Absinthe
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2012
- Messages
- 4,062
KotOR's gameplay fucking sucked. The story was mostly celebrated for no other reason than being an opportunity to play a Star Wars hero in a game that focused on the Star Wars narrative. Some people really liked that.I remember when it was released on PC, or maybe year or two later, I was playing Jedi Academy a lot, and once upon a time a buddy of mine brought me a disc with pirated version of kotor he thought I'd like it. After playing for like 30 minutes I was completely disgusted with the absolutely horrible gameplay of this piece of shit, and uninstalled it forever, didn't talk to that guy for the next month.
And yet, I look at the internet and the game was received very well, people still have huge nostalgia for it etc. wtf is this, explain yourself KOTORDS. Don't even try to tell me that "hurr it couldn't be done differently", because Jedi Knight 2, that gameplay of JA is only an evolution of is like 3 years older than KOTURD. Maybe it couldn't be done differently to satistfy average KOTURDER but let's be honest, down-syndrome children are rare thanks to widespread eugenic abortions, and so by 2020 there shouldn't be that many alive for them to post on forums about videogames.
Not really a big KotOR fan, but I know some reasons why it was well received:
- KotOR was set in the Old Republic times - it was a breath of fresh air at the time.
- There are common melee weapons that can withstand lightsabers, so Force Users can't melt everything.
- It used D20 system (there are actual rolls involved).
- It's not an action game.
- In KotOR 1 you get to be cool (story-wise) one point in the game (other than that it was trashy run-of-the-mill story you could expect).
- Some companions are interesting (KotOR 2 had more interesting companions).
- KotOR 2 had a fairly original and not one-dimensional plot (considering the setting), so I liked it a lot more.
- Old Republic times were kinda interesting but nothing special was done there. It was just a rehash of a Star Wars story.
- It's also mostly the shields rather than the weapons that withstand lightsabers.
- Being a d20 system was by no means a fucking improvement. The gameplay is absolute fucking garbage in KotOR 1 and 2, and anyone who thinks there is inherent value in a d20 system ought to be smacked. The AI and balance are both complete shit.
- Not being an action game is not an improvement either. If anything it would probably have been better as an action game because then there would be actual impetus to use your head, if only slightly. This shit is less engaging than fucking Diablo-likes.
- Being a Star Wars hero is pretty much the whole appeal of the game.
- Maybe. Depends on the person, I guess.
- Ditto.
An interesting take, but wrong. Cinematic presentation has been a part of pretty much every fucking Star Wars game. And RPGs had been doing cinematics long before KotOR ever came out. KotOR in no way represented something new on that front, nor did it represent particularly good graphics. What you are doing is basically historical revisionism in order to make KotOR look ground-breaking somehow. What KotOR did do, was give the player an opportunity to play out a typical Star Wars adventure as a Star Wars hero. They did focus on the look and feel of a Star Wars adventure, yes. And it made a lot of Star Wars fans happy, especially the ones who didn't like action games so much.I've said this before. KoTOR's innovation was cinematic presentation.
Before a certain game, RPGs were slow, grindy, number crunchers for nerds. After a certain game, RPGs became cinematic spectacles. That game was Final Fantasy 7.
You may not think JRPGs are "real" RPGs or whatever, but that is irrelevant. Game publishers absolutely did not see that distinction in 1997. They only saw a game with stats and level-ups selling ten times the number of copies anyone even thought an RPG could sell. It was actually embarrassing to western devs, many of which were told to develop 'FF7-killers' ASAP. This inspired games like PST and Anachronox, but they failed to understand FF7's true appeal.
It was Bioware who succeeded at stealing the thunder from Squaresoft. They understood the game was about the cinematic look and feel, so they set about doing the same with Star Wars. Under the hood, KoTOR is the same game as Neverwinter Nights, but it looks and feels completely different. The shot-reverse shot camera angles, close up for dialogues, full VO, and the cinematic animations for battles make the whole game feel like you are playing a star wars film.
Story and choices are red herrings. The point of Bioware games has never been to have a deep or reactive story. It's to have a story that looks and feels dramatic. It's all smoke and mirrors.
The cinematic RPG is sort of dead now so it's easy to look back at KoTOR and say yeah it's not a great game (i've always thought the story and characters were trash). But that was never the point, while the use of full voiced dialogue and cinematic framing in every part of the game was quite revolutionary.
Nah, Kreia is dark side alright (although also somewhat gray-sided in her own way), but murdering the Jedi masters was not her goal. If you kill the Jedi masters yourself she'll really lay into you. What Kreia was looking to do was prove her way of teaching, demonstrate the flaws in the Jedi masters' way of doing things, and make them broaden their perspectives. The protagonist is on some level proof of Kreia's teachings and the errors of the Jedi masters, an opportunity for them to understand where they went wrong and fucked things up so colossally. It's just that during your meeting the Jedi masters prove they're not learning animals and double down on their mistakes, resolving to fuck your character over, at which point Kreia has pretty much had it with their shit and steps in before the wrongdoing can set in. But her goal was never to kill them. That was just the unfortunate outcome.Kreia manipulates and sabotages your crew for her own ends and openly tells you to treat everyone like disposable tools, intentionally sets up conflict and then murders the Jedi masters. That’s not really morally grey, I’d say she’s fairly sinister throughout. She’s not a cackling villain but she is the villain.
And Kreia's villainy is a bit sketchy too. She definitely does villainous things, but I think half her goal was to get you ready for dealing with the threat of the True Sith who were a massive threat to the galaxy.