KOTOR Revisited

The thing that annoyed me about the combat was the boss battles. I’m fine with having to replay a boss battle when there is some skill involved, like in a platformer. Having to go through the same fight 5+ times when all I’m doing is clicking things is less fun. Oh boy, this time I’ll try healing first and then using stasis!

Also, in order to skip the unskippable cutscenes I would save right after battle was joined. Then (after dying) I would reload and despite the game being paused, my enemy would somehow end up behind me, chopping me in the back. Thanks Bioware!

I got through 4 planets and was on the space ship when I lost interest. The story is somewhat cool but the crappiness of the fighting really sucks fun out of the game. And the fact that the best character can’t use melee weapons and blasters are totally useless seems like a poor design choice.

I liked that game, but hated Pazaak (thank god it’s optional) and hated the stupid lightsidedarkside force philosophy. Jolee was the best! He trancends all the lghtside darkside bullshit.

Sounds like you were just predisposed to hate “good guys” I enjoyed interacting with the Light side characters quite a bit, of course I am generally predisposed to be “good” in most games I play. I found the Dark side characters to be little more than just comic relief but I actually found myself caring about Mission and Carth by the end of the game.

No, I’m just predisposed to hate weak writing. Well, hate is probably too strong a word. I also tend to be good when I play RPG’s, because I usually feel bad about harming the NPC’s around me. This is dependant on how much I care about the NPC’s though, and the KOTOR NPC’s only consistant feature is that they manage to annoy me. Carth in particular is a whiny loser with horrible dialogue. None of the other ones have any real emotional depth and I never get to the point where I care about whether they live or die.

I think most RPG’s start off rather slowly; at least for me.

I thought Carth had good dialogue and was voice acted very well. I really dont see how you can complain about the writing in KOTOR. I mean its not literature but its well above average for the genre.

olaf

edit: Dont get me wrong, Carth was whiny but I got what they were trying to do with his character. And given your typical cast in an RPG I dont think he fares poorly at all.

I think the guy who voiced Carth did a darn good job. The problem is that the dialoge is waaaaaaaay too verbose for a videogame. I mean, how many cutscenes with the same, “I know I should trust you, BUT I DONT! And I have my reasons, but they don’t really make any sense. And no, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, but if you ask me again in about an hour I’ll say roughly the same exact thing only different.” do we need?

None of the characters really took a terribly deep personal journey. Why do you need to voice paragraph after paragraph of fluff. Get to the point.

I was much more impressed with the offhand comments they’d sometimes toss in as you’re playing. Since they were based on who was in your party and your current situation those one liners spoke volumes about each character’s personality.

Canderous has brilliant, and extremely well acted, dialogue. Ditto HK 47. Some of the snarky interplay between Bastila and Canderous is great, too.

Add another vote for kinda crummy writing in KOTOR. Kalle and I were discussing this on IRC the other day and we compared our perceptions playing it to a game like Torment or, to a lesser extent, BG2. In both of these games, I have an incredibly difficult time playing an evil character because I honestly like and care about the NPCs. In Torment especially, hurting some of these characters isn’t something I can really go through. In KOTOR, though, there’s no such problems - most characters are whiny and one-dimensional goody two shoes who are very hard to genuinely like as people, not just ancillary ass-kicking avatars.

Also, you can’t really respect the writing of a game that slags itself off. Some part early in KOTOR, one of the characters comments about how stupid it is to think that being evil is just wandering around acting like a petty bully all the time. But if you play an evil character in KOTOR, that’s exactly what you end up doing: there’s just no subtlety at all.

I liked it alot, I actually planned on playing a few times, trying different things every time, but didn’t get to it, got hooked on Simcity 4

Maybe I’ll do it now…

Be back in a couple of weeks :D

-Assaf

KOTOR isn’t subtle but for whatever reason I found myself caring about Bastila like few other NPC’s.

Also, contra the seemingly endless praise of PS: Torment, I just didn’t find it as fun [sorry Tom] as BG2 or KOTOR, which leads me to think that good writing is maybe 4th or 5th on the list of reasons why I like to play RPG’s. Below things like combat, leveling/loot hook, gameworld/exploration, etc. This makes sense, since when I am experiencing good writing in a game I am not doing anything at all, and gaming is mainly about doing. Ignus is maybe my favorite party NPC of all time, though.

Not to say PS: Torment wasn’t a great RPG or anything. For me it just wasn’t in the rarefied “best ever” category of BG2, Kotor, Gothic 2, Avernum 2, and a few others.

But how many games had better ‘writing’ than KOTOR? Surely not so many as to class it as below average.

As for Torment, while I appreciated the dialogue and writing (I think…) as a game I found it lacking. It just isnt in the same league as my favorites.

olaf

(Trying to avoid spoilers) Late in KOTOR if you take the evil path there is an “option” that made me sick to my stomach so I can safely say I cared about the characters.

Spoil away. I went out of my way to be evil on my second playthrough, and I don’t think anything fazed me.

I am pretty sure he is referring to the, uh, thing with Mission.

That was a pretty tough one, but it didn’t bother me as much as the Bastila situation on my first playthrough (as light-side). That one actually kinda haunted me. Of course, a dark-side playthrough puts it into an altogether different perspective.

Could someone just go to the trouble of making the requisite spoiler alerts, and maybe colouring the spoiler white or something, and just discuss it straight.

[size=6]Spoiler!![/size]

[color=white][size=2]Is it when you force persuade her furball buddy to cut her down? I just found it shocking that she didn’t think me capable of ordering it done after she had seen me act like a ruthless bastard for the entire game.[/size][/color]

Kalle, yes that’s the scene.

[size=6][/size]SPOILER[size=3][/size]
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The whole idea of forcing someone to kill his best friend was pretty disturbing, especially when Mission started begging for her life and I thought that Z expressed his anguish at the situation about as best as, well, a Wookie can. I thought it was far darker than just having the Player Character kill Mission himself. Yet at the same time I was repulsed I admired it because it was an interesting take on the Wookie Life Debt thing so it made the whole horrible situation uniquely Star Wars.