While you can play through around three-quarters of the game without really feeling like you are missing significant chunks of the game’s story, the thin veil that Obsidian had constructed to cover up the story’s missing elements unravels in a singular moment when you finish an anti-climactic battle with what is supposed to be the universe’s most dangerous entity (the haunting Darth Nihilus) and suddenly find yourself heading to the game’s final moments without a real understanding of how you arrived at the conclusion or what exactly you hope to accomplish there. While some of what was cut equated to little more than a throwaway line of dialog or a comedic scene, there are far more substantial moments that weren’t incorporated into the game that deal with important character backstories and entire levels.īut nothing in the game was affected quite as much as KOTOR II’s finale on the surface of the planet Malachor V. This means that not only are many of the character warping and combat detection glitches found in the original game still very much a factor, but both the graphics and gameplay are more or less a direct pull from the previous title.Ī quick glance at the game’s wiki pages devoted to the content that didn’t make it into the game reveals enough scenes to comprise an entirely new experience.

There are quite a few flaws to be found in Knights of the Old Republic II.Many of the game’s technical problems can be attributed to Obsidian’s reliance on the original Knights of the Old Republic game engine combined with some cuts to the testing and QA time. Instead, the flaws that made it into the game were the result of an ambitious developer attempting to create something truly extraordinary while still trying to figure out things as a team on a limited timeline. Obsidian team member Anthony Davis would later argue that LucasArts was hardly the villain of this tale as they would take on large chunks of the development process and spare additional resources when possible. They were not only given a development time that wouldn’t even be possible were it not for the fact the project would be able to borrow heavily from pre-existent in-game resources, but had to complete the game while still finding their identity.

In fact, publisher LucasArts was apparently so confident in the abilities of Obsidian Entertainment to provide the next installment of the Knights of the Old Republic franchise that, despite the developer’s considerable head start, they gave them a mere 14 months to finish the game and a skeleton crew to work with.ĭeveloper Obsidian and the considerable talent among their founding members may have not been the typical recipients of the “get it done” video game sequel, but their situation was fairly standard for such an arrangement. His usual devotion to the source material of any adaptation he worked on was especially necessary in this case, as Knight of the Old Republic took place in a period barely referenced by the Star Wars films, but was also just another sign that Knights of the Old Republic II was in the right hands. Buy Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II on Amazonįor his work on Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Avellone reportedly grabbed every single piece of media and content he could get his hands on that bore the Star Wars name.

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