KotOR II help...is this possible?

[Red Hawk]

I remember trying to get the Knights of the Old Republic games to work on an old 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 with an Intel "Extreme Graphics 2" 852 chipset. Normally it crashed on startup, but I managed to get it to work -- something about changing the "flipping policy" in the drivers from "flip" to "blit". It caused metallic objects to lose their shine though, items characters held in KotOR II were somewhat transparent, and of course it ran like crap, but it ran. The desire to run the KotOR games properly is what motivated me to get my dad to buy our first graphics card, the Geforce GT 7300 GT. Ah, memories.

Probably the worst ending ever, until Mass Effect 3 at least. No real closure at all, and if I recall correctly, the game just ends very suddenly. I remember just sitting there thinking, I played 50 hours building up my character and party for this??

The main portion of the game is very fun though, although the opening and closing portions are not close to the quality of the first game. The gameplay itself is much like the first game but with some added features such as trying to train you party members to be jedi and more crafting than the first game. The story though, is very muddled and the love/hate the force thing is never really resolved.

I was hoping at least the muddled ending would be cleared up in KOTOR 3, along with what happened to Revan, but we know how that worked out dont we?

While the ending did suffer a feeling of "suddenness" thanks to the cut content, I disagree that it didn't provide closure. Rather, if you talk to Kreia, she will tell you visions of the future of your companions. That's a lot better than anything in ME3's initial ending. Lack of closure regarding the Exile (I refuse to call him by the "canon" name, or acknowledge his "canon" gender. ) can be excused because it was sort of a cliffhanger ending, which left fans agonizing for a KotOR 3 that never truly came. It's not the game's fault that it never got a true sequel. ME3 had no such excuse, as it was very specifically the end of a trilogy and the story arc of Shepard's struggle with the Reapers.

Looking back at it, it also seems that KotOR II was more mature in how it handled themes. The story was more of a mystery and an "invisible war" than the grand scale struggle from KoTOR I. Characters had a bit more depth to them, and the love/hate the Force aspect was an intelligent exploration of the Force, its nature, and what it means to Jedi, Sith, and the rest of the galaxy. And it had the maturity to leave it rather ambiguous and up to the player to decide rather than loudly determining which side was good and which was evil. This is all not to say anything bad about KotOR I; the first game was a near-perfect translation of the story mechanics, atmosphere, character style, and universe from the original Star Wars trilogy to RPG form, moved to another time period so the writers were free to do what they wanted with the story. KotOR II is just as good in several rather different ways.

 

[qliveur]

Another word of advice: don't bother installing the high-quality movies. The engine doesn't scale them properly and they actually end up looking worse than the originals. :\

I do recommend the high-quality music, though.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I remember trying to get the Knights of the Old Republic games to work on an old 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 with an Intel "Extreme Graphics 2" 852 chipset. Normally it crashed on startup, but I managed to get it to work -- something about changing the "flipping policy" in the drivers from "flip" to "blit". It caused metallic objects to lose their shine though, items characters held in KotOR II were somewhat transparent, and of course it ran like crap, but it ran. The desire to run the KotOR games properly is what motivated me to get my dad to buy our first graphics card, the Geforce GT 7300 GT. Ah, memories.



While the ending did suffer a feeling of "suddenness" thanks to the cut content, I disagree that it didn't provide closure. Rather, if you talk to Kreia, she will tell you visions of the future of your companions. That's a lot better than anything in ME3's initial ending. Lack of closure regarding the Exile (I refuse to call him by the "canon" name, or acknowledge his "canon" gender. ) can be excused because it was sort of a cliffhanger ending, which left fans agonizing for a KotOR 3 that never truly came. It's not the game's fault that it never got a true sequel. ME3 had no such excuse, as it was very specifically the end of a trilogy and the story arc of Shepard's struggle with the Reapers.

Looking back at it, it also seems that KotOR II was more mature in how it handled themes. The story was more of a mystery and an "invisible war" than the grand scale struggle from KoTOR I. Characters had a bit more depth to them, and the love/hate the Force aspect was an intelligent exploration of the Force, its nature, and what it means to Jedi, Sith, and the rest of the galaxy. And it had the maturity to leave it rather ambiguous and up to the player to decide rather than loudly determining which side was good and which was evil. This is all not to say anything bad about KotOR I; the first game was a near-perfect translation of the story mechanics, atmosphere, character style, and universe from the original Star Wars trilogy to RPG form, moved to another time period so the writers were free to do what they wanted with the story. KotOR II is just as good in several rather different ways.

I would still disagree with you in that I feel the ending was very rushed and poorly done. I know Kriea tells the fate of many of the characters (couldnt they have made a few cutscenes?), but the ending seems very much the same whether you play light side or dark side, unlike the first game which one could call contrived I suppose, but at least had very distinctly different endings.

I know some people like a darker and more morally ambiguous game than a strictly good vs evil situation. However, personally I feel that the good triumphing over evil in Kotor 1 was more true to the star wars universe at the time than a morally ambiguous one.

And I still think the plot regarding the force and Kriea was full of holes. She hated the force, but was teaching the force to the Exile. OK, maybe, but she took you under her wing and trained you whether you chose to kill the remaining Jedi or not. And then in the beginning she fought the Sith guy, blanking out on his name, but the one who cut off her arm. But then in the end she was in the sith academy. WTF. And if she hated the force so much, why did she use it??

And to those who are defending the ending to this game by comparing it to Mass Effect 3, I totally agree with you about ME3. No game ending I have ever experienced compared to the travesty that was the ending of that game, especially after building up such great expectations through two earlier games and much of the third game.

P.S. I still dont understand why Lucas Arts or EA or whoever owns the rights so steadfastly refuses to make KOTOR 3. I could see that they did not want to take away attention from TOR, but now that game is out of the spotlight and apparently not doing that well, I dont see why they keep making Star Wars games but not KOTOR 3. In fact, if they made a KOTOR 3, it might even revive interest in the MMO. Seems like every other game is making sequel after sequel, but not this one, which had so much interest and a great story to finish.

 

[shortylickens]

My understand is that just like Baldurs Gate 2, while it was an excellent game and extremely popular, the cost of production was just too damn high.
KOTOR 2 didnt do so well. Granted, that was mostly the publishers fault because they insisted it be out by Christmas and forced a hasty development, but it doesnt change the fact they kinda killed the franchise. Not much motivation to make a third game.

And it took years before we got anything similar, and THAT was a freakin MMO.

 

[frozentundra123456]

My understand is that just like Baldurs Gate 2, while it was an excellent game and extremely popular, the cost of production was just too damn high.
KOTOR 2 didnt do so well. Granted, that was mostly the publishers fault because they insisted it be out by Christmas and forced a hasty development, but it doesnt change the fact they kinda killed the franchise. Not much motivation to make a third game.

And it took years before we got anything similar, and THAT was a freakin MMO.

You may be correct about the economics, I dont know. What I am saying is that they keep pumping out Force Unleashed games, and now Star Wars 1313, but wont do KOTOR 3. Maybe you are right though. I suppose those so far mediocre action/shooter games are a lot cheaper to produce than a quality single player RPG.

Actually considering what EA/Bioware did to the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises, maybe it is just as well.

 

[shortylickens]

Oh shit yeah I'd much rather have KOTOR 3 than anything else. If they had put the effort from all those damn Mass Effect games into finishing the KOTOR story we'd have had an epic star wars saga right there. Better than the movies.

 

[qliveur]

Better than the prequels, at least.