Interview GameSpy & Feargus talk KOTOR2

[Spazmo]

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

<a href=http://www.gamespy.com>GameSpy</a> managed to get our old pal <b>Feargus Urquhart</b> to do an <a href=http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic-2/565256p1.html>interview</a> concerning their very soon to be released Knights of the Old Republic 2.<blockquote>GameSpy: The original game had a problem in that the Jedi tended to be a bit overpowered -- to the point where players missed some of the storyline because they weren't using all the available characters. How are you changing the game to make sure that all of the player's NPC allies are useful this time around?
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Feargus Urquhart: There are a number of things that we've done to keep your other companions interesting throughout the game. Some if it will be a part of the story, while others will be useful in what they can do for you on the Ebon Hawk. What has also turned out be a great way to keep your favorite companions around is that depending on what you do in the game, you can convince many of them to become Jedi.
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The biggest change was having specific quests in the game where only a certain character or characters can do them -- and those characters are not the PC. So for certain portions of the game, while you character is off doing one branch of the story, a small group of NPCs will be in a party of their own taking care of a different branch</blockquote>So the solution to overpowered jedi party members is to make everyone an overpowered jedi. Well, I guess it'll work and the high level of party interaction in KOTOR2 does sound pretty cool.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>

 

[The Exar]

There are a number of things that we've done to keep your other companions interesting throughout the game. Some if it will be a part of the story, while others will be useful in what they can do for you on the Ebon Hawk.

Does that mean that they are finaly going to manipulate the ship instead of you? Proverbius realy wanted that if you remember the review.

Our lead designer and one of Obsidian's owners, Chris Avellone, set out to read everything.

Hm...thats the proper way of doing things...We can only hope his hard reading isn't wasted.

For people who didn't play the first game, they can just say they don't know and the game happily continues after that.

That doesn't sound good.

Both the PC and Xbox version will be the same in the end; however, we have put in a lot of work on the PC interface. It will now work in multiple resolutions in full screen. That not only includes the menus, but the in-game buttons and graphics as well. So, when you take the resolution all the way up, the interface won't just be smaller in the middle of the screen with a nice border.

A perfect example of: I speak much, but I dont actualy say something. What about the interface - inventory and stats screens? They were AWFULL! I hope they are somehow mdified..

Our goal has always been to craft a story that the player loves and enjoys playing.

That's why they were reading...

each of the companions is not only going to have very distinctly different personalities and roles to play in the story, they also each have special abilities that no other character can get.

I hope that makes them more useful.(what about a charcater with special ability like the Candeous Ordo's implant? Pretty useless, by my oppinion...)

 

[Limorkil]

There's one part in Kotor when you have to use one of your companions to rescue everyone else and you get to pick which companion to use. Its only a short segment but its one of my favorite parts. Sounds like the feedback is that other people liked it too, which is why Kotor 2 will have more of it I assume.

There's an element of the gaming community that is either (a) soley focused on having a very very easy and uninteresting gameplay experience or (b) woefully inept, because I keep hearing about these people playing Kotor who pick up the two best Jedi companions and then use them throughout the game, not having any interaction with the other companions except when the game forces them to do so. I could understand it if the game was so hard that it needed the most powerful characters, but it isn't. This is a game where you play on the hardest setting the first time through because anything less is laughable easy, and even on the hardest setting you rarely - if ever - have to use specific tactics or issue specific commands to your companions or your main character. This is a game where your main character can be a Jedi Consular, the most mage-like of the jedi, and yet still kick all the bad guys asses using a single lightsaber and no force powers. Hell, during the last few levels that are meant to be hard, I could just let my companions do all the fighting while I took my hands off the controller and drank my coffee, and only one of them was a jedi (because the game forced me to take that companion with me). What I am saying is, there wasn't really any need to use the overpowered jedi and those people that did are probably so stupid that they will do the same thing again in Kotor 2 regardless, so there's hardly any point trying to balance out the companions for them.

 

[The Exar]

There's an element of the gaming community that is either (a) soley focused on having a very very easy and uninteresting gameplay experience or (b) woefully inept, because I keep hearing about these people playing Kotor who pick up the two best Jedi companions and then use them throughout the game, not having any interaction with the other companions except when the game forces them to do so..

All we know how to call such "gamers": lamers. I feel sorry for them. But what's the bad thing? THERE ARE TOO MANY OF THEM. Really. To solve the problem I suggest posting a handbook: "How to protect yourself from the lamer within."

 

[kumquatq3]

Does that mean that they are finaly going to manipulate the ship instead of you? Proverbius realy wanted that if you remember the review.

I think he said he wanted them to A) move around instead of standing in the same spot B) Man the turrets.

In K2, for example, T3 will apparently move around the ship welding things (tho it doesn't actaully do anything, afaik, it's just for show). It seems at least some NPC move around on the ship.

O and as reported before, the turret thing is optional now, so that kinda kills the idea of having to bother putting a NPC in there

That doesn't sound good.

I'm sure it just has a default path if you don't know what happened to Revan. Maybe it's random. Dunno, but I don't see why it sounds bad.

A perfect example of: I speak much, but I dont actualy say something. What about the interface - inventory and stats screens? They were AWFULL! I hope they are somehow mdified..

The inventory will now have filters and a promise to fix that "datapad" problem from K1. As for the stats screen, dunno

I hope that makes them more useful.(what about a charcater with special ability like the Candeous Ordo's implant? Pretty useless, by my oppinion...)

Each PNPC has 2 abilities it seems. Here are the ones I can recall:

Mira: Has a armed mounted rocket launcher (think Boba Fett) that basically seems to work as a grenade without as much lag time between throwing it and it exploding. So, the enemy can't move out of the way.

She also has something, iirc, called "point". This means she doesn't set off mines, and if she is leading the party, no one else does either.

Atton: Can't be knocked out unless the two other members of your party are knocked out first. He has something else too. He apparently does this thing where he says "I have a bad feeling about this" (a la Han) that lets you know it's time to save. Not sure if thats it tho. O just remembered, he is very hard to Stun, poison, or paralyze.

T3: He functions as a half a work bench. I guess some items you can assemble or break down, others he can't. Another NPC, which I'll get to, can do the rest of the items. So together they make a full mobile work bench. Since the things a bench can do have been increased, one can argue how usefull that will be. Not sure what else T3 can do, but MCA says:

T3, as the testers have discovered, kicks incredible amounts of ass. His droid-specific items are pretty good, in addition to his other skills and abilities. He's far from useless.

T3 has at least two side-quests in the game, as well as backstory and secrets to unlock. He'll play a vital role in the game, much like R2 did in Episodes IV, V, and VI.

Bao-Dur: He is the (seemingly) Non-jedi guy that is a member of Darth Mauls species. His arm (it's mechanical) allows him to 'bash' down certain force field doors quickly. His robot (think of those little floating orbs Luke practiced against on the Falcon in episode 4) will help you in combat by shooting enemies or repairing friendly droids. He upgrades it over the course of the game. Either he or his droid function as the 2nd half of the mobile workbench.

Kriea: From the LA website:

Kreia gives everyone an earned experience bonus. Even better, the unique bond she shares with the player allows him to Force Chain attacks and defense. Any Force Power cast on Kreia or the player will be automatically applied to the other party members as well.

The exp bonus works like this:

It's a percentage. The amount of the percentage goes up as Kreia goes up in level. The stages are 3%, 5%, 7%, the levels are at 1, 7, 13.

Well, thats everything I can remember about that. Apparently, some (or all) party members will have their own unique drawbacks as well.

 

[kumquatq3]

What I am saying is, there wasn't really any need to use the overpowered jedi and those people that did are probably so stupid that they will do the same thing again in Kotor 2 regardless, so there's hardly any point trying to balance out the companions for them.

I suppose not, but it seems they tried anyways.

The way I understand it is: The only Jedi you get in your party are either very old or new/in training. So, I assume their stats arn't quite as high as the jedi from K1. Tho there could very well be some uber-jedi part member, but we really don't know about it yet. There are only a few NPCs left that havn't been revealed tho.

They also tried to further seperate the different jedi classes. It seems a consular will have a tougher time chopping his way through enemies. On one of the screenshots it shows the screen where you choose Male/Female and what type of jedi to be. The consular has a note attached to it: Recommended for advanced players only.

So I'm not sure if they were successful with all this, but it seems they tried a few things.

 

[geminito]

Re: GameSpy & Feargus talk KOTOR2

...the high level of party interaction in KOTOR2 does sound pretty cool.

Oh that reminds of what I hated the most about KOTOR 1... The high level of party interaction. Way too much talking for nothing.

[KOTOR2 looks like it has something to say to you.]

I don't want to hear it.

 

[ichpokhudezh]

What I am saying is, there wasn't really any need to use the overpowered jedi

...
The way I understand it is: The only Jedi you get in your party are either very old or new/in training. So, I assume their stats arn't quite as high as the jedi from K1

This worries me much more than just a little, since this might have forced developers to introduce immediately tangible stats scaling. Original KotOR employed it to match the overpowered PC, but it was relatively subtle and rare (every 4 levels, if I'm not mistaken).
I strongly dislike scaling up of the enemies. Besides, having companions with various levels of abilities actually created an extra difficulty ladder based on party members(all jedi -> no jedi -> t3 -> solo).

It seems a consular will have a tougher time chopping his way through enemies.

Hopefully, some improved scoring has been implemented for non-violent solutions. Chop-fest/force storm spamming in an LS game was extremely irritating.

I would assume that the 'advanced players only' recommendation is related more to the fact that auto-levelling would screw up a consular PC in no time.

 

[Limorkil]

Re: GameSpy & Feargus talk KOTOR2

...the high level of party interaction in KOTOR2 does sound pretty cool.

Oh that reminds of what I hated the most about KOTOR 1... The high level of party interaction. Way too much talking for nothing.

[KOTOR2 looks like it has something to say to you.]

I don't want to hear it.

I don't understand why games don't give you more options to choose how you want to play. Kotor gave you options to control the level of feedback, but nothing to control how much 'help' it gave you. In addition to difficulty settings (and Kotor was way too easy IMO) I would like to choose an assistance level "Lots", "Some", "None". (Or advanced/beginner or something.) If you chose that you did not need help then it wouldn't do things like "[Carth looks like he wants to distract you]" or give you step by step clues for everything you have to do ("Enough with the frickin data pads already").

 

[AlanC9]

Re: GameSpy & Feargus talk KOTOR2

I don't understand why games don't give you more options to choose how you want to play. Kotor gave you options to control the level of feedback, but nothing to control how much 'help' it gave you. In addition to difficulty settings (and Kotor was way too easy IMO) I would like to choose an assistance level "Lots", "Some", "None". (Or advanced/beginner or something.) If you chose that you did not need help then it wouldn't do things like "[Carth looks like he wants to distract you]" or give you step by step clues for everything you have to do ("Enough with the frickin data pads already").

Umm... those NPC dialogs aren't about "help" ... they're about plot.

And if you don't want chatty NPCs, why buy a Bio game? That's what they do.

But I like the idea of having a slider to control how many clues you get from datapads and whatnot.