You know, I just loved Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords. It’s powerful and compelling, taking the already awesome Star Wars universe and adding incredible layers of wisdom and exploration of human nature to it. No, that’s not quite right--KotOR2 doesn’t really add that wisdom, that analysis of the human spirit, to Star Wars, so much as it opens our eyes and makes us realize that it was already there. Through this game’s commentary on The Force and its ways, we find an intuitive understanding of heroism, cowardice, ambition, arrogance, admiration, leadership, of the power of personal and spiritual connections between people and groups and the echoes of actions great and small, and much, much more.
There’s really only one major problem with the game: it was never quite finished.
Oh, KotOR2 has a beginning and an end, to be sure, and it’s (mostly) playable from start to finish, so in certain technical terms. And it’s not like the tragedy that is Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader,* either; its storytelling pace and quality stays pretty consistent throughout the game, save for its finale. But it’s apparent as you play through KotOR2 that it’s just plain missing things. Most notable are a resolution to the subplot involving HK-47 and the HK-50 droids, and the fact that the game’s finale left too much unexplained and had over half the party suddenly absent (in fact, KotOR2’s ending would likely have made my Worst Endings list if it didn’t have a rather great and at least minimally satisfactorily conclusive conversation with Kreia at its very conclusion). Beyond these large, glaring absences, however, there are plenty of times in KotOR2 that feel like they’re missing something, dialogue or actions here and there that might make the general flow of exposition go more smoothly. There’s also a ton of bugs in KotOR2, and it sometimes just handles rather clumsily. All in all, it adds up to one obvious conclusion: the game was released prematurely, with much of its story content cut and without enough testing. It’s always been a damn tragedy in my eyes that this terrific RPG was rushed to shelves before it was ready, and I’ve always wondered just how great it could have been if its developers had just had the time they needed to properly finish it.
Well, I still don’t know the answer to that query, but thanks to the The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod, I at least have a much better idea.
The TSL Restored Content Mod, which can be found at http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-sith-lords-restored-content-mod-tslrcm, is an absolute, undiluted Godsend for anyone who appreciated KotOR2’s many and sizable virtues. To start with, it’s easy enough to install and get working. I know this to be true because I managed get it running myself, and when it comes to computers, my intellectual prowess is at about the same level as I would expect from, say, the lovechild of Elmer Fudd and Sarah Palin, if said lovechild hung around Dan Slott and Daniel Tosh on a daily basis, was privately tutored by Peter Griffin, and idolized Homestar Runner. If I managed to install the damn thing correctly, it’s fairly safe to say that absolutely anyone can do it.
More important than ease of use, though, is what the mod actually does. First of all, like any good major improvement mod, it cleans the game up considerably, fixing a metric fuckton of bugs and other, more minor problems (like spelling errors, or coloring issues). I’ve seen buggier games than Knights of Old Republic 2, but certainly not many (and to be fair, most of the problems of Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Mass Effect 3’s Multiplayer were eventually fixed (or, occasionally in ME3’s case, lazily covered up rather than actually corrected...whatever works, though, I guess)). So making the game properly playable is by itself quite a nice thing.
But that by itself wouldn’t be enough to warrant a rant. What makes this mod so awesome is that it does just what its title implies: it restores content. It restores a LOT of it. As in, tons of lines of dialogue and dialogue cutscenes that were either cut or simply didn’t activate correctly are brought back into the game, and even some entire conversations. Considering that it’s the characters and plot that really make or break an RPG, that’s gonna be a huge deal for any RPG, but it’s even greater and more important a restoration in a game like KotOR2, where so much of its excellence rests in the insights and nuances of its characters’ dialogue. I’d give KotOR2 another playthrough just to hear Kreia’s restored lines, let alone all the others’ additional content.
In addition to that, a great many parts and qualities of the game’s events and quests have been fixed, restored, and/or added as originally intended. For example, the defense of the settlers on Dantooine is now much more in depth. Before, it was basically just a preparation phase, an underwhelming non-interactive view of the first wave of battle, and then a cut straight to the final fight between your characters and the invader. Now you have a part to play in the battle from start to finish, and it all feels far more real and complete. It’s a real treat as you go through the game and keep running across one thing after another that’s been touched up, added upon, or restored out of nothingness.
And of course, it’s definitely worth noting that this mod completely restores the entire HK-50 dungeon and events, AND adds a heap of the cut content from the finale back in, allowing for a proper resolution to the stalemate between the Remote and G0-T0, giving the previously missing crew members actual parts to play, and generally improving substantially upon KotOR2’s ending to make it far more cohesive and satisfying.
I’ve encountered restoration mods before, and they’ve been great, a way for fans to help realize the full ambitions of games’ creators that for whatever reason weren’t complete with the game’s release. There’s a mod for Planescape: Torment called the Unfinished Business mod which adds a few cut quests and dialogues that are enjoyable, which is well-known and respected enough that it’s even officially suggested by GOG.com that you install it, for example. And I’ve mentioned before how great the Fallout 2 Restoration Project is, how it’s almost like playing Fallout 2 new all over again. Well, I’d say that the TSL Restored Content Mod is even better than that, providing so much more of the rich, deep, insightful content of KotOR2 and making the entire experience of playing the game feel far more complete. If you were at all a fan of Knights of the Old Republic 2 the first time around, or even just disappointed with it because it felt incomplete, then it’s definitely time to dust your disc off (or go purchase it anew from Steam; it’s only like $10) and give it another playthrough with the TSL Restored Content Mod. It’s fans to the rescue of a great game in the best way.
* Obscure old PC RPG by the makers of the original Fallout games. By all appearances early in the game, it was going to be pretty damn cool, but after a little while of playing it basically just becomes a semi-plotless slogfest because the developer went out of business during the game’s development and had to either get it out the door ASAP or never publish it at all.
Showing posts with label Knights of the Old Republic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Knights of the Old Republic. Show all posts
Monday, October 28, 2013
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Knights of the Old Republic 2's Kreia
Alright, folks, if you haven't played KotOR2 and ever intend to (and you really, really should), don't read this. Too many spoilers.
I am a big fan of the Knights of the Old Republic games. They manage to flawlessly combine fan-made Star Wars (fuck Lucas--anyone who has ever read Timothy Zahn's books knows this is the best, most carefully detailed version of the SW galaxy) with the RPG genre. They've got an awesome setting (naturally), great plots, and better characters. They've got more realistic and gripping backstories and personalities than most other RPGs, and it can be hard not to like even the ones with a heart as black as Darth Vader.
Case in point for me would be Kreia. Now, I do not personally LIKE Kreia. If you've played the game, you'll know that she's not exactly the nicest or most moral person you'll ever come across. She's vicious, manipulative, and she bullies poor Atton all the time (I love Atton). She's Machiavellian to an extreme, just a bit crazy, and at least as much a servant to the Dark Side as she isn't.
But man, as a villain, Kreia is the best I've ever seen in an RPG, plain and simple.
Point One: She's tough. She's genuinely powerful. She's a master of the Force like few others, knowing its ways and using them to her advantage. She can use a lightsaber, which automatically makes her more of a force to be reckoned with than any villain using a regular weapon. She can take a hit (and by a hit, I mean have her hand cut off) and keep on truckin'. She doesn't NEED to do some quest for magic objects to give her the powers of a god. She's smart enough to set the fall for anyone who opposes her without resorting to one-winged angel crap like that. When you deal with Kreia, you deal with someone who's not going to futz around with that nonsense--she'll just either kill you, or, more likely, let you live to unwittingly do her bidding. If Kreia decides to let you live, it's not because she's being a stupid FF villain who doesn't have the good sense to kill protagonists after whupping them early in the game while their levels are low. It's because she knows she WILL make use of you, and can probably do so while making you mentally suffer.
Point Two: The game gives you ample opportunity to know Kreia. Like, KNOW Kreia. This isn't like knowing, say, Seymour of FF10. With Seymour, you know the very, very broad and general (not to mention really dumb) reasons for his villainous actions. This is true of most villains in RPGs, even the good ones--you just don't get too really involved in understanding them. A few, however, like Fou-Lu of Breath of Fire 4 or Orsted of Live-A-Live, are evil characters that you're given a really good amount of insight about, both in their personalities and the reason they do the evil things they do. Kreia, however, blows these two away. She hangs with your party for most of the game, and in that time she tells you all about herself. Her past, her ideals, the qualities she admires and the qualities she despises, her understandings of people and the ways of the universe, and eventually how and why she set everything up. Kreia is a realistic human being in a way that few characters (and of those few, just about no villains) in games are, complex in dozens of different ways that intertwine with each other. Even in a game series with such strongly defined personalities as KotOR2, she really stands out as a character whose creation and development are extraordinarily solid and deep. Folks, a great many of the classic works of literature I've read in my time at college as an English major don't have characters of this high a quality.
Point Three: The voice acting for Kreia is pretty much perfect. Not a big deal, I know, but still, when most of the game's more insightful and thought-provoking content comes from her, it really helps that it's delivered by a voice actress who can get just the right inflections of aged, dark wisdom to match Kreia's personality and words.
Point Four: Kreia wins. Everything. She's the most successful villain of any RPG ever, because she accomplishes every single goal she has. Kill off the remaining survivors of the old Jedi order? Check. Revenge on the Sith Lords who betrayed her? Check (no easy task, either--one regenerates all wounds done him, and the other one is such an unnatural horror that he could very likely defeat every single normal Jedi who ever lived--Yoda, Palpatine, Vader, Luke, EVERYONE). Set the stage for several new Jedi, who know what it is to be human first and foremost and Jedi after that, to create a new order which has a chance not to make all the mistakes the old one did? Check. Bring some balance to the force? All of the above work towards this one. Help prepare the galaxy for the inevitable and fast-approaching day when the Sith finally strike? Check. Send Revan a powerful ally to aid him in fighting the Sith on their own turf? Check. Just about no major move of the Light Side or Dark Side in this game is made without Kreia's making sure it works to further her goals. I mean, even when you kill her at the end of the game, you're STILL doing exactly what she wants--one of her goals is to train her greatest apprentice of all, and that apprentice having the strength of body, Force, and will to kill her will be the way to prove that she has succeeded, her final triumph. How many villains can you think of for whom their final defeat (not just I'm-Dying-But-Not-Really, like Seymour) is an essential part of their plan? Not many.
Point Five: You identify with Kreia. Understanding her isn't just a case of knowing where she's coming from, it's also a case of empathizing with her at times, acknowledging that there's wisdom in her ways regardless of whether they're good or evil. Villains aren't characters you can very often really connect with, and if they are, then you probably have a few issues. Kreia, though, you could argue the merits and weaknesses of her philosophies and insights on humanity, society, karma, and life for hours on end.
In the end, there's really no villain crafted with quite as much care and expertise as Kreia is. Buggy and unfinished as KotOR2 may be, the presence of a villain of Kreia's caliber alone makes it a great RPG.
I am a big fan of the Knights of the Old Republic games. They manage to flawlessly combine fan-made Star Wars (fuck Lucas--anyone who has ever read Timothy Zahn's books knows this is the best, most carefully detailed version of the SW galaxy) with the RPG genre. They've got an awesome setting (naturally), great plots, and better characters. They've got more realistic and gripping backstories and personalities than most other RPGs, and it can be hard not to like even the ones with a heart as black as Darth Vader.
Case in point for me would be Kreia. Now, I do not personally LIKE Kreia. If you've played the game, you'll know that she's not exactly the nicest or most moral person you'll ever come across. She's vicious, manipulative, and she bullies poor Atton all the time (I love Atton). She's Machiavellian to an extreme, just a bit crazy, and at least as much a servant to the Dark Side as she isn't.
But man, as a villain, Kreia is the best I've ever seen in an RPG, plain and simple.
Point One: She's tough. She's genuinely powerful. She's a master of the Force like few others, knowing its ways and using them to her advantage. She can use a lightsaber, which automatically makes her more of a force to be reckoned with than any villain using a regular weapon. She can take a hit (and by a hit, I mean have her hand cut off) and keep on truckin'. She doesn't NEED to do some quest for magic objects to give her the powers of a god. She's smart enough to set the fall for anyone who opposes her without resorting to one-winged angel crap like that. When you deal with Kreia, you deal with someone who's not going to futz around with that nonsense--she'll just either kill you, or, more likely, let you live to unwittingly do her bidding. If Kreia decides to let you live, it's not because she's being a stupid FF villain who doesn't have the good sense to kill protagonists after whupping them early in the game while their levels are low. It's because she knows she WILL make use of you, and can probably do so while making you mentally suffer.
Point Two: The game gives you ample opportunity to know Kreia. Like, KNOW Kreia. This isn't like knowing, say, Seymour of FF10. With Seymour, you know the very, very broad and general (not to mention really dumb) reasons for his villainous actions. This is true of most villains in RPGs, even the good ones--you just don't get too really involved in understanding them. A few, however, like Fou-Lu of Breath of Fire 4 or Orsted of Live-A-Live, are evil characters that you're given a really good amount of insight about, both in their personalities and the reason they do the evil things they do. Kreia, however, blows these two away. She hangs with your party for most of the game, and in that time she tells you all about herself. Her past, her ideals, the qualities she admires and the qualities she despises, her understandings of people and the ways of the universe, and eventually how and why she set everything up. Kreia is a realistic human being in a way that few characters (and of those few, just about no villains) in games are, complex in dozens of different ways that intertwine with each other. Even in a game series with such strongly defined personalities as KotOR2, she really stands out as a character whose creation and development are extraordinarily solid and deep. Folks, a great many of the classic works of literature I've read in my time at college as an English major don't have characters of this high a quality.
Point Three: The voice acting for Kreia is pretty much perfect. Not a big deal, I know, but still, when most of the game's more insightful and thought-provoking content comes from her, it really helps that it's delivered by a voice actress who can get just the right inflections of aged, dark wisdom to match Kreia's personality and words.
Point Four: Kreia wins. Everything. She's the most successful villain of any RPG ever, because she accomplishes every single goal she has. Kill off the remaining survivors of the old Jedi order? Check. Revenge on the Sith Lords who betrayed her? Check (no easy task, either--one regenerates all wounds done him, and the other one is such an unnatural horror that he could very likely defeat every single normal Jedi who ever lived--Yoda, Palpatine, Vader, Luke, EVERYONE). Set the stage for several new Jedi, who know what it is to be human first and foremost and Jedi after that, to create a new order which has a chance not to make all the mistakes the old one did? Check. Bring some balance to the force? All of the above work towards this one. Help prepare the galaxy for the inevitable and fast-approaching day when the Sith finally strike? Check. Send Revan a powerful ally to aid him in fighting the Sith on their own turf? Check. Just about no major move of the Light Side or Dark Side in this game is made without Kreia's making sure it works to further her goals. I mean, even when you kill her at the end of the game, you're STILL doing exactly what she wants--one of her goals is to train her greatest apprentice of all, and that apprentice having the strength of body, Force, and will to kill her will be the way to prove that she has succeeded, her final triumph. How many villains can you think of for whom their final defeat (not just I'm-Dying-But-Not-Really, like Seymour) is an essential part of their plan? Not many.
Point Five: You identify with Kreia. Understanding her isn't just a case of knowing where she's coming from, it's also a case of empathizing with her at times, acknowledging that there's wisdom in her ways regardless of whether they're good or evil. Villains aren't characters you can very often really connect with, and if they are, then you probably have a few issues. Kreia, though, you could argue the merits and weaknesses of her philosophies and insights on humanity, society, karma, and life for hours on end.
In the end, there's really no villain crafted with quite as much care and expertise as Kreia is. Buggy and unfinished as KotOR2 may be, the presence of a villain of Kreia's caliber alone makes it a great RPG.
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