On their own, these are all small-sometimes even assumed-elements of the driving plot. These include rumblings of a Clone War, the conflict between the Rebels and the Empire, and let’s not forget the mysteries of the Force. Yet despite its simplicity, there were trace elements of something deeper in place. It’s an utterly fascinating and well-crafted take on that set-up, but really you’re dealing with the story of a farm boy who becomes a hero by rescuing the princess from an evil sorcerer.
Looking back on the story of 1977’s Star Wars, it’s hard to not view it as a relatively simple tale of good vs. Or at least it would have if what came before wasn’t perhaps the most compelling Star Wars story ever told. The power of a story’s ending cannot be overstated and Knights of the Old Republic II’s ending is nothing short of a travesty that nearly destroys the majority of the experience that came before. Only those kids didn’t have 40+ hours of emotional investment tied into the outcome. It’s the video game storytelling equivalent of a parent trying to rush to the ending of a bedtime story when the children refuse to fall asleep. If this rushed explanation is frustratingly lacking in satisfaction, then it is doing an excellent job of recreating the experience of the game’s finale. Even worse your fellow party members, who have until this point become just as integral to the story as yourself for all intents and purposes, simply disappear from the experience. What characters do appear again are involved in moments that have little to do with what came before and leave little emotional impact.įrom there you engage in a couple more anticlimactic altercations, have the option to receive a brief glimpse into future events beyond the game and watch the credits. While you can play through around three-quarters of the game without really feeling like you are missing significant chunks of the game’s story, the thin veil that Obsidian had constructed to cover up the story’s missing elements unravels in a singular moment when you finish an anti-climactic battle with what is supposed to be the universe’s most dangerous entity (the haunting Darth Nihilus) and suddenly find yourself heading to the game’s final moments without a real understanding of how you arrived at the conclusion or what exactly you hope to accomplish there. While some of what was cut equated to little more than a throwaway line of dialog or a comedic scene, there are far more substantial moments that weren’t incorporated into the game that deal with important character backstories and entire levels.īut nothing in the game was affected quite as much as KOTOR II’s finale on the surface of the planet Malachor V. This means that not only are many of the character warping and combat detection glitches found in the original game still very much a factor, but both the graphics and gameplay are more or less a direct pull from the previous title.Ī quick glance at the game’s wiki pages devoted to the content that didn’t make it into the game reveals enough scenes to comprise an entirely new experience.
There are quite a few flaws to be found in Knights of the Old Republic II.Many of the game’s technical problems can be attributed to Obsidian’s reliance on the original Knights of the Old Republic game engine combined with some cuts to the testing and QA time. Instead, the flaws that made it into the game were the result of an ambitious developer attempting to create something truly extraordinary while still trying to figure out things as a team on a limited timeline.
Obsidian team member Anthony Davis would later argue that LucasArts was hardly the villain of this tale as they would take on large chunks of the development process and spare additional resources when possible. They were not only given a development time that wouldn’t even be possible were it not for the fact the project would be able to borrow heavily from pre-existent in-game resources, but had to complete the game while still finding their identity. Developer Obsidian and the considerable talent among their founding members may have not been the typical recipients of the “get it done” video game sequel, but their situation was fairly standard for such an arrangement.
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