"I was the only person who left to eventually start concepting on the Dragon Age universe and game," he says. Mass Effect was something we decided we had to do instead of another Star Wars game."Įveryone from the core KOTOR team moved onto Mass Effect except James Ohlen. "In order for a company to be successful and control its own destiny you need to own your own IP, and we didn't own Dungeons & Dragons or Star Wars. "It was a very smart decision on their part," Ohlen says. BioWare bosses Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk called it off. "He was training you to essentially be his enforcer, a Dark Lord to conquer the universe, and he was going to become the main villain." Dun dun duunnn!īut this KOTOR 2 concept never made it any further. That character was going to train you in the first part of the game but then you were going to discover this Yoda figure was actually not the good Yoda you expected. "The initial twist in the first two-page concept we had for Knights of the Old Republic 2 was you were going to be trained by a Yoda-like figure," Ohlen says, "someone from the Yoda race. "It feels like Star Wars, an episodic movie series, needs cliffhangers and twists, so we wanted a twist from the start" Yes, Yoda would have been the perfect tool for deceiving you. These days he's creative director of BioWare Austin, and he's working on Anthem. James Ohlen was also lead designer of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins, and director of Star Wars: The Old Republic, the online game. "We felt like Yoda was the ultimate - everyone trusts Yoda," James Ohlen tells me, lead designer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Not the actual Yoda, because canonically he's untouchable, but someone a bit like him we know so little about Yoda's almost nonexistent species even someone in his likeness would have the same effect: trust. Because once upon a time BioWare was - and it came up with an idea. How do you follow a game like Knights of the Old Republic, the most famous original Star Wars tale a video game has ever told? Forget about Obsidian's sequel for a moment and imagine it was BioWare staring at a piece of paper wondering how to follow a twist like Revan's. There are spoilers ahead for Knights of the Old Republic. This piece was originally published in December 2017. But still, rejoice that we can all finally revisit a Star Wars game that's not ye annual rote shooter, or that has you doing laps in a merchandising-chummy pod racer, or shark-jumpingly wrenching Star Destroyers out of orbit with your mind.With the recent news of a Knights of the Old Republic remake, we thought it'd be fun to return to this look behind the curtains of BioWare's groundbreaking original. Sure, even the best Star Wars games are still a galaxy far, far away from the yarn-spinning chops of a Gene Wolfe or Neal Stephenson. Some fans would say that Knights of the Old Republic II is the best-told Star Wars tale to date. Want invisible headgear? Weapons hidden during cutscenes? The famed mod that professes to restore the features that Obsidian cut from the original? There's also Steam Workshop support-the ability to make and use mods. Like: 37 gameplay achievements, Steam Cloud saves, widescreen, up to 5K resolution support, and the option to use gamepads (PlayStation 3 or 4 and Xbox 360 or One). More than a decade after its release in December 2004, developer Obsidian's science-fantasy roleplaying opus has finally been resuscitated on Mac, PC and Linux by port-monger Aspyr, and the forward path includes a few things I thought we'd never see. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II no longer lives under a rock that's been sitting in the backroom of used game stores that traffic in dusty original Xbox DVDs or forlorn Windows discs nestled inside physical boxes the size of library books.
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