So I finished Obsidian's Knights of the Old Republic II. Fundamentally an enjoyable game for me, with a lot of good writing and an interesting premise. That said, I ran into some areas at the end that confused me. This is possibly because I was playing the game at work (I work at a games company, and I'm in waiting-mode on a particular project, so this isn't a problem -- but sometimes someone would come in and ask a question during one of the non-pausable cutscenes, and I'd be out of luck) or because I missed conversation options somewhere that would have unlocked deeper possibilities, but I've come away from the game feeling like an old Sierra Game player who finished the game with a score of 1164 out of 1800 -- I hit all the important points but obviously missed something big somewhere.
In no particular order -- and of course, since I've finished the game, this includes spoilers.
G0T0: Interesting character, although I got him so late (and was such a dedicated light-sider) that I didn't do much with him. I was initially not sure we were supposed to know that he WAS Goto and not a droid sent by G0T0, but I'll chalk that up to "someone at work asking a question during the big non-pausible cutscene after you escape from the droid yacht" -- I knew he was G0T0 and found it an interesting character choice, but I saw random dialogue snatches that made me think I was supposed to not know that.
T3: There's a great cutscene where HK comes in to bug T3 and talks about how T3 controls astronavigation and drops some hints about how T3 is hiding something, and T3 zaps HK massively -- but nothing ever comes of it. As a Sentinal who took feats to get more class skills, I never needed T3 after the beginning game section, so I didn't interact with him much except in the ship, and I never got my Repair high enough to do really good upgrades on him, so that might explain why I never learned about his past until Kreia told me.
Mira: Feel like I missed something here, although I did my darndest to get information from her. (Like I said, Sentinal, high Awareness, high Wis, high Int, high Persuade.) I didn't get a romance with her, but figured that I wasn't supposed to. I got as far as her agreeing to "maybe come see the world through the Force with me, but don't act like a tourist when I do", but never past that. She never became a Jedi. Either I missed something, or I just didn't have enough time with her, although I spent as much as I could -- I had her as a companion whenever possible from her arrival on, but her world was the second world I visited (did Dxun/Onderon, then Nar Shadda, then Korriban, then Dantooine). So maybe I missed something.
Visas: Feel sorta bummed here, because I felt like something got cut short. She showed up to try to kill me, I defeat her and make her part of the party, and then… nothing. No great revelations past the first dialogue paths, no twists and turns, just “My life is yours” until near the end, where she announces that she’s in love with me and we’re supposed to gaze at each other. She was a fascinating character, but compared to the Handmaiden, who had a bunch of character-building chances for me to unlock new dialogue with her, Visas just seemed to go nowhere. Maybe I was supposed to have a lot of ranks in Repair to unlock something. I dunno. I had her with the party for awhile, but the most I got was one “Hey, you’re not being evil” comment, which didn’t result in Influence gained or lost however I played it.
Handmaiden: Lots of great dialogue, lots of good stuff, but I wasn’t sure if I missed something. I never got the influence necessary to get her to talk about Atris, but I did get her to become a Guardian. I never got a big great love speech from her, which sorta bummed me out – this is possibly because I tried to let Visas down easy and not flat-out say “I like Handmaiden, not you” – perhaps doing that would have triggered Handmaiden doing something more overt in re her blossoming love for me. Or whatever.
Bao-Dur: Unlike Handmaiden, Visas, and Mira, where I’m annoyed because I had those three with me for as much of the game as possible, I know that I didn’t give Bao-Dur much play-time, so when it turns out that he is responsible for the bomb or whatever that shafted Malachor V at my orders, I just went, “Okay, missed that. Maybe on the replay.” Yes, I do play with female NPCs to try to get them to all fall in love with me. I’m not proud of it, but that’s where it is.
Mandalore: Again, I’m a light-sider, so he was with me until he didn’t have to be with me, and then I ditched him. I brought him back twice to pick up wandering Mandalorians, and that was it. And then at the end, he had to come with me, and that was fine, but I sensed either a game bug or unclear writing – we were ostensibly setting a bunch of bombs to blow up the Ravager and save Telos, but the Mandalorians were supposedly doing something sneaky… although what that sneaky thing was never came out, and I don’t know how it would, since you go right from the Ravager to blasting on toward Malachor and going into Solo mode, so it’s not like I had chances to talk with Mandalore and find out what had happened. While Bao-Dur’s stuff felt like stuff I’d missed because I didn’t have Bao-Dur in my party, Mandalore’s big sneaky endgame felt like something I missed either because it wasn’t written in very well or because I missed an important line of dialogue when somebody needed me to answer a question about plot-links. (I did hear the sneaky stuff, and then Visas saying, “What’s that?” and Mandalore saying, “Nothing, just business,” or something like that.)
The End: Okay, this could just be me, but I was unwowed by the end. We crash on the planet, and I’m alone, and I think, “Okay, this is by the people who did Planescape, so I’m going to see what happens to my companions and have some closure with all of them.” Nope. All I got was Mira facing down Hanharr, which was nice but not a worldshaker, and Bao-Dur’s remote setting things up and then being trapped by G0T0, who says, in essence, “No, we’re not blowing up the world, we can’t do that, it’s not good for business.”
Meanwhile, I go through some fairly minor fights (Liked the big pain dude, but had no trouble anywhere else – either I’m better at minmaxing than I thought, or I did too many sidequests or something, because even the pair of Sith Marauders, who are apparently supposed to be tough, were two-round kills for me) and then got into the big fight with Kreia. I win, spare her, fight some lightsabers, spare her again, ask some questions, and find out… nothing.
Wasn’t the whole point of what she was doing to kill herself, to create a big wound that would eradicate the force? When I spared her and she died anyway, didn’t that do that? Why didn’t her death, which is what she was trying to accomplish, do what she wanted it to do? I felt that there was some big emotional payoff here that just didn’t click for me – I loved, LOVED Kreia’s reactions when I have the big meeting with the Jedi Council, but I didn’t feel like it paid off at all in the end.
And then she dies (with me saying, rest now or something), and I run off to my ship, and the planet weirds out as I fly away, and apparently all that stuff with G0T0 was meaningless, since as far as I can tell, it worked just fine. Unless I missed something.
But no Handmaiden/Visas/Atton involvement in the ending? Handmaiden and Visas got their good lines in their own confrontations (Atris and Nihilus), but I’d have liked to see them there at the end, doing something or declaring their love for me or something. And Atton, who was there right from the beginning, had bupkus. Some kind of coming to peace with himself would have been nice. (I felt I’d earned something, since I’d gotten the big conversation and turned him into a Jedi.)
Anybody else finish this and get more closure? Did I miss important dialogue trees, or read too quickly and miss the true essence of the meaning, or was there stuff cut for time?
In no particular order -- and of course, since I've finished the game, this includes spoilers.
G0T0: Interesting character, although I got him so late (and was such a dedicated light-sider) that I didn't do much with him. I was initially not sure we were supposed to know that he WAS Goto and not a droid sent by G0T0, but I'll chalk that up to "someone at work asking a question during the big non-pausible cutscene after you escape from the droid yacht" -- I knew he was G0T0 and found it an interesting character choice, but I saw random dialogue snatches that made me think I was supposed to not know that.
T3: There's a great cutscene where HK comes in to bug T3 and talks about how T3 controls astronavigation and drops some hints about how T3 is hiding something, and T3 zaps HK massively -- but nothing ever comes of it. As a Sentinal who took feats to get more class skills, I never needed T3 after the beginning game section, so I didn't interact with him much except in the ship, and I never got my Repair high enough to do really good upgrades on him, so that might explain why I never learned about his past until Kreia told me.
Mira: Feel like I missed something here, although I did my darndest to get information from her. (Like I said, Sentinal, high Awareness, high Wis, high Int, high Persuade.) I didn't get a romance with her, but figured that I wasn't supposed to. I got as far as her agreeing to "maybe come see the world through the Force with me, but don't act like a tourist when I do", but never past that. She never became a Jedi. Either I missed something, or I just didn't have enough time with her, although I spent as much as I could -- I had her as a companion whenever possible from her arrival on, but her world was the second world I visited (did Dxun/Onderon, then Nar Shadda, then Korriban, then Dantooine). So maybe I missed something.
Visas: Feel sorta bummed here, because I felt like something got cut short. She showed up to try to kill me, I defeat her and make her part of the party, and then… nothing. No great revelations past the first dialogue paths, no twists and turns, just “My life is yours” until near the end, where she announces that she’s in love with me and we’re supposed to gaze at each other. She was a fascinating character, but compared to the Handmaiden, who had a bunch of character-building chances for me to unlock new dialogue with her, Visas just seemed to go nowhere. Maybe I was supposed to have a lot of ranks in Repair to unlock something. I dunno. I had her with the party for awhile, but the most I got was one “Hey, you’re not being evil” comment, which didn’t result in Influence gained or lost however I played it.
Handmaiden: Lots of great dialogue, lots of good stuff, but I wasn’t sure if I missed something. I never got the influence necessary to get her to talk about Atris, but I did get her to become a Guardian. I never got a big great love speech from her, which sorta bummed me out – this is possibly because I tried to let Visas down easy and not flat-out say “I like Handmaiden, not you” – perhaps doing that would have triggered Handmaiden doing something more overt in re her blossoming love for me. Or whatever.
Bao-Dur: Unlike Handmaiden, Visas, and Mira, where I’m annoyed because I had those three with me for as much of the game as possible, I know that I didn’t give Bao-Dur much play-time, so when it turns out that he is responsible for the bomb or whatever that shafted Malachor V at my orders, I just went, “Okay, missed that. Maybe on the replay.” Yes, I do play with female NPCs to try to get them to all fall in love with me. I’m not proud of it, but that’s where it is.
Mandalore: Again, I’m a light-sider, so he was with me until he didn’t have to be with me, and then I ditched him. I brought him back twice to pick up wandering Mandalorians, and that was it. And then at the end, he had to come with me, and that was fine, but I sensed either a game bug or unclear writing – we were ostensibly setting a bunch of bombs to blow up the Ravager and save Telos, but the Mandalorians were supposedly doing something sneaky… although what that sneaky thing was never came out, and I don’t know how it would, since you go right from the Ravager to blasting on toward Malachor and going into Solo mode, so it’s not like I had chances to talk with Mandalore and find out what had happened. While Bao-Dur’s stuff felt like stuff I’d missed because I didn’t have Bao-Dur in my party, Mandalore’s big sneaky endgame felt like something I missed either because it wasn’t written in very well or because I missed an important line of dialogue when somebody needed me to answer a question about plot-links. (I did hear the sneaky stuff, and then Visas saying, “What’s that?” and Mandalore saying, “Nothing, just business,” or something like that.)
The End: Okay, this could just be me, but I was unwowed by the end. We crash on the planet, and I’m alone, and I think, “Okay, this is by the people who did Planescape, so I’m going to see what happens to my companions and have some closure with all of them.” Nope. All I got was Mira facing down Hanharr, which was nice but not a worldshaker, and Bao-Dur’s remote setting things up and then being trapped by G0T0, who says, in essence, “No, we’re not blowing up the world, we can’t do that, it’s not good for business.”
Meanwhile, I go through some fairly minor fights (Liked the big pain dude, but had no trouble anywhere else – either I’m better at minmaxing than I thought, or I did too many sidequests or something, because even the pair of Sith Marauders, who are apparently supposed to be tough, were two-round kills for me) and then got into the big fight with Kreia. I win, spare her, fight some lightsabers, spare her again, ask some questions, and find out… nothing.
Wasn’t the whole point of what she was doing to kill herself, to create a big wound that would eradicate the force? When I spared her and she died anyway, didn’t that do that? Why didn’t her death, which is what she was trying to accomplish, do what she wanted it to do? I felt that there was some big emotional payoff here that just didn’t click for me – I loved, LOVED Kreia’s reactions when I have the big meeting with the Jedi Council, but I didn’t feel like it paid off at all in the end.
And then she dies (with me saying, rest now or something), and I run off to my ship, and the planet weirds out as I fly away, and apparently all that stuff with G0T0 was meaningless, since as far as I can tell, it worked just fine. Unless I missed something.
But no Handmaiden/Visas/Atton involvement in the ending? Handmaiden and Visas got their good lines in their own confrontations (Atris and Nihilus), but I’d have liked to see them there at the end, doing something or declaring their love for me or something. And Atton, who was there right from the beginning, had bupkus. Some kind of coming to peace with himself would have been nice. (I felt I’d earned something, since I’d gotten the big conversation and turned him into a Jedi.)
Anybody else finish this and get more closure? Did I miss important dialogue trees, or read too quickly and miss the true essence of the meaning, or was there stuff cut for time?
