Star Wars How on earth did anyone think KOTOR is an acceptable game

[Deleted member 7219]

The Rule of Two is introduced by Darth Bane approx 1000 years before the Battle of Yavin (A New Hope), long after the events of the KOTOR games.

 

[DeepOcean]

Reasons to like KOTOR:
Uses the system of the pnp.
It is hub based with actually different hubs with different quests.
It has real quests.

Yes, my friends, all of the above pratically doesnt exist anymore on the popamole world.

What you get now?
Singleplayer MMO.
Empty open world.
Repetitive bullshit.

It isnt the best rpg ever but it is still mechanically better than alot of garbage today. You can see many people on the codex are still stuck on 2000, the decline got much worse since then so shitting on KOTOR nowdays feels like shitting on the last breath of the dying mainstream rpgs, yeah, yadda, yadda, bad game, yadda, yadda, I know it but it is sort of pointless, mainstream cRPGs died anyway. We can only count on crazy indie people that release a gem every 5 years or so, our genre isnt on a good state and we are just a bit better than adventure gamers so a RPG like KOTOR today for the mainstream would be actually incline as it would be a return from death to, at least, a previous state.

 

[AW8]

In the case of Kotor 2, while the Sith are destroying the Galaxy for fun and profit, the Jedi council decided the best course of action is to do nothing. Which is the same posture they adopted during the Mandalorian War. That's not only a disaster, but also very cowardly.

Like I said, Katarr. Organized resistance is suicide, since Nihilus will simply find them and eat them.

Also, hiding =/= doing nothing. Vrook is working to keep Dantooine with the Republic, and Kavar is doing the same on Onderon. Only Zez-Kai Ell is doing nothing, but he is no longer a Jedi either, being disillusioned with the Order since your exile.

 

[Alexios]

One really terrible thing about the KotOR games, which is also found in nu-Fallout, is the morality system. It's really retarded to have the game shove it in your face whether you did something good or evil, without leaving it to the player to figure out. I don't know if KotOR was the first game to have this. I know older RPGs had alignment systems, but they didn't remind you with a UI popup and a little sound every damn time you did something.

A real man's RPG like Underrail does this a lot better. If you

Spoiler

join Protectorate, you are made to brutally massacre the Free Drones. You realize that what you are doing is evil, and the game subtly reminds you with the Free Drones' dialogue, but no one ever condemns you for doing it. You don't get "dark side points" for it. It's just presented as being part of life in a war zone.

 

[wahrk]

That's... not new.

Then name an RPG that did all of that before KOTOR.

And KotOR's dodge animations really aren't praiseworthy. Plus that examples I listed do operate as examples of that shit happening in previous games. Jedi Knight is also all about using camera angle cinematic style shit. But I feel like you're trying to move the goalposts on me so you can claim to still have an argument.

This seems like moving goalpost shit. You asked me to cite my claims that RPGs and Star Wars games already did cinematic shit and now you're complaining these games are not RPGs. Anyway, I listed some 3D RPGs too. But this argument is headed nowhere fast considering how quickly this is headed into attempting to split hairs on points of minutiae to preserve the semblance of a point.

This was always the fucking goalpost.

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.

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.

To which you said NUH UH and proceeded to list shit like Tie Fighter and Jedi Knight. But if you want to be intentionally obtuse and pretend that Lands of Lore and fucking Fallout are examples of "cinematic RPGs" then whatever. I've already spent too much time arguing someone else's point.

Are you retarded? Read the sentence after what you bolded. She's not arguing against intentions mattering. She's arguing against the blind application of intentions. She's arguing you have to make sure that the consequences of your actions align with your intentions. If your intentions don't matter her argument would be futile because it only carries weight in so far as you actually intend to help people.

What was that about splitting hairs on points of minutiae to preserve the semblance of a point? She's arguing you have to make sure that the consequences of your actions align with your intentions because consequences matter much more than intentions. Kreia doesn't pat you on the back and say hey, at least you were trying to do good! It's the thought that counts! Intent matters when it comes to villainy heroics!

Their passivity is not what ruined the galaxy though, it was the Jedi who disobeyed them and went to war who saw to that - Revan and Malak became much worse threats than the Mandalorians were. Not only that, but the way the war was ended on Malachor V set the stage for even further ruin, as seen in KotOR 2. The decision to go to war was the single most disastrous action in the galaxy for centuries.

This is definitely how the Jedi Masters saw it, but nearly everyone critiques the Jedi for their response, not just Kreia (even the protagonist). The Mandalorians were crushing the Republic before the Jedi arrived. The Jedi preached self-sacrifice and protection of innocents then just sat on their hands while millions were dying and begging them for help. Complete inaction was obviously not the right choice either.

It is a mistake to buy completely into everything Kreia says, but in most cases her critiques of the Jedi (and Sith) failings are solid. Even Zez-Kai admits to the exile privately that he didn't think the students were to blame, but that perhaps it was their failing and they mishandled the situation.

 

[Dycedarg]

Like I said, Katarr. Organized resistance is suicide, since Nihilus will simply find them and eat them.

Also, hiding =/= doing nothing. Vrook is working to keep Dantooine with the Republic, and Kavar is doing the same on Onderon. Only Zez-Kai Ell is doing nothing, but he is no longer a Jedi either, being disillusioned with the Order since your exile.

Even if you think confronting the Nihilus and Sion directly would be suicide, the council members went into exile separately and didn't even to coordinate between themselves to find a solution to the crisis. If the council can't be bothered to TRY to fight an existential threat to the galaxy, what use are they? Oh, and when you try to unite them against the two Sith lords who are supposed to be too powerful for them to handle on their own, their response is to try to maim/kill you. Way to go guys.

This is definitely how the Jedi Masters saw it, but nearly everyone critiques the Jedi for their response, not just Kreia (even the protagonist). The Mandalorians were crushing the Republic before the Jedi arrived. The Jedi preached self-sacrifice and protection of innocents then just sat on their hands while millions were dying and begging them for help. Complete inaction was obviously not the right choice either.

It is a mistake to buy completely into everything Kreia says, but in most cases her critiques of the Jedi (and Sith) failings are solid. Even Zez-Kai admits to the exile privately that he didn't think the students were to blame, but that perhaps it was their failing and they mishandled the situation.

Pretty much this. The Jedi are pretty good at finding reasons to do nothing. And when things inevitably go wrong, they can safely claim they are not responsible for what happened. It's kinda genius really: you can't fail if you weren't trying to do anything!

 

[Absinthe]

This was always the fucking goalpost.

Really? Because it feels like the first goalpost was "was KotOR groundbreaking for its use of cinematic storytelling and FMVs?" to which the answer was no because RPGs and Star Wars games have been doing that long before KotOR did, then you made the goalpost about KotOR's combat animations and graphics, then it turns out to be about cinematic style anyway, but your definition of cinematic style is apparently about shifting camera angles (which is nothing new) and combat animations (also nothing new) now.

To which you said NUH UH and proceeded to list shit like Tie Fighter and Jedi Knight. But if you want to be intentionally obtuse and pretend that Lands of Lore and fucking Fallout are examples of "cinematic RPGs" then whatever. I've already spent too much time arguing someone else's point.

His argument was about FF7's major cinematic upgrade and how KotOR was somehow doing a new thing by having these aspects. Now, FF7's major cinematic thing was its use of FMV sequences and having more animations for the most part. To which I said that his post was interesting but RPGs and Star Wars games had been fucking with cinematic storytelling and spectacle for ages, so this was mostly revisitionist nonsense that served to praise KotOR as being groundbreaking somehow when it wasn't, and you asked for citations so I listed examples of games that were developed before the likes of FF7 and KotOR came out as an example of how regardless of FF7 or KotOR the cinematic direction was happening outside those games anyway.

And Fallout employed a bunch of FMV tech and used movie-like storytelling sequences. Lands of Lore, old as it may be, also focused hard on animated storytelling segments. TIE Fighter and Jedi Knight also have very strong cinematic presentations, as Star Wars games.

The point remains the same, really. Cinematic presentation style is nothing new to Star Wars games or RPGs and Bioware wasn't breaking new ground with KotOR. Now your argument is something about how the combat animations were somehow nicer (which I am frankly mystified on, as I still remember those ridiculous exaggerated dodge routine animations because you see them something like a thousand times) and that KotOR was doing something new by using camera angles somehow (which wasn't new at all either).

This shit's getting ridiculous. KotOR's visuals just weren't ground-breaking as you make them out to be.

What was that about splitting hairs on points of minutiae to preserve the semblance of a point? She's arguing you have to make sure that the consequences of your actions align with your intentions because consequences matter much more than intentions. Kreia doesn't pat you on the back and say hey, at least you were trying to do good! It's the the thought that counts! Intent matters when it comes to villainy heroics!

I don't understand your obsession with trying to weigh the value of intentions against the consequences of actions. Kreia at no point delegitimizes having intentions. She just has you examine whether your consequences align with your intent to help people. And somehow you keep trying to twist this into "so intentions don't matter, only consequences do!" but that is just trying very hard to overlook the basic point: The consequences don't fucking matter if you don't care about the consequences. So your intention does matter, otherwise looking at the consequences wouldn't matter either. Kreia makes a whole argument about how to best go about helping people and whether your actions are productive to that end. If you do not have an intention of helping people, her entire argument about what would help the person most wouldn't matter because you're not interested in helping them in the first place. The presence of an intention to help people is necessary to her argument and if you take the dark side route of killing the beggar she lays into you for being a pointless sociopath. So Kreia does give a fuck about intentions.

Anyway, you sound butthurt as fuck.

 

[wahrk]

Really? Because it feels like the first goalpost was "was KotOR groundbreaking for its use of cinematic storytelling and FMVs?"

Neither myself or Grampy_Bone said KOTOR was groundbreaking for it's use of FMVs. Nor did I claim that it was pure graphical quality. You're the one moving these goalposts around. His original argument was about the overall cinematic presentation in RPGs, to which I gave specific examples (like the way dialogue was presented in KOTOR). For some reason you seem to have this idea that cinematic presentation just means "it has FMVs", and finding examples of games that featured FMVs somehow proves your point. It's like arguing that the original Star Wars didn't have groundbreaking special effects because other movies had used miniatures before.

What's strange to me is that you seem to correctly understand that KOTOR's appeal was more about the feel and the experience of living out your Star Wars fantasy but are insistent that the presentation had little to do with it. Or that KOTOR's popularity was only due to getting to play a hero in a Star Wars game as if that had never been done before either. Do you think that KOTOR would have been just as popular if it ran on the Infinity Engine?

but your definition of cinematic style is apparently about shifting camera angles (which is nothing new) and combat animations (also nothing new) now.

Those are specific examples of it, yes. You keep saying this is nothing new, and yet I'm still waiting for you to show me an example of an RPG pre-KOTOR that did even either of those things, much less all of them in one complete package. Shit, let's just take a look at dialogue presentation by itself:

Spoiler

Can you spot where the change happened? But this is where I tap out, I'm done

intentions

We're getting too far afield here. You originally said "intent matters when it comes to villainy", which I took as meaning "villainous actions don't make you a villain if you're actually trying to do good". It's an odd argument to me considering Kreia certainly doesn't think that the good intentions of the Jedi actually make them noble, especially considering what she presents to you here. What if what you do actually brings harm, instead of what you intended? Frankly I don't think we're ever going to agree on this because I think the real issue ultimately comes down to whether or not you think Kreia's actions are actually for good and therefore justified. Let me ask you this, because I'm tired of debating this shit - let's say Kreia went ahead with her plan, and killed the exile at Malachor V, sending out a massive echo that killed the vast majority of the galaxy and only leaving a few alive that were forever deafened to the force. Do her intentions justify this? What if it didn't work, or wasn't permanent and eventually the whole cycle started up again anyways? Would her intentions match the consequences?

After all, you said it yourself - good intentions don’t excuse bad consequences.

Anyway, you sound butthurt as fuck.

It's ok, you were wrong. No need to be upset.

 

[Absinthe]

This is just devolving into nitpicking, really.

Neither myself or Grampy_Bone said KOTOR was groundbreaking for it's use of FMVs. Nor did I claim that it was pure graphical quality. You're the one moving these goalposts around. His original argument was about the overall cinematic presentation in RPGs, to which I gave specific examples (like the way dialogue was presented in KOTOR). For some reason you seem to have this idea that cinematic presentation just means "it has FMVs", and finding examples of games that featured FMVs somehow proves your point

I gave plenty of examples of overall cinematic presentation. Evidently you were unhappy with them and complained about it being cutscenes or something. The reason that I focused on FMVs in part (not in total, but you seem to be doing some weird tunnelvision/misdirection shit there) is because of the emphasis on the FF7 cinematic style, when FF7's big cinematic thing was that it went to town with FMVs. Cutscenes existed before and since, so did FMVs, but FF7 really went ahead and used a lot of 'em.

It's like arguing that the original Star Wars didn't have groundbreaking special effects because other movies had used miniatures before.

It'd be like arguing Star Wars 3 didn't have groundbreaking special effects because there were already 2 other Star Wars movies and let's say a couple other movies that were going ahead with special effects shit.

Seriously, KotOR just wasn't groundbreaking in the visual effects department.

What's strange to me is that you seem to correctly understand that KOTOR's appeal was more about the feel and the experience of living out your Star Wars fantasy but are insistent that the presentation had little to do with it. Or that KOTOR's popularity was only due to getting to play a hero in a Star Wars game as if that had never been done before either. Do you think that KOTOR would have been just as popular if it ran on the Infinity Engine?

What are you talking about? I gave examples of the Star Wars presentation being done before, mostly in Star Wars games (like the Jedi Knight series), because surprise surprise, it's Star Wars games that tend to do the whole Star Wars cinematic presentation. As for how popular KotOR would've been if it ran on the Infinity Engine, KotOR probably isn't as well-suited to the Infinity Engine precisely because the Star Wars series runs on 3D cinematic effects. But who knows, there is a lot you can do with 2D graphics and enough effort to make it look good. In a hypothetical world it's more than possible to make a 2D KotOR that would look better than 3D KotOR because they don't have to suffer the poor lighting and wooden animations of rudimentary 3D from the NWN engine. Really depends on the artists and effort spent on it.

but your definition of cinematic style is apparently about shifting camera angles (which is nothing new) and combat animations (also nothing new) now.

Those are specific examples of it, yes. You keep saying this is nothing new, and yet I'm still waiting for you to show me an example of an RPG pre-KOTOR that did even either of those things, much less all of them in one complete package. Shit, let's just take a look at dialogue presentation by itself:

Spoiler

Can you spot where the change happened? But this is where I tap out, I'm done

*yawn* So now it's about the cutscene style cinematic? So you cherrypicked some screenshots and now you seriously think KotOR invented the cutscene dialogue screen? Reopen the Deus Ex video I sent you. It's been done before, years before KotOR came out. And you're done.

intentions

We're getting too far afield here. You originally said "intent matters when it comes to villainy", which I took as meaning "villainous actions don't make you a villain if you're actually trying to do good". It's an odd argument to me considering Kreia certainly doesn't think that the good intentions of the Jedi actually make them noble, especially considering what she presents to you here. What if what you do actually brings harm, instead of what you intended? Frankly I don't think we're ever going to agree on this because I think the real issue ultimately comes down to whether or not you think Kreia's actions are actually for good and therefore justified.

That's headed into a different argument than the nitpicking we had over that line of dialogue. Anyway, Kreia overall acts to stop Sion and Nihilus from fucking shit over, stops Atris before she basically corrupts the Jedi Order with Sith teachings, and tries to set up the protagonist to end the threat of the True Sith. These are outcomes Kreia not only causes but causes intentionally.

Let me ask you this, because I'm tired of debating this shit - let's say Kreia went ahead with her plan, and killed the exile at Malachor V, sending out a massive echo that killed the vast majority of the galaxy and only leaving a few alive that were forever deafened to the force. Do her intentions justify this? What if it didn't work, or wasn't permanent and eventually the whole cycle started up again anyways? Would her intentions match the consequences?

After all, you said it yourself - good intentions don’t excuse bad consequences.

I'd ask you reread the shit I already mentioned on that front multiple times, but that may be expecting too much of you. As I said, at that stage, it's either that or let the galaxy get fucked by the True Sith who are going to try to usurp the galaxy through the force. Also, it's been noted before that Kreia could've just gone ahead with her plan instead of waiting for the exile. It seemed more like she was deliberately waiting for the exile as a type of final test. And on a side note I think the whole "deafen the galaxy to the force" bit was a result of Obsidian being rushed to finish the game and slapping a final battle on things.

Anyway, you sound butthurt as fuck.

It's ok, you were wrong. No need to be upset.

You realize you're just showing how much you got hung up over "winning" and "being right"? You got personally invested into an argument about KotOR, son, and that post of yours really did reek of asspain. This one's doing better on that front, but you're also overcompensating with these attempts at egotripping.

Honestly I sort of stopped giving a fuck about this argument a while ago but let me know if this is headed somewhere meaningful or if it's just headed into bickering over the need to be right, if you want to keep this argument going. But I think I already know the answer to that.

 

[AW8]

This is definitely how the Jedi Masters saw it, but nearly everyone critiques the Jedi for their response, not just Kreia (even the protagonist). The Mandalorians were crushing the Republic before the Jedi arrived. The Jedi preached self-sacrifice and protection of innocents then just sat on their hands while millions were dying and begging them for help. Complete inaction was obviously not the right choice either.

It is a mistake to buy completely into everything Kreia says, but in most cases her critiques of the Jedi (and Sith) failings are solid. Even Zez-Kai admits to the exile privately that he didn't think the students were to blame, but that perhaps it was their failing and they mishandled the situation.

Problem is, we know what happened to the (mostly younger) Jedi who left to fight the Mandalorians. If the Jedi Masters had joined them in the war, maybe they could have guided them and stopped them from falling to the Dark Side - or maybe the result would have been that instead of a Jedi Civil War, there would have been no Jedi left and Revan's Sith would have twice the numbers.

With the results in hand, joining the war was obviously a terrible option. And the Jedi Masters never planned to stay out of the war either. I don't remember who says it, but they knew the Mandalorians were manipulated by an unknown actor, and wanted to find out who that was before rushing into battle. That unknown actor was the True Sith, and the Mandalorian Wars did achieve their goal - weakening the Republic and corrupting the Jedi.

Of course, would they have joined the battle in time to keeping the Republic from having to learn to speak Mandalorian? Maybe not. But it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Joining the war plays into the hands of the True Sith, waiting causes more of the galaxy to burn under the Mandalorian war machine.

Even if you think confronting the Nihilus and Sion directly would be suicide, the council members went into exile separately and didn't even to coordinate between themselves to find a solution to the crisis. If the council can't be bothered to TRY to fight an existential threat to the galaxy, what use are they?

They can't confront Nihilus and Sion directly, since they don't know who or where they are. That's the whole point of their plan - to hide and pretend to be dead, in order for the new Sith to get cocky and reveal themselves. And while in hiding, they are actively working to save the Republic. That's their use.

When the Sith finally reveal themselves at Telos, could they have done anything? Probably not, they'd have cut off the Exile's Force connection at that point and lost the one way to defeat Nihilus. But we'll never know what they would have done, since Kreia had murdered them at that point.

Oh, and when you try to unite them against the two Sith lords who are supposed to be too powerful for them to handle on their own, their response is to try to maim/kill you. Way to go guys.

Cutting you off from the Force doesn't kill you. But it's most likely a mistake by them, caused by fear of the unknown (your strange power) instead of trying to understand it.

But it does bear thinking about. If what they say is true, and you're the reason someone like Nihilus exists... wouldn't it be safer if your power was removed? Wouldn't the galaxy be better off from it?

Anyway, I'm with Kreia here. It's like Batman and the Joker - sure, without Batman, Joker would not exist. But without Batman, Gotham would still be controlled by the mob, and overall a much worse place. The Exile can use their ability for a lot of good just as much as they can use it for evil, especially now that the Masters have explained your ability to you - which they should have done in the first place, instead of exiling you and hoping you'd figure it out on your own.

 

[Dycedarg]

They can't confront Nihilus and Sion directly, since they don't know who or where they are. That's the whole point of their plan - to hide and pretend to be dead, in order for the new Sith to get cocky and reveal themselves. And while in hiding, they are actively working to save the Republic. That's their use.

When the Sith finally reveal themselves at Telos, could they have done anything? Probably not, they'd have cut off the Exile's Force connection at that point and lost the one way to defeat Nihilus. But we'll never know what they would have done, since Kreia had murdered them at that point.

I think you give the Jedi far too much credit. Here's my problem with their methods: whenever you are confronted with a difficult situation, it's impossible to know beforehand whether you will succeed or fail. This is true for anything you may try to accomplish in your personal and professional life. This also applies to a government, especially in times of war. During WW2, the UK didn't know they would defeat the Germany, but they still tried their luck. When a boxer enters the ring, he doesn't know he will defeat his opponent, even though he's usually pretty confident. But like it or not, many situations in life have an element of risk.

Returning to the Jedi, they seem unwilling to get involved in any situation unless they KNOW they can solve it. This attitude was pretty clear in both the Mandalorian Wars and in their non fight against Nihilus and Sion. But as the protectors of the Republic they had a responsibility to keep the peace and protect it's citizens. When they chose to wait for the Sith to make a mistake, the Jedi abandoned the same people they sworn to protect. And it's not like their plan was completely risk free either. One of the Jedi masters was killed by Sion before either Kreia or your character was involved, which could have happened to the others. But the idea that there are risks inherent to doing nothing seems like an alien concept to them.

By choosing to wait for the Sith to show their hand, the Jedi gave their enemies the chance to destroy the republic. By choosing to wait for the real power in the Mandalorian Wars to appear, the Jedi left a bellicose nation pillage and plunder their galaxy. If you think it's they are responsible for maintaining peace and order in the republic, then it's obvious the Jedi failed. The worst part is that if they keep choosing the same "risk free" approach, any serious threat the republic has to face will result in the same kind of chaos. If only there was another kind of government that is very good at keeping the peace and stability in a territory, at a price of course.

 

[KK1001]

KOTOR just hasn't aged that well. It was fine when it came out, though obviously decline from Baldur's Gate 2.