Ah, this is truly the time of sequels. Just about every significant game to be released in the last several months has had a “two” or a “three” stuck on the end of it, and the biggest of these releases (Half-Life 2, Halo 2, Doom 3, etc) have been the subject of heavy scrutinizing to see if they live up to the hype and promises their predecessors brought to bear. Knights of the Old Republic II is no different, not only given how successful the original game was, but also because it has been passed on to a new developer – Bioware has been ditched in favor of Obsidian Entertainment. The game itself is already out on the Xbox and has seen promising reports, but what about PC users? Despite KOTOR1 turning out to be a very solid release on PC, it suffered from a number of glaring technical problems on launch that seriously hampered its playability for many people until it was patched up, and as such there is a good deal of concern going around regarding if any lessons were learned in time for the release of the game’s sequel. Fearlessly surmounting the game’s five-disc installation process (apparently a few publishers are still fearful of stepping into the DVD market), I dived into the universe of KOTOR2 with the hopes of discovering a game just as good as the original, if not better, and while I ended up having huge amounts of fun, not all of the results I’ve uncovered are entirely favorable.
Similar to the original game, KOTOR2’s approach to a prologue immediately shrouds the player character in mystery. The game takes place five years after KOTOR1 and focuses not on a quirky Jedi who happens to suffer from numerous memory problems, but instead on an exile of the Jedi Order, who served in the massive conflict between the Jedi and the Mandalorians that sparked off the conflict the original game revolved around and has been wandering the galaxy ever since. As a result of the last great conflict, the Jedi are now all but extinct, putting the player character into the role of the “last” of the Jedi who is tasked with trying to prevent the galaxy from spiraling further into ruin. No pressure, right? But also much like the original, KOTOR2 is a game heavily dependant on exploration and self-discovery (albeit in a much darker atmosphere), so I’ll try to avoid spoiling the plot any further.
As I initially suspected from its limited development time, KOTOR2’s gameplay is incredibly similar to that of the original’s, making it evident that most of the effort was put into new content – the interface is almost exactly the same, and the controls and combat system will make fans feel immediately at home again. Starting a new game prompts the player to set up and personalize their character by selecting a class (from three possible Jedi classes this time) and either using pre-recommended settings or direct customization to determine his or her starting statistics and name. After that, a tutorial segment begins to get players properly acquainted with the game in the form of a side-quest: The Ebon Hawk, heavily damaged, has drifted into an asteroid field, and it’s up to a damaged T3 droid (yes, the same one purchased from a vendor in the original game) to spring into action and get the ship fixed back up. The tutorial naturally does a good job at explaining everything a new player will need to know about interacting with the environment, but those who are already familiar with all the basics may find the segment monotonous and will be glad to know it can be skipped (with no penalty in experience or gained items either, since they’re effectively taken away following the tutorial regardless). The actual game then begins with the player character waking up in a recovery tank, with no clue of where he is or what happened.
As I said, KOTOR2 is a game more focused simply on new content than a totally new gameplay approach (and why should they change it, when the system they already had set up in the original worked so well?), and thanks to this the campaign is very long and chock-filled with content and side quests to keep explorative players occupied for hours at a time. However, the campaign isn’t the only thing about the game to get a new approach, as a number of new features have been added to spice up the combat, conversation, and inventory aspects of the game. As far as combat goes, there are now a number of new “forms” that can be assumed to provide constant passive bonuses to a character’s stats, such as increasing force regeneration, or making lightsaber combat more effective against masses of enemies or specific targets. The development team has also found a solution to the “character saturation” problem that plagued the original (where there were too many characters that could basically do the same thing) by giving party members unique, very specific abilities, like a mechanic that can easily and instantly discharge energy shields with his cybernetic arm, or a Mandalorian with combat implants that can be changed to provide improved strength, dexterity, defense, or regeneration on the fly. It’s sad to see that the combat AI hasn’t really been improved much though, as friendly units didn’t use their special abilities nearly as intelligently or often as I wanted them to, and friendlies and enemies alike still don’t hesitate to blindly charge through a field of mines they could clearly see in order to get at their targets. There are also a number of pathfinding problems I witnessed, with all sorts of AI characters getting stuck on terrain objects – in fact, even my own character got stuck on invisible pieces of geometry on occasion, making it evident that the game’s levels didn’t quite have time for a good testing pass.
As for dealing with the huge amount of redundant equipment players are bound to obtain throughout their quests (much like the original KOTOR), the developers have also come up with a nice solution: Labs and Workstations. The Workstations, previously used for the sole purpose of upgrading equipment, can now also be used to create items by making use of spare parts and the interacting character’s skill levels to create a variety of items – specifically, weapons, armor, and upgrades. Each item costs a given number of components, which can be obtained either through exploration or by using the Workstation to break spare down spare inventory items. This leads to another interesting new gameplay element, as locked containers and lockers run the risk of having their contents destroyed and turned into spare parts if a player tries to bash them open rather than using his security skill. Lab stations alternatively are used to create medical supplies, stimulants, grenades, mines, and even implants, and require chemicals for functionality (which can also be created by breaking down items), so there are plenty of options for pack-mule players to turn their gigantic inventory into something actually useful.
Finally, a number of changes have been made to the dialogue system to allow for more flexibility in the conversation tree. Most noteworthy is the new “Influence” rating, which measures how much respect the characters in the player’s party have for him and affect how they respond. With certain conversations, topics will come up which NPCs may choose not to discuss with the player if his influence is too low, or alternatively, they may share additional insight and assistance if the influence check passes as a success. Allegedly, this influence check may also have some other force-related effects on NPCs, though I haven’t examined what these are yet. Taking this whole process another step further, other player skills can also have an affect on conversation options, such as Awareness, Intelligence, Computer, and Repair, adding a surprising amount of depth to conversations based on how charismatic the player is feeling.
One curiosity I found involving the new integration of skills into dialogue trees however is that the “Affect Mind” Force capability never really came into play as often as I was expecting it to. During negotiations for the release of a slave, or just some hard bargaining, I kept expecting the Force Persuasion options to appear to assist me like they did in the original game, yet they never did as often as I was hoping. Some of the game’s dialogue also seemed to be a little bugged up, with occasional spelling mistakes or totally incorrect dialogue options appearing (one example is a Swoop Race official, whom I had persuaded to allow me into the race for free, but after I left and came back, he suddenly wanted 100 credits for my entry again and I was left with no options for persuasion until I left and re-entered the dialogue window – the same NPC also kept insisting that I hadn’t beaten any of the records, even though I clearly had), which was quite disappointing given how solidly the original game’s conversations were built. I also ran into an occasional obscure problem where a dialogue segment between certain NPCs and myself would skip ahead suddenly to the end, totally passing over the voice file as if it didn’t exist and leaving me confused on what had just been said until I glanced at the message history subtitles – though this happened most often when conversing with droids, which meant I wasn’t missing too much.
All of the additions I’ve mentioned culminate into making KOTOR2 a more interesting game than its predecessor, but also a slightly easier one. Thanks to the fact that I had force powers available from the get-go, I was able to settle on an initial configuration that kicked a good deal of ass, and capitalize on that to eventually turn my character into a slaughter machine that only had trouble in a few of the boss fights – and he was a flimsy Jedi Consular, no less. The ability to make my own hardware or bring in a great deal of income with ease made providing my characters with the best available equipment quite easy, and the new combat additions balanced things even more in my favor. For players who comprehend the basics of how the game’s combat system works and don’t mind whoring out their force powers like crazy, the game should be quite an easy experience – certainly easier than that of the original game. Not that it detracts from the fun of the game, of course.
On the subject of graphics engine, KOTOR2 brings a number of new visual effects to the table, including some nice looking grass, weather effects, soft shadows, and a suite of other tricks to enhance the game’s visual experience. The art is once again top-notch, with some very nicely rendered environments that really offer the feeling of old facilities and locales ravaged by war (some areas from the original game are even revisited in this manner) and have a good feeling of scale and detail. The levels are somewhat a little on the small side, but this also means short load times. Otherwise, the graphical style is incredibly similar to that of the original game, and the same general style of animation and even use of world objects can be see throughout the game’s various areas.
As for KOTOR2’s state of bugginess (which I know you’ll all be interested in, given the somewhat less-than-stable state the original KOTOR shipped at), Knights of the Old Republic II is anything but a totally stable affair. I’ll start with the following lovely quote from the game’s own readme file: ”The game may freeze or crash to a blank screen if you play in one level for extended periods of time. This was typically seen when playing the game between thirty and forty minutes without transitioning to a new level or movie. We recommend that you save the game often to avoid losing progress if you encounter this issue.” Geeeesh, I know I complain a lot about under-qualified Q&A teams and hastily-released games, but this one really takes the cake, and as further evidence, my own experience with the game engine was less-than-pleasant, with Windows XP actually spitting out BSOD errors on several occasions when I tried to transition to new areas, or the game simply crashing to the desktop outright. Framerates were also incredibly poor in numerous zones in the game for no apparent reason, and no matter how much graphical tweaking I did I still couldn’t get the game to run well, which astonished the hell out of me given how well games like Half-Life 2 run on my system at maximum detail.
