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Review KOTOR 2 gets a beating

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Tags: Obsidian Entertainment; Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

There is an entertaining, honest, and straightforward <a href=http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swkotor_sithlords/>KOTOR 2</a> <a href=http://www.richardcobbett.co.uk/codex/journal/filingcabinet/knights_of_the_second_hand_republic/>review</a> written by one Richard Cobbett, a writer and journalist. I have a feeling many folks here would appreciate his style.
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<blockquote>Of course, there’s more to KOTOR2 than just knickers. There’s crappy game design too. From the pathetic ending (anyone else not have any sound during the final movie?) to game design that takes cut-and-paste to a whole new level (*cough* find-four-pieces-of-the-star-map *cough*), there’s barely a moment in the second half that you’re not left thinking of the obviously great RPG that exists in paper form over at Chez Obsidian. Unfortunately, what we’ve got is some hacked together version that stands up okay, but is barely a shadow of what it could, and frankly should have been. I haven’t seen such a hastily slapped together RPG since...uh...Vampire. Which was only a couple of months ago. It’ll get ludicrous scores across the board, I’m sure, because the true scale of its problems doesn’t become obvious until many hours in, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing - and I’d be very, very surprised if the most disappointed people aren’t on the development team.
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It’s nowhere near as bad as Lionheart, of course. In many places, KOTOR2 is genuinely excellent. So much of it has been lavished with care and attention, from the superb dialogue to many of the set-pieces that you’ll want to keep playing; and the story has all the twists and turns you need to keep playing to the end. Unfortunately, all this good stuff sits side by side with absolute, abject crap, like levels that seem to have been banged out in a weekend, the second half of your crew (Disciple, I am so very definitely looking at you...) seemingly joining up just to fill the gaps on the party select screen and having almost nothing to say beyond a backstory that they may or may not want to tell you, characters vowing revenge on the guy you just killed, to seemingly galactic confusion over the gender of former universe-conqueror Darth Revan (to an extent we’ve only ever seen in ol’ Maggie Thatcher), subplots that exist for absolutely no reason (especially on the last, appallingly designed planet) and characters who still run over entire fields of land mines without the slightest regard for personal safety… </blockquote>That was lovely. More, please.
 

Section8

Cipher
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(to an extent we’ve only ever seen in ol’ Maggie Thatcher)

"If you're happy and you know it...wear a dress, and pretend you're Margaret Thatcher...

...It's what he does."

Anyway, that was a great read. I really dig the pommie sense of humour. Still, when all your birds are that fucking ugly, I guess you've gotta have a sense of humour. As a breif aside, we got Top Gear on SBS the other night, and that's a bloody good watch. Sarky old pommie bastard drives shit hot cars and jokes about them. Brilliant!
 

jiujitsu

Cipher
Joined
Mar 11, 2004
Messages
1,444
Project: Eternity
He sounds like a whiney faggot. A bucktoothed one at that.

Anyway, KotOR 2 wasn't all that bad... There is truth in his words, however.
 

RiK

Novice
Joined
Jun 21, 2004
Messages
21
Vault Dweller said:
RiK said:
"Honest and straightforward"?
What part of that phrase confuses you, young padawan?

The review is entertaining indeed.. But not very honest.
It just rips the game apart as being garbage which is not the case with KotoR.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
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Messages
28,024
What part is dishonest or incorrect?
Tip of the Day: when making a statement, feel free to back it up with facts and arguments.
 

LlamaGod

Cipher
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Oct 21, 2004
Messages
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Yes
He likes the game so saying it sucks is a LIE.

He's been taught by Volourn.
 

Volourn

Pretty Princess
Pretty Princess Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Mar 10, 2003
Messages
24,924
And, Volourn's been taught by the Codex.


LOLOLOLOLLIPOP
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
28,343
Section8 said:
As a breif aside, we got Top Gear on SBS the other night, and that's a bloody good watch. Sarky old pommie bastard drives shit hot cars and jokes about them. Brilliant!
I was surprised they picked the Monaro on that beach challenge. Also surprised the Monaro didn't win the drag race. That and they kept calling it a Volkswagen or something. I guess that's just British humour though.
 

Richard

Novice
Joined
Dec 14, 2005
Messages
11
(blink) Not quite sure why there's a link to one of my year old blog posts on RPGCodex, but I'll play along.

He likes the game so saying it sucks is a LIE.

Reading's fun. You should try it.

He sounds like a whiney faggot. A bucktoothed one at that.

Skateboarding off cliffs is fun too ;-)

RiK said:
The review is entertaining indeed.. But not very honest.
It just rips the game apart as being garbage which is not the case with KotoR.

The post is entirely honest. I don't pretend it's a comprehensive review - it's a just a personal Journal entry about a game I bought, having enjoyed both the previous game and the development team's past work, and was bitterly disappointed by. Had it been a full review, I'd have gone into much more detail on the bits I did enjoy, such as the plotting in Nar Shadaar, the excellent writing (although I do mention this), and all kinds of other things.There's a whole lot to like.

But the part that really stood out wasn't how good any of this stuff was, but how frustratingly good it all could have been. To quote that entry:

there’s barely a moment in the second half that you’re not left thinking of the obviously great RPG that exists in paper form over at Chez Obsidian. Unfortunately, what we’ve got is some hacked together version that stands up okay, but is barely a shadow of what it could, and frankly should have been.

That's what bugged me. KOTOR2 was a great game, its pants pulled down by all its well documented problems, and a fair few more (a particular favourite from my game was when Visas devoted herself to the Dark Side to one day defeat Darth Kabuki - a Sith Lord whose corpse was currently cooling off a couple of rooms away) until by the end, all the good it did was utterly undone. As much as I might like, say, Mira's plotline, or the main character's relationship with his mad witch mentor, it's hardly going to sit well in my head if I reach the end of the game thinking 'And Kreia did that...why?'

The opening levels prepared me for Star Wars: Torment, only to serve up £35 of bitter disappointment that wasn't merely a flawed game that needed more time (like Vampire), but an outright gob of spit in the eye from everyone who thought the game was ready to roll. In the case of a bad game, I wouldn't care, but KOTOR2 had the potential to be so damn good, and that burns. That's why I kept using phrases like 'a classic game' and 'genuinely excellent', even amidst all the negativity. Because it should have been, would have been, and damn well deserved to be.

But it wasn't.

(If you disagree with anything there, don't worry! Every argument was explained in great detail that would entirely have satisfied you, but I ran out of time before adding those bits to the post.There may be an unofficial patch in time that totally fixes them all!)
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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Messages
28,024
Richard said:
(blink) Not quite sure why there's a link to one of my year old blog posts on RPGCodex, but I'll play along.
Blame me. Welcome to the forums, btw. I hoped you'd drop by.
 

MarFish

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 7, 2004
Messages
266
Greatatlantic said:
Yes, we all know an 18 month development cycle left the game wanting. However, I still thought it was a better game then its predesecor, and much less formulamatic. I would be interested in hearing what this guy had to say about the original.

EDIT: Check out this commentary on the original.

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php ... st&id=1927

This could have written in exuse of <generic troika game here>. Nom KotOR 1 was better.

The difference between KotOR 1 and 2 was that the first one was a finished product, the second one was a rush job planned as a rush job from the start and executed as a rush job. Ever wonder why bioware didn't want to do it? Probably because they knew that you can't make a good RPG in 18 month these days.

I still remember people predicting ToEE to be the second coming of christ and bringing up the same "it's a good game at heart" excuses.

Unfinished games suck. Unfinished games that had potential suck more.

If I rate a game, I rate it by the gameplay value it has for me, and an unfinished, bug ridden game with a horrible story ranges much lower on my rating scale than less ambitious but bug free games.
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
MarFish said:
The difference between KotOR 1 and 2 was that the first one was a finished product, the second one was a rush job planned as a rush job from the start and executed as a rush job. Ever wonder why bioware didn't want to do it? Probably because they knew that you can't make a good RPG in 18 month these days.

Exactly - it seems to me a lot of people claim KOTOR2 was better than the original solely because of the warped logic that Obsidian = Black Isle = Fallout.

It was unfinished and downright sloppy. The most disappointing thing for me was the difference in NPCs - in the original KOTOR they were still saying new things/coming up with new interactions right to the very end, but in KOTOR2 (with the exception of Keira) they just ran out of stuff to say by the mid-point of the game.
 

Jora

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Messages
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Location
Finland
DemonKing said:
Exactly - it seems to me a lot of people claim KOTOR2 was better than the original solely because of the warped logic that Obsidian = Black Isle = Fallout.
My logic is that every single bit of dialogue in the first game is awful. Both games share almost exactly the same design mistakes but the difference is in the writing and the characters that are much better in the sequel.
 

HanoverF

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MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2
LlamaGod said:
Reading's fun. You should try it.

I wasnt even talking about you.
(fag)

I think he's from the UK or something, so you just called him a cigarette...

Anyway this line from the review-blog-whatever confused me:
The pair of you took a radioactive leak over a classic game, and really, you must be killed.

Is this referring to KoTOR as a classic, or KoTOR2 sans the pair's contributions coulda been a classic? In either case it's wrong, I'm just wondering if its horribly wrong (KoTOR) or debatably wrong (KoTOR2)
 

Richard

Novice
Joined
Dec 14, 2005
Messages
11
HanoverF said:
Is this referring to KoTOR as a classic, or KoTOR2 sans the pair's contributions coulda been a classic? In either case it's wrong, I'm just wondering if its horribly wrong (KoTOR) or debatably wrong (KoTOR2)

Debatably wrong.
 

Greatatlantic

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Location
The Heart of It All
DemonKing said:
The most disappointing thing for me was the difference in NPCs - in the original KOTOR they were still saying new things/coming up with new interactions right to the very end, but in KOTOR2 (with the exception of Keira) they just ran out of stuff to say by the mid-point of the game.

Thats only because Bioware used the very arbitrary say new things upon leveling up system. Until you got their quest, that is, at which point they wouldn't say anything new no matter what happens until the end of the game. And the game didn't even give you a choice to ignore them. If they were in your party, they would interupt your game to tell you more of their backstory. And this converstation rarely lead anywhere except to later in the game running into somebody from their past to trigger their quest. In KotOR2 you had conversations when you spoke to them, and you could continue talking to them as long as you wanted to, with out having them cut out and say they don't feel like talking anymore. Plus, conversations could give you real, in-game bonuses, like new powers or stat bonuses. Finally, the writing for Sith Lords was just better-- more interesting and subtle, like P:T.
 

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