I've put off playing Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords for several years now. I finally purchased a copy about a month ago, almost exactly three years to the day after the game was released. This was no normal lazy delay. No, from the minute the game was released, it's been the target of complaints ranging from rampant bugs to incomplete content. And so I decided to bide my time and wait. I still hold the first Knights of the Old Republic to be one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and one of the most significant pieces of work in the entire Expanded Universe canon. At the time I was confident that bugs would be fixed, and content patches would eventually appear to correct the mistakes made by an overly-eager publisher (LucasArts) wanting to get their product on the store shelves in time for Christmas. I was willing to wait for a perfected experience in the follow-up to the game that renewed my love for Star Wars which had largely been killed by the Phantom Menace four years earlier.
Some bugs were fixed, many were not. LucasArts outright denied a request by the developer, Obsidian Entertainment, to reintroduce the deleted content. There was much crying and gnashing of teeth. However, there was some hope given in the form of a fan effort to restore the missing content. Unfortunately that project is still underway to this day and has yet to release anything (but I'm still cheering for them).
Why now? Mass Effect. BioWare's (BioWare developed the first KOTOR) latest epic lovingly caressed many of the KOTOR buttons in my brain, without ever pressing them - after Anna played Mass Effect and listening to my endless litany of comparisons between the two she decided it was time for her to play KOTOR for the first time as well. She played it first (and agreed that as good as Mass Effect is, KOTOR is far superior), then I replayed... for the tenth time.
I decided it was finally time to stop waiting on KOTORII. Fresh off the original, I ordered the sequel and dove right in. And it was buggy, oh yes it was buggy. Pathing errors, problematic scene changes, equipped items disappearing in the middle of cut scenes (only once, but that was enough), poorly implemented transparencies, buggy cameras in cut scenes... and I stopped counting the number of times it locked up - both in the game, and while loading an old save.
Even with all that though the game was playable. And it was an entirely serviceable sequel to the original. What hurts so much is how obvious it is that the game was gutted. Plotlines removed, endings excised, a whole planet no longer playable, and on and on. The worst part of it all is that after reading about exactly what was removed... I think KOTORII could have been a much deeper experience than what was offered in the original which, as I said, I hold in very high regard.
I can also say that it leaves me wanting a KOTORIII more than I would have thought possible, and that's a real accomplishment. Perhaps we'll get one eventually. Maybe even developed by BioWare. I can only hope, it would be a shame to leave it where it stands.
Some bugs were fixed, many were not. LucasArts outright denied a request by the developer, Obsidian Entertainment, to reintroduce the deleted content. There was much crying and gnashing of teeth. However, there was some hope given in the form of a fan effort to restore the missing content. Unfortunately that project is still underway to this day and has yet to release anything (but I'm still cheering for them).
Why now? Mass Effect. BioWare's (BioWare developed the first KOTOR) latest epic lovingly caressed many of the KOTOR buttons in my brain, without ever pressing them - after Anna played Mass Effect and listening to my endless litany of comparisons between the two she decided it was time for her to play KOTOR for the first time as well. She played it first (and agreed that as good as Mass Effect is, KOTOR is far superior), then I replayed... for the tenth time.
I decided it was finally time to stop waiting on KOTORII. Fresh off the original, I ordered the sequel and dove right in. And it was buggy, oh yes it was buggy. Pathing errors, problematic scene changes, equipped items disappearing in the middle of cut scenes (only once, but that was enough), poorly implemented transparencies, buggy cameras in cut scenes... and I stopped counting the number of times it locked up - both in the game, and while loading an old save.
Even with all that though the game was playable. And it was an entirely serviceable sequel to the original. What hurts so much is how obvious it is that the game was gutted. Plotlines removed, endings excised, a whole planet no longer playable, and on and on. The worst part of it all is that after reading about exactly what was removed... I think KOTORII could have been a much deeper experience than what was offered in the original which, as I said, I hold in very high regard.
I can also say that it leaves me wanting a KOTORIII more than I would have thought possible, and that's a real accomplishment. Perhaps we'll get one eventually. Maybe even developed by BioWare. I can only hope, it would be a shame to leave it where it stands.
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