Review: Knights of the Old Republic 2
Jan. 17th, 2007 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayThis is an RPG set in the Star Wars universe, but thousands of years before the events of the films. (Not that there is any noticable difference in the general level of society or tech level...)
This game is set five years after the previous one. No knowlege of that game is required, though having played it will certainly add depth to the characterization of the few continuing NPCs. (Interestingly, they've clearly made an effort to avoid spoilers for KOTOR 1, so you could theoretically even play them out of order.) A few of the "same" locations are visited as well, though they each have undergone significant changes since the first game.
As is so often the case, the Jedi have (allegedly) been driven to near-extinction, and you play the last remaining holdout, being hunted by the Sith. The game gains points for having you start as a Jedi from the get-go, but loses many of those points by not giving you access to a lightsaber until almost halfway through the game. The main character has an interesting backstory, which is gradually revealed over the course of the game. The writers did an excellent job of laying down an interesting series of events, while leaving the interpretation and *meaning* of those events up to the player. *What* you did is predetermined, but they let you choose, through dialogue, *why* you did it, and what emotional effect it had on you. A marvelous compromise between the demands of narrative and role-playing.
This sort of subtlety is shown throughout the game. This is a very gray moral universe, where there are lots of opportunities for compromise, and few actions available which are 100 percent Good or Evil. There's even an interesting (if understated) thread running throughout about the rights of droids. This game is an excellent contrast to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Open instead of relentlessly linear, forgiving instead of punishing, subtle plot points instead of blatant ones. While KOTOR2 also has a primary questgiver NPC who reeks of "I am evil and will eventually betray you", it's handled with a great deal more subtletly, and you're allowed to talk back or disobey her.
The voice acting is excellent. (The aliens and astromech droids still have annoyingly lengthy illegible speech though.) Among the utility actors who do many voices each are Robin Atkin Downes (probably best known as Ethan Rayne on Buffy, and who also did a lot of Babylon 5 roles) and Daran Norris (who I've come to love as Cliff the sleazy lawyer on Veronica Mars).
The gameplay is similar to KOTOR 1, but with two significant changes. Firstly, they've introduced an "Influence" system, whereby your party members react to your choices, and like you more or less as a result. Not only does your main character get to move more towards the Dark or Light Side of the Force, you can influence your companions to do so as well. On the one hand, it's a pretty cool and intuitive system. On the other hand, it's a bit of a downer that you can't really unlock the backstory and subplots of all the NPCs in a single playthrough. Of course, some people would consider that a feature.
(I had initially felt that I would try to avoid either extreme of the alignment scale on my playthrough, but the thought of corrupting all my teammates seemed like too much fun, so I turned to the Dark Side. Once I got access to the highest level of the Force Storm power, I truly felt I knew "the power of the Dark Side" -- Nothing is quite as satisfying as taking out hordes of enemies with this spell!)
The other major new system is crafting. Now, all the "useless" loot you find can be converted into raw materials, and those materials in turn can be made into Really Good Loot. It's a bit micro-manage-y, and I'm not sure it really achieves the (apparent) design goal of keeping loot interesting throughout the length of the game. By about midway through, you can make such awesome gear, that finding new stuff usually feels redundant, with just the occasional minor upgrade.
The mini-games of racing, card-playing, and manning turrets all make a reappearance, though as *fully* optional sidebars this time around. I only actually played the card game, as I never much liked the other two. They introduced a few new special cards, but they turned out to not actually be *useful*, just wacky.
On the down side, the game was pushed out the door prematurely, and it shows. Bugs abound, from illogical scripting, to cutscene bloopers, and the occasional outright crash. The level of polish varies highly, often dipping below what I would have called publishable. The ending... isn't a proper ending; it just sort of stops when the final Bad Guy falls. It says something about the quality of what they *did* manage to produce that I can still highly recommend this game. Just take the advice in one of the load screen tips: "Save often, and in different slots."
This game is set five years after the previous one. No knowlege of that game is required, though having played it will certainly add depth to the characterization of the few continuing NPCs. (Interestingly, they've clearly made an effort to avoid spoilers for KOTOR 1, so you could theoretically even play them out of order.) A few of the "same" locations are visited as well, though they each have undergone significant changes since the first game.
As is so often the case, the Jedi have (allegedly) been driven to near-extinction, and you play the last remaining holdout, being hunted by the Sith. The game gains points for having you start as a Jedi from the get-go, but loses many of those points by not giving you access to a lightsaber until almost halfway through the game. The main character has an interesting backstory, which is gradually revealed over the course of the game. The writers did an excellent job of laying down an interesting series of events, while leaving the interpretation and *meaning* of those events up to the player. *What* you did is predetermined, but they let you choose, through dialogue, *why* you did it, and what emotional effect it had on you. A marvelous compromise between the demands of narrative and role-playing.
This sort of subtlety is shown throughout the game. This is a very gray moral universe, where there are lots of opportunities for compromise, and few actions available which are 100 percent Good or Evil. There's even an interesting (if understated) thread running throughout about the rights of droids. This game is an excellent contrast to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Open instead of relentlessly linear, forgiving instead of punishing, subtle plot points instead of blatant ones. While KOTOR2 also has a primary questgiver NPC who reeks of "I am evil and will eventually betray you", it's handled with a great deal more subtletly, and you're allowed to talk back or disobey her.
The voice acting is excellent. (The aliens and astromech droids still have annoyingly lengthy illegible speech though.) Among the utility actors who do many voices each are Robin Atkin Downes (probably best known as Ethan Rayne on Buffy, and who also did a lot of Babylon 5 roles) and Daran Norris (who I've come to love as Cliff the sleazy lawyer on Veronica Mars).
The gameplay is similar to KOTOR 1, but with two significant changes. Firstly, they've introduced an "Influence" system, whereby your party members react to your choices, and like you more or less as a result. Not only does your main character get to move more towards the Dark or Light Side of the Force, you can influence your companions to do so as well. On the one hand, it's a pretty cool and intuitive system. On the other hand, it's a bit of a downer that you can't really unlock the backstory and subplots of all the NPCs in a single playthrough. Of course, some people would consider that a feature.
(I had initially felt that I would try to avoid either extreme of the alignment scale on my playthrough, but the thought of corrupting all my teammates seemed like too much fun, so I turned to the Dark Side. Once I got access to the highest level of the Force Storm power, I truly felt I knew "the power of the Dark Side" -- Nothing is quite as satisfying as taking out hordes of enemies with this spell!)
The other major new system is crafting. Now, all the "useless" loot you find can be converted into raw materials, and those materials in turn can be made into Really Good Loot. It's a bit micro-manage-y, and I'm not sure it really achieves the (apparent) design goal of keeping loot interesting throughout the length of the game. By about midway through, you can make such awesome gear, that finding new stuff usually feels redundant, with just the occasional minor upgrade.
The mini-games of racing, card-playing, and manning turrets all make a reappearance, though as *fully* optional sidebars this time around. I only actually played the card game, as I never much liked the other two. They introduced a few new special cards, but they turned out to not actually be *useful*, just wacky.
On the down side, the game was pushed out the door prematurely, and it shows. Bugs abound, from illogical scripting, to cutscene bloopers, and the occasional outright crash. The level of polish varies highly, often dipping below what I would have called publishable. The ending... isn't a proper ending; it just sort of stops when the final Bad Guy falls. It says something about the quality of what they *did* manage to produce that I can still highly recommend this game. Just take the advice in one of the load screen tips: "Save often, and in different slots."
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 02:00 pm (UTC)The influence system was probably the most interesting part of the game for me, but it did have a weird side effect - you convinced people to be influenced by you by doing nice things, and then this somehow turned them evil. It would have been more interesting if there were more instances of opportunities to do something either good or evil which would gain influence with the same person. (That is, if you're a dark jedi, you should be getting influence with someone by finding their evil or selfish aspects and pushing on those rather than by making nice and then immediately following that up with evil.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 05:16 pm (UTC)My inner game-player totally agrees with you.
My inner game-designer wrinkles his brow ruefully at the amount of work required to implement that sort of thing -- work that a majority of players won't ever see the results of.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 05:42 pm (UTC)