Development Info KOTOR 2 - suffering from amnesia according to IGN

[Whipporowill]

Tags: Obsidian Entertainment; Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords

<a href="http://xbox.ign.com/articles/547/547349p1.html?fromint=1" target=_blank>A little piece</a> on the new force powers and some basic KOTOR 2 story info has surfaced on <a href="http://www.ign.com" target=_blank>IGN</a>. There's also a <a href="http://media.xbox.ign.com/media/679/679264/vids_1.html?fromint=1" target=_blank>short clip</a> of the new force powers in "action", which is pretty funny considering most of them have no obvious effect apart from some flares of colour and a slight character animation. Anyhow, here's the <b>really</b> funny bit:
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<blockquote>You start the game in a medical facility on Peragus Station, a remote asteroid mining operation. You have no recollection of who you are, how you got there, or why you're hurt. And yes, this does sound familiar. In just five brief years, you're the only known Jedi left in the universe, and now it's up to you to carry on the ideals and beliefs of the Jedi.
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</blockquote>I thought Avellone refuted the amnesia part, but apparently either IGN aren't aware of this, Avellone suffered from amnesia himself or it's just a plain ole' misunderstanding. I guess we'll see, won't we?
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPG Dot</A>

 

[Vault Dweller]

Actually, you are The Nameless One and Revan was one of the many reincarnations.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Its a little bit different from the first one because in the first you knew who you were in the beginning you just found some more poop about you later, in the second one its all "OMG WHERE AM I?" stuff.

 

[Jung]

Sounds lame.

 

[Whipporowill]

Well, I guess it could be some sort of initial amnesia - due to being hit by a lump of space rock or something, but passes after the tutorial where you fix your ship and learn about how Kotor played out in your Star Wars dimension. Dunno.

 

[Whipporowill]

A little dev comment from the Obsidian board, courtesy of Senõr AnthonyD:

The character does not have amnesia, though he/she may be a bit groggy after coming to.

Here is the deal, the 'character' knows who they are, it is *YOU* the player that doesn't know who the 'character' is. Make sense? Didn't think so.

When you pick up a brand new book to read, assuming the main character doesn't actually have amnesia, how much do you know about the character at page 1? Probably not a whole lot. Does this mean the character has amnesia? No.

 

[Jung]

A little dev comment from the Obsidian board, courtesy of Senõr AnthonyD:

The character does not have amnesia, though he/she may be a bit groggy after coming to.

Here is the deal, the 'character' knows who they are, it is *YOU* the player that doesn't know who the 'character' is. Make sense? Didn't think so.

When you pick up a brand new book to read, assuming the main character doesn't actually have amnesia, how much do you know about the character at page 1? Probably not a whole lot. Does this mean the character has amnesia? No.

Yeah, but if the book is part two, then I know all about the character on page 1.

 

[DamnElfGirl]

Makes sense to me. But unlike some of the fine folks at IGN, I occasionally dip into those "book" thingies.

 

[Voss]

Yet another reason why people need to understand that novel writing is not the same as game writing.
A character in a book isn't supposed to be the player, or a stand in for the player, or a local representation for the player. The character in a computer game is. Particularly in an RPG. There isn't a good non-hackneyed-writing way that the character would be clueless about himself. Its just laziness on the part of the writers. Even a brief dialogue with Bob the personnel robot where you choose some options from a dialogue tree would be better than groggy-ness. Hell, an interactive cut-scene with a fucking fortune teller is more impressive.

 

[Whipporowill]

A little dev comment from the Obsidian board, courtesy of Senõr AnthonyD:

The character does not have amnesia, though he/she may be a bit groggy after coming to.

Here is the deal, the 'character' knows who they are, it is *YOU* the player that doesn't know who the 'character' is. Make sense? Didn't think so.

When you pick up a brand new book to read, assuming the main character doesn't actually have amnesia, how much do you know about the character at page 1? Probably not a whole lot. Does this mean the character has amnesia? No.

Yeah, but if the book is part two, then I know all about the character on page 1.

Unless we're playing Revan this time (boy, wouldn't THAT be a surprise) I wouldn't say that's the case. This is a brand new honcho/honchette you're controlling.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Somebody had to end up having amnesia it takes all the work out of creating a twist in the plot. The main character will end up crash landing on a planet and turn out to be jedi-jesus who saves all our souls.

 

[Limorkil]

I'm only about halfway through kotor 1 at the moment. There's been no mention of my character having amnesia. Apparently my character knows who she is, but the game hasn't bothered to tell me yet. I keep getting questions from Carth and others about my background, but I just can't answer them because me, the player, has none. I suppose I make my own background by picking whatever response I prefer. In this sense, kotor 2 sounds no different from kotor 1.

I've done a good job of avoiding kotor spoilers so far, although I hardly need them because it couldn't be more obvious. Lets not forget the old mystery show maxim:

If the police supsect him, he didn't do it.
If there's no body, he's not dead.
If the body is unrecognisable, it's not him.
If he had an affair some years back, he has a child he never knew.
If he died some years ago, he didn't.
If he went missing a while ago, he's back.
If he went to prison some years back, he's out.
If you never see what he looks like, he's here.
If you have amnesia, he's you.

 

[littleboy]

I belive it has been stated earlier that during conversations you have with npc's on the first planet you get to decide what happend in the previous game, that probably affects you charicter and where he/she could have come from and how they got to be where they are. And the whole reason game writers keep going back to amnesia/forgefullness etc. is that it doesn't place any intial restrictions on what charicter type a player chooses or what that charicter choses to be in the future.

 

[DamnElfGirl]

I belive it has been stated earlier that during conversations you have with npc's on the first planet you get to decide what happend in the previous game, that probably affects you charicter and where he/she could have come from and how they got to be where they are.

So they're using dialog to let you establish your character's background. Been done before, not a bad way to do it. Perhaps this method confuses those of very little brain ("What am I supposed to answer? How do I knoooooow?"), but I tend to like it. I think it's a good way to adapt the literary convention of gradual character introduction into computer game format.

 

[littleboy]

well it's pretty much ether that or have a completly different begining for each starting peramiter, and that might take a bit more time than a lot of developers want to spend.

 

[JanC]

So they're using dialog to let you establish your character's background. Been done before, not a bad way to do it. Perhaps this method confuses those of very little brain ("What am I supposed to answer? How do I knoooooow?"), but I tend to like it. I think it's a good way to adapt the literary convention of gradual character introduction into computer game format.

It is a good idea. And if it is used often enough and well enough even those of little clue will get to understand the convention. I can see it catching on as a substitute for the old amnesia cliche. I think they were taking pains to avoid the amnesia cliche in KOTOR 1.

 

[Volourn]

Meh. Since most of us here are likely to buy the agme when it coeks out in February, we can judge its "amnesia" storyline then...

 

[ichpokhudezh]

It's a bit of a spoiler, but it seems that the only(?) question is whether Revan was a male of a female....

 

[Limorkil]

It's a bit of a spoiler, but it seems that the only(?) question is whether Revan was a male of a female....

The more I read about Kotor 2, the more it sounds like BG2. Sounds like Imoen is on the scene, all we need is for Jon Irenicus to show up.

 

[littleboy]

Okay the game looks nice, Okay i'm probably going to buy it and piss the girlfreind off by staying up till 4 in the morrning playing the game, but that doesn't excuse the bloody gushing going on in that board over the game. They sound like 14yr old girls after seeing some lame New Kids on the Block clone.

 

[littleboy]

Sounds like Imoen is on the scene, all we need is for Jon Irenicus to show up.

I remember trying very hard to kill her and get away with it at the very start of BG

 

[JanC]

It's a bit of a spoiler, but it seems that the only(?) question is whether Revan was a male of a female....

Oh, that is not so good. I was expecting it to ask whether Revan was Dark or Light side at least.

 

[Spazmo]

This stuff they're talking about is probably there because right after you wake up on <strike>the mortuary slab</strike> the bed in the medical bay, you get into that sequence where a your responses in a dialog with an NPC determine what happened in the first KOTOR that we heard about in a different article.

 

[Sammael]

If KoTOR2's protagonist is TNO, I'm going to pre-order 100 copies of the game.

Remember the sequence with one of the sensory stones where TNO is the captain of a ship? It didn't say what kind of a ship it was, right? Right?

Nah. And you people are really underestimating MCA.

 

[Vault Dweller]

It's not MCA that we are concerned about. There are other factors affecting game developments like marketing, publishers, license owners, etc. Temple of Trials otherwise known as "gotta have a starting dungeon tutorial thingy" is one of the examples.