The Gamer’s Quagmire: 10th Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

Gaming, humor, and insanity in harmony

Every so often you need to fall back onto your favorite games just to get away from the world. After an incredibly long week I decided that it would be a good idea to do nothing but watch movies and play video games all weekend. Movies included such staples The Shawshank Redemption and The Usual Suspects, Final Fantasy VIII, and Knights of the Old Republic. Unfortunately when I had gotten to the latter part of this plan I found that I still had KOTOR out on loan to a friend. As a result, it was time to get the game working on my PC. As it took a lot of effort to get this initiative going, I decided to play both games in the series. This led me into a philosophical discussion- would it be wrong to locate a crack for my game that I had legitimately bought but couldn’t play because I wanted someone else to try it out?

Regrettably with some debate I decided to get around the requirement of the game being in the CD drive in order for me to play it. Some game manufacturers still feel compelled to get around game piracy by forcing the game disc to be in the drive at all times. This is just so stupid it is laughable. Apparently the registration key idea has not caught on yet despite its use over the past decade. Half Life 2 did a good job of limiting piracy. Of course it did not eliminate it but at least it was able to shut down games that used the same registration key more than once.

This isn’t a referendum on licensing, however. The point is what happened during my search for a no CD crack for Knights of the Republic II. To my surprise there were a lot of people that struggled to find one that worked since the most recent update to the game. Eventually I stumbled upon something that made me very glad I never bothered writing a review for this game. In all honesty, after crying for about an hour, which is extraordinarily pathetic considering we are talking about a game, it started me to wonder how often gaming scripts are cut short just so a game can go out at launch on time.

What am I talking about? Those of you that played through The Sith Lords were enamored with it for much on the game and, like myself, wondering how a game this good from a company (Obsidian Entertainment) experienced in making excellent role playing games could fall so hard on its face. One forum thread I found was dealing with people struggling to find a working no CD crack and the unimplemented ending to the game.

I’ll be honest here. My jaw hit the floor upon reading this. As a major fan of both games I was devastated. Both games are still have a strong replay value for me, but the second game’s ending never felt right. Its ending reminded me way too much of the ending from Final Fantasy VII which basically was a quick movie stating that everything was back to normal. In both cases the story abruptly ended and there were several character plotlines that never got resolved. I was becoming infuriated. Sure, not as much as playing the FFXII demo infuriated me, but it was high. Let’s just say it was a very good thing that no breakable objects were in my reach at the time.

After some additional digging I found not only scripts for some endgame story but I also found sound files that were these lines being voice acted. Things started to become a little too clear. Obsidian’s writers had put together story for the ending of the game which handled all of your party dynamics (light/dark side, male/female, character influence, etc). The voice actors recited most of the lines. So what stopped this from going into the game?

If you recall this game was released for the holiday season, and because nobody was able to comment on this after this script was found and distributed online (I’m pretty sure developers at Obsidian are clenching their teeth on this as if they just took a major hit of ecstasy) the most popular rumor is that LucasArts forced the game to come out a little too early which prevented this from entering the game. I’m not even going to bother sending out a link to this simply because only people who have finished the game should look at the script. Right now the angel is out-arguing the devil on my left shoulder quite convincingly.

Rushing games out for the holiday season is not a new practice. Those of you that had an Atari 2600 recall the disaster that was E.T.- a game that developers were rushed to complete in about two months so Atari could capitalize on a big-name license for Christmas. Back with simplistic graphics and limited memory that isn’t nearly as bad as trying to put a game together in two months’ time today, although with some game releases (Driver 3, for example) you have to wonder what limits some companies are throwing down on its game developers.

Perhaps it is an unhealthy thing to do, but I do take offense to games with the Star Wars title not being as polished as I know they could be. The late 1990’s was a dark time for the franchise with all of the extremely bad titles that came out. People, including myself, were becoming justifiably disenchanted with the franchise. Whether you enjoy Star Wars or not is okay, but I believe it is one of those franchises that fans can have control over. Lucas is open about the movies being for the fans and there are plenty of novels and cartoons that are produced by outside writers. In Episode III the main cyborg, General Grievous, was a character adopted by the film studio from the Star Wars cartoon.

Why do I mention all of this? The Star Wars movies paint such a small time frame of the universe that so many different stories can help shape the universe in almost any way the fans see fit (provided, of course, that the fans get a license from LucasArts to publish their work). Knights of the Old Republic showed provided a fantastic new story in the Star Wars universe with several compelling characters and general story arcs. The first KOTOR was a surprise success, and due to the enormity of its success its sequel was seen by the industry as a potential cash cow. And somehow the most important part of a role playing game, how the story comes together at the end, was severely lacking in closure. Its ending was very reminiscent of the neat little bow that was tied onto Matrix Revolutions (thankfully there was a general concept of a story in KOTOR II).

Please understand, I still think that the Sith Lords is still a very enjoyable game. However, it greatly angers me because it could have been much better than the first game if Obsidian was given just a little more time to finish it. After reading though the script and general discussion it feels like one or two more weeks at most would have been all that was needed to make this game the masterpiece that it could have been. How long could character animation possible take? I wasn’t at the point where Obsidian offended me so much so that I wouldn’t look at any more of their games. Finding the meat of the ending they wanted for the game made me realize how good they are at writing stories.

I am not looking to pin blame on anyone here, but I will say that LucasArts needs to pay more attention to its gaming franchise. Fans of Star Wars already went through a tumultuous time before with a slew of bad games in the late 1990’s that were just plain garbage. Battlefront and Knights of the Old Republic both helped the popularity of the Star Wars license dramatically, and when games are rushed to meet holiday seasons it can only hurt the franchise. It is nice to have games out for the Christmas season (which now seems to start in mid-October for some reason) but when a game can deliver so much more with a small delay it is always worth being patient. Always.

Sure, once the game get shipped to the gaming stores the sale has already been made, but it always looks bad when games find their way back to the used games bin or gamers simply become frustrated with a game so much so that it takes major convincing to come back. Just ask anyone who was punched in the face by the Devil May Cry 2 disaster. No amount of good reviews can get me to play the third installment. I am sure that there are many gamers who will feel that way if KOTOR 3 ever becomes reality (please say it will!). What’s disturbing is that there may be enough sour taste in people’s mouths to prevent that from ever happening.

Then again there are about 260 installments of Street Fighter so who knows.

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