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."
Ati video cards (Score:5, Interesting)
A massive letdown - it's unfinished (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Bugs? We've got bugs! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Ati video cards (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
So glad (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:A massive letdown - it's unfinished (Score:4, Interesting)
***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.
My feelings (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Taking a butcher knife to the ending of an RPG is (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Taking a butcher knife to the ending of an RPG (Score:1, Interesting)
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.