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."

Comments

Phew!

[grub]

Thanks! Based on that review I've stopped my torrent download.

A massive letdown - it's unfinished

[diseasesofseamen]

I just finished it the other night. Without a doubt, the ending was vastly simplified at some point. It's ruined for me, almost completely. It's not what was advertised, certainly. All the complex interactions between characters, the careful building up of influence, the moral issues raised - it is all simply frittered away. It's one of the worst endings to any RPG I've ever seen, and I've played a ton. This regrettable state of affairs does lend heavily to one of three conclusions:

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.

Re:A massive letdown - it's unfinished

[taion]

If you dig around on the forums, you'll see signs of the original ending, which was very PS:T-y. Apparently it was even in some preview builds, which was what was referenced when the previewers talked about influence mattering and absolutely heartrending endings. The stuff was all written, too. No clue why it didn't make it in --- maybe LucasArts decided that having an ending that actually tugged on anybody's emotional strings would've been too much?

The stuff is here, but you'll need to go to the second page to see that formatted in a way that's really readable. If you dig around in the proper directories, you can actually find the freaking recorded dialogue for those scenes. It really rather annoys me that they lobotomised what would've been a spectacularly touching ending.

Bugs? We've got bugs!

[Ahnteis]

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.

So glad

[TheAdventurer]

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.