
How Do You Make A Sequel To An Open-Ended Game? Watch And Learn. KOTOR II is out next February, sq we advise you to book some sick days off now. And from what we've seen there's absolutely no reason to doubt them or their ability.

This is a game that Obsidian is touting as the Empire Strikes Back to the original game's New Hope - a tale with a darker tone and a feeling of constant danger throughout. Elsewhere, a visit to Carth's home planet of Tilos (or, at least what remains of it) is on the cards, along with the triumphant return of assassin droid HK-47 - undoubtedly the best comedy sidekick we've seen in many a year. One rumble I witnessed outside a Sith Temple on the planet of Dxum had my jaw hitting the floor with the sheer number of dark-siders milling about.īut what other things could I mention that'll ignite the KOTOR geek inside you? Over 60 new feats and force powers might tickle your fancy - including Force Scream (a power you can't quite imagine being used by Sir Alec Guinness) and the decidedly dark-side Force Crush (great for making fresh juices).

There's also the capacity to handle far more enemies on screen, which immediately ups the excitement of the battles. This same fiddling has meant the engine is now firing on all cylinders, and environmental effects that were previously only available on their lonesome (grass, weather effects, flowing water, flashy particle effects and the like) are now combined with aplomb. There are 17 new character heads for your Jedi to choose from as well, all of them mildly attractive, and this time round the code's been tweaked to allow for full-flowing Jedi robes -something which, if you think about it, was sorely lacking in the original game. Now, you can be an inordinately forcesavvy Counsellor, a battle-trained Guardian or middle-man Sentinel straight from the off. Obviously (what with you being the last known Jedi and everything) the usual stockpile classes of scoundrel, scout and soldier can be waylaid, and you can just leap straight into the Jedi order without the Force-less preamble of the first game. Here your amnesiac Jedi meets a mysterious old woman, and your adventure begins pursuit of experience points - such as an option to switch between different weapon set-ups on the fly to make swapping between blasting and a melee bundle less cumbersome - but overall it's the game we know and love, with all the same depths and the same eccentricities. Back-story neatly taken care of, your ship is then led into the bowels of a nearby mining colony, and your injured avatar into one of those trademark Star Wars healing-tank/scuba-gear combos. You're the last known surviving Jedi, you're unconscious and it's all up to a plucky T3 unit to save your freshly created character - the trials of whom make for a skippable tutorial. The game opens five years after the close of KOTOR with the trusty Ebon Hawk floating aimlessly in space near Peragus - a planet scarred by fuel mining and surrounded by unstable debris.

In these terms alone we shouldn't have too much to worry about, but seeing as the brief is basically to provide a game of the same template, with a tweaked engine and a darker tone, it's highly unlikely that fans will be disappointed.
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The company boasts alumni from the likes of Icewind Dale and the Baldur's Gate series and a lead designer (one Chris Avellone) who also pulled lead duties on the sublime Planescape: Torment. Handed the golden sabre by BioWare, Obsidian has talent that approaches RPG royalty. The pedigree of the people creating Knights Of The Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is unsurpassed. But it looks like this, my friends, was only the beginning.

KOTOR, the best Star Wars story since The Empire Strikes Back and the best RPG in years, has consumed me once again. Jedi-in-waiting and, accompanied by a jailbait Twi'lek and a grumpy bitch, the fate of the galaxy lies in my hands. The reason I've been disrespectfully late for work every single, solitary morning this month is because by night I'm a nefarious smuggler turned hero of the Old Republic.
