As of the moment I’m starting to type this out, I finished Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II about an hour ago. If you can’t tell, it left something of a sour taste in my mouth, brain, and three-sizes-too-small heart. Pinning down exactly why this is can be a bit difficult because this game fails in so many new and exciting ways. And yet, the mechanical core is virtually unchanged. The question arising from that is “How can the first KOTOR be a decent but unapproachable game, yet another game with the same mechanics be seen as a failure?” Well kids, that’s what I’m going to do my best to answer today. Fair warning, this will probably be a long one.
In my review of KOTOR 1, I used the first portion to give a bit of context to put the complaints I had into perspective. I felt it was only fair to give the developers a little slack. I’d like to do the same here, but primarily to soften the blows of the savage beating this game is about to get. In October of 2013, mere months after the release of KOTOR, Obsidian was approached by LucasArts to handle a sequel. Apparently the two companies had done work together before and Obsidian had a history of handling the IP to LucasArts’ satisfaction. Even in the beginning, though, there were signs that the development was a rush job. Obsidian only finished the E3 demo of the game days before the conference, at least partially due to the fact that no actual levels had been completed before work on the demo began. A co-founder of Obsidian has said since then that the original release date was slated for 2005, but the team soon found themselves working towards a holiday 2004 release under the direction of LucasArts. Here I have to give Obsidian credit where it’s due; the fact that they were able to crank out something even mechanically competent in this 14-month time frame is noteworthy. Sure the engine was the same and some assets had been used in the first, but the combat does seem to have undergone a fair amount of tweaking and they achieved fairly large worlds compared to the original. Still, even Chris Avellone, lead designer and writer on the project, has said that the tight production schedule led to the release of an unfinished product.
All that being said, however, at the same time he hits on one of the reasons this can’t be considered the primary reason the game doesn’t work. Chris admits that the team should have radically “de-scoped” the game, and this is simultaneously true and false. See, the game is basically divided into three “acts” in terms of how progression is structured; there’s the prologue/tutorial segment, the “open galaxy” segment, and finally the “boss rush” segment towards the end. All three of these portions have radically different pacing and structure and largely feel unconnected to each other. The most egregious of these is the tutorial, which is the single most unbelievable 6 hours of gameplay I’ve ever powered through. Yes, that’s right; 6 hours. This is how long it took me to get from the prologue, in which you control a repair droid, to a point where you can actually choose your own destination. This section of the game is so reviled that one of the most popular mods for this game removes 2/3 of it, leaving the last portion only because it’s the first time story-critical information is conveyed that can’t be figured out easily during the rest of the game. I’d like to say that I have no idea why this overbearing hand-holding happened, but I actually have an idea. This is purely speculation, but I have a feeling it may be related to one of the issues I brought up in the first KOTOR review.
You see, one of my biggest complaints with that game was that the mechanics were highly unapproachable. Between the fact that they relied too heavily on tabletop terminology that only exists as an abstraction in a video game and the complete disinterest in helping the player acquire play skills, the game can be incredibly intimidating. One of the few good things I can say about this game is that it certainly doesn’t have that problem. But I would posit that it goes too far in the other direction with this approach. It’s not uncommon for games to give players a starting area that has little threat in order to get the player comfortable with the mechanics, but this area doesn’t need to be long. Think the outside of Peach’s Castle in Mario 64; there are no enemies, only empty space for the player to get used to the idea of moving around in 3D space and learning about the physics of the game through trial and error. Then, once the player is comfortable, they move forward. This element of the player setting the pace is crucial, since it makes sure that no player is held back any longer than they have to be. Instead in KOTOR II, we get a long, claustrophobic, uninteresting slog through a mining facility where almost no plot or character development takes place. Also, at the end of the mining facility, you’re given a ship which teases the idea of the game becoming more open; instead you’re simply herded to the next tutorial area for a few “mandatory side quests” before you can actually get to the part of the game you care about.
Although, describing the rest of the game as something you care about is a bit of a stretch as well. The main “story” follows you, your band of stock characters, and HK-47 as you go from planet to planet and do odd jobs while some vague threat of the Sith lies in the distance. On the subject of the Sith, everyone you interact with seems utterly confused as to what their objective is, which shows that they’re all imbeciles. Sith have always clashed with the Jedi, so it stands to reason that their purpose in hunting all the Jedi is as simple as “they want the Jedi dead”. It’s not a mystery if it’s literally party of what defines a Sith character. The game flirts with subplots at times, but never really follows through with them. This includes elements like a Sith temple on the moon of Onderon, Infinite Empire flags and markings all over a Mandalorian camp, the mystery of what happened to Revan after the first game, and a couple of other dead ends. All of these are unresolved and unexplained at the end of the game, as if they hoped you would just forget. Even the main plot has a rushed, nonsensical ending in the form of the “boss rush” I mentioned earlier. The last portion of the game is basically you running around small maps sprinkled with bosses that should be epic and memorable but just come off as pathetic. They’re built up the whole game as the pinnacle of evil, then they just kind of keel over.
Speaking of this last segment, even outside of it being a boss rush to the finish line, there are some pretty strange design choices here that are worth looking at. Keep in mind that the tension here should be consistently high, as it is intended to be the climax of the entire game. First, before entering the Sith flagship (the Ravager), you’re told to pick a third party member since you have been forced to take one of your companions along by default. Then, you enter the Ravager and are immediately told that your choice was irrelevant since the third member you picked is replaced by another forced companion. A little confusing and detrimental to the flow of play, but not a huge deal. I mean, we’re going to fight a Sith lord! This will be awesome. Well, not so fast. First, you’re required to place four bombs on certain points of the ship because reasons. Alright, not the first time I’ve been asked to run errands right before a boss, although I wish they had bothered to justify it. Then, right as you’re about to finish this little distraction, you’re told you have to backtrack near the front of the ship in order to continue. This KILLS the tension, because it completely disrupts the forward momentum of the game and the excitement of the battle that’s about to take place. Instead of approaching Darth Nihilus with anticipation, I just felt deflated. Less, “Hell yeah!” and more “Let’s get this over with”. And unfortunately, this is only the start of the ending’s problems.
After the pitiful boss fight that is Darth Nihilus (where no information is provided about his backstory or motivation, by the way), we quickly jump cut to the player landing on a planet while no explanation is given as to where we are or why we went there. You wander aimlessly among the planet’s surface until you find what appears to be some sort of Sith academy. The game then decides that you have met your quota of interesting shit happening and abruptly switches your control to a near-defenseless droid. I’m not kidding, in the middle of the final world you switch characters just to press some buttons you found as the primary character that they wouldn’t let you interact with yet. Thankfully, this segment doesn’t last long. To contrast this, the Sith academy seems to last fucking forever and has about a million Sith minions. Oh, and did I mention that you’re all alone during this segment? The one where you have to fight more strong enemies at once than almost any other portion of the game? Make your way through the mind-numbingly boring onslaught, and you reach Darth Sion, another battle that’s built up over the course of the game. Like Darth Nihilus, he dies almost immediately. Unlike Darth Nihilus, you’re forced to kill him about five times over. And none of the fights are any different from the first. Same health, same moveset, same everything. At this point it’s just needless padding.
Now the player is treated to the real final boss of this game, and what can only be described as the laziest plot dump I’ve ever seen. I get the sense that it was intended to be some kind of “big reveal”, but the rest of the game isn’t set up to achieve this. From fairly early on it’s easy to tell exactly what’s happening, and this is at least partially due to the fact that subtlety is not the writer’s strong suit here. As such, there are a few things you may learn for the first time in this scene, but it’s largely just confirmation of things you’ve known for the past 10 hours of play. This would be forgivable if the last fight were epic enough to counteract this, but like the other Sith lords, this one barely puts up a fight. The last portion of it seems like a rushed, tacked-on addition, too; you fight three floating lightsabers. There’s no context for this, the boss just kind of summons three floating lightsabers and they attack you. It felt like I had briefly switched to Kingdom Hearts in the middle of the fight. After you kill her, you talk briefly of some weapon on the planet you’re on that’s supposed to be super scary, and it just…ends. It’s very abrupt, and it kind of shocked me. I at least expected to see some final scene of your character preparing for the future you picked for them in the last dialogue option, but it just jump cuts to the credits.
You may read all of this and think that I hated this game. While that’s certainly true for parts of it, I have to admit that the middle portion where you’re going from planet to planet was actually fairly enjoyable. Some planets were obviously more fun than others, and I suspect that a couple of planets were rushed due to time constraints. For those of you looking to play this game at some point in the future, I recommend this planet order; Onderon, Nar Shaddaa, Dantooine, Korriban. It should be very apparent as you play that the further towards the end of the list you get, the shorter and less finished the planets are. Kind of surprisingly, the shorter planets tend to be more fun and straightforward. Both Nar Shaddaa and Onderon have poor player direction that is only emphasized by the bland visual design that makes the whole world look samey. Still, even Onderon manages to capture a suitable tension during the later stages of its quest to counteract this. And really, when it comes down to it, the combat is still good. Especially with the decision to ditch the non-Jedi class for the player character and the increased (if overdone) focus on approachability. If you enjoyed the first game but wished you had a better grip on the play itself and don’t mind being bored for about 75% of the game, KOTOR 2 might be for you.
So what’s the takeaway from all this? Well, in the end I have to say that I think this game is rather bad. Of course, this is the simplistic conclusion. I don’t necessarily think this game is bad because of incompetence. It seems merely to be an unfinished product. In fact, one of the most frustrating parts of the game is that for every complaint I had above, there’s at least one instance of the game getting it right. By the end of the game it becomes clear that the team had the potential to make the “KOTOR 1 but improved” sequel that I wanted this to be, but the resources and the time just weren’t there. Like the first game of this series, I don’t think I can recommend it to impatient gamers without also suggesting that you mod it heavily, but to those looking for a lesson in design this is almost a must-have. It can be a painful, boring journey, but it’s one of the rare instances where you can see an element fail and succeed within one title. You could say this is like the James Joyce novel of video games; it’s tough to get through, and you may not like it, but you definitely learn a lot just through the process of completing it.