No KOTOR For PS2, Darth Vader Playable?
Thanks to IGN PS2 for their second Playstation 2 rumor round-up, including plenty of questionable whisperings (GTA4 is referenced as possibly being called 'Sin City', though this was a notable April Fool's gag), but at least one official confirmation, from Lucasarts, following some online confusion, that "There are no plans for to develop Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for the PS2. We are concentrating fully on the development of the PC version of the game." The rest of the rumor-mongering has at least one intriguing tip, the claim that LucasArts are developing "a third-person perspective action-adventure game [which] enables players to take on the role of Darth Vader."
This game is something that the PS2 would not be able to run unless it was cut down so far as to make the game useless. Save files for it are 64megs in save, for crynig out loud! You're as likely to see Morrowind on the PS2 as KOTOR.
If you've played the game, you know the enormous amount of detail that was put into it. They'de have to take out all bump mapping, shrink the levels, remove most of the NPCs, etc, etc. The PS2 just doesn't have the graphics power and RAM to execute this game. Plus, there's no way for Bioware to release updates to the game on the PS2; even if they figured out how to release updates via Sony's network adaptor (without any of the Live! infrastructure), where'd you put it? Assuming you could do a 4/1 compression on the save file, you'd still take 2 full memory cards with each KOTOR save.
I think you should play this game, as it is excellent. Wether you do so on your PC or you Xbox is up to you. If you don't have either, consider getting one; the more systems you own, the more games you can play, the less likely you'll ever miss out on anything cool.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The cool thing about Vader is the fact that he's so bad-ass he doesn't do those type of things. He's all about choking people from afar using his fingers and lightsabers. He's about presence and fear. He's management. Vader let's his minions do the piddly stuff and steps in to finish it off. This game design really, really worries me.
Pff, I've spent the last week playing the SNES I just got, and among the only games I've managed to borrow are the three Star Wars games - play those and then play KOTOR, and the difference is staggering.
As for the Tie Fighter/Rogue Squadron/etc. games, I find them too repetetive generaly - well done, but really, another space dogfighting game? For that matter, another Star Wars space dogfighting game? I had my fill with Wing Commander III, which at least had something resembling a unique plotline to go with the gameplay.
KOTOR, however, has renewed my faith in the Lucasarts team and Star Wars games in general. It really is amazing, and other than the 'save game is accidentally corrupted' bug, the worst part is the number of people I deal with on a day to day basis that won't stop talking about it. Whether that's actually a bad thing or not depends on whether or not you like to hear 'war stories' about RP games. If so, it's a definite plus.
--Dan