Are you planning on talking about Planescape Torment? I tried playing it after I heard that Torment: Tides of Numenera was an spiritual successor of it, but couldn't get into it the way I did Torment. It would be cool to finally know what's so special about it from someone as thorough as you.
Back when KOTOR II was just released, one of my school friends enjoyed Pazaak so much that he ripped the game graphics and made a stand-alone version to play against AI or each other on LAN. Almost twenty years later, I still have it on my HDD and occasionally return to it.
@@robertharris6092 Yeah. It was more of a programming challenge/practice for him, I guess, since even in his early years, he was deeply interested in games and made quite a few simple ones as a form of training. Pazaak was one of such projects.
@@PutkisenSeta The closest we got to a meta was stocking up on low-value +/- cards to allow you to reach the winning number without overshooting too often. Other than that, it's not much different from Blackjack.
"Was Meetra Surik girl power?" "Yes!" "Was Meetra Surik girl power when she activated the mass shadow generator and kill thousands of Mandalorians and her own troops, permanently scarring the galaxy?" "I don't know about that!"
What really makes this game work for me is the voice acting. Atris's contempt, Kreia's bitterness, HK-47's condescension, even Bao-Dur's quiet rage form a backing chorus that tell the story of this world better than a thousand codex entries ever could. It's brilliant, and I'm not sure a remake could ever do it justice.
Mandalore's pride but also his complex from getting left behind by Revan. RIP John Cygan. did you know he was also Luke in the Dark Empire audio dramas? And Ulic Qel-Droma in the sadly unfinished Tales of the Jedi audiodramas?
The only Star Wars entry where dark side philosophy and praxis is developed beyond teen angst or moustache twirling. Ty for video eastern european power lifting rpg man.
I wouldn't say the only entry. A lot of Legends/Extended Universe work added depth to the Dark Side and Sith philosophy. KOTOR 2 was just one of the most prominent examples. It's unfortunate that such concepts were basically erased thanks to it no longer be canon.
What really gets me about this game is the juxtaposition between the beginning of it and the end of Old Republic one. Let’s say you got the light side ending in that game. At the end the Jedi masters give a big speech about how you saved the galaxy. It’s true, you totally did save the galaxy from the star forge. However things STILL promptly fall apart as the horrific damage done on the economy and population of the galaxy reverberates outwards. You stop the big bad evil guy and blow up the evil death machine, and then you still sort of lose anyway because nobody’s there to refurbish the ravaged setting. As a cherry on top the people you can save on Taris limp along for a couple hundred years but you find out in the MMO that they eventually die off anyway. I fucking love it.
@Court Jester if you're actually miffed about not getting meaningful decisions in a video game you should probably just stick with dungeons and dragons or something because you will never in your entire life get meaningful decisions in a 12-hour video game as when you beat the game in 12 hours and turn it off those decisions become meaningless.
@Court Jester in other words you showed up to comment two things that bring literally nothing to the conversation? ok. If I'm not allowed to think that video game decisions are meaningless because they take place in a vacuum then you're also not allowed to think that this specific RPG's decisions are meaningless because you just didn't like the way they played out.
@@wearecoterminous While I think that the notion that "meaningful" decisions that have long-term impacts on the course of a game's narrative being automatically a good thing is a foolish notion, and that many people who complain about the lack of that are missing the enjoyment to be had in a good old fashioned linear tale (and oh god this sentence is getting away from me) I do understand how someone could be frustrated at finding out that the back-filling of a setting has retroactively led to something that may have felt like a triumph instead turning into only a bitter, temporary victory. I mean, hell, that's how I felt when I watched the modern Star Wars trilogy. I think this guy you're responding to isn't so much upset at his decision not being meaningful, to whatever weight such a term may hold, but rather that new material for the setting written years and years later re-contextualized the actions a player can make in the game. It's akin to a retcon, and I've never met someone who likes when things are retconned.
I actually really like the first confrontation with Atris. As a KOTOR 2 LPer on the LP archives once said, its like a verbal boss fight with her. You can use skill checks and conversation branches to tie her up in knots and really expose the deeper feelings buried inside her. Really gets into the psychology of Atris as a character before the truth comes out.
@@Wizard_Pikachu No it was a poster to the SA Forums called Scorchy. I watched a few of Lore Runners vids a few years ago and found them to be not my cuppa tea.
Kreia's philosophy seems to be in direct reaction to how she views the Force. The Force is a barely understood power that meddles in the lives of the people of the galaxy at large, and this meddling disrupts things, causing consequences good and bad. We see a microcosm of that with the beggar scene: Whether we give him money or assault him, we see that our actions have negative consequences... because they are motivated by Force-centric philosophies. We see this in the prequel trilogy. The Jedi consider themselves peacekeepers and serve the people of the Republic, but even before the prequels start, the Republic is grossly corrupt and falling apart. "Keeping the peace" means perpetuating a system that genuinely should be allowed to fall apart so that a better system can replace it, one that would do better to serve the people. The Jedi are ultimately fighting a war against people who are wanting to cut ties with the Republic, forcing people to stay in that failing system against their will, even as that system continues to crumble. Meanwhile, Palpatine and his apprentices, Sith all, are acting as agents to bring about that downfall, but while Count Dooku thinks that this is for bringing about a better system, the truth is that Palpatine is purely self-serving and will only create a dictatorship that serves him. The Sith are the vanguard of a new system, but it is a legitimately worse one. Jedi maintaining a failing system because their selfless philosophy demands it, and Sith supplanting it purely for the sake of taking power for themselves because their selfish philosophy demands it. Both systems are toxic to the people of the galaxy at large. Neither system actually works. Kreia, in her storyline, is trying to work out a third path. She recognizes the flaws inherent in both, and wants to fix them, but since she was coming from this largely from a Sith mindset, it was likely always doomed to failure.
And I swear, this is where they were headed with in the Last Jedi, Kylo Ren makes DIRECT refernece to hating them both and I swear we were gonna get a KOTOR 2 style storyline with the third movie but NOPE
@@gamegod273 The main issue there is that the person in charge of the story changed hands between movies in the sequel trilogy. A solid foundation was built in the first movie, then in the second movie, the one in charge decided to go in a radically different direction than what was originally planned. Then, in the third movie, they bring the original guy back, and he's forced to try and fix the raging dumpster fire the sequel trilogy has become. He basically has to try and cram two movies worth of intended stuff, plus the stuff intended to fix what the other guy broke, and bring the trilogy to a conclusion. An impossible task for even the best of us, so naturally he failed. If the same person had been managing the story for all three films, we would have had a more coherent storyline. Maybe it wouldn't have been the best thing ever, but it wouldn't have been the disaster it ended up becoming.
I don't think Kreia approached it from a Sith mindset, and maybe at one-time she could be described as a Jedi who became Sith, but when we meet her she is neither, and wouldn't sit within the venn diagram. She is the characterised form of self-determination; a critique on the force and star wars. Her plan may have been the perfect weapon to destroying the true Sith that lay beyond the outer rim in KOTOR 3, obviously at the cost of all present and future force-sensitives. I didn't play TOR, but from what I've heard the story was a bit of a mess.
@@bronsone4535 Look at how she behaves throughout KOTOR 2. She uses lies, schemes, deception, pawns, and manipulation to get the things she wants. That's how Sith do things, not Jedi. That's a Palpatine mindset. Self-determination is a fine thing, but it is not the end-all be all. Civilization isn't built by everyone solely working to pursue their own goals and expressing their will to power. It is largely the result of large numbers of people working together to build a better future to generations to come. Yes, there may be incentives in the here and now, but the end goal is often to leave the world a better place for their children. What a single person can accomplish on their own is limited, something I think that Kreia recognizes, given that she is largely reliant on others to accomplish her goals. A true Grey Jedi, I think, wouldn't be someone who expresses enlightened self-interest, not self-determination. Someone who aids others, not because of a selfless creed that demands one throw away all attachments to become a servant to others, but because they recognize that more often than not, these good deeds can benefit them in the long term. Someone who pursues their ambitions, not because a selfish creed that demands that they pursue their goals to the point of obsession and self-destruction, but because they see the goal as something worthy of accomplishing. It is effectively the Ubermensch concept we're seeing. There's two kinds of Ubermensch. Both see through the illusion of morals and reason imposed upon them by an "Other" that may or may not exist. Kreia represents the one who, upon seeing these illusions, discards all morals and reason to pursue their own goals. However, one can, upon perceiving the illusion, instead choose to still abide by those morals and reason because they recognize that, while a fiction, it is still something worthwile to keep, as without that ficticious morality, man quickly degenerates to the nature of a beast. It is the understanding that while the fiction may restrain man on the individual level, it elevates him on the grander scale. The former would ultimately destroy civilization for its own goals, the latter enriches it because it recognizes that it does ultimately serve them.
32:00 It's explained in KOTOR I that many military issue swords had lightsaber resistant metals/crystals included in the blades to give the average footsoldier of the Mandalorian Wars at least some hope at surviving a close encounter with someone wielding a lightsaber. I think by the time of the movies that was no longer standard practice due in part to the Rule of Two leaving very few lightsaber users outside the Jedi Order, who had leaned hard into weirdo pacifism, so there wasn't much need for industrial production of resistant blades.
It's a fine lore explanation but in reality they had to add some non jedi melee weapons because of mechanics that are based on 3rd edition of dnd. And let's be honest - it just looks weird when you fight a group of enemies with blasters and you keep shooting at eachother dealing a small amount of damage. Fights animation are rad as fuck
My favorite part of Kotor is finding all the ancient sith blades in the tombs of Korriban. I forget if most of these predate lightsaber tech or not, but it's a really cool and criminally underused SW concept of a Sith showing up to a 'saber duel with some hatemagic lich claymore.
@@junioraltamontent.7582 oh I wish there was more ancient artifact swords in mainline star wars. Just imagine a story of a sith or dark jedi wielding a sword that basically corrupted them and the main plot is to stop them from wielding it and maybe destroy the blade
11:53 I'm only that far into the video but there's a line that the Sith Assassins are using a very strange force technique that allow them to steal the force from their targets but it makes them weaker if the target in question is not attuned with the force, which is the game way of explaining away level scaling really cool!
That actually evolves further into the development of the major Sith enemies, and even shows a entirely new expression of 'The Force' and how it is abused by pretty much everyone sensitive or not
Yes, it explains the level scaling, and also the entire concept of XP is mulled over in this game. Is it sucking bits of life out of defeated enemies with the force? Is it being hardened by your challenges? Kreia scolds you for hogging XP by doing tasks for randoms that could help them level up if they did them for themselves.
I think what's kind of key to the deconstructionism that is KOTOR2 is... it's kind of unique in Star Wars. It's an intellectual property that's existed for over 40 years and had hundreds of various things from Novels to Comics to Video Games and the movies that started it. But... deconstruction of the idea of the Force and what the Force actually means for the setting is something that basically only Knights of the Old Republic 2 did. This is contrary to things like, Super Heroes. Where there are deconstructions of them constantly and everywhere from the likes of The Authority to The Boys. It becomes tiresome because you keep seeing the deconstruction and you miss what they were deconstructing by comparison. I wouldn't want another game like KOTOR2. But I like that there is a KOTOR2. And considering the sort of iterative sequel process of trying to do "The same thing but bigger" more or less as an industry standard? I"m pretty amazed there hasn't been a KOTOR3 following in that same deconstructionist footsteps. I'd hate for the deconstruction to become as overplayed as it is with so many other th ings.
It's not unique because of deconstruction. But because the deconstruction itself is unique. It deconstruct the "material" trapping of star war: the force, the jedi, the sith, blaster, lightsaber, the perpertual conflict... to arrive at the very core of what George Lucas wanted to say all along: to give up attachment and dogmas when they prove to be destructive. In the game, the ultimate power doesnt come from your circumstances of birth, your bloodline, being the force's chosen one (well George atleast dished the chosen one trope harder than anybody lol), some special power or blind belief... But the strength to turn away from the power that enhance your very being but require strict spiritual adherence from you. Most superhero deconstruction, in contrast, are neither competently made nor have anything clever to say. Most of them read like shock value schlock at best and the lashing out of people fed up with the genre at worst... No shit if you write entirely different character and different scenario with similarity only in superficials like character designs and superpower, thing gonna turn out differently. It's the equivalence of changing every thing about a franchise but keep the name, the aesthetics and call old fans a variety of -ism when met with criticism. Let's compare a "deconstruction" like One Punch Man, made with love to the genre with The Boy comics. In OPM, there are an extensive crisis management system, the citizen act both critical and adore superheroes depends on what they see, what they are told and the supes' media manipulation and the supes have different goals. The boy comics pretends everybody feel safe with supes despite their various degenerate acts and it took "The Boys" to rat them out. Meanwhile, irl fear for life is such a potent force in American politics that it create hysteria and strawman of different races and political or religious belief... The boy TV are so much better though, it treat characters and events with much more individuality and diversity as well as relate to more insititutional failures. The most ironic thing is those deconstruction dont need to exist. Superheroes stories themselves already do them, and often with much more grace. They make their characters walk in pretty dark places, pit the hero's outlook and philosophy against the world around them, force them to grow as characters, make them lose various things: from their loved one, their fight, their world to themselves... The good "deconstruction" comic is actually as far from a supe story as possible: Watchmen or the Marvel Max run are actually political/action thriller, the cast are overwhelmingly normal human being, with meaningful thing to say about the state of their contemporary world. So yeah I want more of the deconstructive flavor of kotor2 and none of the superheroes flavor, please. The world do need more people to pay attention to what the stories are trying to say and not the aesthetic it choose to present itself as. But I dont want them to be mass produced, sloppy schlock made to satisfy "an audience™" that exist only on some disconnected analyst's slide show.
Obisidian had plans for KOTOR III, you can read about it in various interviews (I recommend the Eurogamer one from a few years ago that's centered around KOTOR II if you're interested), but it didn't materialize due to LucasArts.
@@zlodrim9284 The worst part of these plans is that they are forever tainted and ruined. The book Revan undid anything KotOR 2 did to elevate the character, and dragged it in the mud. The Old Republic proceeded to make him into a emo-emasculated sissy that holds no morals, nor any plans worth mentioning. I dreaded the Mandalorian for just how horrible they treated the franchise (in both movies and games) after Kotor, feared they might push the shit stream into the TV series as well. The thing is, KotOR II took a leap outside of the media, and the only reason it wasn't a ever-lasting icon, to forever be remembered when referring to Star Wars, is because of the constrained time-frame they had to work with. Having so many issues, with such intensity, that it tainted the experience of anyone. And despite this, it's still a cult-classic. Or maybe BECAUSE of this it is a cult-classic, and not something so much more. But let's not forget something: Obsidian isn't what it used to be. Look at TOW. As much as I adore that game, as beautiful, and smooth it is in gameplay, i see the lack of anything, Obsidian-worthy, in it... The characters are lackluster, the AI isn't great, and the story, while extremely fun and amusing, isn't memorable... There won't be a KotOR III, because there isn't a good team that can do it. There aren't any more writers that can give the nuances that the characters of the game would need. Nor devs that could implement this with the smoothness of Doom Eternal, and worst of all, there are no customers who would purchase this game, to justify the investment it would need.
When I played the game, I didn't realize that several of those shitty extended sequences that annihilate the pacing were from the Restored Content mod. The latter half of Nar Shaddaa was my personal Vietnam because of this. Could really use a modular installation where you can tick a box that only adds the content that doesn't suck (pretty sure that's a small sum).
The HK factory segment had me falling asleep in my chair. Combat with only one person against health sponge robots using literally only guns and grenades.
Baldurs gate 3 reminds me of how good games were back then. Miss you Bioware and Obsidian your still here but that love and talent is gone. I still remember the lectures Kreia taught us about the effects of the force and how people without it live in the world.
29:30 I know you mention that the game aesthetically suffered, but honestly as a child I remembered sequences like this. It broke my heart to see an old women so mercilessly beaten. Artists and masters of their craft.
Having never played this game with the restoration mod, good lord does so much of it not seem familiar to me. I specifically remember pretty much the entire HK plot was cut from the base game. I remember the ending making very little sense and being incredibly confusing and unsatisfying. Glad to see it was fixed so much by the mod.
Honestly the only Star Wars film/TV content I want is a TV adaptation of Kotor 2 with Sarah Kestelman reprising her role as Kreia in live action. It's literally a story about a traumatized veteran dealing with institutions that have a abandoned and betrayed them. Merge Bao Durr's really crippling trauma in with the exile's character and you could do a damn good 8 to 10 episodes. She's so good as this selfish old bitch that you can't blame her for how she feels most of the time. Her admitting, at the very end that she could be wrong when you basically do a Jolee Bindo not-stupid light side character really does a lot to make it come together.
@@planescaped He's very obviously cut down, but his voice acting is just superb as somebody who pressed the war crime button and wants to never hurt anybody ever again. Seriously the voice acting in this game is fucking incredible.
A man can dream, but knowing Disney's track record, the only way it'd happen is with familiar characters and other elements forcibly inserted for the new fan that laps up every release without really knowing or caring what makes a good Star War, because 'ooh, I know that thing!' It's like dangling keys in front of toddlers. Yeah, maybe I'm still just bitter about 1313 getting cancelled. At least we had the LucasArts boom in the '90s and '2000s with Lucas (for all his flaws and mistakes) signing off on each project to keep the vision alive in some way or another. We got garbage sometimes but also classics.
46:17 Atton, very sarcastically: "Well, good thing it's not a trap." The disciple, very distraught: "No Atton, I think it might be a trap." People always praise Kreia's VA for her excellent performance, but just about everyone was really good in that game.
I'm kinda sad I've never heard the disciple say that before, because the line is golden. Handmaiden just calls atton dumb, and I don't think I had the disciple yet the one time I did a female jedi run so bao dur had a line.
On a side note, I like how you do semi-evil runs of these games. I noticed it in the Arcanum video as well. You do an evil run, but it's not ball-to-the-walls screw everyone. You still do logically helping things at various points. It's an interesting blend.
huh. never thought about how that speech HK47 gives is pretty much a parallel of the goal Kreia has throughout the entire game (breaking free from a force that controls you). that montage at the very end of the video was incredible. amazing content as always
What an absolute gem, one of few content creators I can't bring myself to listen to while playing games, it's got to be an attentive watch... at least the first time through! Love the content, I find you so inspirational. You always calm and entertain this Doomer Brit's brain.
For me there is no game in the world greater than this one. Characters, story, gameplay, music (oh, god, the music), sound effects, even graphics. Yes, the graphics are good, despite what SOME people may have just said. Probably because it was developed at the time when people actually cared to squeeze the most out of their situation to create something complete, something one can love and come back to after decades. That is why it is still incredibly beautiful walking on the shore of the ocean on Telos or fields of Dantooine, or the jungle of Dxun. Despite it`s limitations, everything in this game`s level design complements one another to create a world you can believe in. And i`m not gonna say anything about it`s characters or dialogue, or story. Let`s just say - there is a reason some people have over 2k ours played in this game.
Yeh I agree, I love absolutely everything about this game. The first time I played it I thought ‘it’s a bit disjointed, 8/10’ but after playing it again and again I’d it’s definitely top 5 games of all time.
@@gregtaylor9806 Nope. I got this game in 2006, waaay before i even knew about the internet. It was a poorly translated to russian, pirated (no surprise in that) copy on 4 CD discs. I played the living shit out of that game when i was in school, and came back to it many times. Never owned the original licenced jewel however. I now own it on Steam tho, and Warlock is absolutely right - you NEED that restoration content mod. When i first installed it - boi, was it great.
This is by far my favourite Star Wars game, with one, if not the best character in all of Star Wars fiction, imo. Kreia is just so incredibly well written.
"Why were we created? Do we have a purpose? Who made us?" HK-47: "Statement. You see, when a Male Robot and a Female Robot love each other a lot, they go and do the..." *fades to black*
Will you make a video about kotor 2 as well? I guess only time will tell. But for now, I'm waiting for a Vtmb video. You did praise it, And I'm really curious to know what are your thoughts about that game.
One of many things i've heard that Chris Avellone, in order to study the SW lore, watched every single movie. Including the Christmas special. Say what you want about him, but he is certainly dedicated. But i have to point something out. Kreia and Ulysses seem to be very similar. In both that they describe how the world around them sucks and they never shut up about it. At least they can't outtalk lightsabers/bullets. Either way, KOTOR 1 and 2 were great, TOR did Revan very dirty, and i'm skeptical of a company who looked at a line "Somehow, Palpatine returned" and thought it was good to produce anything good SW related.
Well that was symptom of poor planning and really bad writing. Hell as someone noticed they rushed the production so bad that they didn't even have time to make more stuff that could be sold as toys for the movie
Avellone for the most part is a hack writer who just writes in over important self inserts that spout his own personal philosophy on the settings he’s writing for. Hence why the divide basically had no one except Ulysseses and he tried to make the tunnelers a threat to smack the setting back to what he thinks is the better post apocalyptic setting. His opinion was the setting was getting too civilized and advanced for a post apocalypse. He’d rather it be “The Road” where everything is dying and miserable and there is no hope than something like “Mad Max” or even the first Fallout.
@@thegreatgoatking.kingofall4001 His OC's are a great detriment to his works, but everything around them is great enough so that it's not exactly noticeable. And you do have a chance to turn against them in the endgame. He was the designer in Fallout 2, and a lead one in KOTOR2, and participated in Fallout New Vegas, and from what we've seen, he can clearly design a functioning world without it all revolving around his pets. He might be a hack of a writer, but he is an excellent world designer.
@@murisbukvic2496 yes, except for New vegas in which he was mostly only a writer and only ever really was involved with Lonesome Road. With Josh Sawyer doing most of the base game new vegas work. On top of that I think what I dislike the most about him isn’t his own writing but how people treat him. They praise his work, say kreia tore down the idea of Jedi good and Sith bad and to think more for oneself, but then his fans will blindly parrot those views without being critical about them. Like kreia wants to destroy the force based solely on her limited view of it. Her entire character arc is basically berating the player for doing anything but blindly following her instructions like a dog while also going “oh you should think for yourself.” Maybe I’m just not cut out for this stuff but I feel like people get so swept up by this “woah Jedi are bad too” thing that they forget that the sith and kreia are no better.
@@thegreatgoatking.kingofall4001 if you go into it more than like the very top layer of surface level the Sith are literally not evil because when the Sith were a race they needed to feed on the dark side of the force or they would die. The Sith were no more evil than maggots eating a corpse or lions creating a corpse. The Sith at least acted. Seth like Revan I saved the outer rim while the Jedi did nothing but stagnate and be butthurt when the children they kidnapped from their families started to feel things like guilt and regret. The Jedi did a lot more damage to the Galaxy according to the actual lore through inaction and political favoritism than the Sith ever could, especially the modern bainite Sith who can only exist two at a time master and apprentice. The Jedi Council and numerous Jedi academy were radically shifting the balance of the force in their favor and was thus causing ripples throughout the rest of the galaxy when the force tried to correct that. It happened over and over again throughout the EU and directly led to every bad thing about the modern galaxy post old republic. if you look at pretty much any piece of information about the force and points to it having its own will that it enacts through us using us as an avatar of its own machinations. Like sure the guy who wrote the character tends to write characters that people like or whatever but that doesn't really detract from the character being objectively correct about everything. just because it had to be written in silly video game mechanic sort of ways like giving a homeless guy five bucks doesn't really devalue it. Tl;dr you're right it is you.
Without a doubt the best thing to ever come out of Star Wars. It was just so brilliant in how it walked the line between Light and Dark, how it really drummed up the effects of choice, and expanded on the story of KotOR 1 in amazing ways. Obsidians take on the Star Wars galaxy, with varying shades of grey, made for such an interesting story and cast. Makes me wonder how much better it could of been given more time without a rushed development cycle.
Ross over at Accursed Farms has remained remarkably consistently great since pretty much youtube's inception. But this channel is pretty great and seemingly came out of no where.
@@planescaped Id say Warlock is more entertaining than Ross, for my tastes anyway. And the added Eastern cultural context is absolutely fantastic. This channel is an absolute gem and for it to only have 50k subs is crazy
@@planescaped I tend to find Ross's jokes funnier but Warlock's substantive criticism of games more interesting and insightful. But that's personal taste, obviously, and I've been watching Ross for about twice as long as I've been watching this channel, so perhaps I'm somewhat biased.
@@macdeus2601I find Ross and Warlock equally satisfying in seperate ways. Ross is like a bowl of mac and cheese, savoury and comfy. Warlock is like a pot of tea (from a samovar), equally cozy but stimulating.
I think a piece of unrestored cut content had Darth Sion develop some sort of love-hate stalker romance with the player, regardless of gender. Considering Kreias Role as a mentor for both characters this could've ventured into wierd freudian territory When I first played Kotor 2 as a 10 year old I was shocked how dark the game was in comparison to its predecessor. Or even Star Wars in general. There was no Order 66 grand plan to wipe out the Jedi, they just collapsed under the constant conflict that keept the Franchise going. I always viewed that as a critique of the expanded Star Wars Universe as a whole.
You make great videos Warlockracy, I can’t say there is a single one I haven’t enjoyed or laughed with. Keep up the great content and I wish you good health and safety.
@@PlumpProductions-wj3jp It's supposed to be. Some graphics cards/drivers/etc render the environment/reflection maps wrong in Kotor 1. They did fix it in Kotor 2, or at least I've never seen the bug appear in Kotor 2.
Man, post-KOTOR2 old republic lore is such a wasted potential. We could have had a game about a hunt on ancient lovecraftian siths, akin to Sion and Nihilus, but even more abstract and whacky. Instead we got books and one MMO about normal sith but they were hiding and had different species. And their power was just the same as of jedi - because MMO requires this for factions. Instead of fight between alliance and horde VS the burning crusade, we got simple alliance vs horde situation. Although writing in MMO is still really good and close (or dare i say - even better) to KOTOR1. Just missed potential.
Imagine, if you will, Snoke just getting back up after being bisected. How? Because he's long dead. Dust, held together by an indomitable will. A dark side equivalent of a force ghost. A remnant from forgotten eons. Not skilled with a mortal's sword, but rather the subtle cosmic power of manipulating feelings on a galactic scale through the Force. Not mind control, just a creeping influence that over decades made the New Republic wrest itself apart in petty squabbles and bureaucratic disillusionment, paving the way for the rise of the nostalgic false dream of order and efficiency. A New Order. Fuckers couldn't even figure out that Snoke is a terrible name.
While i generally agree on mmo writing being ok, its one of instances when too much stuff is bad for worldbuilding and crippling the lore. Swtor did a "great" job to depreciate originality of dilogy story and chars into basically prequel shit all over again to the sake of game mechanics and mmo structure.
@@specialsnowflake2309 i like the game's story overall But hate it whenever any character from kotor games shows up They did Kreya bad. Yeah, feels like killed potential. Everything is good until you remember the context.
I played both KotOR games quite a lot when I was a kid. This was way before the famous Restored Content Mod. Still, I always preferred TSL. Something about it was always so appealing to me. It felt grim, melancholy, and lonely. The game has this kind of foreboding atmosphere that I just love so much. As I got older I came to really love this story. It's a great exploration and deconstruction of Star Wars.
17:34 It does generate one, but not for us to obtain. 32:52 It was the Matale Estate back then, and a private villa instead of a government building. 34:58 Low Influence does the same thing as high Influence, but the companion will take on the opposing alignment instead. You can be a Sith Lord with an entirely Light side party. 35:37 Using a one-handed sword multiplies the STR damage by 1.5, and STR damage can crit. Very useful if you use Critical Strike and Shien, which increases the critical multiplier even more. 40:32 Kreia has the Stealth Class Skill feat pre-selected from the start. Consulars usually don't have Stealth as a class skill. 47:18 You can also stand behind the bar. That breaks their pathfinding. 1:04:20 It worked fine for Zhar in the first game in my opinion. It is probably just production value. 1:37:05 It actually doesn't do anything at all. It is just flavor text.
you can go behind the bar or you can just lay 20 mines in there before you go trigger the cutscene and have the fight end instantly. Also a useful way to beat handmaiden in all her challenges on Telos, if your character is not built for melee. Actually when I think about it there's _a lot_ that can be cheesed with mines - in both games.
Very cool detail in The Petroglyph produced Empire at War. The Mandalorian designed and produced Starviper fighter available to the Zann Consortium bears a significant resemblance to the Basilisk war droid in the Onderon/Dxun world. I love little nods between games produced and designed by completely seperate people.
I loved KoToR2. I thought it was a much better game than KoToR 1... until the end where the game was clearly unfinished. How do you look upon a game that is a masterpiece for the first 80% with an ending made of bubblegum and sticks? As history as shown, divisively. And lol I posted that before watching and hearing you yourself describe it as divisive. :P The thing that always stuck out most to me about KoToR 2 were all the parallels between it and Planescape Torment's story. I also adore Mask of the Betrayer and it's Avellone-esque story. Kaelyn the Dove is probably my favorite character in any game I have ever played. Fallout New Vegas is the one outlier that doesn't seem Planescape/Kotor2/MoTB derived in the slightest. But that had far more of a team contribution AFAIK than some of the other games Avellone's worked on.
Despite being from roughly the opposite side of the planet every joke you make is pretty much exactly the kind of humor I love. God damn I love you and your videos an unreasonable amount. I wish you nothing but the best!
It's weird how that gas filled section of the M4-78 mod still looks so broken. There's a high quality skyboxes mod that's compatible with it, and it fixes the lack of skybox by just adding some fog. Also, I would recommend that mod overall even if used without other texture mods, due to how much it enhances the environments, especially Nar Shaddaa.
I ended up getting a reskin mod for Nar Shadaa. It’s amazing how lights and windows make the whole place feel more like that living web of life Zez-Kai-ell was supposed to be hiding in.
Might be looking too deep into the writing, but Krea's fear of force controlling you (or her) is pretty strong with this script. Most of Krea's dialogue is basically "why did you pick this dialogue option? Like blindly following writer's script? Giving force all the thinking?", and there is always a "yeah, i'll think over it" or "it's my master plan to create a ripple or something" option and she's like "oh, okay, just checking" *influence increased* But Nar Shaddaa sketch was funny as hell.
@@ExeErdna Not really, it does the exact same thing but with slightly more self awareness. Still has the dumb mechanical bonuses for pushing a particular path of morality, still offers barely any ability to avoid being obviously good or evil. If anything, mass effect handles the topic significantly better by having paragon and renegade at least try to represent something closer to morals vs pragmatism, instead of being jesus or more evil than any serial killer that has ever lived.
@@realname8362 I really disagree, if anything paragon renegade is even shallower than the light side dark side idea that Kotor 2 was critiquing. It's really lacking in motivations- just 'i want to be a bad/good guy this time because video game.'
@@octopusexperiment1931exactly. I personally always seen those bonuses in this particular scene as a subversion in itself, like, you get points for being a good guy (which is logical since you acted with good intentions) yet you don't feel good about that at all. I think that's a very clever way of using the first Kotor's binary morality system while also developing a theme
Perfect timing, I'm just wrapping up a light-side Jedi Master playthrough when you released this. The same happened a couple months back when you uploaded the VTMB video. You sir have a great taste in games.
Okay, so I am wondering. The sith holocron chamber Atris meditated constantly screamed about sith secrets. And since the Sith ideals was inspired by Mein Kampf (According to the Wiki) Would that mean that she essentially sat in a sensory-deprevation chamber for years listening to voices screaming lines from Mein Kampf?
Best Star Wars game ever made. I often think about this Game. “So, you will do nothing? Apathy is death. Worse than death, because at least a rotting corpse feeds the beasts and insects.” Chris Avellone is a savant of his craft.
That's not actually Kreia, it's just an image of her. The line itself is manipulation, much like the rest of the events of the place. The writing is even more deliberate than it initially seems.
20:04 “he wasn’t even reprogrammed, he just hates working here.” Lol. Small little moment that makes the world feel a bit more alive and memorable. Going through another playthrough currently, thinking I’ll try and stay a gray Jedi with high Charisma
I watch The Salt Factory, who plays many of the same games that you do, it felt very refreshing to see someone play this and appreciate the beautiful details rather than nitpicking all of the slower bits. P.S why did you make your character the finest red bone in the galaxy, shawty is distractingly bad 😅
@@metetural9140 I tried watching his video. Felt like watching someone who really did not get it and was way off the mark with his assessment. Kinda killed my desire to watch anything else of his. Reminded me of the Willlovesgames Oblivion video. Another essay I vehemently disagree with.
@@metetural9140 I couldnt watch that mass effect 3 video for days. Its so painfully stupid he is like "So I know that if I dont do X i wont get all assets... And thus not the good ending..." And he didnt get them! And he did the Citadel DLC IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAME!??
@@planescaped salt factory has surprisingly bad takes in most of his essays. It's surprising because its usually a criticism that no one has presented before because it makes no sense. Seems like a nice guy, he's just got a very strange outlook on how video games are made and it makes his videos unwatchable.
@@punishedbarca761 That's my takeaway as well. I've only seen part of one of his videos, the one on the Pokemon games. I like Pokemon. I like essay videos. I've got a fucking 7 hour long video essay on Pokemon Omega Ruby that I keep bookmarked because it's that good. So I was interested to hear someone's take. It was literally just him nitpicking the story, the entire time. And while I have big problems with the writing in Pokemon past the early stuff, his criticisms were stuff like "Why is Whitney throwing a temper tantrum? Why is a gym leader a teenage girl who is so emotional? This doesn't make sense, no one would allow this to happen!" "Why is the evil organization able to be beaten by a ten year old child? This doesn't make sense!" And it's like, my dude, it's a game for children. It's not a serious story (that waits until later gens when they introduce genocide!) it's a cute little wrapper for a fun adventure. Like you say, criticism no one's made before because it makes no sense. I didn't even make it to the end of the section on gen 2, I just stopped because the only things he was talking about were things that were not problems, while completely ignoring every single legitimate complaint/issue there is with gen 1 and 2!
Mandalore is the title given to the Mandalorian leader, like King or Queen or President. It makes sense to me? Then again defacto homewolrd of the Mandalorians is also called Mandalore, so that probably doesn’t help lol
@@cobraglatiator its even weirder because to distinguish each Mandalore they use another title, "Mandalore The [subjective]" like Mandalore the Ultimate or in Canderous's case, the Preserver
My memories of Kotor 2 are filled with whiplash, swinging between long, dull combat encounters and huge barren environments on the one hand, and brilliant but very obviously unfinished pieces of writing, plot and character work. I fully agree that the restored content mod is essential, but that the game really needs some sharp editing down to make both the base and the restored content shine as much as they could.
I liked how all game build around Krea monologs, but player can just shut her up at any moment. Most games like this one would force it's theme on player but here you can throw it all away and enjoy everything else.
Playing this game i allways had the feeling the game was not planned to be played planet by planet, but to jump between them while questing/swapping companions etc. SOmething like an open world that got cut short. Also, if you just enter/exit your ship once per planet you will miss like 50 interactions between your companions.
Now that you mention it, there are a few quests that have you go to different planets, maybe that's leftover from that idea. Then again, half the planets lock you on them for doing the story quests so idk
@@jmjedi923 Indeed, that is why i think that due to their time limitation beside the cut content they cut the progress of the story and quests as well.
When you ask whether mind trick ever works, you should know that it always fails when you attempt it on Toydarians, as they have natural immunity to it. As Watto said, "I'm a Toydarian. Mind tricks don't-a work on-a me. Only money!"
51:31 There actually is a restored content removal mod, I've never played without it but I think it trims back on some of the weirdly implemented items and cutscenes Edit: It also for sure cuts out the droid planet, this is the first I've even heard of that
Incredible video. Played both KOTORs when I was younger and fell in love with the games. Being an adult now and watching videos like this give me a whole new perspective on it. Great job
Another quality video by Mr Warlockracy. Great editing and narration, really pleasant watch as always. Really looking forward to the next upload! Tbh, a lot of the games you cover, i have reinstalled and played through again. With Bauldurs Gate for example, i returned to 2. Breath of fresh air with your style of content and way you present it, cheers for the upload, as well as time and effort spent :)
great review/critical analysis as always, your channel is easily one of my favorite. since i last played this about eight years ago without the cut content (still found it very compelling), its great to see all the storyline stuff that i missed out on. i can only assume that if i had played it the way it was initially intended before being cut down, i would have loved it, and might replay it soon even despite the filler content - thanks for the great video
See I love the game and really like it myself over the first game any day but I feel like my reasons are different than most. Everyone seems to mainly go on about Kreia who is a good character but to me she's mostly just a psycho which nothing justifies the people she kills or lives she ruins no matter how she spins it. What I liked were the extra force powers being able to use them from the start. You got a lot of cooler armors and weapons also I found and the lightsaber forms were cool. Also other than Canderous and Jolee I didn't really care for the companions in the first game as much but really liked the ones in 2 and you get Canderous and the droids so that works out haha. Also the planets and side quests and characters were interesting as well. Like I really liked the whole militia vs azkul thing with the scavengers in the middle on dantooine. And Nar Shadaa was really cool because one of my favorite parts of star wars is always been the underworld and bounty hunters. Which is why Bounty Hunter game is also one of the best star wars games ever imo and if 1313 got made I bet it would be up there too. But that's just imo. I know most everyone else seems to really like Kreia and her views.
I have to agree with you. I love the interactions between characters, many of the side quests are great, I actually like the dungeon layouts for the most part (I'm particularly in love with the Korriban dungeon). Kreia, on the other and, is just a cryptic jerk. Every time she opens her mouth, I get more confused. Like, I'm listening to you old hag, you just refuse to speak like a normal person!
1:18:34 because there is no clever way, the dark side by its very nature is selfishiness incarnate its like expecting a serial killer to stop after he killed so many. effectively Sion and Nihlius achieved immortality and are the best the Sith could ever be and both are empty shells, even Kreia was a dark lord and yet she changed nothing, there is no truth to the dark side just death.
Nihilus isn't a sith in any meaningful way, and sion is just hard to kill. I don't get where the immortality claim is coming from. Neither of them are anywhere near the best that sith could be, the only one with a realistic claim to that is Sidious. Arguably vitiate, but he kind of shifted out of being a sith into being a weird dark side force entity. I do agree with the conclusion, just think they're not the best examples.
@@realname8362 Sion is at least one hundred of years old. It's stated by a medical examiner that his bones had been broken multiple times. The guy is immortal. The only way someone can kill him is if he decides to let go of the dark side. We beat Sion through words, not the blade. Nihilus not so much as Kreia stated his power will eventually consume him. In that case it's just a matter of time but as long as he can find Force to absorb, he'll live but he can be killed by a lightsaber and blaster.
I always remembered the opening on Peragus being amazingly moody and mysterious - my favorite game opening ever. But replaying it recently, the HK droid’s introduction completely kills the tension by revealing all the answers early … with comedy and sarcasm, no less. Much lamer than I remember. Still, the Republic ship adds some extra intrigue, at least.
It's basically a survival horror segment that doesn't have the balls to actually make the robot zombies dangerous. The mood is there but the design and tech is too crap to make it really work. Doesn't help that rather than using one of those beam weapon animations, they just dualwield pistols. Christ.
excellent video like usual, i remember first playing kotor 1+2 after getting it from a "best of" game compilation and 7 year old me being scared shitless from peragus
I heard you mention the MMO in the vid, have you ever been compelled to play through any of the class stories? As limiting as the MMO structure is, I found some of them to be quite good
I played this game extensively after my son was born. I was at home with him and every time he took a nap, I'd get some game time in. Today's his 20th birthday and he's just as much a Star Wars nerd as me. I was super proud when I came home from work one day and he was playing KOTOR.
Man, this makes me nostalgic, although I have to say I am weirded out seeing the game transition to cutscenes and not immediately crashing and burning.
No game of dejarik can be won without pawns.
Yes YESSSSSSSSSS
Pff... Dejarik is for women and children. Pazaak? That's a game for real men.
Play System Shock 2 right now, you have 2 months
Are you planning on talking about Planescape Torment? I tried playing it after I heard that Torment: Tides of Numenera was an spiritual successor of it, but couldn't get into it the way I did Torment. It would be cool to finally know what's so special about it from someone as thorough as you.
like how you've went through all these rpgs and still somehow manage to avoid talking about new vegas
Back when KOTOR II was just released, one of my school friends enjoyed Pazaak so much that he ripped the game graphics and made a stand-alone version to play against AI or each other on LAN. Almost twenty years later, I still have it on my HDD and occasionally return to it.
Wtf. Seriously?
@@robertharris6092 Yeah. It was more of a programming challenge/practice for him, I guess, since even in his early years, he was deeply interested in games and made quite a few simple ones as a form of training. Pazaak was one of such projects.
Is there a meta to pazaak? I never really got how you're supposed to git gud.
@@PutkisenSeta The closest we got to a meta was stocking up on low-value +/- cards to allow you to reach the winning number without overshooting too often. Other than that, it's not much different from Blackjack.
If you can post this somewhere, I'd love to use it for tabletop Star Wars 5e
"My brother in christ, I'm literally a war criminal"
The right word is Girlboss
"Was Meetra Surik girl power?"
"Yes!"
"Was Meetra Surik girl power when she activated the mass shadow generator and kill thousands of Mandalorians and her own troops, permanently scarring the galaxy?"
"I don't know about that!"
Destroying everyone at Malachor V was a sigma move
@@metetural9140 The girl power side of the force is full of many abilities that would be considered bitchy
@@cyberninjazero5659 I wanna I wanna I wanna I wanna really really really wanna ziggazig DESTROY MALACHOR V
@@metetural9140 "Is it possible to learn this power?"
"Not from Mansplaining"
What really makes this game work for me is the voice acting. Atris's contempt, Kreia's bitterness, HK-47's condescension, even Bao-Dur's quiet rage form a backing chorus that tell the story of this world better than a thousand codex entries ever could. It's brilliant, and I'm not sure a remake could ever do it justice.
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
I'm sure somebody out there appreciates storytelling enough to make it happen. People are pretty fucking awesome.
Simple game to update though.
I loved having hk in my party.
All my real life responses tended to be "Oh you beautiful murder machine, you can't do that"
Mandalore's pride but also his complex from getting left behind by Revan. RIP John Cygan. did you know he was also Luke in the Dark Empire audio dramas? And Ulic Qel-Droma in the sadly unfinished Tales of the Jedi audiodramas?
The only Star Wars entry where dark side philosophy and praxis is developed beyond teen angst or moustache twirling.
Ty for video eastern european power lifting rpg man.
I wouldn't say the only entry. A lot of Legends/Extended Universe work added depth to the Dark Side and Sith philosophy. KOTOR 2 was just one of the most prominent examples. It's unfortunate that such concepts were basically erased thanks to it no longer be canon.
I mean... this is wholly incorrect, but whatever, you got the right to be wrong.
@nananamamana3591 yeah I can't stand KOTOR 2 fan boys 😂
“You press the subscribe button; it’s impossible to fuck up. I fucked it up“
Such is the Steam Workshop experience.
What really gets me about this game is the juxtaposition between the beginning of it and the end of Old Republic one. Let’s say you got the light side ending in that game. At the end the Jedi masters give a big speech about how you saved the galaxy. It’s true, you totally did save the galaxy from the star forge. However things STILL promptly fall apart as the horrific damage done on the economy and population of the galaxy reverberates outwards. You stop the big bad evil guy and blow up the evil death machine, and then you still sort of lose anyway because nobody’s there to refurbish the ravaged setting. As a cherry on top the people you can save on Taris limp along for a couple hundred years but you find out in the MMO that they eventually die off anyway. I fucking love it.
@Court Jester if you're actually miffed about not getting meaningful decisions in a video game you should probably just stick with dungeons and dragons or something because you will never in your entire life get meaningful decisions in a 12-hour video game as when you beat the game in 12 hours and turn it off those decisions become meaningless.
@Court Jester in other words you showed up to comment two things that bring literally nothing to the conversation? ok. If I'm not allowed to think that video game decisions are meaningless because they take place in a vacuum then you're also not allowed to think that this specific RPG's decisions are meaningless because you just didn't like the way they played out.
@@wearecoterminous While I think that the notion that "meaningful" decisions that have long-term impacts on the course of a game's narrative being automatically a good thing is a foolish notion, and that many people who complain about the lack of that are missing the enjoyment to be had in a good old fashioned linear tale (and oh god this sentence is getting away from me) I do understand how someone could be frustrated at finding out that the back-filling of a setting has retroactively led to something that may have felt like a triumph instead turning into only a bitter, temporary victory. I mean, hell, that's how I felt when I watched the modern Star Wars trilogy.
I think this guy you're responding to isn't so much upset at his decision not being meaningful, to whatever weight such a term may hold, but rather that new material for the setting written years and years later re-contextualized the actions a player can make in the game. It's akin to a retcon, and I've never met someone who likes when things are retconned.
@@Shenaldrac i like it if disney retconned themselves out of starwars lol
@@shadow_ninja9149 Hah! Amen.
I actually really like the first confrontation with Atris. As a KOTOR 2 LPer on the LP archives once said, its like a verbal boss fight with her. You can use skill checks and conversation branches to tie her up in knots and really expose the deeper feelings buried inside her. Really gets into the psychology of Atris as a character before the truth comes out.
Lore runner?
@@Wizard_Pikachu No it was a poster to the SA Forums called Scorchy. I watched a few of Lore Runners vids a few years ago and found them to be not my cuppa tea.
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
@@OfficerHotpants Talk no Jutsu never felt better than in KOTOR 2, well as far as I remember.
i was thinking you where talking about woolievs's lp.
Kreia's philosophy seems to be in direct reaction to how she views the Force. The Force is a barely understood power that meddles in the lives of the people of the galaxy at large, and this meddling disrupts things, causing consequences good and bad. We see a microcosm of that with the beggar scene: Whether we give him money or assault him, we see that our actions have negative consequences... because they are motivated by Force-centric philosophies.
We see this in the prequel trilogy. The Jedi consider themselves peacekeepers and serve the people of the Republic, but even before the prequels start, the Republic is grossly corrupt and falling apart. "Keeping the peace" means perpetuating a system that genuinely should be allowed to fall apart so that a better system can replace it, one that would do better to serve the people. The Jedi are ultimately fighting a war against people who are wanting to cut ties with the Republic, forcing people to stay in that failing system against their will, even as that system continues to crumble. Meanwhile, Palpatine and his apprentices, Sith all, are acting as agents to bring about that downfall, but while Count Dooku thinks that this is for bringing about a better system, the truth is that Palpatine is purely self-serving and will only create a dictatorship that serves him. The Sith are the vanguard of a new system, but it is a legitimately worse one.
Jedi maintaining a failing system because their selfless philosophy demands it, and Sith supplanting it purely for the sake of taking power for themselves because their selfish philosophy demands it. Both systems are toxic to the people of the galaxy at large. Neither system actually works. Kreia, in her storyline, is trying to work out a third path. She recognizes the flaws inherent in both, and wants to fix them, but since she was coming from this largely from a Sith mindset, it was likely always doomed to failure.
And I swear, this is where they were headed with in the Last Jedi, Kylo Ren makes DIRECT refernece to hating them both and I swear we were gonna get a KOTOR 2 style storyline with the third movie but NOPE
Disney cannot make interesting choices because it makes their formula for extracting money more difficult.
@@gamegod273 The main issue there is that the person in charge of the story changed hands between movies in the sequel trilogy. A solid foundation was built in the first movie, then in the second movie, the one in charge decided to go in a radically different direction than what was originally planned. Then, in the third movie, they bring the original guy back, and he's forced to try and fix the raging dumpster fire the sequel trilogy has become. He basically has to try and cram two movies worth of intended stuff, plus the stuff intended to fix what the other guy broke, and bring the trilogy to a conclusion. An impossible task for even the best of us, so naturally he failed.
If the same person had been managing the story for all three films, we would have had a more coherent storyline. Maybe it wouldn't have been the best thing ever, but it wouldn't have been the disaster it ended up becoming.
I don't think Kreia approached it from a Sith mindset, and maybe at one-time she could be described as a Jedi who became Sith, but when we meet her she is neither, and wouldn't sit within the venn diagram. She is the characterised form of self-determination; a critique on the force and star wars.
Her plan may have been the perfect weapon to destroying the true Sith that lay beyond the outer rim in KOTOR 3, obviously at the cost of all present and future force-sensitives. I didn't play TOR, but from what I've heard the story was a bit of a mess.
@@bronsone4535 Look at how she behaves throughout KOTOR 2. She uses lies, schemes, deception, pawns, and manipulation to get the things she wants. That's how Sith do things, not Jedi. That's a Palpatine mindset.
Self-determination is a fine thing, but it is not the end-all be all. Civilization isn't built by everyone solely working to pursue their own goals and expressing their will to power. It is largely the result of large numbers of people working together to build a better future to generations to come. Yes, there may be incentives in the here and now, but the end goal is often to leave the world a better place for their children. What a single person can accomplish on their own is limited, something I think that Kreia recognizes, given that she is largely reliant on others to accomplish her goals.
A true Grey Jedi, I think, wouldn't be someone who expresses enlightened self-interest, not self-determination. Someone who aids others, not because of a selfless creed that demands one throw away all attachments to become a servant to others, but because they recognize that more often than not, these good deeds can benefit them in the long term. Someone who pursues their ambitions, not because a selfish creed that demands that they pursue their goals to the point of obsession and self-destruction, but because they see the goal as something worthy of accomplishing.
It is effectively the Ubermensch concept we're seeing. There's two kinds of Ubermensch. Both see through the illusion of morals and reason imposed upon them by an "Other" that may or may not exist. Kreia represents the one who, upon seeing these illusions, discards all morals and reason to pursue their own goals. However, one can, upon perceiving the illusion, instead choose to still abide by those morals and reason because they recognize that, while a fiction, it is still something worthwile to keep, as without that ficticious morality, man quickly degenerates to the nature of a beast. It is the understanding that while the fiction may restrain man on the individual level, it elevates him on the grander scale. The former would ultimately destroy civilization for its own goals, the latter enriches it because it recognizes that it does ultimately serve them.
32:00
It's explained in KOTOR I that many military issue swords had lightsaber resistant metals/crystals included in the blades to give the average footsoldier of the Mandalorian Wars at least some hope at surviving a close encounter with someone wielding a lightsaber. I think by the time of the movies that was no longer standard practice due in part to the Rule of Two leaving very few lightsaber users outside the Jedi Order, who had leaned hard into weirdo pacifism, so there wasn't much need for industrial production of resistant blades.
It's a fine lore explanation but in reality they had to add some non jedi melee weapons because of mechanics that are based on 3rd edition of dnd. And let's be honest - it just looks weird when you fight a group of enemies with blasters and you keep shooting at eachother dealing a small amount of damage. Fights animation are rad as fuck
My favorite part of Kotor is finding all the ancient sith blades in the tombs of Korriban. I forget if most of these predate lightsaber tech or not, but it's a really cool and criminally underused SW concept of a Sith showing up to a 'saber duel with some hatemagic lich claymore.
@@junioraltamontent.7582 oh I wish there was more ancient artifact swords in mainline star wars. Just imagine a story of a sith or dark jedi wielding a sword that basically corrupted them and the main plot is to stop them from wielding it and maybe destroy the blade
@@junioraltamontent.7582 The Hatemore! :)
@@baron3904 Ragemore?
11:53 I'm only that far into the video but there's a line that the Sith Assassins are using a very strange force technique that allow them to steal the force from their targets but it makes them weaker if the target in question is not attuned with the force, which is the game way of explaining away level scaling really cool!
That actually evolves further into the development of the major Sith enemies, and even shows a entirely new expression of 'The Force' and how it is abused by pretty much everyone sensitive or not
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
Yes, it explains the level scaling, and also the entire concept of XP is mulled over in this game. Is it sucking bits of life out of defeated enemies with the force? Is it being hardened by your challenges? Kreia scolds you for hogging XP by doing tasks for randoms that could help them level up if they did them for themselves.
I think what's kind of key to the deconstructionism that is KOTOR2 is... it's kind of unique in Star Wars. It's an intellectual property that's existed for over 40 years and had hundreds of various things from Novels to Comics to Video Games and the movies that started it. But... deconstruction of the idea of the Force and what the Force actually means for the setting is something that basically only Knights of the Old Republic 2 did.
This is contrary to things like, Super Heroes. Where there are deconstructions of them constantly and everywhere from the likes of The Authority to The Boys. It becomes tiresome because you keep seeing the deconstruction and you miss what they were deconstructing by comparison.
I wouldn't want another game like KOTOR2. But I like that there is a KOTOR2. And considering the sort of iterative sequel process of trying to do "The same thing but bigger" more or less as an industry standard? I"m pretty amazed there hasn't been a KOTOR3 following in that same deconstructionist footsteps. I'd hate for the deconstruction to become as overplayed as it is with so many other th ings.
It's not unique because of deconstruction. But because the deconstruction itself is unique. It deconstruct the "material" trapping of star war: the force, the jedi, the sith, blaster, lightsaber, the perpertual conflict... to arrive at the very core of what George Lucas wanted to say all along: to give up attachment and dogmas when they prove to be destructive. In the game, the ultimate power doesnt come from your circumstances of birth, your bloodline, being the force's chosen one (well George atleast dished the chosen one trope harder than anybody lol), some special power or blind belief... But the strength to turn away from the power that enhance your very being but require strict spiritual adherence from you.
Most superhero deconstruction, in contrast, are neither competently made nor have anything clever to say. Most of them read like shock value schlock at best and the lashing out of people fed up with the genre at worst... No shit if you write entirely different character and different scenario with similarity only in superficials like character designs and superpower, thing gonna turn out differently. It's the equivalence of changing every thing about a franchise but keep the name, the aesthetics and call old fans a variety of -ism when met with criticism. Let's compare a "deconstruction" like One Punch Man, made with love to the genre with The Boy comics. In OPM, there are an extensive crisis management system, the citizen act both critical and adore superheroes depends on what they see, what they are told and the supes' media manipulation and the supes have different goals. The boy comics pretends everybody feel safe with supes despite their various degenerate acts and it took "The Boys" to rat them out. Meanwhile, irl fear for life is such a potent force in American politics that it create hysteria and strawman of different races and political or religious belief... The boy TV are so much better though, it treat characters and events with much more individuality and diversity as well as relate to more insititutional failures. The most ironic thing is those deconstruction dont need to exist. Superheroes stories themselves already do them, and often with much more grace. They make their characters walk in pretty dark places, pit the hero's outlook and philosophy against the world around them, force them to grow as characters, make them lose various things: from their loved one, their fight, their world to themselves... The good "deconstruction" comic is actually as far from a supe story as possible: Watchmen or the Marvel Max run are actually political/action thriller, the cast are overwhelmingly normal human being, with meaningful thing to say about the state of their contemporary world.
So yeah I want more of the deconstructive flavor of kotor2 and none of the superheroes flavor, please. The world do need more people to pay attention to what the stories are trying to say and not the aesthetic it choose to present itself as. But I dont want them to be mass produced, sloppy schlock made to satisfy "an audience™" that exist only on some disconnected analyst's slide show.
Obisidian had plans for KOTOR III, you can read about it in various interviews (I recommend the Eurogamer one from a few years ago that's centered around KOTOR II if you're interested), but it didn't materialize due to LucasArts.
@@zlodrim9284 The worst part of these plans is that they are forever tainted and ruined. The book Revan undid anything KotOR 2 did to elevate the character, and dragged it in the mud. The Old Republic proceeded to make him into a emo-emasculated sissy that holds no morals, nor any plans worth mentioning. I dreaded the Mandalorian for just how horrible they treated the franchise (in both movies and games) after Kotor, feared they might push the shit stream into the TV series as well. The thing is, KotOR II took a leap outside of the media, and the only reason it wasn't a ever-lasting icon, to forever be remembered when referring to Star Wars, is because of the constrained time-frame they had to work with. Having so many issues, with such intensity, that it tainted the experience of anyone.
And despite this, it's still a cult-classic. Or maybe BECAUSE of this it is a cult-classic, and not something so much more.
But let's not forget something: Obsidian isn't what it used to be. Look at TOW.
As much as I adore that game, as beautiful, and smooth it is in gameplay, i see the lack of anything, Obsidian-worthy, in it... The characters are lackluster, the AI isn't great, and the story, while extremely fun and amusing, isn't memorable...
There won't be a KotOR III, because there isn't a good team that can do it. There aren't any more writers that can give the nuances that the characters of the game would need. Nor devs that could implement this with the smoothness of Doom Eternal, and worst of all, there are no customers who would purchase this game, to justify the investment it would need.
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
"To have fallen so far and learned nothing, that is your failing"
this fucking game! beautiful
This was hands down my favorite Fallout 2 mod I've ever played.
When I played the game, I didn't realize that several of those shitty extended sequences that annihilate the pacing were from the Restored Content mod. The latter half of Nar Shaddaa was my personal Vietnam because of this. Could really use a modular installation where you can tick a box that only adds the content that doesn't suck (pretty sure that's a small sum).
The HK factory segment had me falling asleep in my chair. Combat with only one person against health sponge robots using literally only guns and grenades.
Baldurs gate 3 reminds me of how good games were back then. Miss you Bioware and Obsidian your still here but that love and talent is gone. I still remember the lectures Kreia taught us about the effects of the force and how people without it live in the world.
29:30 I know you mention that the game aesthetically suffered, but honestly as a child I remembered sequences like this. It broke my heart to see an old women so mercilessly beaten. Artists and masters of their craft.
The cutscenes are very good in this, amazing production.
needed some chapters, cuz im keep coming back every month or so, lol
0:00:00 - Intro
0:03:10 - Backstory and Prologue
0:05:08 - Peragus
0:09:36 - The Harbinger
0:17:40 - Telos IV (Citadel Station)
0:20:16 - Telos IV (Restoration Zone)
0:22:50 - Telos IV (Hidden Academy)
0:31:13 - Dantooine
0:41:20 - Nar Shaddaa
0:55:55 - Onderon (Dxun)
0:58:26 - Onderon (Iziz)
1:02:12 - Korriban
1:06:18 - M4-78 (Droid Planet)
1:10:42 - Onderon (Civil War)
1:15:14 - Dantooine
1:19:11 - Telos IV (Facing Atris)
1:22:22 - Telos IV (HK Factory)
1:26:33 - Telos IV (Sith Attack)
1:32:19 - Malachor V
Having never played this game with the restoration mod, good lord does so much of it not seem familiar to me. I specifically remember pretty much the entire HK plot was cut from the base game.
I remember the ending making very little sense and being incredibly confusing and unsatisfying. Glad to see it was fixed so much by the mod.
Mandalore, Atris, GOTO, HK... The mod is mandatory imo
@@Warlockracy the only bad thing is that it allows HK to steal the crown yet again as best character..
But then again, was there even a comparison?
Honestly the only Star Wars film/TV content I want is a TV adaptation of Kotor 2 with Sarah Kestelman reprising her role as Kreia in live action.
It's literally a story about a traumatized veteran dealing with institutions that have a abandoned and betrayed them. Merge Bao Durr's really crippling trauma in with the exile's character and you could do a damn good 8 to 10 episodes.
She's so good as this selfish old bitch that you can't blame her for how she feels most of the time. Her admitting, at the very end that she could be wrong when you basically do a Jolee Bindo not-stupid light side character really does a lot to make it come together.
I forgot Bao Durr was even a character in the game. O_o
Haven't played it in awhile.
@@planescaped He's very obviously cut down, but his voice acting is just superb as somebody who pressed the war crime button and wants to never hurt anybody ever again. Seriously the voice acting in this game is fucking incredible.
A man can dream, but knowing Disney's track record, the only way it'd happen is with familiar characters and other elements forcibly inserted for the new fan that laps up every release without really knowing or caring what makes a good Star War, because 'ooh, I know that thing!' It's like dangling keys in front of toddlers.
Yeah, maybe I'm still just bitter about 1313 getting cancelled. At least we had the LucasArts boom in the '90s and '2000s with Lucas (for all his flaws and mistakes) signing off on each project to keep the vision alive in some way or another. We got garbage sometimes but also classics.
for what? for disney to ruin it all and make it the "new canon"? no thanks.
Yeah, and the show needs to be filmed and structured just like the tv shows of the 90s and early 2000s.
46:17
Atton, very sarcastically: "Well, good thing it's not a trap."
The disciple, very distraught: "No Atton, I think it might be a trap."
People always praise Kreia's VA for her excellent performance, but just about everyone was really good in that game.
I'm kinda sad I've never heard the disciple say that before, because the line is golden. Handmaiden just calls atton dumb, and I don't think I had the disciple yet the one time I did a female jedi run so bao dur had a line.
The only thing you’re missing is the mod that lets you have both Handmaiden and Mical at the same time to get that canon play through it’s dope.
Dude PLEASE tell me the name of that mod!
On a side note, I like how you do semi-evil runs of these games. I noticed it in the Arcanum video as well. You do an evil run, but it's not ball-to-the-walls screw everyone. You still do logically helping things at various points. It's an interesting blend.
Self serving evil is the finest kind for everyone has that call in their mind
"I could fuck that guy over" or
"I could steal that"
huh. never thought about how that speech HK47 gives is pretty much a parallel of the goal Kreia has throughout the entire game (breaking free from a force that controls you). that montage at the very end of the video was incredible. amazing content as always
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
What an absolute gem, one of few content creators I can't bring myself to listen to while playing games, it's got to be an attentive watch... at least the first time through! Love the content, I find you so inspirational. You always calm and entertain this Doomer Brit's brain.
For me there is no game in the world greater than this one. Characters, story, gameplay, music (oh, god, the music), sound effects, even graphics. Yes, the graphics are good, despite what SOME people may have just said. Probably because it was developed at the time when people actually cared to squeeze the most out of their situation to create something complete, something one can love and come back to after decades. That is why it is still incredibly beautiful walking on the shore of the ocean on Telos or fields of Dantooine, or the jungle of Dxun. Despite it`s limitations, everything in this game`s level design complements one another to create a world you can believe in. And i`m not gonna say anything about it`s characters or dialogue, or story. Let`s just say - there is a reason some people have over 2k ours played in this game.
Yeh I agree, I love absolutely everything about this game. The first time I played it I thought ‘it’s a bit disjointed, 8/10’ but after playing it again and again I’d it’s definitely top 5 games of all time.
Agree, it is my favourite game of all time for the same reasons. Probably my favourite looking game aswell and man the music is so so good.
Unfortunately i cannot play it for the first time again
Did you say, two THOUSAND hours!? That must be an exaggeration.
@@gregtaylor9806 Nope. I got this game in 2006, waaay before i even knew about the internet. It was a poorly translated to russian, pirated (no surprise in that) copy on 4 CD discs. I played the living shit out of that game when i was in school, and came back to it many times. Never owned the original licenced jewel however. I now own it on Steam tho, and Warlock is absolutely right - you NEED that restoration content mod. When i first installed it - boi, was it great.
This is by far my favourite Star Wars game, with one, if not the best character in all of Star Wars fiction, imo. Kreia is just so incredibly well written.
"Why were we created? Do we have a purpose? Who made us?"
HK-47: "Statement. You see, when a Male Robot and a Female Robot love each other a lot, they go and do the..." *fades to black*
Another banger. On the second watch already
Can't wait for your next video too 👌
fr you gotta review this game
damn harry u got taste
Will you make a video about kotor 2 as well? I guess only time will tell. But for now, I'm waiting for a Vtmb video. You did praise it, And I'm really curious to know what are your thoughts about that game.
One of many things i've heard that Chris Avellone, in order to study the SW lore, watched every single movie. Including the Christmas special. Say what you want about him, but he is certainly dedicated.
But i have to point something out. Kreia and Ulysses seem to be very similar. In both that they describe how the world around them sucks and they never shut up about it. At least they can't outtalk lightsabers/bullets.
Either way, KOTOR 1 and 2 were great, TOR did Revan very dirty, and i'm skeptical of a company who looked at a line "Somehow, Palpatine returned" and thought it was good to produce anything good SW related.
Well that was symptom of poor planning and really bad writing. Hell as someone noticed they rushed the production so bad that they didn't even have time to make more stuff that could be sold as toys for the movie
Avellone for the most part is a hack writer who just writes in over important self inserts that spout his own personal philosophy on the settings he’s writing for.
Hence why the divide basically had no one except Ulysseses and he tried to make the tunnelers a threat to smack the setting back to what he thinks is the better post apocalyptic setting.
His opinion was the setting was getting too civilized and advanced for a post apocalypse. He’d rather it be “The Road” where everything is dying and miserable and there is no hope than something like “Mad Max” or even the first Fallout.
@@thegreatgoatking.kingofall4001 His OC's are a great detriment to his works, but everything around them is great enough so that it's not exactly noticeable. And you do have a chance to turn against them in the endgame. He was the designer in Fallout 2, and a lead one in KOTOR2, and participated in Fallout New Vegas, and from what we've seen, he can clearly design a functioning world without it all revolving around his pets.
He might be a hack of a writer, but he is an excellent world designer.
@@murisbukvic2496 yes, except for New vegas in which he was mostly only a writer and only ever really was involved with Lonesome Road. With Josh Sawyer doing most of the base game new vegas work.
On top of that I think what I dislike the most about him isn’t his own writing but how people treat him. They praise his work, say kreia tore down the idea of Jedi good and Sith bad and to think more for oneself, but then his fans will blindly parrot those views without being critical about them.
Like kreia wants to destroy the force based solely on her limited view of it. Her entire character arc is basically berating the player for doing anything but blindly following her instructions like a dog while also going “oh you should think for yourself.”
Maybe I’m just not cut out for this stuff but I feel like people get so swept up by this “woah Jedi are bad too” thing that they forget that the sith and kreia are no better.
@@thegreatgoatking.kingofall4001 if you go into it more than like the very top layer of surface level the Sith are literally not evil because when the Sith were a race they needed to feed on the dark side of the force or they would die. The Sith were no more evil than maggots eating a corpse or lions creating a corpse. The Sith at least acted. Seth like Revan I saved the outer rim while the Jedi did nothing but stagnate and be butthurt when the children they kidnapped from their families started to feel things like guilt and regret. The Jedi did a lot more damage to the Galaxy according to the actual lore through inaction and political favoritism than the Sith ever could, especially the modern bainite Sith who can only exist two at a time master and apprentice. The Jedi Council and numerous Jedi academy were radically shifting the balance of the force in their favor and was thus causing ripples throughout the rest of the galaxy when the force tried to correct that. It happened over and over again throughout the EU and directly led to every bad thing about the modern galaxy post old republic. if you look at pretty much any piece of information about the force and points to it having its own will that it enacts through us using us as an avatar of its own machinations. Like sure the guy who wrote the character tends to write characters that people like or whatever but that doesn't really detract from the character being objectively correct about everything. just because it had to be written in silly video game mechanic sort of ways like giving a homeless guy five bucks doesn't really devalue it.
Tl;dr you're right it is you.
Without a doubt the best thing to ever come out of Star Wars. It was just so brilliant in how it walked the line between Light and Dark, how it really drummed up the effects of choice, and expanded on the story of KotOR 1 in amazing ways. Obsidians take on the Star Wars galaxy, with varying shades of grey, made for such an interesting story and cast. Makes me wonder how much better it could of been given more time without a rushed development cycle.
Warlock has possibly the best videogame content on the platform right now. His Deus Ex video is 10/10
Agreed.
Ross over at Accursed Farms has remained remarkably consistently great since pretty much youtube's inception.
But this channel is pretty great and seemingly came out of no where.
@@planescaped Id say Warlock is more entertaining than Ross, for my tastes anyway. And the added Eastern cultural context is absolutely fantastic. This channel is an absolute gem and for it to only have 50k subs is crazy
@@planescaped I tend to find Ross's jokes funnier but Warlock's substantive criticism of games more interesting and insightful.
But that's personal taste, obviously, and I've been watching Ross for about twice as long as I've been watching this channel, so perhaps I'm somewhat biased.
@@macdeus2601I find Ross and Warlock equally satisfying in seperate ways. Ross is like a bowl of mac and cheese, savoury and comfy. Warlock is like a pot of tea (from a samovar), equally cozy but stimulating.
I think a piece of unrestored cut content had Darth Sion develop some sort of love-hate stalker romance with the player, regardless of gender. Considering Kreias Role as a mentor for both characters this could've ventured into wierd freudian territory
When I first played Kotor 2 as a 10 year old I was shocked how dark the game was in comparison to its predecessor. Or even Star Wars in general. There was no Order 66 grand plan to wipe out the Jedi, they just collapsed under the constant conflict that keept the Franchise going. I always viewed that as a critique of the expanded Star Wars Universe as a whole.
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
You make great videos Warlockracy, I can’t say there is a single one I haven’t enjoyed or laughed with. Keep up the great content and I wish you good health and safety.
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
15:54 The "silver armor" is actually a rendering bug, it is supposed to be bronze in the first game too.
Sex mod for this game???? I cant am find out anywhere! Know how to find sex mode ???
In my version of kotor 1, it's bronze.
@@PlumpProductions-wj3jp It's supposed to be. Some graphics cards/drivers/etc render the environment/reflection maps wrong in Kotor 1. They did fix it in Kotor 2, or at least I've never seen the bug appear in Kotor 2.
The Droid planet should not have been "restored"
It's really boring and just an excuse to gain more levels. A product of love sure...
Man, post-KOTOR2 old republic lore is such a wasted potential. We could have had a game about a hunt on ancient lovecraftian siths, akin to Sion and Nihilus, but even more abstract and whacky. Instead we got books and one MMO about normal sith but they were hiding and had different species. And their power was just the same as of jedi - because MMO requires this for factions. Instead of fight between alliance and horde VS the burning crusade, we got simple alliance vs horde situation. Although writing in MMO is still really good and close (or dare i say - even better) to KOTOR1. Just missed potential.
Imagine, if you will, Snoke just getting back up after being bisected. How? Because he's long dead. Dust, held together by an indomitable will. A dark side equivalent of a force ghost. A remnant from forgotten eons. Not skilled with a mortal's sword, but rather the subtle cosmic power of manipulating feelings on a galactic scale through the Force. Not mind control, just a creeping influence that over decades made the New Republic wrest itself apart in petty squabbles and bureaucratic disillusionment, paving the way for the rise of the nostalgic false dream of order and efficiency. A New Order.
Fuckers couldn't even figure out that Snoke is a terrible name.
@@YevOnegin the Canderous Astroid story was about the Yuzzan Vong, who’s arc in the NJO books where still in progress at the time,
While i generally agree on mmo writing being ok, its one of instances when too much stuff is bad for worldbuilding and crippling the lore. Swtor did a "great" job to depreciate originality of dilogy story and chars into basically prequel shit all over again to the sake of game mechanics and mmo structure.
@@specialsnowflake2309 i like the game's story overall
But hate it whenever any character from kotor games shows up
They did Kreya bad.
Yeah, feels like killed potential. Everything is good until you remember the context.
I played both KotOR games quite a lot when I was a kid. This was way before the famous Restored Content Mod. Still, I always preferred TSL. Something about it was always so appealing to me. It felt grim, melancholy, and lonely. The game has this kind of foreboding atmosphere that I just love so much. As I got older I came to really love this story. It's a great exploration and deconstruction of Star Wars.
17:34 It does generate one, but not for us to obtain.
32:52 It was the Matale Estate back then, and a private villa instead of a government building.
34:58 Low Influence does the same thing as high Influence, but the companion will take on the opposing alignment instead. You can be a Sith Lord with an entirely Light side party.
35:37 Using a one-handed sword multiplies the STR damage by 1.5, and STR damage can crit. Very useful if you use Critical Strike and Shien, which increases the critical multiplier even more.
40:32 Kreia has the Stealth Class Skill feat pre-selected from the start. Consulars usually don't have Stealth as a class skill.
47:18 You can also stand behind the bar. That breaks their pathfinding.
1:04:20 It worked fine for Zhar in the first game in my opinion. It is probably just production value.
1:37:05 It actually doesn't do anything at all. It is just flavor text.
It drops Sion's max health, so probably his constitution attribute and the associated saves at the very least.
you can go behind the bar or you can just lay 20 mines in there before you go trigger the cutscene and have the fight end instantly. Also a useful way to beat handmaiden in all her challenges on Telos, if your character is not built for melee. Actually when I think about it there's _a lot_ that can be cheesed with mines - in both games.
Also, I was always SO confused by Goto stopping Remote in the original version.
The missing content really leaves some big plot holes.
Very cool detail in The Petroglyph produced Empire at War. The Mandalorian designed and produced Starviper fighter available to the Zann Consortium bears a significant resemblance to the Basilisk war droid in the Onderon/Dxun world. I love little nods between games produced and designed by completely seperate people.
I loved KoToR2. I thought it was a much better game than KoToR 1... until the end where the game was clearly unfinished.
How do you look upon a game that is a masterpiece for the first 80% with an ending made of bubblegum and sticks? As history as shown, divisively.
And lol I posted that before watching and hearing you yourself describe it as divisive. :P The thing that always stuck out most to me about KoToR 2 were all the parallels between it and Planescape Torment's story. I also adore Mask of the Betrayer and it's Avellone-esque story. Kaelyn the Dove is probably my favorite character in any game I have ever played.
Fallout New Vegas is the one outlier that doesn't seem Planescape/Kotor2/MoTB derived in the slightest. But that had far more of a team contribution AFAIK than some of the other games Avellone's worked on.
Despite being from roughly the opposite side of the planet every joke you make is pretty much exactly the kind of humor I love. God damn I love you and your videos an unreasonable amount. I wish you nothing but the best!
It's weird how that gas filled section of the M4-78 mod still looks so broken. There's a high quality skyboxes mod that's compatible with it, and it fixes the lack of skybox by just adding some fog. Also, I would recommend that mod overall even if used without other texture mods, due to how much it enhances the environments, especially Nar Shaddaa.
I ended up getting a reskin mod for Nar Shadaa. It’s amazing how lights and windows make the whole place feel more like that living web of life Zez-Kai-ell was supposed to be hiding in.
Might be looking too deep into the writing, but Krea's fear of force controlling you (or her) is pretty strong with this script. Most of Krea's dialogue is basically "why did you pick this dialogue option? Like blindly following writer's script? Giving force all the thinking?", and there is always a "yeah, i'll think over it" or "it's my master plan to create a ripple or something" option and she's like "oh, okay, just checking" *influence increased*
But Nar Shaddaa sketch was funny as hell.
Yeah this is clearly Avelone making fun of simple "good/bad" moral choices in RPG games (which were plenty in KOTOR)
@@FlymanMS Yeah that hardlined "this is clearly a" type of choice. in retrospec it basically shits on Mass Effect as a concep
@@ExeErdna Not really, it does the exact same thing but with slightly more self awareness. Still has the dumb mechanical bonuses for pushing a particular path of morality, still offers barely any ability to avoid being obviously good or evil. If anything, mass effect handles the topic significantly better by having paragon and renegade at least try to represent something closer to morals vs pragmatism, instead of being jesus or more evil than any serial killer that has ever lived.
@@realname8362 I really disagree, if anything paragon renegade is even shallower than the light side dark side idea that Kotor 2 was critiquing. It's really lacking in motivations- just 'i want to be a bad/good guy this time because video game.'
@@octopusexperiment1931exactly. I personally always seen those bonuses in this particular scene as a subversion in itself, like, you get points for being a good guy (which is logical since you acted with good intentions) yet you don't feel good about that at all.
I think that's a very clever way of using the first Kotor's binary morality system while also developing a theme
This game is so claustrofobic , but the voices and acting are great and character models too
Perfect timing, I'm just wrapping up a light-side Jedi Master playthrough when you released this. The same happened a couple months back when you uploaded the VTMB video. You sir have a great taste in games.
Okay, so I am wondering. The sith holocron chamber Atris meditated constantly screamed about sith secrets.
And since the Sith ideals was inspired by Mein Kampf (According to the Wiki)
Would that mean that she essentially sat in a sensory-deprevation chamber for years listening to voices screaming lines from Mein Kampf?
Coincidentally all of the sith voices and darth nihilus sound vaguely German.
"sensory-deprivation chamber full of voices screaming lines from Mein Kampf"
/pol/ in a nutshell
Best Star Wars game ever made. I often think about this Game. “So, you will do nothing? Apathy is death. Worse than death, because at least a rotting corpse feeds the beasts and insects.” Chris Avellone is a savant of his craft.
That's not actually Kreia, it's just an image of her. The line itself is manipulation, much like the rest of the events of the place. The writing is even more deliberate than it initially seems.
@@PutkisenSeta i played the game nerd
@@nol6819dam ☠️
The way you edit your videos gives them all a truly unique rhythm, your style is just impeccable
Kreia is an endlessly fascinating character and I loved this video
20:04 “he wasn’t even reprogrammed, he just hates working here.” Lol. Small little moment that makes the world feel a bit more alive and memorable. Going through another playthrough currently, thinking I’ll try and stay a gray Jedi with high Charisma
I watch The Salt Factory, who plays many of the same games that you do, it felt very refreshing to see someone play this and appreciate the beautiful details rather than nitpicking all of the slower bits.
P.S why did you make your character the finest red bone in the galaxy, shawty is distractingly bad 😅
Also thankfully Warlockracy doesn't suffer from brain damage unlike salt
WHAT DO YOU MEAN "WHY DID YOU HUG TALI?"?! WHATS WRONG WITH HUGGING TALI?!
@@metetural9140 I tried watching his video. Felt like watching someone who really did not get it and was way off the mark with his assessment. Kinda killed my desire to watch anything else of his.
Reminded me of the Willlovesgames Oblivion video. Another essay I vehemently disagree with.
@@metetural9140 I couldnt watch that mass effect 3 video for days. Its so painfully stupid he is like "So I know that if I dont do X i wont get all assets... And thus not the good ending..." And he didnt get them! And he did the Citadel DLC IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAME!??
@@planescaped salt factory has surprisingly bad takes in most of his essays. It's surprising because its usually a criticism that no one has presented before because it makes no sense. Seems like a nice guy, he's just got a very strange outlook on how video games are made and it makes his videos unwatchable.
@@punishedbarca761 That's my takeaway as well. I've only seen part of one of his videos, the one on the Pokemon games. I like Pokemon. I like essay videos. I've got a fucking 7 hour long video essay on Pokemon Omega Ruby that I keep bookmarked because it's that good. So I was interested to hear someone's take.
It was literally just him nitpicking the story, the entire time. And while I have big problems with the writing in Pokemon past the early stuff, his criticisms were stuff like "Why is Whitney throwing a temper tantrum? Why is a gym leader a teenage girl who is so emotional? This doesn't make sense, no one would allow this to happen!" "Why is the evil organization able to be beaten by a ten year old child? This doesn't make sense!" And it's like, my dude, it's a game for children. It's not a serious story (that waits until later gens when they introduce genocide!) it's a cute little wrapper for a fun adventure. Like you say, criticism no one's made before because it makes no sense.
I didn't even make it to the end of the section on gen 2, I just stopped because the only things he was talking about were things that were not problems, while completely ignoring every single legitimate complaint/issue there is with gen 1 and 2!
Frankly, having a mandalorian named Mandalore is like having a human named "Humie"
i assumed it was a title, as in 'The Mandalore', but who knows
It's a title, which doesn't make it much better. Kind of like if the queen of England's title was "English".
Mandalore is the title given to the Mandalorian leader, like King or Queen or President. It makes sense to me? Then again defacto homewolrd of the Mandalorians is also called Mandalore, so that probably doesn’t help lol
@@5h0rgunn45 i guess more like if the queen of england was called "The Angle." given england comes from the angles tribe.
@@cobraglatiator its even weirder because to distinguish each Mandalore they use another title, "Mandalore The [subjective]" like Mandalore the Ultimate or in Canderous's case, the Preserver
My memories of Kotor 2 are filled with whiplash, swinging between long, dull combat encounters and huge barren environments on the one hand, and brilliant but very obviously unfinished pieces of writing, plot and character work. I fully agree that the restored content mod is essential, but that the game really needs some sharp editing down to make both the base and the restored content shine as much as they could.
I know it's just his accent but... I keep hearing Nihlus as Nicholas. All fear Darth... Nicholas!
I liked how all game build around Krea monologs, but player can just shut her up at any moment. Most games like this one would force it's theme on player but here you can throw it all away and enjoy everything else.
Playing this game i allways had the feeling the game was not planned to be played planet by planet, but to jump between them while questing/swapping companions etc. SOmething like an open world that got cut short. Also, if you just enter/exit your ship once per planet you will miss like 50 interactions between your companions.
Now that you mention it, there are a few quests that have you go to different planets, maybe that's leftover from that idea. Then again, half the planets lock you on them for doing the story quests so idk
@@jmjedi923 Indeed, that is why i think that due to their time limitation beside the cut content they cut the progress of the story and quests as well.
Oh man, I love these long-form videos. Great for listening to in the background as I go through my day.
When you ask whether mind trick ever works, you should know that it always fails when you attempt it on Toydarians, as they have natural immunity to it. As Watto said, "I'm a Toydarian. Mind tricks don't-a work on-a me. Only money!"
Mind trick works in some parts of KOTOR II, but it is a limited power for sure.
Yeah, it's a lore thing, even in movies it fails when used on Toydarians, I wonder why?
Bro, you've became one of my favorite youtubers, I'm always looking forward to your uploads. Thanks, Slav brother!
51:31 There actually is a restored content removal mod, I've never played without it but I think it trims back on some of the weirdly implemented items and cutscenes
Edit: It also for sure cuts out the droid planet, this is the first I've even heard of that
Love these videos,the length,narration,humor,its all great 👍
"My brother in christ I'm literally a war criminal" That gave me a chuckle
Best star wars game, hands down. Kotor 2 is amazing and it isn't even finished.
glad to see you’re doing well!! excellent upload as always. stay safe brodie ❤️
Incredible video. Played both KOTORs when I was younger and fell in love with the games. Being an adult now and watching videos like this give me a whole new perspective on it. Great job
I had to stop and comment on just how fucking massive the FemC's dumptruck is.
That will be all, thank you,
Memories of leveling Bao-Dur specifically so I can craft obscenely powerful vibro-blades and blasters that defied all logic.
This video was great.
Dude, YT algorithm made me watch it and I love it. Can't want for more
I want to say thank you for having a smooth voice, cause I've been using your videos to fall asleep to for the last year
Great video, duder, loved the retrospective on one of my all time favorite games, keep up the great work!
Another quality video by Mr Warlockracy.
Great editing and narration, really pleasant watch as always.
Really looking forward to the next upload!
Tbh, a lot of the games you cover, i have reinstalled and played through again.
With Bauldurs Gate for example, i returned to 2.
Breath of fresh air with your style of content and way you present it, cheers for the upload, as well as time and effort spent :)
You can't do this to me at 11 minutes after midnight. It's going to be a short night. Again.
Every Warlockracy video makes me giddy as I now have something boomer RPG related to watch for the whole day. Thank you Warlockracy
great review/critical analysis as always, your channel is easily one of my favorite. since i last played this about eight years ago without the cut content (still found it very compelling), its great to see all the storyline stuff that i missed out on. i can only assume that if i had played it the way it was initially intended before being cut down, i would have loved it, and might replay it soon even despite the filler content - thanks for the great video
See I love the game and really like it myself over the first game any day but I feel like my reasons are different than most. Everyone seems to mainly go on about Kreia who is a good character but to me she's mostly just a psycho which nothing justifies the people she kills or lives she ruins no matter how she spins it. What I liked were the extra force powers being able to use them from the start. You got a lot of cooler armors and weapons also I found and the lightsaber forms were cool. Also other than Canderous and Jolee I didn't really care for the companions in the first game as much but really liked the ones in 2 and you get Canderous and the droids so that works out haha. Also the planets and side quests and characters were interesting as well. Like I really liked the whole militia vs azkul thing with the scavengers in the middle on dantooine. And Nar Shadaa was really cool because one of my favorite parts of star wars is always been the underworld and bounty hunters. Which is why Bounty Hunter game is also one of the best star wars games ever imo and if 1313 got made I bet it would be up there too. But that's just imo. I know most everyone else seems to really like Kreia and her views.
I have to agree with you. I love the interactions between characters, many of the side quests are great, I actually like the dungeon layouts for the most part (I'm particularly in love with the Korriban dungeon). Kreia, on the other and, is just a cryptic jerk. Every time she opens her mouth, I get more confused. Like, I'm listening to you old hag, you just refuse to speak like a normal person!
Chris Avellone is seriously underappreciated. He needs his own monument and appreciation video, mister Warlock
he's actually immensely overhyped, to the point where people will defend him masturbating on a page just to praise him.
Great video as always Warlockracy. These longer videos are always a treat and I look forward to new ones when they drop.
Mate I love these videos of long missed nostalgia. Your accent adds a flavour to your A+ narration
Babe wake up, the new Warlockracy dropped
I wish dark siders were able to use more colors. Kotor tried to give them purple sabers, but it didn't stick in overall media.
You are quickly becoming my favorite youtuber, you are a great content creator. Keep up the good work!
Your channel is absolutely of a stand-alone quality my main man, keep it up!
1:18:34 because there is no clever way, the dark side by its very nature is selfishiness incarnate its like expecting a serial killer to stop after he killed so many.
effectively Sion and Nihlius achieved immortality and are the best the Sith could ever be and both are empty shells, even Kreia was a dark lord and yet she changed nothing, there is no truth to the dark side just death.
Nihilus isn't a sith in any meaningful way, and sion is just hard to kill. I don't get where the immortality claim is coming from. Neither of them are anywhere near the best that sith could be, the only one with a realistic claim to that is Sidious. Arguably vitiate, but he kind of shifted out of being a sith into being a weird dark side force entity.
I do agree with the conclusion, just think they're not the best examples.
@@realname8362 Sion is at least one hundred of years old. It's stated by a medical examiner that his bones had been broken multiple times. The guy is immortal. The only way someone can kill him is if he decides to let go of the dark side. We beat Sion through words, not the blade.
Nihilus not so much as Kreia stated his power will eventually consume him. In that case it's just a matter of time but as long as he can find Force to absorb, he'll live but he can be killed by a lightsaber and blaster.
I’m really glad to see this game getting the love it deserves
Your video is great as well.
always lovely to see a new vid from you, such an enjoyment to watch!
Absolutely one of the most 'obsidian' games of them all, and I love it. Great video on it, well done.
I always remembered the opening on Peragus being amazingly moody and mysterious - my favorite game opening ever. But replaying it recently, the HK droid’s introduction completely kills the tension by revealing all the answers early … with comedy and sarcasm, no less. Much lamer than I remember. Still, the Republic ship adds some extra intrigue, at least.
It's basically a survival horror segment that doesn't have the balls to actually make the robot zombies dangerous. The mood is there but the design and tech is too crap to make it really work.
Doesn't help that rather than using one of those beam weapon animations, they just dualwield pistols. Christ.
This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for…
excellent video like usual, i remember first playing kotor 1+2 after getting it from a "best of" game compilation and 7 year old me being scared shitless from peragus
My day is always made when Warlockracy uploads.
Nice. Great. Fantastic!
As always.
I heard you mention the MMO in the vid, have you ever been compelled to play through any of the class stories? As limiting as the MMO structure is, I found some of them to be quite good
Such a great Video that thoroughly shows why this was such a beloved and one of a kind game!
Thank you.
I love your work man. Thanks for all you do
I played this game extensively after my son was born. I was at home with him and every time he took a nap, I'd get some game time in. Today's his 20th birthday and he's just as much a Star Wars nerd as me. I was super proud when I came home from work one day and he was playing KOTOR.
Man, this makes me nostalgic, although I have to say I am weirded out seeing the game transition to cutscenes and not immediately crashing and burning.
Excellent vid. Thanks! Loved both KOTOR and KOTOR 2 when I was younger
Thank you for making my waiting time in the airport bearable
Best content on TH-cam