Star Wars Why I fell out of love with KOTOR

[Harthwain]

KOTOR 2 does not aim to do what KOTOR 1 does. That is what you are missing here, BioWare wanted to make a simple feelgood game to make people feel better after the prequels.

I doubt they were this far-sighted. Look at Jade Empire. It follows the same template. It's simply the kind of stuff BioWare was capable of making, not because they had a hidden agenda beyond that.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

It's just infantile storytelling (which has its charm, unlike nuBioWare which tries to go for 'mature' storytelling and fails miserably).

 

[Radiane]

Star Wars is just fairy tales

Yeah, no shit? What gave it away? "A long time ago, far, far away"? Princess in distress? Black knight? And the Death Star fulfills the role of a dragon.

Phrases like the one you quoted are seen so often that people in general don´t associate it with any standard fairy tale. They take it as granted.

Other elements, like the princess etc. appear in many other types of films and media, so you cannot say those are elements where you can identify a fairy tale for 100 %. We wouldn't call a western, for example, a fairy tale, would we.

Besides, there are a plethora of people who worship some cults they pulled out from these movies, just look at the jedi religions. For these people alone it is imported to stress out that star wars is not reality, but rather some fictional junk.

There are dozens of millions of people who think that star wars is based upon some mysterious anticipation, or even hat this whole thing is the future brought into today's world by some visionaries.

So it cannot be a wrong thing to tell them: No, it is not, this is fiction, it's just some sort of fairy tale.
(No, I would call it even something worse, because while from fairy tales one can learn something, from this trash one usually cannot)

 

[Storyfag]

Phrases like the one you quoted are seen so often that people in general don´t associate it with any standard fairy tale.

 

[Poseidon00]

KOTOR 2 does not aim to do what KOTOR 1 does. That is what you are missing here, BioWare wanted to make a simple feelgood game to make people feel better after the prequels.

I doubt they were this far-sighted. Look at Jade Empire. It follows the same template. It's simply the kind of stuff BioWare was capable of making, not because they had a hidden agenda beyond that.

Jade Empire needs to return. A fighting game/rpg with multiple fighting/weapon/magic/transformation styles to choose from is just so incline. They just need to work on the gameplay.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Star Wars is just fairy tales

And the Death Star fulfills the role of a dragon.

A fairy tale about young men inserting their missiles in the dragon's exhaust port.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Jade Empire needs to return. A fighting game/rpg with multiple fighting/weapon/magic/transformation styles to choose from is just so incline. They just need to work on the gameplay.

And most importantly, comfy wuxia setting is comfy.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I never plan on playing KOTOR again; I really can't stand the "single-player MMO" vibe it gives off, not only from the combat, but basic movement as well. That being said, it's better than KOTOR 2, because it has better pacing and a simple, down-to-earth story about good vs. evil (which is what you'd expect out of Star Wars), rather than Chris Avellone's gay attempts at shoehorning moral relativism into a universe where it doesn't belong. I never even finished KOTOR 2 because it dragged too much - though, to be fair, I might've done the same with KOTOR 1 if I wasn't like 12 back when I played it.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I never even finished KOTOR 2 because it dragged too much

 

[Barbie]

KOTOR 2 does not aim to do what KOTOR 1 does. That is what you are missing here, BioWare wanted to make a simple feelgood game to make people feel better after the prequels.

I doubt they were this far-sighted. Look at Jade Empire. It follows the same template. It's simply the kind of stuff BioWare was capable of making, not because they had a hidden agenda beyond that.

Not much of a hidden agenda when it's disappointment most of Star Wars fans had at the time. Here are some excerpts from it's reviews at the time;

Surprisingly flat-footed dialogue scenes that feature wooden acting, dreary art direction and old fashioned optical wipes are either intended as an homage to the sci-fi of the '50s or reflect the director's impatience with exposition. ...Meanwhile, the lovebirds' story veers into camp. These two fall in love not because romance sparks but to suit the needs of subsequent movies. Worse yet, the actors woo to the most stilted lines of the movie: Anakin to Padme, "You are everything soft and smooth." Or later, "I am haunted by the kiss you should not have given to me." And by lines that should never have been written. - The Hollywood Reporter

Attack of the Clones, like Phantom Menace before it, is a cold, cold movie. It skillfully touches on countless emotional pressure points, but never pulls us into its universe, or completely involves us with the personalities populating it. ... AotC seems content to skirt along the perimeters of emotional resonance, but never commits to taking us on a journey of any substance. It is rarely involving, rarely rousing, and never stirring. It is deliberate and mechanical, and little more. - IGN

We'll never see another "Star Wars," no matter how much we want to. And we want to very much. ...The plot is standard, and the dialogue, even for something intended for young people, is curiously flat. It ranges from the pious ("The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it") to the predictive ("Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me," Obi-Wan Kenobi jokes to Anakin) to the pathetic, as when Anakin grumbles about Padme Amidala, "I've thought about her every day since we parted--and she's forgotten me completely." - Los Angeles Times

"Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" could be the worst movie ever made and still it would have the faithful rallying around the Lucas franchise. ... Against that army of formidable opponents, it seems like a waste of breath to point out the flaws in a movie that isn't really a movie at all: truncated sequences that don't string together into a coherent story, dialogue that may as well have been cobbled together out of pieces of wood instead of words, love scenes shot to look like douche commercials. ... This is a fantasy with no poetry in it. - Salon



Drink the Kool-Aid. Wear blinders. Cover your ears. Because that's the only way you can totally enjoy Revenge of the Sith — the final and most futile attempt from skilled producer, clumsy director and tin-eared writer George Lucas to create a prequel trilogy to match the myth-making spirit of the original Wars saga he unleashed twenty-eight years ago. - Rolling Stone

The picture is laden with plot and difficult to follow, even for someone who has seen every "Star Wars" installment. The action scenes are overlong and unexciting, and if anyone needs to take a bathroom break, go during a light saber duel. They'll still be fighting when you get back. ... Perhaps as a result of playing to this audience, Lucas occasionally loses focus and presents the story as if it were merely a vehicle through which cultists might bask in a cherished fantasy. When Lucas does that, he's giving way to the dark side. - San Francisco Chronicle

The dialogue is astonishingly feeble, the acting unforgivably wooden. To paraphrase Yoda, the only creature with truly human dimensions ever since Harrison Ford's cowboy-mechanic Han Solo departed the galaxy: Bored I am. ... I admit to a thrill of sick delight when the black Darth Vader mask at last descends upon the face of Anakin, sealing his fate and changing his breathing, bringing full circle something that began with far more offhand charm back in 1977. It's a reminder that in the "Star Wars" saga, there are pockets of brilliance, surrounded by the yawning emptiness of space. - New York Daily News

Anakin/Vader turns out to be a petulant wuss, a brat who chooses evil because he didn’t get the Jedi promotion he wanted. Instead of meaningful anti-heroism, we’ve got this bitter fellow gulled by the ego strokes and patently false promises of Ian McDiarmid’s Senator Palpatine. At the pivotal moment when Anakin/ Vader says, “I’ll do anything you want,” his hubris— his moment of tragic downfall—is undercut by McDiarmid’s devilishly arch line-reading, a smugly purred “Go-o-o-o-o-o-d!” Laughter erupted even from the faithful assembled at the big screening I attended. - New York Magazine

There is nothing fun about Sith, except maybe the opening space battle, and it's not so much an adventure as an ordeal. Ian McDiarmid, who's afforded a larger role than Portman, lays it on thick as the villainous Supreme Chancellor-cum-Emperor Palpatine, but his mustache-twirling performance is more tedious than entertaining, and his entreaties to Anakin to join the side of evil are circuitous and repetitive. ... But these are not, and should not be, enough to elevate Sith beyond passable entertainment into what none of the Star Wars films have been: a truly great movie. - Las Vegas Weekly

So as you can see...It really is not a hidden agenda nor does it take superior intelligence to have heard of the most common criticisms of the prequels. Only the most hardcore Star Wars fans and people who had never seen a Star Wars movie loved the prequels.

https://www.reddit.com/r/kotor/comments/1i7ls3/comment/cb1r7l9/

The lead designer himself said they aimed to appeal as a throwback to the original trilogy.

JC: Given the large amount of Star Wars movies, games and books, how did you decide on the timeframe and story for KOTOR?

JO: We wanted a timeframe that gave us the freedom to tell an epic story where the player’s choices could impact the entire galaxy. That would be difficult during the movie era as Luke, Han and Leia were the movers and shakers of that time period. So we decided to base the game in The Old Republic era. Even though the game takes place thousands of years ago, we felt it was important that it feel similar in tone to the original trilogy, both in story and in art style.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

The lead designer himself said they aimed to appeal as a throwback to the original trilogy.

Lifting story beats from the OT does not equal "Devs think PT is bad."

 

[vibehunter]

...

A long ass way of saying you got old.

 

[Harthwain]

The lead designer himself said they aimed to appeal as a throwback to the original trilogy.

You're reaching by trying to link the dissatisfaction with the prequels to it though. He literally said they wanted a free hand while using the Star Wars setting. That's it.

 

[gurugeorge]

Just playing them back to back, I'm finding the combat in KOTOR is actually better than the combat in KOTOR 2, a bit more tactical - the enemies are a bit more dangerous and intelligent. Also, I'm really appreciating the UI - the 3 scrollable powers tray and the 4 scrollable utility trays, combined with pause and switching members, works very well as a hybrid form of combat that has almost an actioney 3rd person feel but is quite pausable and ponderable.

It's all about getting to know the keybinds and using them.

Top tip: you can actually shuffle through abilities in any of the seven slots by hitting shift and tapping the relevant number (e.g. holding Shift and tapping 1 several times will cycle through your basic attack, power attack, flurry, etc. - very useful for Force powers, means you don't have to bother waving your mouse about).

I think it was a very slick, well thought-out system that's conducive to getting into muscle memory quite quickly, and it's a shame they didn't iterate on it more. I guess it was just on the cusp of UIs getting dumbed down for consoles, it wasn't quite dumb enough yet (they managed to dumb it down enough with subsequent games).

 

[JamesDixon]

The stories were fine, but the mechanics are shit. Wizards of the Woke's D20 Star Wars is utter shit mechanically. They should have used WEG Star Wars' system instead.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Star Wars is just fairy tales for (so called) grown ups. Pfff. Very cringeworthy. Also, don´t forget that the aliens who made this like to milk your hard earned cash. Pure Fail on your side to fall in for that. Besides, the Kotor games are overrated. And no, I won´t read your wall of texts. Better play Avernum next time.

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Maybe this quote from C.S. Lewis needs to be posted as a reminder at the start of each thread?

 

[Barbie]

The lead designer himself said they aimed to appeal as a throwback to the original trilogy.

You're reaching by trying to link the dissatisfaction with the prequels to it though. He literally said they wanted a free hand while using the Star Wars setting. That's it.

I think you're missing my point, or I'm not coming off as clear as I wish I did. People did not like the prequels because they were too much not like the original trilogy, which were simple times and simple movies. By appealing to the original trilogy they addressed the main complaints about the prequels naturally. People preferred the original trilogy, they appealed and aimed for that instead of the prequels. Thats all there is to it.