Slashdot Mirror
KOTOR II Pushed To Retail Too Soon?
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."
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.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I haven't even finished the first one yet.
Thanks! Based on that review I've stopped my torrent download.
Trolling is a art,
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.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
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 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
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.
they probably had to release it this past Christmas if they wanted a decent profit.
see the Obsidian Forums or the Lucas Forums.
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.
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 software developers ever just wait to release a product until it is actually ready?
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bioware was not involved in the sequel. Someone else picked up the code and churned this game out.
Any improvements that would have went into this sequel will end up in Bioware's Jade Empire.
http://jade.bioware.com/
To bad it's only for XBOX. I hope it's released for the PC because it sure looks like a cool game.
Considering that Obsidian Entertainment is also developing Neverwinter Nights 2, their bungling of KotOR II worries me.
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.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Historically, the very first batch of pen-and-paper contained a good section of fantasy representation. All from most likely well before you were even born. Gamma World, RIFTS, the original star wars RPG, all jewels from teh golden age of roleplaying. And by roleplaying i mean rollplaying.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
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, frankly.
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 get the game out.
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.
I was a fan of KOTOR I, and I have to say that this game is not bad. People complain about crashes, but they don't matter if you save often. In addition, this crappy ending is not the fault of Obsidian but LucasArts. Dialog has been found in the pc game files for unseen cutscenes. This forum describes the left out stuff: http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic= 29764&st=15
"You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak."
:)
And to make this a useful post rather than a random flame, I cite Grand Theft Auto, the original, in software mode. You NEVER get graphics glitches if you don't enable hardware acceleration
which makes it all the more non sensical that it would suck. I mean, these are the guys who brought us Planescape:Torment (go play it, right now, don't even finsh reading the comment!). I didn't have high hopes for Kotor II, Kotor I sucked for everyone but Starwars and Xbox fan boys (weak graphics in later levels, totally linear leveling up, 2D characters who don't give a shit if you're evil or good. Tacked on Side quests, etc, etc. Yes, I have reasons for disliking it. Hell, I bought a new Graphics Card so I could play it). Some part of me hoped Black Isle could save it, but I'm sure with the production schedual they were on it was hopeless. I've read some good things about it (light side characters leaving when you go Dark Side, better leveling, etc). Oh well, The Witcher is on the way, and without a big license maybe it'll get proper treatment. Damn though, Torment was so good, I really want another game from these people.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
No sig for you!!
http://www.petitiononline.com/kotor2/petition.html
Probably won't change anything, although it's a magnitude better than silence.
..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?
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 the game.
Maybe I'm anal about my critiques, but so far whenever I have judged a game by the manual I haven't been wrong.
It took me about 5 hours to install this game, I have a athlon XP 3000+ with 512MB of ram, 9200se ATI Radeon, blah blah blah. The installer wouldn't copy the swkotor2.exe or the language file over to my PC. I did that manually. I think it kept puking on the installation of the DX9.0c , I already had it installed thanks to Pirates!.
The fit and finish of the game is lacking, to many quirky bugs, plus I feel like most of the time there's only one way of doing something, even if you try to be evil.
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.
Who do you blame? I'd put my money on Lucas Arts, they rushed Obsidian so that they could get the Xbox version out before Christmas.
I just hope there's a patch on the way. No one from LA or Obsidian has confirmed that there is yet, to my understanding.
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
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.
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 can't believe you mentioned Rifts and not the grand-daddy of all space RPG's, "Traveler"!
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
>Icewind Dale I and II were not that good IMO
They're both great when you play them multiplayer. Get your friends online, roll a character each, have a hack'n'slash ball.
That way you take the weak part (story) and turn it around into a feature. When you MP you don't care about the story anyhow, it's just about doing combat and finding strategies together with your friends.
The story was largely excellent, parent just obviously didn't understand it...
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
bah!*@%!
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 trying to do stuff before I figured it was a bug and restored.
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.
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 play the first would ever win - heck, they don't tell you how to start, speed up, jump - nothing - you have to figure it out. In the first at least you'd win the first few races by missing a few of the boost points - not in this - you need to hit something like 10 of 12 to win while dodging an obstacle course that made the first game's hardest track look easy. Most XBox owners I know just used the cheat, which doesn't work on PC as far as I can tell (or my timing was bad).
- 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 score.
- Even if you don't forfeit a race, the current state of my game is that a winning time is never acknowledged. I got a time of 44 seconds on my second try (I didn't try for the top score, but 44 seconds wasn't too hard), and the very bland (compare to the Hutt on tattoine in KotOR1, for instance - all the KotOR2 characters seem quite 2-dimensional in comparison) swoop racing official says "nice try but you didn't beat any records"; however, when you ask him to list the track records, your name comes up. Which is nice and all, but you don't get any reward for winning, or the adulation of the masses (if they bothered to code any of that..I tend to doubt it).
Also, see this thread on the game"The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48
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 am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
The trade rags gushed how good it was. Amazon water-cooler reviews said it was horrible, the plot sucked, but that I should buy it anyway.
My wife and I rented it Friday and we played it all weekend. It was worth every penny. We might even keep it late, but I won't buy it. That's not the way with RPGs. Rent it, play it for a week, then return it and forget about it for 6 months. Rent it again, play it as evil this time, return it and forget about it for 6 months. See the PC version in the bargain bin for 10$, get it, patch and hex edit it, get ridiculous, then trade it in or ebay it.
When you buy a RPG you buy *1* story. (No, non-linear doesn't work, you get sick of the common elements the second time through.) When you buy a head-to-head FPS you buy as many stories as you like. Who do you think wrote the script for KOTOR II, Shakespeare? How much would you pay for the dreck in one of the new Star Wars paperbacks? Spend no more than that on KOTOR II and you will be happy.
New games show up on the Internet every day. Most can be played for free. Think about it.
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 gave up - the 500 credits aren't worth it. Not to mention that the track was more interesting.
I agree, though, something seems skew with the view perspective making the characters look kind of flattened. It may be a byproduct of using a certain resolution, though, so I plan to test a different resolution and see if it fixes things (I'm currently at 1024x768 and I think the "base" of the PC version of the game is 800x600)
I've also been disappointed with most of the planets - very bland and not a whole lot to figure out on them. The exception is probably the Exchange homeworld, aside from combat on that world has been far too easy, especially after the Sith homeworld (I suspect it wasn't meant to be played in that order, but you can do it).
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 streams as well, so perhaps it was just sheer incompetence.
"The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48