13th September 2004, 1:50 PM
KotOR's areas small? I don't have a problem with them. But then, this opens up a whole huge can of worms... to be precise, KotOR's relationship with Baldur's Gate. As you recall I had a whole list of (to a large part minor) complaints about KotOR and the ways it was inferior to BG. In other ways, it's pretty much the same as BG except from a new perspective. This led to some of things some people might have found more annoyance from that only mildly bugged me. These especially.
-People. Extremely limited selection of NPC character models... just like BG, except they actually vary the bodies sometimes instead of having the same looking people with maybe a different colored shirt five hundred times.
-Zones. Sizewise I'd say that they are quite comparable to BG once you factor in the differing viewpoints... not huge, but not tiny. I'd say that they took BG maps as a strong influence when they decided how large to make the maps. Except maybe they don't get quite as large as some BG maps... but it's pretty hard to judge with the different perspective. It hasn't seemed like a significant difference yet.
-The alignment system. Only speech options and actions related to that affect it -- robbing people blind while they are not home and without getting caught doesn't change alignment, for instance. It was the same in BG. And it's still stupid. :)
In short, I was expecting a game a lot like BG. In ways like those two it was that so I didn't find the 'limitations' as a problem. In others it was lacking so I complained about it. :)
In some other ways it is quite different from BG... see cool stuff like being able to hack into computers and blow up enemies in other rooms or reprogram droids to kill their own people. :)
Oh yeah, and I have definitely found that the best way to play is to mostly ignore your companions unless you have a hard fight that you're losing or something. They don't use special abilities nearly often enough but oh well... with this game design it's just too frusterating to have to control all of them all the time. As I said before I consider this a pretty serious gameplay flaw from the perspective of it being an RPG (and not an action game), but what can you do...
-People. Extremely limited selection of NPC character models... just like BG, except they actually vary the bodies sometimes instead of having the same looking people with maybe a different colored shirt five hundred times.
-Zones. Sizewise I'd say that they are quite comparable to BG once you factor in the differing viewpoints... not huge, but not tiny. I'd say that they took BG maps as a strong influence when they decided how large to make the maps. Except maybe they don't get quite as large as some BG maps... but it's pretty hard to judge with the different perspective. It hasn't seemed like a significant difference yet.
-The alignment system. Only speech options and actions related to that affect it -- robbing people blind while they are not home and without getting caught doesn't change alignment, for instance. It was the same in BG. And it's still stupid. :)
In short, I was expecting a game a lot like BG. In ways like those two it was that so I didn't find the 'limitations' as a problem. In others it was lacking so I complained about it. :)
In some other ways it is quite different from BG... see cool stuff like being able to hack into computers and blow up enemies in other rooms or reprogram droids to kill their own people. :)
Oh yeah, and I have definitely found that the best way to play is to mostly ignore your companions unless you have a hard fight that you're losing or something. They don't use special abilities nearly often enough but oh well... with this game design it's just too frusterating to have to control all of them all the time. As I said before I consider this a pretty serious gameplay flaw from the perspective of it being an RPG (and not an action game), but what can you do...