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Thursday 6 March, 2008
“STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC 2” GAMELOG ENTRY #2
GAMEPLAY:
Upon further investigation into KOTOR 2’s gameplay one cannot help but notice the “Party Influence System”. Sometimes, when a character is presented with a conversation or situation that is relevant to a given character’s personal beliefs or relationship with the Exile, the player is able to raise or lower the given character’s level of influence. What this means is that if you do things that your party members like, they will like you more. If you do things they don’t like, they will begin to loathe you. The influence system has very interesting effects on your characters. If you persuade them to turn to the dark side, their skin will begin to turn pale and their presence will become darker and more menacing, if you turn them onto the path of the light, their features will become angelic. Gaining influence with all the characters also allowed the player to find out more about their back stories, thus increasing the desire to replay the game and find out each character’s history.
KOTOR 2’s endings were somewhat disappointing. The reason is that you are given many choices at the end of the game, but there is only one ending cinematic. This cinematic is very vague in its depiction of what is going on and leaves the player gasping for more and unfortunately does not deliver a proper amount of closure. On a brighter note, the music in KOTOR 2 sets the mood fantastically for each world you are on. MY favorite music was when you traveled to the sith home planet, Korriban. The music here was a slow retro-sounding sci-fi instrumental piece that sent shivers down my spine. I felt that the soundtrack of the game helped add to the hustle and bustle of cities Onderon and the emptiness of the barren wastes of Korriban.
DESIGN:
I found KOTOR 2 to be a very incomplete game. This fact is confirmed by many postings on the official obsidian website directing the PC-version owners to a site where an independent company is trying to fill in the gaps. There is evidence of the games incompleteness in many forms, one of which is a conversation option which requires a certain amount of influence for the NPC to give a satisfactory answer. No matter how much influence you have the given NPC, the game will always tell you that your influence is not high enough and to try back later. After checking on multiple forums, I found out that this was indeed a precursor to a side quest that was not added. I found this somewhat frustrating that the developers left the option in, almost as if to taunt the players.
The character customization in KOTOR 2 was also somewhat disappointing. In the beginning you have a very limited number of male and female faces to choose from. You can however, customize your melee and ranged weapons with certain “upgrade items” you can find and purchase along the way. The lightsaber customization feature allows the player to customize their lightsaber to do more damage, to do certain types of extra damage, to deflect bullets, and change the color of their lightsaber. I found that the ability to “trick-out” my lightsaber added greatly to the interactivity of the game. Overall, I found KOTOR 2 to be a fun game despite the holes in the design. I feel that the game really immerses the player into the Star Wars universe and allows the player to live out their jedi fantasy and to truly feel the force.
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