In response to the hooplah that is and will be SWTOR, I, after much prodding from the Girlfriend, embarked upon playing KOTOR and KOTOR II. I didn't play ALL of KOTOR. It was kind of droll. Could not finish it. After the big reveal (the game is not 10 years old yet, so I'll stay my tongue)the action kinda drops. I had a big issue with how it felt a bit repetitive. But overall, the story was good and so were the characters. Very enthralling stuff. Then I set forth to play KOTOR II. And it was quite a bumpy ride. First off, it is the fucking buggiest game I've ever played (and I suffered the infamous Fallout 3 freeze quite a bit, as well as watching Altaïr from Assassin's Creed falling through the floor ad nauseum more than once) It would freeze every few hours, the little robot would not move, it would simply just detract from the experience. And then, 26 hours into the game I made a small mistake: I had taken care of playing a light side of the force playthrough...and I made a small mistake and sided with evil f'ckers on some backwaters planet, and suddenly I was on the path to darkness. So I had to go back to a save 19 hours in. This kinda killed it a bit for me. To be fair, I was still very hooked on seeing the experience through, on playing what was aiming to be an incredible conclusion to a game that, bugs aside, spun a tale in a manner so masterful, it should be remade, leaving the storyline and storytelling mostly untouched.
Except for the end. I'm trying to think of a movie that fell so short of greatness at the very end. Or a book. I've got it. KOTOR II acomplishes, by accident, what Terry Gilliam acomplishes on purpose on each and every movie: that feeling of having sat through great scenes that illicit childlike wonderment, only to be met by abject disappointment and a feeling of staleness at the end (it's my contention that Gilliam's purpose in life is to confuse his viewers and depress them a bit/a lot)
Basically you get to the end, and the resolution is this: your mentor spews predictions for roughly 5 minutes regarding your companions, and the state of the planets you visited in your travels, and how balance is restored to the galaxy. Yes. the ending is reduced to walls of text. Very very NES-like. Oh yeah, there's voice overs in this game. It's like an audio book then.
Then you're treated to a short cinematic of the Ebon Hawk, your spaceship flying away. Into space. Yep.
....WTF!?
Apparently Lucasarts rushed this game to completion, or I should rather say, release, so they could partake of everyone's Christmas money.
So now I kind of hate Lucasarts for ruining yet another thing that could have been great. I mean, it's great as it is, but....still. so much wasted potential. Much to my chagrin, the continuation is in MMO form. MMOs, so far, and to my knowledge, are not famous for incredible storytelling. And Bioware has made sure everyone knows that this will be an incredible, cinematic experience. And I have to trust them, I mean, they ARE Bioware. But ionno...part of me....just wishes for a KOTOR III, a game that married Dragon Age and SW in perfect, nerdgasm marriage.
That and, come on, HK 47 in HD would be fucking awesome.
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