KotOR 2 - Retrospective @ OXM

OXM posted a new retrospective article for Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords.

Let's be blunt. KOTOR 2 is an unfinished game. By the time you reach Malachor V, everything is petering out. The signs were there from the start: cut content, loot randomly generated rather than placed by hand and oh so many bugs. The ending violates the "show, don't tell" rule so hard you can almost hear the money running out.

The popular belief is that Obsidian were pressured to put the game out in time for Christmas, but we're talking about a game with two gender-exclusive companions, a fully implemented crafting system and a card-playing mini-game. If they'd had an extension, would they have finished what they started, or added a fully featured NPC shaving simulator?

In many ways, KOTOR 2 feels like the end of an old era of RPGs. It was the first console game by a group of veteran PC developers, and it shows. Combat is flashy animation played over behind-the-scenes dice rolling. Literally in this case - KOTOR 2 was one of the last major RPGs to be based on a pen-and-paper game (Star Wars d20), a holdover from a time when video games followed, rather than led, the RPG market.

KOTOR 2 was made in that moment, forever frozen between Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect. That's its thing, to be caught between worlds. It's too sophisticated for a proper Star Wars game, too flashy for the old-school RPGs, too wedded to dice for the new, and too broken to be great, but just broken enough to be unique.

Just so you all know I hate the article, and OXM Staff writer funding was indeed cut short due to LucasArts. Watch the Matt Barton interview with Feargus Urquhart for why.