molochthagod
Log Status
Completed
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
33h 24m
Days in Journal
1 day
Last played
December 30, 2022
Platforms Played
Library Ownership
Foreword
KotOR 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. I first played it back in the early 2000s, and have loved it since. Despite that, I rarely complete longer games, so a lot of time passed before I completed KotOR 1 in 2019.
My first experience with KotOR 2 was sometime in mid-2000s, probably in 2006 or so. I remember playing it for a few hours and dropping it. Since then I always felt that I didn't give it a fair chance. A feeling that was reinforced by all the praises it was receiving from the SW fan community. Most people claimed that it was better than the first game in terms of story, some also claimed that it was better altogether. I've seen a few people mention that it was better than the movies even. So, today I've finally completed this game and have made my own conclusions.
Tone/Aesthetic
For whatever reasons Obsidian thought it would be a great idea to take a vibrant and diverse universe of Star Wars and make it dark and bland. The first game created a sense of journey, as you explored various planets that ranged widely in aesthetics. It made you want to inhabit that world. I was always excited to run the game and see where it takes me next. But here it's all shades of brown, grey and black. Most planets look and feel the same. It's either a dark urban environment at night, a semi-urban environment at sunset or the wilderness in rain or sunset. The final mission takes place among grey rocks. The feeling of unpleasantness permeated the entire game, and created a world you don't want to return to.
Gameplay
The gameplay here is a mess. First 6-7 hours of the game that you spend on Peragus are a torture to play through. KotOR's main appeal was always role-playing through conversations and exploration, but this section of the game is mostly just killing metallic spiders. There are only two people to talk to and nothing to explore. In this section already you start noticing numerous bugs, even if you're playing with mods (which I did).
Throughout the entire game the quest chains repeatedly broke because I wasn't doing them in the "right" order. Sometimes the game allowed me to kill a major character that later would magically reappear and be very significant to the story. A lot of the quests were a pain in the ass to do. The game loves to force you to repeat the same action over and over again, like in the Gand quest, where you have to talk to a full room of identical NPCs just to find one that you're looking for. The game also loves throwing an insane amounts of enemies at you. The original KotOR would throw a bunch of NPCs or puzzles in between, but here you sometimes go through corridors and corridors of groups of powerful enemies until it gets nauseating. To add salt to your wound, towards the end of the game, it often forces you to play as the secondary characters, which I always auto-leveled up because you never know whether they'll leave at some point or even turn against you. So they can't fight for shit. I basically soft-locked myself several times because I didn't have enough medpacks for these losers and there was no place to buy/find them, so I couldn't progress without cheat codes.
A lot of the level design was horrendous too.To give you an example, on Nar Shadaa there's a racing event, which is rigged by its owner. A droid is placed by him as a racer, and due to lacking the flaws that biological organisms have, he wins all the races. A woman proposes that I destroy the droid, so that I may win the race and she may buy the racetrack, and I agree. I walk into the room with the droid, and its right in front of me, and there are two characters to the right. So of course, I go kill the droid right away. Then I go speak with the characters and they are seemingly unaware that the droid is dead, despite being in the same room. If only the room was laid out differently, I would've probably spoken to the characters first, before blowing up the droid. This is just one example of how poorly the game is thought through.
Story
But all would be forgiven if the story was really as good as everyone makes it out to be. But no, the story is probably the biggest insult. Because THIS GAME DOES NOT UNDERSTAND STAR WARS.
The game is basically critical of pre-determinism and what it deems to be the moral duality in the Star Wars universe. The problem is: its interpretation of pre-determinism is extremely shallow. If you study the history of pre-determinism in various religions (including Daoism and Chan Buddhism, which inspired Star Wars), you'll realize that the concept of free will is subject to different interpretations, many of which coexist with the concept of destiny or the guiding force. Without going deep into the philosophical waters, let me put it like this: you know those time travel movies where the actions of the protagonist lead precisely to the situation they were running from in the first place? Does that mean these characters have no free will? Not really. They make their own decisions that have real-life consequences. But time is an illusion. Prophecy is simply a way of seeing through it.
Kreia thinks she can somehow divorce herself (and the rest of the universe) from the Force that permeates everything. The Force is the origin of creation. Everything comes from the Force and returns to the Force. It is also the divine principle that guides life. In fact, the Force is life. There is no life without the Force or "disconnected" from the Force, because that would mean being disconnected from ourselves. The game tries to manipulate your views through obscure dialogues that use vague metaphors, such as "Wound of the Force" and "Scream of the Force". Metaphors that provide easily digestable visuals, but don't actually clarify what exactly they mean in the metaphysical sense. Characters talk about the Force as if it was a living creature with human attributes. Like it's something physical that can be physically removed. None of this makes any sense and doesn't fit the Star Wars mythology.
And then there's the question of moral duality. Some people seem to think that the Light Side and the Dark Side in their original conception are binary categories that one must completely adhere to. Apparently, that's what Chris Avellone thought, which might be why he went on record criticizing these fundamental aspects of the Star Wars mythology. But that's really never been the case. There have been many examples of the Jedi who go against the code (such as Qui-Gon Jinn) or use aspects of the Dark Side in their combat (such as Mace Windu) without ever succumbing to it. It's just that these "Sides" were presented in a somewhat exaggerated manner, because Star Wars movies were made for kids (by Lucas' own admission). The goal was to convey that attachment, desire and fear lead to a lifetime of suffering, while the transcendence of them leads to peace, harmony and enlightenment. It is ridiculous when people claim that prior to this game Star Wars had never had moral complexity.
Of course this all leads to yet more Lucas-bashing that seems to be so strangely popular among the Star Wars "fans". Some of the comments I've read on this game are beyond baffling. Somebody said that no other Star Wars game or movie has ever understood the Force better than this game. Are you kidding me? How can Chris Avellone understand George Lucas' invention better than George Lucas? I am honestly sick and tired of people trying to strip Lucas of his legacy. This is something that's been going on for decades now. How entitled must you be to claim that you (or someone else) understand a work of art better than its creator?
Conclusion
This game doesn't get Star Wars. It doesn't like Star Wars. It doesn't want to be Star Wars. Neither in its visuals, nor its story. It wants to be some depressing philosophical discussion on existentialism or something, with vague metaphors and scarce structure. And in terms of gameplay, it is just a more broken version of its predecessor. I am saddened and frustrated that I had to spend 33.4 hours of my life on this game, just because the majority of the fanbase seems to be confused about what they're fans of.
KotOR 1 is one of my favorite games of all time. I first played it back in the early 2000s, and have loved it since. Despite that, I rarely complete longer games, so a lot of time passed before I completed KotOR 1 in 2019.
My first experience with KotOR 2 was sometime in mid-2000s, probably in 2006 or so. I remember playing it for a few hours and dropping it. Since then I always felt that I didn't give it a fair chance. A feeling that was reinforced by all the praises it was receiving from the SW fan community. Most people claimed that it was better than the first game in terms of story, some also claimed that it was better altogether. I've seen a few people mention that it was better than the movies even. So, today I've finally completed this game and have made my own conclusions.
Tone/Aesthetic
For whatever reasons Obsidian thought it would be a great idea to take a vibrant and diverse universe of Star Wars and make it dark and bland. The first game created a sense of journey, as you explored various planets that ranged widely in aesthetics. It made you want to inhabit that world. I was always excited to run the game and see where it takes me next. But here it's all shades of brown, grey and black. Most planets look and feel the same. It's either a dark urban environment at night, a semi-urban environment at sunset or the wilderness in rain or sunset. The final mission takes place among grey rocks. The feeling of unpleasantness permeated the entire game, and created a world you don't want to return to.
Gameplay
The gameplay here is a mess. First 6-7 hours of the game that you spend on Peragus are a torture to play through. KotOR's main appeal was always role-playing through conversations and exploration, but this section of the game is mostly just killing metallic spiders. There are only two people to talk to and nothing to explore. In this section already you start noticing numerous bugs, even if you're playing with mods (which I did).
Throughout the entire game the quest chains repeatedly broke because I wasn't doing them in the "right" order. Sometimes the game allowed me to kill a major character that later would magically reappear and be very significant to the story. A lot of the quests were a pain in the ass to do. The game loves to force you to repeat the same action over and over again, like in the Gand quest, where you have to talk to a full room of identical NPCs just to find one that you're looking for. The game also loves throwing an insane amounts of enemies at you. The original KotOR would throw a bunch of NPCs or puzzles in between, but here you sometimes go through corridors and corridors of groups of powerful enemies until it gets nauseating. To add salt to your wound, towards the end of the game, it often forces you to play as the secondary characters, which I always auto-leveled up because you never know whether they'll leave at some point or even turn against you. So they can't fight for shit. I basically soft-locked myself several times because I didn't have enough medpacks for these losers and there was no place to buy/find them, so I couldn't progress without cheat codes.
A lot of the level design was horrendous too.To give you an example, on Nar Shadaa there's a racing event, which is rigged by its owner. A droid is placed by him as a racer, and due to lacking the flaws that biological organisms have, he wins all the races. A woman proposes that I destroy the droid, so that I may win the race and she may buy the racetrack, and I agree. I walk into the room with the droid, and its right in front of me, and there are two characters to the right. So of course, I go kill the droid right away. Then I go speak with the characters and they are seemingly unaware that the droid is dead, despite being in the same room. If only the room was laid out differently, I would've probably spoken to the characters first, before blowing up the droid. This is just one example of how poorly the game is thought through.
Story
But all would be forgiven if the story was really as good as everyone makes it out to be. But no, the story is probably the biggest insult. Because THIS GAME DOES NOT UNDERSTAND STAR WARS.
The game is basically critical of pre-determinism and what it deems to be the moral duality in the Star Wars universe. The problem is: its interpretation of pre-determinism is extremely shallow. If you study the history of pre-determinism in various religions (including Daoism and Chan Buddhism, which inspired Star Wars), you'll realize that the concept of free will is subject to different interpretations, many of which coexist with the concept of destiny or the guiding force. Without going deep into the philosophical waters, let me put it like this: you know those time travel movies where the actions of the protagonist lead precisely to the situation they were running from in the first place? Does that mean these characters have no free will? Not really. They make their own decisions that have real-life consequences. But time is an illusion. Prophecy is simply a way of seeing through it.
Kreia thinks she can somehow divorce herself (and the rest of the universe) from the Force that permeates everything. The Force is the origin of creation. Everything comes from the Force and returns to the Force. It is also the divine principle that guides life. In fact, the Force is life. There is no life without the Force or "disconnected" from the Force, because that would mean being disconnected from ourselves. The game tries to manipulate your views through obscure dialogues that use vague metaphors, such as "Wound of the Force" and "Scream of the Force". Metaphors that provide easily digestable visuals, but don't actually clarify what exactly they mean in the metaphysical sense. Characters talk about the Force as if it was a living creature with human attributes. Like it's something physical that can be physically removed. None of this makes any sense and doesn't fit the Star Wars mythology.
And then there's the question of moral duality. Some people seem to think that the Light Side and the Dark Side in their original conception are binary categories that one must completely adhere to. Apparently, that's what Chris Avellone thought, which might be why he went on record criticizing these fundamental aspects of the Star Wars mythology. But that's really never been the case. There have been many examples of the Jedi who go against the code (such as Qui-Gon Jinn) or use aspects of the Dark Side in their combat (such as Mace Windu) without ever succumbing to it. It's just that these "Sides" were presented in a somewhat exaggerated manner, because Star Wars movies were made for kids (by Lucas' own admission). The goal was to convey that attachment, desire and fear lead to a lifetime of suffering, while the transcendence of them leads to peace, harmony and enlightenment. It is ridiculous when people claim that prior to this game Star Wars had never had moral complexity.
Of course this all leads to yet more Lucas-bashing that seems to be so strangely popular among the Star Wars "fans". Some of the comments I've read on this game are beyond baffling. Somebody said that no other Star Wars game or movie has ever understood the Force better than this game. Are you kidding me? How can Chris Avellone understand George Lucas' invention better than George Lucas? I am honestly sick and tired of people trying to strip Lucas of his legacy. This is something that's been going on for decades now. How entitled must you be to claim that you (or someone else) understand a work of art better than its creator?
Conclusion
This game doesn't get Star Wars. It doesn't like Star Wars. It doesn't want to be Star Wars. Neither in its visuals, nor its story. It wants to be some depressing philosophical discussion on existentialism or something, with vague metaphors and scarce structure. And in terms of gameplay, it is just a more broken version of its predecessor. I am saddened and frustrated that I had to spend 33.4 hours of my life on this game, just because the majority of the fanbase seems to be confused about what they're fans of.