video cards (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Other White Boy ( 626206 ) <theotherwhiteboy.gmail@com> on Friday February 18, 2005 @04:20PM (#11716152)
      ive been having pretty massive issues on my new setup, and its an nvidia card.

      the most irritating being that everytime it plays an ingame cinematic it changes to 640x480x60hz from the 1600x1200x75hz i'm playing at, which isnt so irritating (except everything on my second monitor gets shifted). the problem is that when it returns to the game engine after the movie its locked at about 5fps. i have to go into graphics settings and change something so it 'resets' and i get my full 75fps back.

      if that bug would be fixed i could almost overlook the fact that conversations seem to break occasionally, people i have high influence with occasionally start hating me for no reason (mainly the handmaiden), and party members start referencing things ive never done.

      almost =/
      • the most irritating being that everytime it plays an ingame cinematic it changes to 640x480x60hz from the 1600x1200x75hz i'm playing at...

        The same thing happened to me on KOTOR I, although I think I was running at 1024x768. Either way, it's just kind of annoying that all the cinematics look horrible because they're at such a low resolution. I don't remember having any framerate issues after the cinematics, but the resolution definitely changed.

        And I have an ATI card, so its obviously not an issue wi

        • The cinematics look awful because they were written for the X-Box, although surely the X-Box could handle higher resolution playback. The wonders of console development, lowering the quality of a computer game near you!
          • Yeah, actually that sort of makes sense. But you would think they could just re-render them at higher resolutions. It's pretty lame to use 640x480-only video in a PC game. It would have looked better if they were redone with the game engine.
      • i'm 20 hours in (i play in all the dialogue boxes) and have had the game crash once so far... I use 1600xwhatever w/ max everything (3000+ winni, 6800gt) the one crash was cause i alt tabbed like 20 times in 10 minutes cause i was having an irc concversation with someone while trying to play... We need dual monitor support where u can use like a kvm still switch to change screens for gaming; it wrecks havok at times:p (and i know, i use one big stretched screne w/ bblean, but there should be a way to r
      • I had serious issues with my 6800, but then I updated ForceWare (aka Detonator) to 66.93 and it is all running smoothly and without any problems.

        Also, a patch is forthcoming shortly (already released for the European versions).

        The game itself is okay so far but I haven't played through to the end so I can't confirm or deny what the reviewer had to say. It would be a shame because it's a nice enough game, although I enjoyed the original game immensely.

        This game uses the same engine however, so should be
    • My roommates bought the game, crashes and freezes on his ati card. Forums are saying it is happening quite a bit on ati cards. Seems like the developers didn't take into account half the video card market.

      I find that to be utterly insulting. They had the same problem with KotOR I & ATI cards. Bioware consistently blamed it on ATI's catalyst drivers but I always thought that was a weak failure to accept responsibility. Now granted the sequel has a new developer but that's garbage to not fix what

      • I had the occasional problem with KOTOR I with the drivers the card shipped with, but usually the VPU would recover, except the one time I won a swoop race and it crashed hard. Now, trying to run GTA Vice City with the drivers shipped w/ the card, that was an exercise in futility.
      • I played the original KOTOR with a 9600XT with no problems.

        I had problems with KOTOR2 on my LeadTek 6800, but updating the driver fixed all the issues.

        Things to do if you experience issues with your ATI card:

        1) Check LucasArts website. They have a list of specific video cards that have known issues.
        2) Make sure you are running the latest drivers for your mainboard/GPU.
        3) Make sure you aren't forcing FSAA/Aniso/etc through the ATI drivers - this can interfere with some games, especially games like KOTOR
    • Re:Ati video cards (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      ok, but even if it was totally bug free..

      it would still feel like a rushed, hacked on sequel with a WEAK ending.

      seriously, when you get to the cool looking dark jedi.. just stop playing there and don't continue to the ending planet, and pretend that the endgame was worth it.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Funny you should say that. There's a known issue with NForce 3 chipsets and certain versions of the 9600XT card. Once I set myself down to 4x, all the issues went away. Could this be related to the issues you're experiencing? I have a 3000+ at home and had all the same problems until I lowered the multiplier. Now I'm running a 6800 and everything is perfect.

        The Catalyst drivers don't have a choice if you set the AGP multiplier to 4 in your BIOS.
  • I purchased the xbox version I love it I havent gotten to the ending yet but Im not really that interested in my sidekick's stories
    • Well you'll be able to be interested in them for years because you'll never find out what happens to them. I loved the game, I thought the ending was cool, definitely play to the end, but it's like they skipped a few dozen cutscenes.
  • by diseasesofseamen ( 816416 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @04:16PM (#11716091)
    I just finished it the other night. Without a doubt, the ending was vastly simplified at some point. It's ruined for me, almost completely. It's not what was advertised, certainly. All the complex interactions between characters, the careful building up of influence, the moral issues raised - it is all simply frittered away. It's one of the worst endings to any RPG I've ever seen, and I've played a ton. This regrettable state of affairs does lend heavily to one of three conclusions:

    1) there was a major disagreement among the creators in the coding or script writing that led to a bad compromise with the ending;

    2) time constraints forced a rush job that cut out anything deeply non-essential to shipping;

    3) they just couldn't deliver on the ambitious nature of the plot.

    It might have been all three. I certainly don't want to think the last, but this was a new studio doing the sequel. They certainly delivered a great game right up to the 'end sequence', then dropped the ball in a way that KOTOR certainly did not.

    Spoilers to follow...

    In the first KOTOR, the endings left the state of the party more or less known, as most of their tales were resolved before the final battle.

    But here, save for perhaps Visas, none of the side characters' stories are resolved. (I played a light-side Jedi, BTW). Why bother putting HK-47 back together, or awakening the Force in anyone? No one save Kreia plays a significant role in the endgame, and I can't even sway her fate. It just turned into a Sith kill-fest and completely lost the questy, thoughtful nature that had been developed for 20+ hours of play.

    And in the end, the Ebon Hawk just soars off. To where? Why? Who's at the controls? Did anyone survive the crash? My entire party just evaporated save for Mira and that annoying floating droid.

    Kriea's whole plan is the height of Bizarro logic; she makes Malak in the first game look alarmingly sane. Her buddies Sion and Whatsits-with-the-mask were anticlimatic pushovers, also; they folded too easily and served no greater purpose than speed bumps.

    When Kriea says, 'there is no great revelation' in the end, I knew I'd been screwed. Because there needed to be one. I expected some classic Star Wars drama - "I'm Balista/Revan/someone-other-than-an-insane-preachy -witch, looking for redemption by destroying everything, starting with you." and I didn't get it.

    This was not the kind of story that needed a Patrick O'Brian-style adrupt ending. It needed an epilogue at the very least, beyond Kriea's musings before the main character is set off into the void.

    • by savagexp ( 531372 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @04:59PM (#11716644) Homepage
      The Dark-Side ain't any better, my friend.

      ***SPOILERS***

      Something for anybody to try: Before you go into your final battle with Kriea, Save your game (you've probably done this anyway, since you've just defeated Sion and you're expecting some great kick-assery to be coming). Before/during/after your battle with Kriea, there will be obvious light/dark dialogue choices. Stick with one or the other and you'll be able to see either light or dark ending.

      The build-up is pointless. The influence gained is pointless. The whole freegin' game up to the final "battle" is pointless! When you can literally select your good guy/bad guy ending just with two dialogue choices at the end, you know there's a problem.

      Oh, and here's the only real difference between light/dark: Dark Side, you don't find out SHIT about the sidekicks. You just assume they died because the Ebon Hawk fell into oblivion at some point. Then, the final shot has the camera panning away from the planet, there's just no Ebon Hawk flying in it.
      • by taion ( 304184 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @05:34PM (#11717030) Homepage
        If you dig around on the forums, you'll see signs of the original ending, which was very PS:T-y. Apparently it was even in some preview builds, which was what was referenced when the previewers talked about influence mattering and absolutely heartrending endings. The stuff was all written, too. No clue why it didn't make it in --- maybe LucasArts decided that having an ending that actually tugged on anybody's emotional strings would've been too much?

        The stuff is here [obsidianent.com], but you'll need to go to the second page to see that formatted in a way that's really readable. If you dig around in the proper directories, you can actually find the freaking recorded dialogue for those scenes. It really rather annoys me that they lobotomised what would've been a spectacularly touching ending.
    • From what I understand there were differences depending on how you played through the game.

      I played Dark Side Sith Lord class and got a really lame ending. After I finished the last battle it just sorta zoomed out into space and cut to game over. No Ebon Hawk flying away even. I believed it had crashed down into the depths of the planet killing all the side characters. The cut scene before the endgame portion made it seem that way.

      My wife, on the other hand, played through Light Side Jedi Knight and appar
      • I can confirm that you do indeed get to see the future of your sidekicks if you play the game right. I have done it as a light side character and had enough influence with her that there you are able to offer her redemption, she is touched but declines offering to destroy herself as well but before she does she will tell you of the future. Kreia will tell you what happens to each person as well as other key items and objects in the game world that you have encountered before you redeem her. I agree that it
        • I suppose the influence system was a large problem then. I missed out on much of the game story because I wasn't nice or agreeable to my sidekicks. Seems kind of unfair to say "We'll let you play a mean character, but then you don't get to know what's going on in the game". Couldn't they just as easily allowed you to intimidate or even beat the information out of your sidekicks?
    • Why bother putting HK-47 back together, or awakening the Force in anyone?
      • It's cool to know that you're making Jedi. I had 2 or 3 members of my party "go Jedi", and there was (I think) at least one more. Pretty cool - you're essentially helping restart the Jedi Order, by "creating" all these Jedi.
      • For the HK-47s, I got the feeling (played the Xbox version, fwiw) that there was a missing encounter/planet. You run across the other HKs a couple of times, and get a "tracking beacon" - my suspicion was tha
    • by Rallion ( 711805 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @11:44PM (#11719917) Journal
      More spoilers here

      I can't agree more. Some things to add, as a fellow light-sider.

      There MUST have been more planned to the Mira sidestory. I mean, come on, she just meets Hanharr again, kills him, and that's the end of it? And it still never made any sense as to why Kreia saved him in the first place, really.

      NONE of the characters side-stories were fleshed out as well as it seems they were supposed to be, HK-47 especially. Mandalore, and the mechanic guy, Atton...MAYBE they're good enough. But not really even them. Even the astromech droid could have used a little more plot behind him -- they do hint at more.

      As for wasting the creepiest villian I've seen lately...uh...yeah. Seriously. None of that made ANY sense to me. They rushed it so that it didn't even seem IMPORTANT that you were killing him, because the game was never clear on how evil he was. The whole end of the game was just very confusing, with big gaps in it. I compare that to the first game, where you know pretty damn well what Malak's up to by the end of the game, everything is very well explained, and so you have some sense of purpose.

      The game had HUGE potential. The improvements over the first one in gameplay were nice, really very nice, if minor. But the sorry state the game released in threw it all away.
  • they probably had to release it this past Christmas if they wanted a decent profit.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    see the Obsidian Forums [obsidianent.com] or the Lucas Forums [lucasarts.com].
  • by Ahnteis ( 746045 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @04:21PM (#11716166)
    Bugs I've found:

    1) Incredibly bad pathfinding. Even the character you control sometimes has trouble walking over to that container 3 feet away to open it.

    2) Impossible quests. Sometimes your actions will render a quest impossible to finish. Not such a problem except they will haunt your quest journal for the rest of the game.

    3) Buggy quests. DO NOT FIGHT THE HANDMAIDENS. This scripted arena-style challenge seems to work fine. However, if you do it, the next level will not load correctly and you'll be stuck staring at a black screen. Hooray!

    4) Rushed scripting. (First game had similar problems.) I've almost given up on using any sort of stealth in the game because you will be sneaking along in solo mode (rest of your party hiding behind a rock) and suddenly you'll hit a script spot. Magically, all enemies can suddenly see you (and converse with you) AND the rest of your party will be conveniently teleported (isn't that a Star TREK thing?) to your location. Hooray! WHY don't they check to see if the NPCs can see you?!

    5) Low FPS in areas. I have an AMD 2700+, 1.5GB RAM, and a geforce 6600GT. There are STILL certain areas where the framerate just gives up and dies. (It's not just *my* computer if that's what you're thinking.)

    I'm not to the point the article mentions where storyline is thrown out the window yet. So far the story is fairly compelling although there are a few items they seem to hint at and then abandon.
    • K, you shouldn't bring up the graphics card part. All PC games have some degree of problems with Nvidia and ATI cards, that's assumed.

      When the plot's missing, that's a real bug. When the graphics card display half the pictures, that's just the norm.

    • 3) Buggy quests. DO NOT FIGHT THE HANDMAIDENS. This scripted arena-style challenge seems to work fine. However, if you do it, the next level will not load correctly and you'll be stuck staring at a black screen. Hooray!

      My favorite was the time I had a conversation with the handmaiden, then when it ended we went to the loading scene and suddenly I was by myself in the handmaiden base with no NPCs around, an ebon hawk I couldn't board, and nothing else. I wasted time there for an hour running around tryin
    • I knew I was going to see a lot of bugs when I found the Pazaak tutorial had problems (as I recall, there's a choice where you can't go against the dialog, even if it means you're going to lose, which happens a lot if you're using cards with negatives).

      Then there's the lack of hints/tips - like the next to impossible swoop races (I've only done the first, spent 8 hours trying to win and my best time was 42 seconds - still 1 sec off from beating the game's top time). I can't imagine how someone that didn't
      • Well, you're lucky you managed to get the game to acknowledge you won a race. There are a couple of bugs that I've encountered with swoop racing on Telos (I've basically stopped playing at this point, due to complete dissatisfaction with the product, not just bug related - the story isn't cohesive at all).
        • If you happen to ever forfeit a race (by hitting escape then F, as I recall), the PC version of the games gets into a state where it thinks you've forfeited all races..even if you happen to score the top
        • Yep, forfeiting (pre-patch) has that bug. There is now a patch out, but I haven't had a chance to test it to see if the problem is solved. I avoided it by saving before the swoop and reloading if I forfeited. Getting 44 sec times wasn't hard, but 41 seemed impossible - I think I missed two of the boosters, and those near the end, and still ended up with 42 seconds. I missed 2 boosters in the staged race on a different planet (Dantoonie?) and still beat the top time in about an hour of play, so I'm glad
          • I don't see a patch (just tried the auto-updater), and neither obsidian's site nor Lucas Arts's page mention a patch - obsidian's site says something about a "patch coming soon". Obsidian's support forum has an interesting thread about the audio in the game - apparently the music in the game is 10kHz Mono, encoded at 48kbps, which is a travesty. This might have been because of xbox constraints, but feh - couldn't they have supplied quality stuff for PCs? And apparently the xbox can handle higher quality str
  • I didn't think the story was all that bad. It didn't quiet live up to the plot twist of the first story but then again what were they going to do manke Revan your father or mother depending on the first game?

    The biggest problem i had were with the numerous bugs in the game at its release. Timing issues where entire conversations would fly by without ever pausing for me to read, numerous crashes, and several quests that had no apparent tie to the story or even an end where my biggest problems.

    Why can't
  • So glad (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheAdventurer ( 779556 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @04:46PM (#11716483)
    I am so glad this came up.

    I was an enormous fan of KOTOR I. I beat it multiple times and loved everything about it.

    KOTOR II is one of the most pointless, frustrating, and boring games I've ever played.

    It suffers from multiple bugs. (I had to restart my game at one point because of a fatal crash... on the xbox). It has horrible slowdowns and stutters during battles. The load times are on average 4-5 seconds longer than KOTOR I load times. (In computer time, 5 seconds is a LONG time.)

    And the story was a total lump of bullshit. It barely made sense, it never inspired me to complete the game (even though I did, out of pure frustrated desire to see something coherent happen), and the characters were useless and paper thin.

    Shame on Obsidian for taking such a royal shit on this game, and what could have been an enduring franchise.

    God damn that game was disappointing.
    • And the story was a total lump of bullshit. It barely made sense, it never inspired me to complete the game (even though I did, out of pure frustrated desire to see something coherent happen), and the characters were useless and paper thin.

      Sounds like George Lucas had a hand in it.
    • Totally Agreed. I felt like I was punished for choosing the dark side with that ending. Went to eBay the day after I finished. Dark Side killing got to be ho-hum after a while.
    • I am so glad this came up.

      I was an enormous fan of KOTOR I. I beat it multiple times and loved everything about it.


      I think this is part of the reason they thought they could get away with it. Kotor 1 was rushed out the door, with some ridiculous bugs that would never have made it out of MS certification if they hadn't needed it to pump up XBox sales.

      Crashes, corrupted save games, save games in areas you couldn't get past-- I had to completely abandon my character 30 hours in, right near the end, becau
    • The load times are on average 4-5 seconds longer than KOTOR I load times. (In computer time, 5 seconds is a LONG time.)

      Even so, KOTOR2 has some of the fastest load times I've seen in a long time. Seriously, I can take a breath, click on the KOTOR2 icon, click through the movies/logos, load a game, and be up and playing (wiht a saved game even loaded) before I needed to take a breath again. (And no, I can't hold my breath terribly long. Less than a minute, though I think the entire procedure only take

    • Re:So glad (Score:3, Interesting)


      Don't blame Obsidian, blame LucasArts. Many of the promo videos stated that the game for both XBox and PC would be out in February. LucasArts was the one that moved the XBbox release date up by a couple of months. When a chunk of your schedule is ripped away from you something has to give. :-(

    • The story was largely excellent, parent just obviously didn't understand it...
  • My feelings (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mfterman ( 2719 ) on Friday February 18, 2005 @05:15PM (#11716811)
    KOTOR II had a lot of stuff that should have been in KOTOR I. For example, the upgrade system was much improved, as well as being able to have two weapon sets to switch between instantly and in some cases, automatically.

    I also liked the concept that your Light/Dark choices would have an impact on who you got for a companion, and to a lesser extent your gender would as well. If anything, I thought that they didn't go far enough with this angle.

    They were also doing an amazing job, up until the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine of building up an incredible sense of atmosphere and tension. There were all sorts of hidden angles going on there between all of the characters. Even nice little T3-M4 was prone to even creepy behavior at various points.

    And it all fell apart after that. One of the reasons I'm so terribly disappointed with the ending of KOTOR II is that they had such a powerful setup and they fell short of that. It could have been a truly mind blowing game and in the end they weren't able to sustain it.
  • Goes to show, never trust a major Starswars franchise RPG with anybody except Bioware. Those canucks knows thier starwars and how to make an ending.
  • Darth Maul, a brilliant answer to replacing Vader as the main baddy. And so evil and menacing he could have been the main enemy of all the triology.
    BUT WAIT A MINUTE LETS HAVE HIM KILLED TO RUIN THE HYPE AND IN A STUPID AND RETARDED WAY! WE NEED MORE JAR JAR!.
  • I went through, like many others thinking of the nice story setup. I even ignored insane scripting bugs, pathfinding problems, and the occasion fps or crash. Then I get to the end of the game, and it immediately falls to pieces. I just stopped playing, it was the most disappointing game in years, with such a great beginning. Honestly, regardless of whether or not it's obsidian's fault directly, you won't see me purchase anything of theirs in the next few years. Voting with your wallet is the best way, frank
  • There's a simple rule of thumb to follow when it comes to games released from Mid-November through the third week of December - unless you have already played it enough to know damned well that the game is done and good, don't buy it, because it was probably rushed to pick up holiday sales. The best example that comes to mind is Gran Turismo 2, which had to be recalled because unfinished features (Such as a drag racing mode) described in the manual and advertisements had to be dropped at the last minute to
  • Well. It sounds like I'm in for quite a ride with this game. I've only just started it. So I guess I'll just have to hope and pray that the glitches I've read about stay to a minimum for myself.
  • Why this got posted, I dunno. This happens all the time with video games. Especially sequels that are slated for release so soon after the original.

    Second, this game was out on Xbox 2 months ago and yeah I'm sure the PC audience is more the /. type of crowd, however it's the same frickin' game contentwise, yet we didn't have a rant fest back in December.

  • by Kaorimoch ( 858523 ) on Saturday February 19, 2005 @10:51AM (#11722045) Journal
    ..an absolutely unforgiveable sin.

    Do it to a FPS and no one will notice though :)

    Anyway, I'm still trying to play it despite having to reboot my computer every 5-35 minutes.

    By the way, did you read the bottom of the readme.txt?

    "Intermittent Crashes

    The game may freeze or crash to a blank screen if you play in one level for extended periods of time. This was typically seen when playing the game between thirty and forty minutes without transitioning to a new level or movie. We recommend that you save the game often to avoid losing progress if you encounter this issue."

    Is this supposed to be a game ready for retail?
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Memory Leak. KotOR II reboots the Xbox between areas and when longer movies are played which wipes out leaked memory. If you don't change levels every once in a while, the Xbox 64Megs memory limit is reached and dies in flames.
    • Yes, it is, according to LucasArts.

      The general consensus on the Obsidian forums is that Obsidian was forced into rushing it out in time for Christmas, no matter what; they can't comment, but it's likely not their fault.
    • i dont think i've had a single crash in over 20 hours of playing. have even left the game on pause whilst gone drinking, returned 5 hours later and picked up where i left with no hint of slowdonw. not to mention easy back-to-desktop - also glitch free.

      my system is only a 2.4 Athlon with 64mb ti4200.

      guess i know how to maintain a system that works.. kinda surprised that more people dont
  • I have made it to the surface of Telo, that's as far as I've gotten. (sorry there's sork, wife and house duties to attend to, right now I should be doing laundry).

    All I can say is that it has been rushed. When I first opened the box I could tell. Look at the manual, compare it to KOTOR1. Sure KOTOR 2's manual is in color, but the level of detail is terrible. I like reading the manuals to get all the details about the weapons and armor etc etc. The fact that it wasn't in there told me the skimped in
    • It took Valve 3 years to do Half-life 2. (I'm guessing at the 3 years, I can't play FPS, motion-sickness). They rushed this, KOTOR 2 should have had atleast a 2 year Dev cycle. They stuffed it into 1.

      For what its worth, HalfLife2 has a totally meaningless, wtf type ending, with a definate feeling that someone got bored writing the storyline at that point or something. It just ... ended. Crap.

  • Sounds a fair amount like what happened with Vampire: Bloodlines. Incredibly engrossing story if you can get past the legions of near-gamestopping bugs and code that is so far from optimized it makes my bleeding edge computer scream for mercy at a simple thing like rain... but once it hit the endgame, the story went out the window and became a killing grind.

  • I wonder what the odds are that they could ever put this game back into development, finish it like they were supposed to, and re-release it? Call it KOTOR 2B. People who already bought 2 get 2B for free.

    Sadly, approaching zero odds they'd ever do that, but I wish they could just admit it was a mistake to release it like this, go back, and actually allocate resouces to finish it right. Release it as a patch if possible. As long as they got to the end result of KOTOR2 being awesome, I'd forgive them.

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