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Let's settle this once and for all: Are Kotor 1 and 2 bad?

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gurugeorge

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Strap Yourselves In
Was watching something related to kotor and I couldn't help but take note of how good the combat animations looked
:avatard:

What other games besides kotor & kotor 2 actually give proper "jedi-fighting" vibes?

That was always a thing about KOTOR, as I mentioned in passing above - when you pause the action to give commands, your heroes are invariably frozen in a cool tableau, with blaster fire and lightsaber trails frozen mid-air too, and you can spin the tableau around and look at it from all angles. It was quite a fun thing on first playing the game back in the day, and still it's pretty cool even now.

Those kinds of fighting animations haven't been done better since, I don't think (although I agree that Jedi Academy had good anims too). It would be interesting if someone more autistic than me were to trace whether it was hand animation, motion capture, a mix of both (probably) and who was involved (both the consultants for mocap and the animators - for I reckon the consultants might have been quite high level movie industry people, like proper stuntmen/martial artists, not just some karoddy guy from the local mall).
 
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It would get to the point in KotOR where I'd solely use the basic attack just to see the excellent animations. Wish they would have gone the extra mile to give power attack/flurry/critical strike at least one extra animation each because when you begin using the feat attacks all the time the combat starts looking too robotic imo. As it is, it's better to only sprinkle them in every so often.

I'd be willing to bet that they mocapped the combat, or else used some stock choreographic video from Lucasfilm as a hard reference. Some of those animations are just too detailed to be rendered by people otherwise unfamiliar with swordsmanship and stunt work. The way the foot trails back after the kick animation in single-saber, the position of the fingers of the character models, the moulinettes, the sidesteps, the displacement of the opponents weapon while blocking. It's all too natural looking to be fabricated wholecloth.

The only other game of that era I know of that rivals it for flashiness is Witcher 1, which was mocapped stuntmen and HEMA guys.
 

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