Star Wars Star Wars: Kotor III is coming

[msxyz]

I asked Chris Avellone about Wheel of Time on Twitter and he said he couldn't say anything. I imagine if it had been cancelled, like Aliens, he would have been free to say so.

You are aware they are only consulting for that game. Not making it right?

So, who is making it? (if it's still in development. I haven't seen any news in long time)

 

[Commissar Draco]

Jedi exile was always Light Sided trany womyn in Cannon... but since I played it as Obsidian game not Star Wars it is OK. I at idea of MCM doing the WH40K game... what can change nature of full Xeno? Bolter round to the head.

 

[Storyfag]

Yeah, this was the only case of a Sith Lord being born as one from the day of his birth.

Don't you guys think it's kinda cool? I mean, Baby Emperor Tenebrae was so evil as an infant that he snapped his father's neck with a mere thought as a toddler. YES, that's actually in the TOR lore.

You're retarded, Wyrmie. Tenebrae was born in an empire ruled by the Sith Lords. They were breeding for 2000 years before he was conceived.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Does being a Star Wars fan suck? Serious question. I got/am still pissed off about the Tom Clancy games turning into console drivel. But Star Wars... I mean, that trilogy, what the fuck. And all the shameless merchandising and capitalizing on product makes my head spin. If I was really into Star Wars all this shit would just piss me off. I do think George Lucas is a moron who has completely fluked his way into success, building off the creative minds of others for his entire career. And ... well, the guy seems like an asshole, I'll leave it at that.

SW is remembered to this day precisely because of merchandizing and capitalizing - including spin-offs and adaptations. Had the kids and manchildren not have all that junk to play with, the old trilogy would've - at best - remained in distant memory and old movies collection of appreciative nerds minority as a cool old space fantasy flick.
The only remotely reasonable complaint could be that the new trilogy was shit by any standard. But eh, old SW fans should've had their balls drop a long time ago and new ones will survive the new trilogy just fine - they're the ones basking in SWEU retardation, after all.

 

[Aeschylus]

Yeah, this was the only case of a Sith Lord being born as one from the day of his birth.

Don't you guys think it's kinda cool? I mean, Baby Emperor Tenebrae was so evil as an infant that he snapped his father's neck with a mere thought as a toddler. YES, that's actually in the TOR lore.

You're retarded, Wyrmie. Tenebrae was born in an empire ruled by the Sith Lords. They were breeding for 2000 years before he was conceived.

Calling someone retarded over the minutiae of Star Wars mythology seems a tad excessive.

 

[sea]

Does being a Star Wars fan suck? Serious question. I got/am still pissed off about the Tom Clancy games turning into console drivel. But Star Wars... I mean, that trilogy, what the fuck. And all the shameless merchandising and capitalizing on product makes my head spin. If I was really into Star Wars all this shit would just piss me off. I do think George Lucas is a moron who has completely fluked his way into success, building off the creative minds of others for his entire career. And ... well, the guy seems like an asshole, I'll leave it at that.

Reminds me of an article I read a while back, although I forget exactly what it was called.

Basically, Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. In fact it's almost necessary that you hate Star Wars to be a real fan. Rather, Star Wars fans love the idea of Star Wars and all the stuff in it, they just despise the execution of everything. The universe is awesome, with so much potential for interesting stories, and different themes to be explored, and yet 99% of that is completely squandered on merchandising, crap for kids, bad videogames and novels, and George Lucas' own "I can still make movies, really!" ego-boosting prequel trilogy nonsense. The best Star Wars stuff exists in the minds of fans rather than in any work that's ever been produced. Heck, George Lucas was kind of a hack even back in the day - he just surrounded himself with much more talented people and took all the credit.

That's also the reason that, as a Star Wars fan, I think KotOR II is the single best work the franchise has ever produced. It brings to light questions such as "is moral certainty in a chaotic universe worth a deterministic existence?", things that both have real-world parallels and also deconstruct the basis of the entire series in ways that both entertaining and intellectually engaging. It's just painful that it took 20+ years and a videogame of all things for the franchise to even start talking on such a level, and of course that was retconned out of canon anyways. Bullshit.

 

[Jasede]

It was a wonderful game, my friend.
Well- perhaps it is better to say, it was a wonderfully written game, with a really good plot that you have to work for to enjoy.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Heck, George Lucas was kind of a hack even back in the day - he just surrounded himself with much more talented people and took all the credit.

Bull. Lucas nearly died of exhaustion working on the original Star Wars trilogy, and was a full process man in all three movies.

He personally dirtied every prop, in order to achieve a rusty look for the Star Wars world, he and friends often made the costumes and masks by hand at home, and he micromanaged on everything from the editing room to the special effects room. The reason he was not the "director" of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi was that he wanted to free himself into taking over the complete filmmaking process and micromanage things that way. And his ideas for the whole trilogy go back to a decade, for a time when he working on and off on the script.

What made Lucas go crazy in the prequels? He wanted to outdo James Cameron for Titanic, despite the fact that he was not James Cameron and was not into the same style of filmmaking. Making a fully digital movie was purely to beat Cameron in the technical department. It was a problem of ego, and it ruined him.

 

[Wyrmlord]

with a really good plot that you have to work for to enjoy.

Oh, and this is the key to understanding KotOR II fans.

You won't enjoy the game until you work hard to do everything you must to enjoy the game. But wait, why do we play videogames? Oh, that's right, to take time off from working hard.

Apparently, it's not the game that is supposed to do justice to the player but the player who is supposed to do justice to the game. As if gaming is a full time job to be conducted like a highly responsible duty. This attitude towards a game is kinda like an old pagan cult, where if a good monsoon doesn't come, it's because you didn't sacrifice enough animals to the sun god.

 

[Jasede]

That's like saying Dark Souls isn't fun just because you die over and over to some boss until you get better and have to put time and work into it.
For some people it's fun to do and for others it isn't.

 

[The Vault Dweller]

Emperor Tenebrae is sort of interesting in a cheesy way. This wasn't some fallen person - Dark Side energies were concentrated into his mother's womb from the moment a Sith Lord injected Dark Dide powered sperm into her. That ensured that he took complete control over the True Sith solar system before he turned even 10 years old.

This cracked me up. Not sure if you kids are getting better at humour or this is just as bad as it sounds, either way I rather enjoyed it

It's true. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sith_Emperor

MY EXACT REACTION:



,
The Vault Dweller

 

[Wyrmlord]

That's like saying Dark Souls isn't fun just because you die over and over to some boss until you get better and have to put time and work into it.
For some people it's fun to do and for others it isn't.

No, it's not the same thing.

There is challenge in winning or losing a fight, and hence the incentive to move on, to see where the odds will swing.

But what are the stakes or incentives in listening to lines upon lines upon lines of people talking about their life story? What's the payoff for doing so, other than just getting to listen to hours of talking? I mean, I don't consider life stories of real life people to be that interesting to listen to all the time either, so why should fictional characters be any better?

And once you remove the talking, what is left in KotOR 2 is a game with easy combat encounters, annoying pathing problems, and linear fighting areas.

 

[sea]

Bull. Lucas nearly died of exhaustion working on the original Star Wars trilogy, and was a full process man in all three movies.

He personally dirtied every prop, in order to achieve a rusty look for the Star Wars world, he and friends often made the costumes and masks by hand at home, and he micromanaged on everything from the editing room to the special effects room. The reason he was not the "director" of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi was that he wanted to free himself into taking over the complete filmmaking process and micromanage things that way. And his ideas for the whole trilogy go back to a decade, for a time when he working on and off on the script.

What made Lucas go crazy in the prequels? He wanted to outdo James Cameron for Titanic, despite the fact that he was not James Cameron and was not into the same style of filmmaking. Making a fully digital movie was purely to beat Cameron in the technical department. It was a problem of ego, and it ruined him.

That doesn't make him a capable or even competent filmmaker. He has a vivid imagination and a great attention to detail, but he is a terrible writer and director. He's a good "idea guy" but the prequel trilogy was a disaster specifically because Lucas was in direct control of everything and he didn't have anybody to kick him into line. Other films like Red Tails, Howard the Duck, even "classics" like American Graffiti reveal that he really doesn't have enough talent to compete with other directors of his generation. Maybe "hack" was a bit much, but still, I wouldn't say he has much more credibility than someone like M. Night Shyamalan.

 

[zerotol]

It was a wonderful game, my friend.
Well- perhaps it is better to say, it was a wonderfully written game, with a really good plot that you have to work for to enjoy.

KOTOR 2 is a bugfest with no ending. The ending is the climax to the whole game, therefore it can not be well written.

 

[Stinger]

You won't enjoy the game until you work hard to do everything you must to enjoy the game. But wait, why do we play videogames? Oh, that's right, to take time off from working hard.

Ok, but what do you have to do enjoy something as fucked up as Dark Side sperm conceiving a Sith Lord of pure evil?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Basically, Star Wars fans hate Star Wars. In fact it's almost necessary that you hate Star Wars to be a real fan. Rather, Star Wars fans love the idea of Star Wars and all the stuff in it, they just despise the execution of everything. The universe is awesome, with so much potential for interesting stories, and different themes to be explored, and yet 99% of that is completely squandered on merchandising, crap for kids, bad videogames and novels, and George Lucas' own "I can still make movies, really!" ego-boosting prequel trilogy nonsense. The best Star Wars stuff exists in the minds of fans rather than in any work that's ever been produced. Heck, George Lucas was kind of a hack even back in the day - he just surrounded himself with much more talented people and took all the credit.

My exwife was a huge Star Wars fan, so I've seen all the movies. I liked the original trilogy when I was a kid, but watching them as an adult was kind of a let down. The prequels were REALLY awful but I think everyone knows that already. It's just kind of amazing watching them as an adult because it's so ovbious what parts of each movie, with the exception of Star Wars, are toy commercials. If Star Wars fans think the movies suck because they're poorly executed, they have a pretty big point. The idea is okay, space ships with space knights running around using magic powers to fight evil. The problem is that it just trips over itself all the time either in the scenes which are ILM Showcase Reels or toy commercials or with really stupid ideas to explain things that don't need an explanation(we know what I'm talking about).

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Why does Wyrmlord dislike Kotor II yet like PST?

 

[Gragt]

Bull. Lucas nearly died of exhaustion working on the original Star Wars trilogy, and was a full process man in all three movies.

He personally dirtied every prop, in order to achieve a rusty look for the Star Wars world, he and friends often made the costumes and masks by hand at home, and he micromanaged on everything from the editing room to the special effects room. The reason he was not the "director" of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi was that he wanted to free himself into taking over the complete filmmaking process and micromanage things that way. And his ideas for the whole trilogy go back to a decade, for a time when he working on and off on the script.

What made Lucas go crazy in the prequels? He wanted to outdo James Cameron for Titanic, despite the fact that he was not James Cameron and was not into the same style of filmmaking. Making a fully digital movie was purely to beat Cameron in the technical department. It was a problem of ego, and it ruined him.

That doesn't make him a capable or even competent filmmaker. He has a vivid imagination and a great attention to detail, but he is a terrible writer and director. He's a good "idea guy" but the prequel trilogy was a disaster specifically because Lucas was in direct control of everything and he didn't have anybody to kick him into line. Other films like Red Tails, Howard the Duck, even "classics" like American Graffiti reveal that he really doesn't have enough talent to compete with other directors of his generation. Maybe "hack" was a bit much, but still, I wouldn't say he has much more credibility than someone like M. Night Shyamalan.

Lucas is somewhat tragic in that there was a time when he not only had great potential but applied it to make a great movie like THX 1138, which is a direct opposite to his subsequent works. It's not simply his best movie but also one of the great science-fiction movies, yet it's often overlooked for crap like Lucas' own Star Wars or a mediocrity like Blade Runner, despite THX 1138 being something like what would have happened if Samuel Beckett wrote sci-fi. Lucas was part of that new generation of American filmmakers like Coppola, Scorsese, Milius or Cassavetes, and these guys were rather close, often discussing their projects with each other. It's no coincidence that this generation gave birth to a serie of self-conscious art films like Taxi Driver, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Apocalypse Now and THX 1138, to name only a few, all in the short span of a decade. One can only wonder what the hell happened to Lucas after that, because it took a while longer for others to meet their artistic demise, like Scorsese. Comparing him to a hack — in the real sense of the word, because I get the feeling it is thrown around without understanding of its meaning — like Shyamalan, who has yet to make something remotely good, is very unfair.

On the subject of Star Wars, I loved it as a kid like many did, but I find it ironic that many complain how much the second trilogy sucks while the first aged so badly. SW is awfully campy, and not in a fun way like the original Star Trek serie; Jedi isn't much better, and even worse at parts; only Empire manages to stay decent by being a nervous and well-paced action flick, but the characters are still the weak point, even if they get some form of development over the course of the movie. I'm almost tempted to say that the second trilogy is just a bit better than the first, despite being mediocre, but I guess that Empire manages to save it barely.

Any universe can be interesting and full of potential but without great characters who do interesting stuff in that universe, it's rather boring, and that's pretty much the bane of SW. By contrast I only started to watch the original Star Trek serie a few years ago and was surprised to discover how much it embraced its campy nature from the very start, which helps it to be still enjoyable today, along with the memorable cast of characters, starting with James T. Kirk. In the same vein, I found KotOR 2 interesting not because it was set in the SW universe or what it did with the setting, but because it has a good cast of characters. You can tell whatever story you want but the characters are still those playing the most important part in its success.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Why does Wyrmlord dislike Kotor II yet like PST?

Torment had a lot more going than just dialogue. Pickpocket the rat thug leader, and you find a Grimoire that teaches you powerful magic. Buy a curiosity in a shop and later find that it comes of use in solving a quest. Pick up a random severed arm in a dungeon, learn that it was your arm, and end up finding the zombie of your old friend in the process.

The game had exploration, problem-solving, clue-finding, object-based interaction, you name it. And it did a good job in that department.

 

[Serious_Business]

with a really good plot that you have to work for to enjoy.

Oh, and this is the key to understanding KotOR II fans.

You won't enjoy the game until you work hard to do everything you must to enjoy the game. But wait, why do we play videogames? Oh, that's right, to take time off from working hard.

Apparently, it's not the game that is supposed to do justice to the player but the player who is supposed to do justice to the game. As if gaming is a full time job to be conducted like a highly responsible duty. This attitude towards a game is kinda like an old pagan cult, where if a good monsoon doesn't come, it's because you didn't sacrifice enough animals to the sun god.

I like your pet peeve agaisnt K2, even though I don't agree with it, I think the game is fantastic. But I'm not sure that you can argue on any serious level that isn't the best piece of writing that will ever come out of Star Wars. Not that I read the infinite amount of crap that was written on this setting, but I find - and I say this with all the pretentiousness required, but note my self-awareness - I find that you need to either be too focused on making a point, or being insensible to the quality of the writing, to not see the value of this game. It was really a tour the force on how it managed to bypass all the limitations of the setting and make something interesting and creative, and I feel like it's misguided to take a shit on it. If you have to, do it because of its uncompleted nature - which is solved by the fan patch anyway.

Really, the idea that games shouldn't offer anything but "time off from working" is skewed and simple minded, I shared that view before, but I believe games can be more than that, and I believe K2 is more than that. More than that to those who... are willing to make the efforts to dig deep enough to find its true worth

Trolling aside what I'm saying is that the game has some sort of esthetic value. I'm not sure what that value is, but there is no doubt that K2 fans take that value into consideration when they discuss the game. It only makes them pretentious if you're not willing to engage dialog on the same level as they do. Saying that games should be entertainment (thus non-esthetic, non-capable of stimulating feelings, but only can be shallow entertainment that recharges the battery of a hard-40-hours office worker with no soul or imagination) can be said, but it's entirely missing the point if you ask me

 

[Wise Emperor]

What Ivan said.
I really like the mood of the game: dark, gloomy, even depressing. There is some interesting feeling of loneliness of your character in cold, harsh, unforgiving space. This is proper game which comes to my mind, if I hear the cliché "dark, gritty, mature". Eats every Bioware title for breakfast. Normal story content without overused violence, sex and disturbing themes.
It's hard to capture that kind of feeling in today's gaming.
Also Kreia :D .

 

[Jasede]

Every couple years I watch some cut-scenes from the game or read parts of The LP and I just can't help but marvel at how good it is. This hands-down beats Torment when it comes to strength of a single character. They put all their chips into one basket: Kreia. And it was glorious. (PS:T is also glorious.)
And I suck so much Obsidian-cock (apparently, even though I hate their latest games) that I am completely immune to all criticism in this regard. Any critique on this is like critizing Torment.

Vrook: "You were deafened."
Kreia: "At last, you could hear."
Kavar: "You were broken."
Kreia: "You were whole."
Zez-Kai Ell: "You were blinded."
Kreia: "And at last... you saw."

The whole game just sends chills down my spine. If there were more characters like Kreia, with her strength and dimension, I'd buy those games on the spot, a storyfag as they might be. There's not enough of these gloriously written games; it's all shlock. The only games that I know that are similar are games like PS:T, Nier, Deadly Premonition (it's genius in a way), Anchorhead and MotB. And Dark Souls, too. Feel free to suggest me similar games; I eat that shit up.

 

[Rivmusique]

Every couple years I watch some cut-scenes from the game or read parts of The LP and I just can't help but marvel at how good it is. This hands-down beats Torment when it comes to strength of a single character. They put all their chips into one basket: Kreia. And it was glorious. (PS:T is also glorious.)
And I suck so much Obsidian-cock (apparently, even though I hate their latest games) that I am completely immune to all criticism in this regard. Any critique on this is like critizing Torment.

Vrook: "You were deafened."
Kreia: "At last, you could hear."
Kavar: "You were broken."
Kreia: "You were whole."
Zez-Kai Ell: "You were blinded."
Kreia: "And at last... you saw."

The whole game just sends chills down my spine. If there were more characters like Kreia, with her strength and dimension, I'd buy those games on the spot, a storyfag as they might be. There's not enough of these gloriously written games; it's all shlock. The only games that I know that are similar are games like PS:T, Nier, Deadly Premonition (it's genius in a way), Anchorhead and MotB. And Dark Souls, too. Feel free to suggest me similar games; I eat that shit up.

Almost makes me want to replay it. Remake with a non-shit combat system and I would.

 

[deuxhero]

Vrook: "You were deafened."
Kreia: "At last, you could hear."
Kavar: "You were broken."
Kreia: "You were whole."
Zez-Kai Ell: "You were blinded."
Kreia: "And at last... you saw."

My favorite scene in the game.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Vrook: "You were deafened."
Kreia: "At last, you could hear."
Kavar: "You were broken."
Kreia: "You were whole."
Zez-Kai Ell: "You were blinded."
Kreia: "And at last... you saw."

Any way to back General Vaklu, spare this unbro Kavar and trigger your dialogue Jasede? I can play as Jedi just can't force myself into backing Multiculti.



Almost worth it.