Some money grabbing sw*ne who must know me personally put an 'as new, unscratched' copy (saw the photos) of KOTOR for Xbox on eb**... Takemymoney, £10 bargain.
I missed it first time around due to 1) Not knowing it existed 2) marriage 3) kids and 4) Not knowing it existed again
Hmmm,,, looks like that's my time split up between planning my homebrew and running around the SW Universe.. is it any good? 😂
Let me put it this way: back in that era, after watching The Phantom Menace, I started to wonder if the originals were all you could get out of Star Wars and have it feel like Star Wars. KOTOR and its sequel were proof that there was much, much more to the setting.
The first is BioWare and the second is Obsidian mimicking the first, so if you've ever played Mass Effect, gameplay is very similar apart from turn-based combat. Somewhat flexible progression, loot-style exploration, NPC "unlocking" through successive conversations.
It will surely show its age in some respects, but the time I played each was unforgettable.
Still easily one of my favorite games of all time. I cherish the memory I have as a teen when the "big reveal" happened. My heart sunk and it totally changed how I played the remainder of the game and the direction I took the character.
1 hour ago, DidntFallAsleep66 said:Hmmm,,, looks like that's my time split up between planning my homebrew and running around the SW Universe.. is it any good? 😂
Funny you should ask, I have played it through many times, and just started a new one a few days ago. It's great. I still find dialogue and choices I've missed in earlier go-arounds. It's probably one of the most re-playable games, I've ever owned. In fact I've had to make notes to remember all the side-quests and plots to make sure to finish them (depending on which track I'm on).
Not to mention these days you won't be stressing any hardware running it on max detail.
There are plenty of familiar elements (fastest ship in the galaxy, Wookiee side-kicks, etc), even a member of the Jedi Council who is disturbingly familiar... but those are just surface details. The stories of each side-kick you gather and other NPCs you meet are well worth diving into, though to get the most out of them you need to time some dialogue with certain events. Ask them how they are doing, often
The combat and character stats are D20. It's actually a pretty good implementation. By the end you'll be ridiculously powerful, but the scaling is good, so you'll need to be that good. You have lots of choice over your skills, combat abilities, and powers, which is a big part of what gives each play-through its unique flavour.
Where it really shines though (IMHO) is the dialogue and voice acting. You really can play light or dark, and some of the dark dialogue and the things you can do to other people (even your side-kicks) is just...chilling. I've honestly never played through the dark side (just tried some things out and then reloaded a saved game), but they didn't pull any punches. Conversely, the light side isn't just cheesy "niceness", you really have to weigh things. Can't give the writers and voice actors enough credit, or the game developer for allowing them to do it. And irrespective of light and dark, it has probably some of the most hilarious dialogue I've ever heard in any game, if you trigger the right things. HK-47 and Jolee are worth every snippet you can explore.
That's all KotoR 1. Kotor 2 had even more promise, the gameplay is a bit better imho, but there are too many dead ends...in a classic example of corporate failure, some idiot in management decided to cut the timeline and demand finalization by a certain date, so they had to chop out tons of story. It just "ends", and is not satisfying.
On this note, there's rumors circulating that EA is doing a remake of the KoTOR games; that or doing a much-asked for sequel.
No hard info (naturally), since this is purely rumor/speculation at this point, but after the solid job that Respawn (an EA-owned developer) did with Jedi: Fallen Order, I wouldn't be adverse to seeing KoTOR 1 and especially KoTOR 2 get the remake treatment. I'm not sure how much of the BioWare staff that worked on KoTOR is even still left (guessing not much, if any). But if not BioWare, then perhaps Respawn, who've earned the trust of most video gamers with regards to Star Wars games.
I doubt it'd be on the level of the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Remake (which for Sqeenix is more a passion project and labor of love as it was game to be produced, if the behind-the-scenes talk I've heard is any indication), but getting a graphical update, implementing game-play elements of the second into the first game, as well as story tweaks (or even a properly completed story in the case of KoTOR2), to say nothing of fine-tuning the d20 mechanics used to run combat.
Whether or not this would have anything to do with the upcoming Project Luminous (of which is hinted to be focusing on the High Republic era) is anyone's guess.
IIRC, you can buy all the current Star Wars games on Steam and play them just about anywhere. The Steam version of KOTOR2 is apparently even playable on Macs, even though I don’t think that game was ever officially ported to macOS.
20 hours ago, wilsch said:Let me put it this way: back in that era, after watching The Phantom Menace, I started to wonder if the originals were all you could get out of Star Wars and have it feel like Star Wars. KOTOR and its sequel were proof that there was much, much more to the setting.
The first is BioWare and the second is Obsidian mimicking the first, so if you've ever played Mass Effect, gameplay is very similar apart from turn-based combat. Somewhat flexible progression, loot-style exploration, NPC "unlocking" through successive conversations.
It will surely show its age in some respects, but the time I played each was unforgettable.
Drew Karpyshyn is a helluva writer.
You can even play KotoR on mobile.
Although it will eat your battery and the controls are a bit fiddly, so getting it on Steam is probably a better choice.
19 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:On this note, there's rumors circulating that EA is doing a remake of the KoTOR games; that or doing a much-asked for sequel.
Kotor's sequel is called SWTOR because the MMO is the direct continuation of Kotor's story. And it's developed by Bioware.
47 minutes ago, Mistervimes said:Drew Karpyshyn is a helluva writer.
Not really. An above average writer at best and better than the guy, who's name I've forgotten, who wrote the Thrawn Trilogy. Then very few Star Wars book are well written.
i considered it after seeing the hitech repair for the xbox 360 tray (a decent paperclip)... at the mo i'm running around skyrim again
Cheers for all the help... TBH I had fun on SW BF1.. racked up 100+ kills with Chewie on the offline maps
3 hours ago, WolfRider said:Kotor's sequel is called SWTOR because the MMO is the direct continuation of Kotor's story. And it's developed by Bioware.
Not really. An above average writer at best and better than the guy, who's name I've forgotten, who wrote the Thrawn Trilogy. Then very few Star Wars book are well written.
I meant his writing for the games (Mass Effect and KoToR). I could take or leave his novels.
12 hours ago, WolfRider said:Kotor's sequel is called SWTOR because the MMO is the direct continuation of Kotor's story. And it's developed by Bioware.
What are you on EA's payroll? SWTOR is not a direct sequel to KOTOR and KOTOR II, it takes 300 years after the end of the KOTOR games, and the Shadow of Revan update didn't even drop until years after SWTOR's launch. Shadow of Revan is a pretty lackluster end to Revan's character by the way.
And yeah I remember the propaganda...er...marketing EA did saying SWTOR was KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or whatever but that was all a lame way to excuse not making a proper direct sequel to KOTOR and KOTOR II.
Now I will say if anyone out there hasn't played SWTOR you should give it a try, the class stories are very well done, especially the Imperial Agent story-line. Jeez, now I sound like I'm on EA's payroll
QuoteNot really. An above average writer at best and better than the guy, who's name I've forgotten, who wrote the Thrawn Trilogy. Then very few Star Wars book are well written.
I agree with you that very few Star Wars books are well written, and no Drew Karpyshyn, is no George R. R. Martin, or whatever, but for a genre fiction writer he is pretty darn good, and his trilogy of Darth Bane books are the best Star Wars novels I've ever read.
All of the old Xbox and 360 Star Wars games are available for sale from the store on Xbox one, including Republic Commando! Go to the store section and search the backwards compatible section, they're all there.
22 hours ago, unicornpuncher said:Now I will say if anyone out there hasn't played SWTOR you should give it a try, the class stories are very well done, especially the Imperial Agent story-line. Jeez, now I sound like I'm on EA's payroll
Until recently, that wasn’t possible unless you had certain platforms available to you. Those of us who cannot live with a Windows machine in the house, or any other hardware using an OS made by Microsoft, were severely hampered in this regard.
But with the latest changes in Steam, and Nvidia GeForce Now streaming, that should be a lot easier.
Well, assuming those games are still around to be played at all, that is. 🤬
and GeForce Now doesn’t help those of us on iOS. 🤬 🤬
In addition you can find a lot of restored content on the internet which was deleted by the developers for various reasons. Some was even done by yours truely.
1 hour ago, Seam said:In addition you can find a lot of restored content on the internet which was deleted by the developers for various reasons. Some was even done by yours truely.
Well, with KOTOR2 the reason a lot of that content was cut was because Lucasfilm put the developers (Obsidian) under a time crunch to have the game out and on shelves in time for the holiday shopping season. Obsidian frankly needed at least another year to properly complete the game, and even after release offered to finish the title on their own dime, but Lucasfilm nixed both those ideas.
In a perfect world, Obsidian would have been able to properly finish KOTOR2 instead of having to cobble together the very unsatisfying third act that the game had.
Right, but there is a mod (as far as I know) which puts many deleted things back into the game and gives a glimpse of what the final product should have looked like. One of these days I have to replay KoTOR 2 with the mod...
3 hours ago, Seam said:In addition you can find a lot of restored content on the internet which was deleted by the developers for various reasons. Some was even done by yours truely.
Having played through the Sith Restoration Mod of KOTOR 2, I can vouch that it's good. The community did a really good job salvaging it from the depths of the code.
Love the KOTOR games, sure nuff. Nuff said.