Interview Nostalgic KOTOR 2 Retrospective Podcast at Eurogamer

[Infinitron]

Tags: Anthony Davis; Chris Avellone; Obsidian Entertainment; Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords; The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod

The folks at Eurogamer recently hosted a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II retrospective podcast, to which they invited several members of the original development team, including Chris Avellone and Codex regular Anthony Davis, as well as two members of the The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod team. The podcast is summarized in the accompanying article:

To this day one decision still plagues Chris Avellone's mind: should Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords have had more Revan in it? BioWare and LucasArts hadn't forbidden it - instead, Obsidian had decided to focus on new characters to allow more creative breathing room.​

"But I don't know if that was the best decision," Avellone ponders, speaking in a Eurogamer KOTOR2 podcast other members of Obsidian and The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod join us for. You can listen to it in full right now, jokes 'n all.​

"There's a lot of design decisions that occurred in Knights of the Old Republic 2 that, to this day, I still question whether that was the right thing to do or not, and one was, ideally we should have maybe looked for more ways to introduce Revan in the sequel.​

"But then again," he adds, "when we were plotting out the idea of doing the third game we just thought it would be cool if we were foreshadowing what Revan was really doing in Knights of the Old Republic 1, and what he was preparing for in Knights of the Old Republic 2, and then bring it to a close, the end of the trilogy, but we didn't get a chance to do that."​

Yes, a Knights of the Old Republic 3 game existed in pre-production at Obsidian Entertainment.​

[...] Knights of the Old Republic 3 would still involve the Ebon Hawk ship, your base and your home, and you'd have "a few" of the companions from the other KOTOR games. "You definitely have T3-M4 and HK-47 with you," he says, and at one point HK-47, its legs dismantled, would "ride around in your backpack like C-3PO does with Chewbacca in Empire Strikes Back". "So during one of the sequences in the game," Avellone expands, "you'd actually have HK-47 firing behind you and being your cover support while you're carrying him around on your back and getting to a repair station."​

That KOTOR3 pitch, which is different to the Star Wars pitch Obsidian is trying on Disney, never got past pre-production. "It was a matter of getting LucasArts to greenlight the title and I... To be honest I don't know all the reasons that went into this, whether they wanted to have an internal team do it, whether they logistics didn't work out...​

"Ultimately," he says, "it felt like we were pitching and pitching and it just wasn't going anywhere, and at some point people just drew a line and said 'it's just not going to happen', which made us kind of sad, but, OK, if that's the business, that's the business."​

It could have had something to do with new consoles - PS3 and Xbox 360 - arriving and engines needing redoing, which would have been expensive and time consuming, points out Dan Spitzley, then senior programmer, now lead programmer at Obsidian. "That's a good point," concedes Avellone. "Thanks, consoles, thank you."​

Oh, MCA, your burning hatred for the console warms my heart. Read the entire article for a closer look at KOTOR2's design process, and lots of warm and fuzzy nostalgia from Obsidian's early days. It's great stuff.

 

[Outlander]

Fuck you, LucasArts.

 

[tuluse]

I think not having Revan in the sequel was a good idea.

Avellone. "Thanks, consoles, thank you."

God I hope this kickstarter thing works out. Couldn't you imagine Obsidian only working on IPs they own. Free to do whatever they want?

 

[Lancehead]

If you are hoping for some spiritual successor to Arcanum, I highly doubt it. Just not Obsidian's cup of tea.

 

[tuluse]

I'm just curious what they could do without having to worry about programming for consoles, being beholden to publisher demands, and not having their schedule jerked around.

 

[Duraframe300]

If you are hoping for some spiritual successor to Arcanum, I highly doubt it. Just not Obsidian's cup of tea.

?

Why not? It should be Tim Cain's and Chris Jones cup of tea at least.

 

[Cosmo]

Always nice to see how genuinely witty and laid back the Obsidian guys are : imagine how phony and dull the same podcast would have been with anyone from Bioware...
By the way, notice the awkward and telling silence after one of them adressing how KOTOR 3 butchered their story.

 

[Lancehead]

If you are hoping for some spiritual successor to Arcanum, I highly doubt it. Just not Obsidian's cup of tea.

?

Why not? It should be Tim Cain's and Chris Jones cup of tea at least.

New Vegas was the most open they got in design. I wouldn't expect them to underutilise their writing talent.

 

[tuluse]

NWN2: SoZ was open

I don't think the openness, in terms of map design, is what made Arcanum good. I think it actually would have been better with a Fallout style map. It sounds like their going for something like that with P:E.

 

[tindrli]

Fuck you, LucasArts.

 

[Lancehead]

NWN2: SoZ was open

I don't think the openness, in terms of map design, is what made Arcanum good. I think it actually would have been better with a Fallout style map. It sounds like their going for something like that with P:E.

I mean the openness in systems.

 

[Rake]

NWN2: SoZ was open

I don't think the openness, in terms of map design, is what made Arcanum good. I think it actually would have been better with a Fallout style map. It sounds like their going for something like that with P:E.

I mean the openness in systems.

With Tim Cain as PL designing the system

Spoiler

and Sawyer to balance it

i don't see why not. Sure, not their cup of tea as a whole, but i don't believe they are against it. Just not what Avellone/Ziets/Feargus/Sawyer prefer. Now that they have Tim, they could give it a shot. It's not as if you can't have openness in systems in a more word heavy/story focused game

 

[King Crispy]

Avellone. "Thanks, consoles, thank you."

"The moment I hit the planet Manaan and I was walking around in the sea-floor I almost threw the controller at the TV...

 

[tuluse]

KoTOR was released on Xbox first, since he was already behind on doing research, what did you expect?

 

[King Crispy]

I actually never realized that so my bad, but still...

 

[Roguey]

Ha, no one at LucasArts told them they were doing KOTOR3 in-house. All that wasted pre-production work.

This dream job had been landed through old ties and BioWare rejecting a sequel, as it was uncomfortable with producing one in the 14-16 month timeframe LucasArts wanted.

I bet the people at Edmonton still wish they had this kind of luxury.

Oh and redesigning the interface was also "a huge waste of time".

KOTOR's PC interface was pure shit, 2's improvements were a welcome addition. If he thinks that's a waste of time, well...

(Avellone having been inspired by a stone demon dying in anime Ninja Scroll

Chris taking his inspirations from shallow, sexist anime, no surprise there.

You helped complete the experience for many people. Many people who get the game for the first time, like from a Steam sale or whatever, their friends are going to tell them, 'Yeah, go get The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod, put that on their first - that's the way it was intended to be.' And that's correct.

A shit mod for a shit game, sure why not.

 

[Infinitron]

Get out of here stalker

 

[Rake]

shallow, sexist anime

I'm so going to watch it
Thanks Roguey

 

[Roguey]

I'm so going to watch it
Thanks Roguey

It does have some rather fine-looking animation and cool monster designs.

The television series follow-up was awfully bland though.

 

[King Crispy]

Here's Roguey: "Stupid sexist anime. I've watched every single one of them."



Is your act ever going to quit?

 

[PlanHex]

Oh and redesigning the interface was also "a huge waste of time".

KOTOR's PC interface was pure shit, 2's improvements were a welcome addition. If he thinks that's a waste of time, well...

They go into more detail in the podcast. It was a waste of time from a cost-benefit view, since it took a lot of time, but didn't provide the benefits of - say - an actual ending or the other cut stuff.

 

[dunno lah]

Avellone. "Thanks, consoles, thank you."

"The moment I hit the planet Manaan and I was walking around in the sea-floor I almost threw the controller at the TV because the game was getting so f***ing stupid.

It sure explains the "controller at the TV" part.

 

[AngryEddy]

Kotor 2 was always the better Kotor, even if Kotor 1 was Juilius Caesar in space. Obsidian had the balls to make a grimdark Star Wars [the twist ending was shitty, but besides that, the antagonists were fine, except for Sion, who I hated since the writers gave him the ability to fall in love with you] and it worked wonderfully.

Outside of that, the only thing Kotor 1 had that could compete with Kotor 2, was the fact that you could kill off most of the cast of characters [lesbians and children included], and how Revan was shown as an ambiguous dark side user instead of "OMG he uses the dark side he's evil!".

 

[CraigCWB]

Kotor 2 is one of the only games I've ever liked a lot at first but then run out of interest before I ran out of content. Story is not enough, even when you do get to wave lightsabers around and pretend to be Dreadlord Dickface. I suppose somebody has to make interactive cinema with trivial and linear "map levels" stringing it all together, but I much prefer when Obsidian is following the Bethesda model, as in New Vegas, than following in Bioware's tired footsteps. A combination of Bioware's storytelling and Bethesda's sandboxy game worlds is just about ideal for my tastes, and they got pretty close with Fallout: NV

 

[Rake]

Kotor 2 is one of the only games I've ever liked a lot at first but then run out of interest before I ran out of content. Story is not enough, even when you do get to wave lightsabers around and pretend to be Dreadlord Dickface. I suppose somebody has to make interactive cinema with trivial and linear "map levels" stringing it all together, but I much prefer when Obsidian is following the Bethesda model, as in New Vegas, than following in Bioware's tired footsteps. A combination of Bioware's storytelling and Bethesda's sandboxy game worlds is just about ideal for my tastes, and they got pretty close with Fallout: NV

I'm the complete opposite. I don't like sandboxes and the Bethesda model is an abomination that needs to die. It can be done better like in Ultima 7, or Arcanum, but they weren't true sandboxes, at least not in the Bethesda way. And i still prefer a more focused excperience to them. For me i would like Obsidian to stick to MotB model. It's what they do best.