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Dumpshock Forums _ General Gaming _ Just finished KOTOR 2
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 28 2009, 03:37 AM
Well, tonight I just powered through KOTOR 2. There were some cheesy aspects (implausible looking action in cutscenes, supposedly unique relics spawning randomly more than once on slain enemies), and towards the end of the game it felt like they forgot to allow for multiple solutions to levels (eg. hacking or sneaking instead of Conan-style lightsaber rage) but playing as a melee oriented character I certainly enjoyed it.
The game had more philosophical complexity than the previous KOTOR. I don't really feel like I'm spoiling anything if I say that right away one philosophical question the game poses is whether it is good or evil to rush to war in order to attempt to defend innocents. Role-playing out my character's take on that issue was emotionally interesting to me because I felt the question had a lot of parallels with NATO involvement or lack thereof in Bosnia and Rwanda, respectively. I felt it was real enough of an issue that I could get into role playing it in the game even when transplanted to a hypothetical imaginary universe.
Naturally these sorts of moral questions weren't part of the original 1970s Joseph Campbell Star Wars philosophical body which dealt more with mythology and proto-Jungian personal psychological actualization, but it was just fine for a game in my opinion.
I'd not gotten KOTOR 2 for a long time because I thought people had considered it to suck especially in comparison to all the praise that I recall KOTOR 1 getting. But, heck, KOTOR 2 is just fine aside from a few minor complaints and the fact that I wouldn't recommend playing anything other than a melee-oriented character.
KOTOR 2 finally lets you wield a Gamorrean war axe! If I didn't have so many other video games awaiting my attention (I finally got the Baldur's Gate boxed set, finally...) I'd play it again making a Robert E. Howard Conan ripoff main character. That way I'd get all the Dark Side points for being passionate and self-empowered but probably balance those out by "noble savage" actions when appropriate.
Posted by: ravensmuse Jun 28 2009, 12:49 PM
The reason a lot of people say that it sucks is that the ending was completely neutered in order to get it out for the Christmas rush. We lost a lot of content in the process, but it sounds like you're playing it on the PC, so there's mods to add the stuff back in...
Basically, http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cut_content_from_Star_Wars:_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords. (I should have thought to check wookiepedia first instead of googling for fifteen minutes)
Posted by: Dumori Jun 28 2009, 01:14 PM
Melee isnt the only way in KOTOR2 you can kick ass with a gun if you power down that route. But light sabers are the key really.
Posted by: Critias Jun 28 2009, 01:43 PM
While I agree the ending was disappointing...I'm one of those (rare?) gamers that thinks the trip there is the important part. If I have fun playing and it tells an awesome story, I don't mind a weak ending -- I much prefer it to a game that sucks and is miserable and frustrating, just to make me "earn" some cool movie at the end.
I still think KOTOR and KOTOR 2, ending woes or not, were two of the best PC games I've ever played.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 28 2009, 09:47 PM
Yeah, I was thinking about the viability of having the main character use a Gamorrean axe the whole game but realized that the game would become intensely painful if you didn't ultimately utilize and twink out your lightsabers.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 28 2009, 09:54 PM
Basically, http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cut_content_from_Star_Wars:_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic_II:_The_Sith_Lords. (I should have thought to check wookiepedia first instead of googling for fifteen minutes)
A lot of stuff was cut but I still enjoyed the game. There are far worse pieces of software out there to spend money on even with whatever problems KOTOR 2 had.
Posted by: ravensmuse Jun 29 2009, 01:40 AM
*shrug* Just explaining why it's got a bad rep. I had a good time with it myself, though I think I had to return it just as I got to Korriban..
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 29 2009, 02:18 AM
I guess that good things never happen to a game that the parent company rushes out the doors to meet the Christmas deadline. You'd think they have learnt their lesson by now never to rush a game.
I'm still sad that they dropped Duke Nukem Forever.
Posted by: ravensmuse Jun 29 2009, 03:06 PM
I think the whole gaming community is mourning the loss of Duke Nukem Forever. But remember, we were talking about whether or not it was even coming out http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/11/03/. I mean, shit!
Then again, anyone else watch the demo video that one of the modelers leaked to the internet? It looked pretty cool...
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 29 2009, 11:29 PM
Then again, anyone else watch the demo video that one of the modelers leaked to the internet? It looked pretty cool...
I feel like the 90s were a special time in games when they still had some of the innovativeness of the 80s but not yet enough of the mainstreamness to suck and be cotton candy-ish like today. (IMO Call of Duty 4 is kind of like cotton candy. It's fun to look at but probably makes you fat.) I play stuff left over from the 90s almost on principle.
Posted by: Thanee Jun 30 2009, 12:12 PM
I also liked KotOR, but never played the 2nd part. I did play Bioware's latest RPG, Mass Effect, though, which is also great (if you can look over the somewhat repetitive side quests). Already looking forward to ME2 and their The Old Republic MMORPG. 
Bye
Thanee
Posted by: Backgammon Jul 1 2009, 01:39 AM
Mass Effect > KOTOR, as good as KOTOR was.
Posted by: Critias Jul 1 2009, 03:08 PM
Mass Effect also came out a good five years after KOTOR with all kinds of new video gaming tech to play with, and I think it's hard to deny it was heavily influenced/inspired by it.
Posted by: KarmaInferno Jul 1 2009, 07:56 PM
Then again, anyone else watch the demo video that one of the modelers leaked to the internet? It looked pretty cool...
It was a faked gameplay video.
Pre-rendered movie made to look like they did a video capture of playing the game.
-karma
Posted by: ravensmuse Jul 2 2009, 12:19 AM
It was faked? I didn't know that, I just saw the video up on gamelife.
I will have to research this.
Posted by: Dumori Jul 2 2009, 02:05 AM
Yeah they said it was faked when the scraped the game.
Posted by: ravensmuse Jul 2 2009, 11:05 AM
Can you imagine that wiki has nothing? Huh.
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 2 2009, 11:13 PM
Why would they even admit to something like that in the first place?
Posted by: ravensmuse Jul 3 2009, 02:31 AM
When I rechecked the blog I got the video from (http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/05/video-duke-nukem-forever-gameplay-footage/), the article says:
Released to the public as part of Brewer’s online portfolio, the clip takes us through a number of different parts of the game — a game that, though much derided, actually looks like a fun time here, and certainly a worthy heir to Duke Nukem 3D .
It’s just too bad that 3D Realms fell apart and probably doomed this game to languish as a minor historical footnote.
Posted by: KarmaInferno Jul 16 2009, 07:59 PM
Ah, I thought http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHU3sq8Wfjs, which was later revealed by a disgruntled ex-programmer to be faked.
The more recent one doesn't look bad.
-karma
Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jul 17 2009, 12:40 AM
The more recent one doesn't look bad.
-karma
Wow, that looked really hardcore. Figures it was a fake.
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