You can read the first word about it here or here
Looks like it’s going to be developed by Fergus Urquhart’s Obsidian studios.
Hopefully Fergus won’t lead to hate…
Chris Avellone writing, I hope. Don’t they have the artist that did all the stellar Icewind Dale 1/2 portraits, too?
Wasn’t that Black Isle?
While I’m pleased that Obsidian are making KOTOR2, I was sort of hoping they’d do something original for their first game. Maybe they’ll feel more confident once they’re sitting on fat sacks of cash.
I was of the understanding a lot of the Black Isle talent went over to Obsidian with Urquhart…
Well it’s good to see Obsidian getting the task - it’ll be a really nice starting point. They may serve as the company that follows up on whatever Bioware does while Bioware does something else.
— Alan
It’s an easier sell to work on a proven franchise your first time out.
Woo-hoo!!!
I wonder if it’s a true sequel, or if you create a new character? There are strong arguments for both approaches. By the end of KoTOR, your avatar is already stupendously strong, which would pose some problems in a sequel. On the other hand, starting all over as a soldier/scout/whatever with no Jedi powers would be irritating.
Presumably if the game were to start you out from where you left off at the end of the first game, it’d have to give you two possible starting characters, based on whether you finished as a Light or Dark Jedi.
In any case, it would be no less of a sequel simply because you didn’t play the same character. DAY OF THE DEAD is the sequel to DAWN OF THE DEAD, even though none of the characters from DAWN appear in DAY. It’s the world that persists.
I agree it would still be a sequel. However, leveling up from a base soldier again could make it a boring sequel. Being too powerful could do the same thing. Frankly, I was surprised when the original game let you get so strong. It would have been better to take a BGI/BGII approach and leave some growth potential for the inevitable expansions/sequels.
I don’t think it would be boring to start as a new character. It didn’t take that long to get your levels up in the first game.
All new story, all new characters, please. The Star Wars universe is big enough to support it, especially as we’re now 4000 years in the past (although you’d never guess from the art in KOTOR). AFAIR, even Jolee points out that there’s always some dark side galactic ruler wannabe needing to be slapped.
What I would like to see is more flexibility with the player character. KOTOR felt too “led by the nose”. What if the player doesn’t want to become a Jedi? I realise this is straying too far away from the console kiddy approach that an Xbox game requires, but a new KOTOR game with more of the BG2 design philosophy would be a vast improvement.
Oh, and a nod to the last decades worth of interface design would be nice. The awkward scrolled inventory list was a very stupid decision. Did none of the KOTOR designers notice how bad it was in Fallout?
Console Kiddy Approach? Could you be any more condescending, please? I mean, due to this horrible design it became only the best Star Wars anything since about 1977…
Fury, word is that KOTOR 2 will in fact be “console kiddy”. Furthermore, those kiddies will all be girls. Many Bothans died to bring you this data on the sequel’s HK-47:
A Hello Kitty with overalls stapled to its face is probably scarier than was intended.
The game is called Knights of the Old Republic not Smugglers or Soldiers or Bounty Hunters. The reason the first game was so strong is that it has a coherent story line that is great and very much tied into you being a jedi. Spreading the focus to other classes etc. would dilute that. I the player doesn’t want to be a Jedi they are playing the wrong game.
As for the console kiddie comment. Give me a break.
– Xaroc
They could just start you in the Jedi Academy and avoid the whole beginning. I don’t really see any reason why that wouldn’t work.
Why? Just because the game is called Morrowind, doesn’t mean you have to play as a Dark Elf. A title is just a brand, and in this game it’s a sub brand of Star Wars, which has a lot of scope. Also, it’s a Role Playing Game, and it’s traditional to allow players a degree of freedom in choosing how to go about things*. I realise in KOTOR there are good story based reasons why you had to become a Jedi, what I’m saying is that KOTOR2 could be even better if the player weren’t constrained in such a way. It doesn’t preclude the telling of a strong story, not least a story about Jedi.
Planescape: Torment did this the other way around, introducing a console RPG style of storytelling, but within the sophistication of the D&D system implemented in the Infinity engine. If there were ever a second Planescape game, I would want it to allow the player more choice over their character.
*except where it’s traditional in console based RPGs, which as a rule tend to follow the Japanese model, i.e led by the nose until the bit where you’re expected to run around for 30hrs buffing up to beat the end boss. Final Fantasy - I’m looking at you!
As for the console kiddie comment. Give me a break.
Sorry, but no. It describes perfectly the difference in approach between KOTOR and Baldur’s Gate 2, which is an utterly PC-centric design. If it wasn’t, the PS2 Baldur’s Gate game wouldn’t have been a shoot-em-up. It seems to me that console games tend to be constrained by the limitations of the expected/desired audience as much as the platform they’re running on, Deus Ex 2 being another example. KOTOR was a step in the right direction for console RPGs, but not far enough for my tastes. We should be bringing everyone else up to our standards, not lowering ourselves to theirs, so to speak. Call me a snob, but I know what I like, and my money’s as good as anyone else’s.
Do people really find the Jedi Academy compelling?
KOTOR worked best for me when they managed to recreate that mystery of discovery of the powers within that made the first two films so enjoyable. It did it with a bit of sleight of hand, but it worked.
The Jedi Academy takes all that fun and makes it… academic.