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

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    180

Falksi

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It feels forced for me when people take a two dimensional fairy tale concept like Light and Dark side and then try to find some depth in it.

Me too. It's feels like I'm reading the Russia Vs Ukraine thread.
 

gurugeorge

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Not quite finished yet so this may be answered with the final encounter, but one thing that puzzles me about the story - shouldn't Kreia go off you when
you start rediscovering your Force connection?
Surely (given her motivations as revealed later) that should make her think of you as a lost cause?

On the other hand,
the idea that you develop your Force connection again because you're feeding off all the killing
goes well enough with a Dark Side player character
and would fit with Kreia's dim view of things,
but feels really jarring with a Light Side player character just innocently doing the Star Wars light side bit. I suppose they had to have that kind of power development and Light/Dark, it being a Star Wars game after all, so they had to jam all the things together somehow. But it often feels like the writing is on a different track from the gamey game side of the game. I mean, you're reading this interesting stuff, building a picture in your mind of what's going on, then bam, next minute you're just playing a "normal" Star Wars game again where the "simplistic" Dark/Light idea is embedded into the gameplay and progression.

It would have been really nice to have either a game where they didn't have to have the usual tropes, then the writing could have guided a different kind of gameplay (but I guess that would have been disastrous sales-wise) or just a novel, where Kreia's theme (which is definitely interesting and quite deep) could be explored without the pressure to include the expected Star Wars tropes for the sake of familiarity and sales.

But maybe at the end of the day it's just hopeless trying to make these things deeper than they intrinsically are. A fairy-tale lives in a different realm of the mind than a story exploring naturalism and realism.
 
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Surely (given her motivations as revealed later) that should make her think of you as a lost cause?
No, because she's a machiavellian and for the majority of the time you spend together she views you as a means to an end. She's trying to understand how it was you alone had the will to cut ties. When she learns eventually that it was because you were afraid/ had no choice she's learned all she can and abandons you. Still, despite herself, she did grow attached. Regardless, she's the one that encourages you on Peragus to "get right with the almighty". An ideal world might have permitted you to remain severed, but pragmatically, Kreia understood the reality of abiding in a galaxy full of psycho-supermen hunting your character.

She was more concerned on you becoming over-reliant on such things. The passive "feeding" is not something the Exile is actually in control of iirc. It's only the direct draining that you can reject. Still, I feel like they really shouldn't have bothered trying to tie experience points into the lore. It just muddied the waters and answered a question no one was asking.
 

gurugeorge

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Surely (given her motivations as revealed later) that should make her think of you as a lost cause?
No, because she's a machiavellian and for the majority of the time you spend together she views you as a means to an end. She's trying to understand how it was you alone had the will to cut ties. When she learns eventually that it was because you were afraid/ had no choice she's learned all she can and abandons you. Still, despite herself, she did grow attached. Regardless, she's the one that encourages you on Peragus to "get right with the almighty". An ideal world might have permitted you to remain severed, but pragmatically, Kreia understood the reality of abiding in a galaxy full of psycho-supermen hunting your character.

She was more concerned on you becoming over-reliant on such things. The passive "feeding" is not something the Exile is actually in control of iirc. It's only the direct draining that you can reject. Still, I feel like they really shouldn't have bothered trying to tie experience points into the lore. It just muddied the waters and answered a question no one was asking.

Yeah I see it now, just finished the game. I wasn't bearing in mind that she had several birds to kill with one stone - she was
getting revenge on her former apprentices and protecting the galaxy from them,
nurturing the Exile's unique talent, actually training him as an apprentice, looking forward to the next big war and trying to prepare the PC to
help Revan deal with it,
and for all that she
still needed the Force, even though she hated it.

An amazing character, really I should think the richest SW character ever written, even better than Revan. The game's a bit too rickety and sketchy overall (even with the TSLRC mod) to be the absolute classic it could have been, but it's still fun enough, and you can see how magnificent it would have been if they had managed to finish and polish it properly.

Poor old Obsidian, always with the not-quite-fulfilled potential.
 
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Poor old Obsidian, always with the not-quite-fulfilled potential.
I'm actually one of the few weirdos who felt deeply satisfied by the ending where Kreia predicts the future of most of your companions. I didn't care about the cliffhanger. KotOR II is a game that benefits from multiple runs just to get the most out the different companions when some, particularly the Disciple, actually get to the root of what Kreia has planned, which is pretty neat to see an NPC actually being intelligent. As far as I recall, her motivations can be grossly misunderstood without that extra information and I've seen it time and time again when discussing the game with randos online. A blessing and a curse to have such a multifaceted character.
 

Poseidon00

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I really can't say that they are. My girlfriend at the time (like 6 years ago) didn't play vidya but was obsessed with KOTOR. When I first played through the second game I was enthralled. Kreia really made the atmosphere of that game, imo. So impressed I played the first one too.

If you try to go back to them, at any point, you will realize how tragically limited they are though. Shallow enough that one experience is all you'll get.
 

gurugeorge

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I really can't say that they are. My girlfriend at the time (like 6 years ago) didn't play vidya but was obsessed with KOTOR. When I first played through the second game I was enthralled. Kreia really made the atmosphere of that game, imo. So impressed I played the first one too.

If you try to go back to them, at any point, you will realize how tragically limited they are though. Shallow enough that one experience is all you'll get.

Funnily enough, after playing KOTOR 2 I've just had a hankering to play the first game.

This is the 3rd time I'm playing through the first game in my life, and it's still charming - and it feels different enough from what I remember, modded to oblivion with the widescreen mod and all the HD graphical mods, that it feels fresh enough to be quite enjoyable yet again, even though I know pretty much what's going on. (Funnily enough, it actually looks even more spiffy than modded KOTOR 2, probably because more people have been working on HD modding it for longer.)

Even the Taris sewers, which I'm going through now - the jankiest-looking zone I remember from the original games - look quite cool. Bit of subtle Reshading plus Pascal Gilcher's raytracing reshade and Bob's very much your uncle.

(That modding setup linked also has a gentle bit of rebalancing - e.g. finally you can have dual wieding blasterey goodness be as effective in KOTOR as it is in KOTOR 2.)

Both these games are just the best thing if you want to soak up some Star Wars vibe (I guess you could say the class storylines in SWTOR are a bit like that too). It's really washing the bad taste of that Kenobi trash out of my mouth anyway.
 

gurugeorge

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I'm actually one of the few weirdos who felt deeply satisfied by the ending where Kreia predicts the future of most of your companions.

I thought the ending was just perfect (mind you that's with TSLRC, don't know how that affects the situation). I think when we say "unfinished" we don't mean in the sense of the main thread - that's all properly resolved, for sure, they did their best to get that right I think. It's unfinished-feeling in terms of a lack of detail, polish, gameplay balance, etc. (e.g. if you're playing optimally it seems to make no sense to do anything other than dual wielding and flurry/rapid shot with most characters), and perfection, and probably a few more quests and things that they'd intended.
 

Eyestabber

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TSLRC restores a bunch of stuff that really should've just stay scrapped. The droid planet is an incredibly boring slog and the endgame doesn't get more answers with the restored content. It's still worth it for the many dialogues lines reintroduced here and there, but for the most part it's underwhelming. I don't consider the mod to be "essential" in any shape or form.
 
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It's unfinished-feeling in terms of a lack of detail, polish, gameplay balance, etc. (e.g. if you're playing optimally it seems to make no sense to do anything other than dual wielding and flurry/rapid shot with most characters),
Yeah, right there with you on balancing in particular and I'm somewhat surprised that a wider effort hasn't been taken by the community to rectify this (ensuring compatibility with TSLRCM ideally). I'm sure some balance mods already do exist, but it tends to be the case that when it's just one guy doing all the work a lot of shit can slip in unnoticed catering to the lone modder's personal idiosyncrasies, potentially introducing a whole new host of problems. Better off as a collaborative effort imo.
 

Jvegi

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The only balance mod I could find around 5 years ago, during my last playthrough, did nothing more than increase the damage dealt by enemies. This is inconsequential, because 3rd level Force Lightning, and to an even greater extent 3rd level Force Push make combat trivial. Enemies need higher stats (saving throws mostly) as well the ability to use items and force powers effectively. Buffing range combat would also be nice to make non-jedi npcs viable.

I like the itemization and character progression in kotors quite a lot, though it's a shame it doesn't transfer to combat well, since you become unbeatable without trying. Visuals are effective as hell. Spice the combat up a bit and the game becomes a much tighter package.
 

gurugeorge

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It's unfinished-feeling in terms of a lack of detail, polish, gameplay balance, etc. (e.g. if you're playing optimally it seems to make no sense to do anything other than dual wielding and flurry/rapid shot with most characters),
Yeah, right there with you on balancing in particular and I'm somewhat surprised that a wider effort hasn't been taken by the community to rectify this (ensuring compatibility with TSLRCM ideally). I'm sure some balance mods already do exist, but it tends to be the case that when it's just one guy doing all the work a lot of shit can slip in unnoticed catering to the lone modder's personal idiosyncrasies, potentially introducing a whole new host of problems. Better off as a collaborative effort imo.

Having a game with plenty of fun, viable options, and not just one damn thing that wins everything, is just about the hardest part of making games (I should think). A continuous process of testing, lots of iteration, small adustments, etc. Lots of people involved. Lots of investment. I think you can probably have one or two guys doing all the coding for it, but it's the testing and adjustment that requires lots of different minds working on it.
 

Commissar Draco

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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
KOTOR 1 on its own is decent romp thru the Star Wars universe before the rodent snatched it, it has interesting plot and reveal if you played it like me in the era before internet solutions were aviable and some of companions are memorable to this very day both in good sense of the word (HK-47 and Canderous) and bad one (Cart, Mission) with rest being mediocre. Its still Bioware game though so don't expect anything you seen before or after.

KOTOR II is much darker and philosophical showing the wounds on planets and people the ''Good'' endings where Raven gave up power and responsibility and let corrupt and decadent ''republic'' to run the things in Galaxy but also questions what is force and clearly shows what bunch of hypocrite fools Jedi order are. Sadly as the game it still feels incomplete and rushed from the encounter with Jedi in Academy even in Restoration patch.

So both games are decent and worth playing even today but as classic Bioware formula game I enjoyed more Jade Empire and as SF Mass Effect 1 to be honest, its still title done in Kwan wannabe Hippie envisioned setting.
 

gurugeorge

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It was always going to be a difficult thing balancing Jedi against ordinary schlubs like soldiers and scoundrels. I remember when first playing SWTOR, how incongruous it felt to have all the classes balanced out (fairly well actually, at least when I played it).

Mind you, RLM have complained about the "power creep" in the SW canon - like, you know, at first Force Choke was some amazing thing, and just lifting a few rocks with your mind. I wonder if it's actually the games that led to the power creep in the canon, and them being incorporated in the EU? (Or were the EU books responsible for power creep too?)

Ironically, if the games had kept to the original canon where Force powers were rare, amazing (in terms of ordinary everyday reality) but not OP, and very, very special, then balance would have made more sense in the games. A Jedi would just be a strong melee combatant with a really powerful weapon and a few Force tricks, and maybe a mere scoundrel could get the better of them they were really smart. But because of the necessity for progression (you have to have more and more and better toys in games), it was necessary to end up with being able to Force Lightning a whole room - whereas in the original movies it was like this amazing thing that you had to delve into arcane and dangerous mysteries to learn to just use lightning on one guy like the Emperor could.

In terms of the original canon, Jedi are highly respected more because of their wisdom (which they get from being in tune with the Force) than anything else, and they have their reputation more from being arbitrators and diplomats, who are reliable because they've mastered their emotions and can see things objectively. And that's actually reflected quite well in KOTOR, where on Dantooine you're called upon to solve investigations and resolve disputes, etc.

Also, to my mind, the Jedi has an edge in combat merely because the Force allows them to see a little bit into the future and anticipate. Somehow the delicacy of that concept has been lost in a bull rush to space magic power creep.
 
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I wonder if it's actually the games that led to the power creep in the canon, and them being incorporated in the EU?
Nah, the power creep was always there and hard-baked into even the original lore. You mention lifting the rocks but in the same film we see that Yoda was capable lifting an entire X-Wing, displacing hundreds of pounds of water in addition to its own weight just to prove to Luke what was possible with the Force. You also have Vader's quote in ANH where he says: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

The games aren't to blame at any rate, already in the early 90s there were characters like Naga Sadow who were capable of causing stars to go supernova with the Force. That's Sith Lord tier power, but still.
 

Puukko

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Having played them for the first time a few years ago, I have a positive view of both games, though 2 is obviously the one that stands out, and 1's qualities largely tie into it serving as important supplementary material for 2. I wouldn't recommend playing 1 as a standalone game since it doesn't really do anything special, but I would absolutely recommend anyone to play it before 2. It's a decent, fairly short experience and considering how heavily 2 relies of knowledge of Revan, it wouldn't be right to tell anyone to play that game in a vacuum.

The writing quality between the two games is very stark and Malak is a bog standard villain, but I absolutely love the dark side ending in 1, with its Saturday morning cartoon cheesiness and all. In 2, slowly corrupting the whole team is likewise very fun, I couldn't dream of playing it any other way.

The main weakness shared by both games is how easy they are.
 

gurugeorge

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One thing I forgot to say, I actually really like the way the UI is in these two games. It's coming back to me that this was a feature I loved in KOTOR the very first time I played it years ago, and have missed in many subsequent 3rd person RPG-ish games.

Freezing 3rd person action and (once you get used to them) using the key commands of E and Q for select next and previous, TAB for next character, 1-3 for attack powers in that floating 3-part box, and 4-7 for support stuff (combined with being able to use the mousewheel to select within each of those 7 "chambers," so to speak) a cancel power button (I use X), all together with the mouse - all that is actually really cosy once you get used to it. You can get really fast slick with it - boom, boom, boom, it gets very intuitive.

It's also visually very cool when you have quite decent animations and blaster shots frozen in time (I wonder if that was the inspiration for the only cool thing in the sequels - that early moment in TFA when emo kid freezes a blaster bolt in mid-air).

I think these styles of games went too far in the console/action direction, but KOTOR really had a happy medium going, and the system is just perfect for PC play, even though it has some concessions to console play. The game also has a nice combat log. The only thing I might wish is a breakdown of contributions to stats on hover (e.g. what's contributing to armor value at a glance, or a breakdown of what's contributing to your boosted attributes or whatever). And perfection would be if you could zoom out to get a tactical view too whenever you fancied it (which some of the subsequent BioWare games did, though never in a very satisfactory way, somehow), but clearly the game wasn't really designed in such a way that a tactical view would have been needed in encounters, and maybe that simplicity is a good thing.

I actually play with full mouselook, and it's easy to combine that with the freeze and mouse selection by holding down R-Mouse or ALT - again, very well thought out.

BTW, after a bit of googling I cobbled together a little Frankenstein autohotkey for autorun (called "autowalk" here) and changed the walk/sprint key to a toggle on/off (comments are from the more knowledgeable inventors of the ahks I took these bits from, they're not mine :) - also they're from different games, so some of the comments are irrelevant to KOTOR). I use G for autorun and Z for walk, so obvs you change those to what you use (game has B for walk as default IIRC). Autorun is cancelled by various things, including W and S the interact key (I use F) and various menu keys. It has to be run in Admin mode:-

#NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
SetTitleMatchMode,2
#ifWinActive Star Wars
; #Warn ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.


;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; autorun ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;


g:: ; KEYBIND Autowalk
SendInput % "{w " ( (autowalk:=!autowalk) ? "down" : "up" ) "}"
Return

#if autowalk ; PERFORMANCE capture these keystrokes only when autowalk is active
w::
s::
; TAB:: ; KEYBIND information
i:: ; KEYBIND inventory
c:: ; KEYBIND clothing
o::
p::
j::
k::
v::
u::
l::
f::
r::
y::
t::
m::
n::
b::
x::
SendInput {%A_ThisHotkey%}
autowalk:=0
SendInput {w up}
Return
Space:: ; KEYBIND Radial menu
autowalk:=0
SendInput {w up}
SendInput {%A_ThisHotkey% down}
Return

#if

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; walk toggle ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

$z::
If !GetKeyState("z")
{
Send {z down}
Return
}
Send {z up}
Return
 
Last edited:

Harthwain

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Messages
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KOTOR 1 on its own is decent romp thru the Star Wars universe before the rodent snatched it, it has interesting plot and reveal if you played it like me in the era before internet solutions were aviable and some of companions are memorable to this very day both in good sense of the word (HK-47 and Canderous) and bad one (Cart, Mission) with rest being mediocre. Its still Bioware game though so don't expect anything you seen before or after.

KOTOR II is much darker and philosophical showing the wounds on planets and people the ''Good'' endings where Raven gave up power and responsibility and let corrupt and decadent ''republic'' to run the things in Galaxy but also questions what is force and clearly shows what bunch of hypocrite fools Jedi order are. Sadly as the game it still feels incomplete and rushed from the encounter with Jedi in Academy even in Restoration patch.

So both games are decent and worth playing even today but as classic Bioware formula game I enjoyed more Jade Empire and as SF Mass Effect 1 to be honest, its still title done in Kwan wannabe Hippie envisioned setting.
I agree with your take on KotOR 2, but not on KotOR 1.

The plot itself isn't really interesting. It hangs on a single, simple hook (that you can see from miles away). The rest is barebones Light Side vs Dark Side and the utter vapidity of Darth Malak doesn't help (just compare him with Darth Malgus!). There are some interesting companions and it was a nice first attempt to show the Old Republic timeline back then. However, other than that KotOR 1 is not an experience I'd recommend today, exactly because of how flat it is.

KotOR 2 is better. It has the same mechanical weaknesses as KotOR 2 (not surprisingly), but it manages to build up a more in-depth story in the otherwise very black-and-white universe, with more interesting characters, who have their own believable goals (G0-T0, for example). This creates the appeal and elevates the game as it gives you something you want to explore, despite knowing the setting (more or less).

By the way, I couldn't stand Jade Empire or Mass Effect 1.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
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?
 

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