On Finishing KOTOR2
In the Home Stretch is a development diary of sorts on GameSpy, as Obsidian producer Chris Parker writes about the final days of debugging and testing Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords for the PC.
-
Bob422
replyGamespy Review:
"The first: bugs. There a lot of them; most are just annoying, but a few are deadly. [...] Any one of these might be forgivable (except the crashes, of course), but all of them together just mark a title that desperately needed another few weeks (or months) of polish."
"Worse than the bugs, however, and far more inexplicable, is the truly god-awful A.I. possessed by the characters. I can't count the number of times my companions got in my way while I was trying to maneuver through a tight spot. During combat, I'd be getting pummeled because one of my characters decided not to bother getting involved in the fight and was two rooms away staring at the wall. [...] I never had the problems with movement and combat A.I. in the first KotOR that I had with this one. It's the same engine, and it reuses a lot of the same material. How could this have gotten screwed up?
"Every interior location seems to be the same collection of sterile, boring, corridors and rooms without any apparent indication that these are places people actually live. There's a distinct lack of signage, artwork, or any of the ancillary details that could bring the world to life. [...] There are also far too many examples of raw, seemingly unfinished artwork in the game."
"The sound is also somewhat of a mixed bag. The music, much of it ->re-used<- from the first game, is excellent."
So the questions I have are: Why are there serious bugs in the PC version when the X-Box release was already rushed and buggy to begin with? Why is the A.I. worse than it was a year ago? Why did nobody hire a competent art staff when it was obvious 6 months ago that this game didn't look so hot (this game, in fact, manages to look worse than the original, one of the few sequels ever to do so, especially with regards to the o so important environments.) Why are most almost all of the music tracks reused from the original game? Hello?
If it wasn't for the story this game would have been become known as a colossal disappointment. Especially amusing is this quote from the Home Stretch article: "but the important part is that the vast majority of folks are enjoying it, and we've even been nominated for several awards." Enjoying it regardless of its COUNTLESS shortcomings because of the story and characters? Yes. Worthy of an award for anything other than best story? NO NO NO.
-
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! You have made me extremely unhappy.
-
Don't be an ass, man. "Why did nobody hire a competent art staff?". They were given something like 9-12 months to turn the project around. That's not a reasonable amount of time in which to make an AAA title. Don't rag on the quality of the art team if they weren't given enough time to make it decent, the whole game smacks of being rushed to get something out for Christmas.
It's easy to forget that games are a business, and this game was about getting something out for the Q4 business and getting a good return on investment - hiring more artists, programmers, etc can only reduce the return that you get. It's not Obsidian's fault, it's choices consciously made by LucasArts.
