KOTOR II could have been a truly legendary game if it wasn’t rushed. I don’t remember off the top of my head what the time frame was, but the designers were given a much shorter length of time because Lucas wanted the game out for Christmas. Which is too bad since II has the better story. It was a bold move, especially in 2003-03 to really criticize the Jedi.
Indeed, even in its unfinished state it's better than most games. I remember reading it was around 14 months, similar to the timeframe they turned Fallout: New Vegas around in. The original draft of KOTOR II underwent massive edits once KOTOR I was released because LucasArts wouldn't let Obsidian see the pre-release build of BioWare's game.
Might be time to revisit the KOTOR games, yet again. It's been a few years. I am kind of surprised we never got any books that dealt with Keri, Darth Sion, and Darth Nihilus.
A book about Kreia, or a series even, following her from Jedi to Grey to Sith would be great. Surprised the characters never appeared in the Knights of the Old Republic comics. Hope you enjoyed your KOTOR playthroughs, if you got round to them.
I played a lot of Dark Forces when I young, but the timing of KOTOR overlapped with my years at college where I didn’t have access these games. In the intervening years, I haven’t found a way back to them, until now. I see they are available on Steam. I’m going to see if they are compatible with my computer and will likely give them a play through.
KotOR I runs but has a few annoying bugs, there is a community patch on nexus mods or somewhere like that that fixes it up though if you find it to be really bad.
I admit that I'm much more familiar with the first KOTOR. The second I've heard that people don't really like it so it's interesting to hear from a perspective of someone who likes the second game better.
I was surprised to learn the opposite when I first found online discussions of the two games, just like how Fallout 3 and New Vegas splits fans, or which Final Fantasy game is the best. Though the latter is more good fun while the Fallout fans are basically insane when discussing their favourite.
I played KotOR in my very early 20s when it came out and loved it. At the time it seemed like the most interesting Star Wars tale since I read Heir to the Empire as a child. The silly moral dichotomies have dated, but at the time they were endlessly entertaining.
KotOR II never really clicked with me. It felt like a great game in need of a serious edit, like an overly flabby first draft manuscript. The levels were all sprawling and massive for no reason, making me run around and around and padding things out. The dialogue, while well written, was absurdly verbose. Just way, way too much talking, endlessly. That combo, of large, empty levels and unnecessarily long conversations, meant I never really connected with it.
KotOR II was the more ambitious game, but it fell very short of those ambitions. It certainly moved the conversation forward in terms of how RPGs can be designed, though, and had a very positive influence on future games.
KotOR I was less ambitious but came together in a slicker package and felt more Star Wars. It's the only big RPG I've played through more than once. Very fond memories.
Avellone's notion of railroaded, pre-written characters vs more player choice is interesting. I don't see either as better or worse than the other. It's a different perspective. I like that Sheperd in Mass Effect is a character, and you nudge them in various directions rather than completely changing them. I like that Geralt in the Witcher games is clearly Geralt of Rivia, from the books: a defined character. There's still a lot of choice, but it's not like you're going to go off and become a murderer.
Where you see sprawling levels and verbose dialogue, I see expansive worldbuilding and depth. I find KotOR I to have dialogue that's overly to the point, doing a job rather than building a character, not in all cases but often enough to notice.
I agree there is no better or worse approach. Final Fantasy games are linear experiences with regard to the story, all the characters are predefined (at least after the first couple of games), and there are few if any choices. Yet they are still some the best RPGs going. I enjoyed Mass Effect but always get bored when trying to replay it and I think it's because most of the dialogue and the dreaded conversation wheel is exceptionally long, not particularly interesting, and quite often, especially in The Citadel, walls of worldbuilding masquerading as dialogue. Shepherd as a character is not that defined either but there does seem to be a tug-of-war between canon Shepherd and player Shepherd at times.
I think the problem with lengthy dialogue sequences in KotOR 2 is that the tech simply wasn't up to presenting it. The writing could be great, the voice acting could be great, but the visuals were so basic, the animation and visual side of the performance so generic, that it made the scenes unengaging for me. The same conversations presented with modern production values, or even something like Witcher 3 from 2015, would be quite a different experience.
Same goes for the large areas - there's nothing inherently wrong with large areas to explore, but for me in KotOR 2 it didn't feel like i was exploring: more that I was trudging across areas that had weirdly huge architectural design given their intended purpose. A bit like how the MMOs that followed always had bizarrely cavernous spaces, so as to accommodate lots of players, even if it made no architectural sense.
I've not played KotOR 2 since it came out, though, so I have no idea what I'd make of it now. KotOR 1 I suspect I'd find very dated now, but at the time it was exactly what I wanted from Star Wars.
Interesting, the animations don't bother me. The voice acting, especially Kreia, is phenomenal. I can go back and play Baldur's Gate, Fallout, or a newer CRPG like Pillars and don't mind the lack of animations or that not everything is voice acted. While the Witcher 3 I struggle to play or really care about. I like the books but the games never hooked me.
I disagree but we'll have to agree to disagree on the merits and demerits of each game.
KotOR II has been more recently updated so it supports widescreen, HD resolutions, and runs smoother on newer systems. KotOR I has not had that luxury and is stuck to sub-HD resolutions, 4:6 screen, and has some odd bugs (like not being able to move after combat) without mods.
Older games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Pillars are all fine. I also absolutely adore narrative games like Citizen Sleeper, where there's very minimal visual depiction. Much more visual novel style. In those cases you generally just have text, so as long as the text is high quality you're all good to go. Same with something like Hades, where the art is gorgeous but it's just static portraits in conversations.
The 2000s-era Bioware style was to have movie-like conversation scenes, cutting back and forth based on who is talking. Once you introduce a strong visual element, it needs to hold up to the quality of the other aspects (ie, voice acting and writing). Perhaps in 2003, when KotOR 1 came out, it didn't bother me because at the time that was up there with as good as it got in games.
KotOR 2 came out in Europe in 2005, I think. By this point Half Life 2 had been released towards the end of 2004, a game which for me massively advanced the depiction of 'drama' within a game setting. Obviously a very different TYPE of game, but the bar had been raised regardless. KotOR 2 perhaps suffered in comparison, which is unfair perhaps but it might explain where my brain was at.
Jon Ingold of Inkle Studios had some interesting things to say about narrative in a podcast I listened to recently. One point he made was in not liking lengthy dialogue in games, which is certainly something I've come to agree with over the years. If a game is going to take away control and make me listen to a character talk AT me, that dialogue had better be the best ever written. :)
I should say, none of this is to try to dissuade you from loving KotOR 2! I know it's a much loved thing. I did play it all the way through, so clearly I enjoyed it enough for that at the time. :) It just didn't quite click with me in the same way.
I agree with the Bioware, and Bethesda, style of talking head conversations being quite dull if the dialogue is uninteresting, I just find KotOR II to have good discussions, especially with most of the party characters. Oddly the more games have become visually stunning the less I have enjoyed them. Occasionally there's something that grabs me, such as Elden Ring and Final Fantasy XVI, but I was monumentally bored by God of War and Horizon that I never finished either. I didn't bother with SpiderMan or Alan Wake, just looked uninteresting. Though Ghost of Tsushima was excellent too.
I've never played Half-Life but I remember Final Fantasy X when I was 9 to have been a similar eye opening moment. Up till then I'd played Pokemon, platformers like Oddworld, and a whole lot of old arcade games. KotOR II was unfinished due to LucasArts imposed release date meaning the whole game had 14 months development and that certainly hurts it too. But again it came about at a time when, in my experience, no other game had dug so deep into philosophy nor took a critical eye to its own universe. So many of our formative books, games, films, events, have to occur at just the right time.
I don't mind lengthy dialogue so long as it isn't info-dumps masquerading as conversations (e.g. Mass Effect) or busy work (e.g. Fallout 4). Around the mid-2010s games started to be filled with busy work, Dragon Age: Inquisition is a good example though by no means the first. Systems simply to keep you playing longer. What has amazed me in going back to play old games like FFX or the KotORs is how short they are. 30 hours max. There is no busy work in the games, sure FFX has some but it's all in the endgame and doesn't interrupt the story. Yet now every big game has base building, crafting, resource gathering, collectibles, just bullshit to keep you playing. One thing I was glad FFXVI didn't have and in Elden Ring you can pretty much ignore the crafting mechanic if you want. It's like every game has turned into an MMO. And the way devs often introduce this stuff is through a character with heaps of dialogue or tonnes of tooltips.
On lengthy dialogue more specifically, there is a fine balance between engaging conversations and a lecture. Not every character is going to be a wordsmith like the crew of Enterprise in TNG, yet some games try and do that, and what engages one player will have another running for the hills. Games are also a unique form of narrative potential and relying on dialogue is too like a movie, I don't want to play a movie, I want to play a game and that requires interaction. Though saying that the literal movies Kojima put in MGS4 get a pass from me, they're phenomenal, but he has said before that he would have liked to be a film director.
Yeah, the padding in modern games, especially open world games, is horrendous. I generally don't play open world games anymore unless it's something truly exceptional. If a dev brags that their games has 'over 50 hours' of content, or 'the biggest map ever', it's an immediate don't play for me. I don't trust that the devs will treat my time with respect.
Horizon is a good example: I actually really like what I've encountered of the main story, but the surrounding game is so sprawling it detracts from the overall experience. I've never finished it for that reason.
Though, the Spider-Man games are great fun: they're also, notably, not very long. While there is 'filler' stuff around the city if you want it, you can also just get on with the story, which is told tightly and doesn't overstay its welcome.
Ghosts of Tshushima just got announced for PC, so I am very much looking forward to that one.
I get what you say about your interest diminishing as production values have gone up. The problem, I think, is that a game with high production values has to be REALLY perfect to work, because it's so much closer to reality, or to a movie or cartoon in presentation. The slightest thing knocks it down. Whereas more retro games, or actual games from the 90s, couldn't rely on the flashy presentation. The Monkey Island games stick in my mind not only because of my age in the 90s, but because the presentation left a lot to my own imagination.
A recent game that entirely captivated me was Sea of Stars. Retro stylings, but a story and engaging throughout. Have you played it?
KOTOR II could have been a truly legendary game if it wasn’t rushed. I don’t remember off the top of my head what the time frame was, but the designers were given a much shorter length of time because Lucas wanted the game out for Christmas. Which is too bad since II has the better story. It was a bold move, especially in 2003-03 to really criticize the Jedi.
Indeed, even in its unfinished state it's better than most games. I remember reading it was around 14 months, similar to the timeframe they turned Fallout: New Vegas around in. The original draft of KOTOR II underwent massive edits once KOTOR I was released because LucasArts wouldn't let Obsidian see the pre-release build of BioWare's game.
Might be time to revisit the KOTOR games, yet again. It's been a few years. I am kind of surprised we never got any books that dealt with Keri, Darth Sion, and Darth Nihilus.
A book about Kreia, or a series even, following her from Jedi to Grey to Sith would be great. Surprised the characters never appeared in the Knights of the Old Republic comics. Hope you enjoyed your KOTOR playthroughs, if you got round to them.
I played a lot of Dark Forces when I young, but the timing of KOTOR overlapped with my years at college where I didn’t have access these games. In the intervening years, I haven’t found a way back to them, until now. I see they are available on Steam. I’m going to see if they are compatible with my computer and will likely give them a play through.
KotOR II works "out of the box", for me at least.
KotOR I runs but has a few annoying bugs, there is a community patch on nexus mods or somewhere like that that fixes it up though if you find it to be really bad.
I admit that I'm much more familiar with the first KOTOR. The second I've heard that people don't really like it so it's interesting to hear from a perspective of someone who likes the second game better.
Thanks for reading.
I was surprised to learn the opposite when I first found online discussions of the two games, just like how Fallout 3 and New Vegas splits fans, or which Final Fantasy game is the best. Though the latter is more good fun while the Fallout fans are basically insane when discussing their favourite.
Thanks for the coffee too! Much appreciated 😁
You're welcome. Also yes, people can get insane when talking about video games.
I played KotOR in my very early 20s when it came out and loved it. At the time it seemed like the most interesting Star Wars tale since I read Heir to the Empire as a child. The silly moral dichotomies have dated, but at the time they were endlessly entertaining.
KotOR II never really clicked with me. It felt like a great game in need of a serious edit, like an overly flabby first draft manuscript. The levels were all sprawling and massive for no reason, making me run around and around and padding things out. The dialogue, while well written, was absurdly verbose. Just way, way too much talking, endlessly. That combo, of large, empty levels and unnecessarily long conversations, meant I never really connected with it.
KotOR II was the more ambitious game, but it fell very short of those ambitions. It certainly moved the conversation forward in terms of how RPGs can be designed, though, and had a very positive influence on future games.
KotOR I was less ambitious but came together in a slicker package and felt more Star Wars. It's the only big RPG I've played through more than once. Very fond memories.
Avellone's notion of railroaded, pre-written characters vs more player choice is interesting. I don't see either as better or worse than the other. It's a different perspective. I like that Sheperd in Mass Effect is a character, and you nudge them in various directions rather than completely changing them. I like that Geralt in the Witcher games is clearly Geralt of Rivia, from the books: a defined character. There's still a lot of choice, but it's not like you're going to go off and become a murderer.
Where you see sprawling levels and verbose dialogue, I see expansive worldbuilding and depth. I find KotOR I to have dialogue that's overly to the point, doing a job rather than building a character, not in all cases but often enough to notice.
I agree there is no better or worse approach. Final Fantasy games are linear experiences with regard to the story, all the characters are predefined (at least after the first couple of games), and there are few if any choices. Yet they are still some the best RPGs going. I enjoyed Mass Effect but always get bored when trying to replay it and I think it's because most of the dialogue and the dreaded conversation wheel is exceptionally long, not particularly interesting, and quite often, especially in The Citadel, walls of worldbuilding masquerading as dialogue. Shepherd as a character is not that defined either but there does seem to be a tug-of-war between canon Shepherd and player Shepherd at times.
I think the problem with lengthy dialogue sequences in KotOR 2 is that the tech simply wasn't up to presenting it. The writing could be great, the voice acting could be great, but the visuals were so basic, the animation and visual side of the performance so generic, that it made the scenes unengaging for me. The same conversations presented with modern production values, or even something like Witcher 3 from 2015, would be quite a different experience.
Same goes for the large areas - there's nothing inherently wrong with large areas to explore, but for me in KotOR 2 it didn't feel like i was exploring: more that I was trudging across areas that had weirdly huge architectural design given their intended purpose. A bit like how the MMOs that followed always had bizarrely cavernous spaces, so as to accommodate lots of players, even if it made no architectural sense.
I've not played KotOR 2 since it came out, though, so I have no idea what I'd make of it now. KotOR 1 I suspect I'd find very dated now, but at the time it was exactly what I wanted from Star Wars.
Interesting, the animations don't bother me. The voice acting, especially Kreia, is phenomenal. I can go back and play Baldur's Gate, Fallout, or a newer CRPG like Pillars and don't mind the lack of animations or that not everything is voice acted. While the Witcher 3 I struggle to play or really care about. I like the books but the games never hooked me.
I disagree but we'll have to agree to disagree on the merits and demerits of each game.
KotOR II has been more recently updated so it supports widescreen, HD resolutions, and runs smoother on newer systems. KotOR I has not had that luxury and is stuck to sub-HD resolutions, 4:6 screen, and has some odd bugs (like not being able to move after combat) without mods.
Older games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Pillars are all fine. I also absolutely adore narrative games like Citizen Sleeper, where there's very minimal visual depiction. Much more visual novel style. In those cases you generally just have text, so as long as the text is high quality you're all good to go. Same with something like Hades, where the art is gorgeous but it's just static portraits in conversations.
The 2000s-era Bioware style was to have movie-like conversation scenes, cutting back and forth based on who is talking. Once you introduce a strong visual element, it needs to hold up to the quality of the other aspects (ie, voice acting and writing). Perhaps in 2003, when KotOR 1 came out, it didn't bother me because at the time that was up there with as good as it got in games.
KotOR 2 came out in Europe in 2005, I think. By this point Half Life 2 had been released towards the end of 2004, a game which for me massively advanced the depiction of 'drama' within a game setting. Obviously a very different TYPE of game, but the bar had been raised regardless. KotOR 2 perhaps suffered in comparison, which is unfair perhaps but it might explain where my brain was at.
Jon Ingold of Inkle Studios had some interesting things to say about narrative in a podcast I listened to recently. One point he made was in not liking lengthy dialogue in games, which is certainly something I've come to agree with over the years. If a game is going to take away control and make me listen to a character talk AT me, that dialogue had better be the best ever written. :)
I should say, none of this is to try to dissuade you from loving KotOR 2! I know it's a much loved thing. I did play it all the way through, so clearly I enjoyed it enough for that at the time. :) It just didn't quite click with me in the same way.
I agree with the Bioware, and Bethesda, style of talking head conversations being quite dull if the dialogue is uninteresting, I just find KotOR II to have good discussions, especially with most of the party characters. Oddly the more games have become visually stunning the less I have enjoyed them. Occasionally there's something that grabs me, such as Elden Ring and Final Fantasy XVI, but I was monumentally bored by God of War and Horizon that I never finished either. I didn't bother with SpiderMan or Alan Wake, just looked uninteresting. Though Ghost of Tsushima was excellent too.
I've never played Half-Life but I remember Final Fantasy X when I was 9 to have been a similar eye opening moment. Up till then I'd played Pokemon, platformers like Oddworld, and a whole lot of old arcade games. KotOR II was unfinished due to LucasArts imposed release date meaning the whole game had 14 months development and that certainly hurts it too. But again it came about at a time when, in my experience, no other game had dug so deep into philosophy nor took a critical eye to its own universe. So many of our formative books, games, films, events, have to occur at just the right time.
I don't mind lengthy dialogue so long as it isn't info-dumps masquerading as conversations (e.g. Mass Effect) or busy work (e.g. Fallout 4). Around the mid-2010s games started to be filled with busy work, Dragon Age: Inquisition is a good example though by no means the first. Systems simply to keep you playing longer. What has amazed me in going back to play old games like FFX or the KotORs is how short they are. 30 hours max. There is no busy work in the games, sure FFX has some but it's all in the endgame and doesn't interrupt the story. Yet now every big game has base building, crafting, resource gathering, collectibles, just bullshit to keep you playing. One thing I was glad FFXVI didn't have and in Elden Ring you can pretty much ignore the crafting mechanic if you want. It's like every game has turned into an MMO. And the way devs often introduce this stuff is through a character with heaps of dialogue or tonnes of tooltips.
On lengthy dialogue more specifically, there is a fine balance between engaging conversations and a lecture. Not every character is going to be a wordsmith like the crew of Enterprise in TNG, yet some games try and do that, and what engages one player will have another running for the hills. Games are also a unique form of narrative potential and relying on dialogue is too like a movie, I don't want to play a movie, I want to play a game and that requires interaction. Though saying that the literal movies Kojima put in MGS4 get a pass from me, they're phenomenal, but he has said before that he would have liked to be a film director.
Yeah, the padding in modern games, especially open world games, is horrendous. I generally don't play open world games anymore unless it's something truly exceptional. If a dev brags that their games has 'over 50 hours' of content, or 'the biggest map ever', it's an immediate don't play for me. I don't trust that the devs will treat my time with respect.
Horizon is a good example: I actually really like what I've encountered of the main story, but the surrounding game is so sprawling it detracts from the overall experience. I've never finished it for that reason.
Though, the Spider-Man games are great fun: they're also, notably, not very long. While there is 'filler' stuff around the city if you want it, you can also just get on with the story, which is told tightly and doesn't overstay its welcome.
Ghosts of Tshushima just got announced for PC, so I am very much looking forward to that one.
I get what you say about your interest diminishing as production values have gone up. The problem, I think, is that a game with high production values has to be REALLY perfect to work, because it's so much closer to reality, or to a movie or cartoon in presentation. The slightest thing knocks it down. Whereas more retro games, or actual games from the 90s, couldn't rely on the flashy presentation. The Monkey Island games stick in my mind not only because of my age in the 90s, but because the presentation left a lot to my own imagination.
A recent game that entirely captivated me was Sea of Stars. Retro stylings, but a story and engaging throughout. Have you played it?