Knights of the Old Republic 2 Review

Posted By Micah C. about 2 years, 4 months ago

Knights of the Old Republic 2 Review

The best way that I could describe Obsidian Entertainment is an RPG brain trust. The minds behind games like Fallout and Planescape: Torment all banded together to create the development house, so it goes without saying that Obsidian has a lot of talent under their roof. However, what happens when this fledgling developer is asked to follow up what could easily be considered the best RPG of the last console generation? This is the situation that Obsidian found themselves in with Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic 2. So, how well did Avellone and company do with the follow up to Revan’s storyline? Is it worth backtracking to experience this game, or is it just a minor disturbance in The Force?

The story of KOTOR 2 takes place five years after the end of the Jedi Civil War. You are an exiled Jedi, who has awoken in a mining facility called Peragus. You can’t remember how you got there, and your only help out of the place is a decrepit old Jedi named Kreia, and a scoundrel named Atton Rand. From there, you have to unravel the mystery of what kind of Sith nightmare is hounding you from one corner of the galaxy to another, and how it is that they’re exterminating the remnants of the Jedi Order. From here on in, your goal is to find the hidden Jedi, and help to rebuild what was lost during the war between Revan and Malak.

Since I’m a person who doesn’t like to spoil anything, I can’t really give any major plot details for this game. What I will say is that Chris Avellone took Star Wars and steered it down a very, very dark path. The types of stories that most people who know of the franchise are used to are grandiose, interstellar war stories with tons of neat characters. The Sith Lords is a much darker, more personal story. Rather than being about the fate of the galaxy in some massive space battle, the storyline is focused on personal wars, and dealing with a dark history. For better or worse, the entire plot of KOTOR 2 has a large shadow over it, cast by Revan and his actions in the last game. It’s a very interesting shift from the original, and is done very, very well.

The storyline takes the player to some dark places in the Star Wars universe.

From a presentation standpoint, not much has really changed since the original game. There are a few minor design changes, however. One difference that was warranted was the design of certain items, such as the Jedi Robes, and the inclusion of more lightsaber colors. This allows the player to have a few more options, on top of the Jedi robes looking more like their movie counterparts, rather than a mystic version of the SS Totenkompf. However, the sound effects associated with all of the items are still excellent, and very true to the universe that they come from. Despite the fact that the story takes place thousands of years before the films, everything still feels very familiar in comparison to the rest of the universe.

One element of the sound design that helps the storyline to come alive is the tremendous care that was put into the voice acting. Like with the previous game, KOTOR 2 has a stellar voice cast. John Cygan and Kristoffer Tabori return to reprise their roles as Canderous and HK-47 respectively. However, the show is mostly run by the work of Sarah Kestelman (Kreia) and Nicky Katt (Atton Rand), who play the two most vocal NPC’s. As with any game with a deep storyline, though, the voice acting needs to be capable of making each character feel feasible to the player, and each of the voice actors do this very well. To speak to the depth of this game’s cast, seasoned voice actors like Robin Atkin Downes and Phil LaMarr are cast as minor roles. This was a game highly devoted to making everything seem alive and breathing, and it pulls everything off well.

The soundtrack is another element of this game that was well done, and well applied on top of it. Now, the composer of the game isn’t really someone who I would define as a special talent. His name is Mark Griskey, and most of his career has been spent doing the soundtracks to Star Wars games. However, KOTOR 2 is probably his best work. Griskey does a solid job of taking a pot of John Williams, and adding in a nice helping of Danny Elfman to capture the grandiose nature of Star Wars, but keeping the dark tone that the developers intended. Each scene in the game is properly accented by the music that Griskey has put together. The music is booming when it needs to be, and accents the moods perfectly whenever a conversation comes about. Its best moments come in the battles with the aforementioned Sith Lords, where it seems the music does a fantastic job of reflecting the dark hearts of your enemies.