Star Wars: The Old Republic (Beta) Impressions

Sorry for the many typos. I'm sick with a cold, and have been playing an MMO all day. Bad combination.

It'd be hard to properly describe the resounding sigh I managed when it was announced the "sequel" to the Knights of the Old Republic games would be an MMO. I remember thinking, "This is it. The series is finished. They're going to get caught up in making silly, standard MMORPG quests that boil down to Kill Ten Rats or Collect Three Eggs or Flip That Switch. Oh, and BioWare's bringing back their voiced protagonist, just like in Mass Effect and Dragon Age 2. Because, you know, that was my favorite part of those games."

tl;dr - "God dammit!"

So, I casually checked up on it, never really seeing anything that I particularly clicked with. The quests did look standard and did boil down to shutting down three relays, or what have you. And the voice acting never really blew me away. I just never saw anything that justified an MMO over KotOR 3. Regardless, I still signed up for the beta, thinking that I should at least give it a try before I wrote it off completely. Similar thinking went into my purchase of The Old Republic: Revan, which has, indeed, been written off.

As of right now, I've put about ten hours into Star Wars: The Old Republic (in one day, sheesh) and I've just gotten off of the intro world, which put me at about level 12 if I remember correctly. What surprises me right now is that, on the whole, my experience has been largely positive. After all the ranting that I've done and all my talk about how BioWare is pretty much dead to me, I'm sitting here honestly contemplating purchasing this game. In my eyes, there's been a decline in quality output from BioWare, but if this game's any kind of evidence: the BioWare that I loved isn't gone for good; they've just been busy making this game.

Getting Started (Races and Classes):

It's that thrilling intro to any good RPG: making your character. In Star Wars: The Old Republic, you have a respectable list of both classes and races, making it every possible to create the kind of character that you've always wanted to play in a Star Wars campaign. There are eight classes in all, with two from each faction (Sith and Republic) being blaster-oriented, non-Force users, and the other two being Jedi or Sith, with one focusing on Force-based abilities and the other more combat/lightsaber-centric.

The cool thing being that you won't be at a disadvantage picking the class that you want. Picking a smuggler won't make you easy pickings for any Sith that happen by, since, if you play your cards right, you can pretty much take down anybody as anybody... Yeah, that made sense.

Not wanting to instantly go Sith or Jedi, I went with the Human smuggler, not expecting to like it a whole lot. The customization was pretty good, so I was able to end up with a character that resembled me a little bit (at least in the goatee region). The game starts out with the standard opening crawl that's specific to your class and you get introduced to what the main storyline (also class-specific) will end up being. With the smuggler, you essentially receive the biggest kick to the crotch the galaxy can conceive for such a character: you get your damn ship stolen.

Welcome to Ord Mantell:

Both the trooper and smuggler classes both end up on the same planet when they start out, and that planet is Ord Mantell: a place that is beginning to tear itself apart as Separatists clash with the ruling Republic in a brutal civil war. My smuggler, Revanth, was dropping off a shipment of weapons when his ship was taken my a separatist spy. Left for dead, I had to make for the nearest Republic outpost, which acted as my main quest hub for the remainder of my stay.

Basically, getting my weapons shipment stolen effectively pissed off the planet's main crime lord, marking a few of his associates and myself for death if we couldn't come up with a solution to the problem. My main contact, a big man named Viidu, sent me on a few missions of appeasement while the location of my ship and its contents were tracked down.

Most of the quests that I experienced were fairly basic when you got right down to it - but then they weren't. For instance, one quest had me going to investigate a crate of medicine that had been stolen. Soon after, I meet another NPC, a Cathar nurse, who admitted that she had stolen the medicine to distribute it to the Mantellian refugees, specifically the children who sat around her. As if that wasn't enough, then you're given options. Help her retrieve more medicine for the refugees, or threaten one of the kids at gunpoint to force her to surrender what she has.

Awesome.

See, the dialogue options for this game aren't altogether deep; you typically only get three responses for any given conversation. But having any way to respond to a given quest was amazing to me, since if you've played as many MMOs as I have, you've never had that ability before. Not only that, there are sometimes more than one way to finish a quest. Once, I was tasked with breaking a guy out of prison, then on my way out of the outpost, I was stopped by a soldier and asked to kill the guy instead (for reasons that seemed justified). So now, an MMO is toying with you, asking that endlessly-intriguing question: Do the ends justify the means?

Or another question: Which one of these refugees, do you wager, will make it through the minefield without dying?

Yeah, that happened. You get to bet on whether or not starving refugees can make it through a minefield without exploding - thus earning the food and water rations they so desperately want.

Awesome.

The game, so far, is simply rife with hundreds of little decisions, ranging from minor to major. Your character never talks out of turn or carries on the conversation without your input, and sometimes you're even given the option to simply react to certain things. I don't want to spoil too much, but there's a bit concerning an encrypted instruction manual that had me cracking up.

Is it as immersive as, say, Dragon Age: Origins or Fallout: New Vegas? Not really. The paraphrasing system drives me insane sometimes - and it's not like Mass Effect where if something like THIS happens, you can just reload the game. There's no reloading an MMO. I dearly hope there's an option to see how your character is going to respond (i.e. -Deus Ex: Human Revolution) implemented in the future.

Still, I think I've made more decisions, no matter how small, than are available in all of Mass Effect, and I've just gotten off of the tutorial level. The game finds ways to keep you involved.

The Smuggler's Guide to Combat:

The first time I kicked a guy in the crotch, I laughed out loud. World of Warcraft did a really good job of making sure each class had their own unique play style, and I'm really glad The Old Republic has made that attempt, as well. As a smuggler, I can really play like a smuggler. Cheap shots, taking cover, tossing grenades, charged blaster shots, causing internal damage. Giving a smuggler these abilities makes sense to me.

The cover system is your friend with this class, since some of your abilities rely on it. Initially, I couldn't make heads or tails of how to work it, but trial and error eventually helped me realize that it's pretty fluid. Ironically, it actually works better than in Mass Effect, since you can take cover behind a lot of things, not just conveniently-placed chest-high walls. It feels more real in that sense, because sometimes cover won't be that obvious.

So I'm having a blast playing as a smuggler. I've been in a party composed entirely of Jedi, and I didn't feel helpless or useless in comparison. In fact, I gave some of them a run for their money, and bailed them out a few times when they got a little ahead of themselves.

I stop laying down covering fire for a few seconds, and suddenly everyone's getting delusions of grandeur. Heh.

Knight's First Flashpoint:

There are instanced "dungeons" in The Old Republic, but not in the conventional sense. In your average dungeon, in WoW or RIFT or what-have-you, you run through with your party or raid to kill all of the enemies, defeat all of the bosses, and pick up some XP and sweet, sweet loot along the way.

That basic format remains unchanged for this game, but with the addition of many of those decisions that saturate the rest of the game. Each dungeon, or "flashpoint", has its own story that stems directly from your own, along with a series of developments that you and your party will have to talk your way through.

My first flashpoint was "The Esseles", a Republic transport on its way from Ord Mantell to Coruscant. En route, the transport is attacked by a Sith star-destroyer (or whatever they're called in this Era) and subsequently boarded. Their demand is that we hand over a Twi'lek diplomat, or else. You can make the decision to hand her over willingly, but I'm not sure if it amounts to anything. The other three people in my party were all playing their strictly light side Jedi.

So, we decided to defend the ship instead of handing the diplomat over, which led to a bunch of fighting and story progression. There are a few twists and turns, which I won't spoil, but overall it was a fantastic experience.

When it comes to the cutscenes (and there are many), the entire party is involved. You'll be given your list of responses, but the game rolls to see whose will actually be chosen, so everyone gets a chance to respond to NPCs over the course of the flashpoint without everyone talking at once. This also means that crucial decisions can be decided by the minority. In one part, we were asked to sacrifice one member of the crew in order to save the rest. My Jedi buddies immediately chose the light side option, which was to refuse, while I selected the dark side option, to agree. I won the roll, which meant that part of the story progressed how I wanted.

This gives the flashpoints a sense of unpredictability, since the decision of one player can throw the story in an entirely different direction, giving you different results each time. It also added another facet to what would otherwise be your standard dungeon, since we all began discussing what we should do, how we should react. You can pretty much have a BioWare-style moral confict as a group, which was very, very fun.

That little chat window also offers you a chance to maintain a running commentary with your group throughout the cutscenes, which only added to the fun.

And it really was fun.

To Sum Up:

I'm having a blast with this game, which is really, really not what I was expecting. At all. The lore of the Old Republic Era is constantly making an appearance, both through dialogue and visuals. Unlike Dragon Age 2, the universe isn't experienced through codex entries alone; if you want to visit the Galactic Senate on Coruscant, f**king go there. Tatooine, Alderaan, Nar Shaddaa, Hoth, the ruins of Taris. They're all here! And honestly, I can't wait to see them if what I've seen of Coruscant is any indication of their quality.

What I've seen is a small portion of the game, and arguably the beginning of any game is always the most polished, so I'm not sure how my opinion will swing down the line. But for now, this about sums up my current feelings on The Old Republic:

Awwwww, yeaaaaaah!

Quoth Darth Revan...

I know what you're thinking - once again these chuckleheads are talking about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Talking about it with barely contained tears in their eyes, talking about it like it's their first wife who died tragically and who was also their childhood pet. Talking until either they die from talking about it too much, or else Bioware hires them to write a second sequel.

Every time I write a piece of fanfic, I tell myself, that's it. No more of this, now. I'm 26 years old, and it's time I put all my efforts into writing actual fiction, instead of flash fiction about Jedi knights.

Well, I've given up trusting myself on that one, but with a ny luck, this one will be my last fanfic. If so, I'm glad it's about Revan, and extremely glad it's a collaboration with Anthony Lowe AKA Knightfall 1138. See, it was Knights of the Old Republic that brought me to Bioware, and indeed to Star Wars, and then to fanfiction, and then to writing fanfiction, and to my transatlantic friendship with Knight, and to writing, full stop.

All those things will no doubt continue to be big parts o f my life, but I think it may be time for me to leave KotOR alone, and shut up about it.


Over the past week or so, Knight and I have been writing two short stories (which link up together, much like Voltron), in the 1st person and from the perspectives of (almost) all of KotOR's party members, remembering moments from the game, and giving a 'eulogy' to Revan.

The Summer of Applejacks. Notice how Zaalbar is gleefully preparing to decapitate Mission with a machete in this picture.

Here is Knight's - 'Of the Sacrifice'
And then mine - 'Of the Fall'


They're just little scenes, but we enjoyed writing them quite a bit, maybe because they allowed us to say 'goodbye' to a fantastically good Star Wars character, who we now accept is almost certainly not coming back from 'the unknown regions or something, I think he said he was out of cocoa' (thank you again, Obsidian).

It's about Revan - his adventure or her second fall to the dark side depending on which of the two versions you read. But it's told in the 'voices' of the other crewmembers and really (not so subtly) it's about how much Knight and I cherish that videogame, and miss those characters.

If you miss that game too and happen to read it, I hope you notice some of the little nostalgic details we put in there, and go, 'Oh yeah, I loved that conversation / planet / scene too'.

If not, thanks for reading this, the latest in my series of overly sentimental theses about pop-culture and computer games. One thing that I love about KotOR, and its sequel, is how beloved they are, by so many people. When I was looking for a picture for this article, I found hundreds of drawings of Revan and the rest, some of them slightly disturbing and most of them a bit odd, but all of them showing the same love we're trying to reflect with these stories. When we posted the first chapters, they were swamped and covered by competing KotOR stories within hours. Annoying, but wonderful.

I love that people are still going on about this stuff. You know that Revan will make appearances of some kind in the upcoming MMORPG The Old Republic, as he already has in the adverts for it.

But you won't get anywhere sitting around here, chatting up old men all day! Shoo! We should return our thoughts to the mission, please, you know? I will leave you be. I'm here, if you want something done right! You got it. Whatever HK said. Dwooooo.



Once again, here are the links- Of the Sacrifice, and Of the Fall.

We have two chapters each up so far - there will be about five each eventually, and will finish uploading soon.

Let's get back to what we were doing... (the KotOR love letter essay)

I've been playing my absolute second favourite videogame (after Joust) the last couple of weeks - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I think we may have mentioned the game before.

This may not seem like anything out of the ordinary for me, the man who plans to name his first child 'Darth Revan' regardless of gender, and his second either 'Carth' or 'Carthette' (and I had a goldfish named Trask, we worked opposite shifts; I guess that's why I haven't mentioned him before) but this is interesting because I haven't played this thing in years. The reasons are firstly that the original Xbox game plays very badly on the Xbox360, and secondly... I was really worried that it wouldn't be as good as I remembered.

Knightfall and I really, really love this game, and I enjoy the nostalgic talks about it so much - and I enjoy using it as a baseline for comparison to any other videogame RPG - that I would have been truly sad if it turned out that I'd embellished it. After all, when I played this game I was in a rough place. I was lonely and miserable and got sucked into Bioware's strange 4000-year-old Star Wars world just because I needed some escapism. I wasn't particularly a Star Wars fan at the time (though I liked the movies in a silly, self-aware jokey way) and I'd never played a role-playing game. It was actually the first game I'd picked up since the Nintendo 64... I needed something silly to do to cheer me up, so I got an Xbox and the Star Wars game.

And it totally worked. After the intial day of "what the hell is this turn-based combat" confusion, I played this 40-hour interactive story through over and over, ten or twenty times through. What I loved was how every single time, I found a quest or a line of dialogue that I'd never experienced before. Nowadays we have DLC for that, but in KotOR, there was no need. It was already massive enough. It was all in the details, the sheer quality of the writing and the acting. I remember playing through it again and again, dreaming the story at night and living it all day, and thinking "God-damn... this story is so much better than the Star Wars prequel movies."

------

And, playing it again, thanks to a new laptop...

I was right! I'm very happy to report that it's still the best damn game out there... provided you know the difference between a Rodian and a Duros, anyway. But then, when I picked this thing up, I didn't know much about Star Wars, 3D games or role-playing. But once I had made it through the training area and the first planet... once I had touched down at the Jedi training academy and built a lightsaber (with my choice of colour - I went with yellow because I fancied Bastila)... once I had role-played the process of becoming a Jedi knight with my own lightsaber, robes, Millennium Falcon-looking spaceship and team of fascinating, beautifully-acted sidekicks... I was hooked. For about 7 years.

I remember thinking, "Where are the cool starship and the amazing sidekicks in Phantom Menace? There's... Jar Jar, I guess, and that black guy with the plastic guard outfit... and that shiny ship that Amidala had that time... the HMS ShinyShip I think it was..."

So I'm about halfway through my game now, my first in a fair few years, and once again getting totally caught up in it. Even though I know, almost word for word, I want to know what happens next. I want to influence the tiniest of details in this story, fine-tuning it as only a loving fan can. I want Carth in Jamoh Hogra's black-and-white cowboy armour. I want Mission to cheer up without forcing her to (she's my surrogate daughter, that girl) and I want to crack dumb jokes at Juhani until she snaps and tries to behead me in that wierd... little bathroom place she lives in.
And I absolutely won't get on with my life until I've done those things.

Carth wears the black and white cowboy armour. The protagonist has a random surname and a real-world first name, and that face that looks a bit like a young Barbara Streisand with the blue eyes and the black hair tied in a small ponytail. She has a single yellow lightsaber and brown Jedi Master robes and levels-up in repair and persuade and I LOVE THEM.

-----

What I truly love about this game, more than any Bioware game that's come since (I've played them all to death and somehow I'm always just a touch disappointed) is that the good/evil decisions are... a little something more than that. As Carth, that handsome bastard, said to me last night outside the Ebon Hawk, "I used to think 'The Dark Side' was a fancy way of describing what I see every day. People are cruel and selfish, and cowardly. But I'm starting to think for the Jedi, it's different." That handsome fuck. That sums it up - because the characters are Jedi, the good / evil aspects of this particular story really allow you to create a character - and better, they allow you to make the story into one of temptation. You know, like Anakin Skywalker, only not rubbish. That's Star Wars.

Your guy can be a noble hero, a cartoonish villain, or a bit of a rogue who wears a leather waistcoat and cracks jokes because she's got a real nasty streak and keeps finding herself swinging between massive acts of charity and Vader-choking that jackass in the cantina who keeps insulting her. And near the end (all good/evil RPG's should have this) there is a distinct choice: the game stops and gives you one heroic dialogue choice and one that just says 'Death to the Jedi'.
The game is saying this is it - good or evil, no turning back. Save the galaxy in the last dungeon, or else murder your friends right now and take over the woooorld instead. I loved to craft the character as if s/he were a recovering addict: always wanting to solve her problems by lightsabering people's knees off, and being kept juuust on the right side of things by her endless invasive chats with the various party-members who were all sick of her, and all hesitant for various reasons, to mentor her. You can't do THAT in Mass Effect 2.

I remember landing on Dantooine for the first time and really liking how there was a flock of birds who followed you in. I thought, 'Huh! Birds in Star Wars - awesome!' (I hadn't been paying attention to Naboo in Phantom Menace, but I ask you, why should I?) The birds were there on Kashhyyk, too. That's a really nice touch. When I saw those birds again a week ago, it honestly felt like coming home. I've missed these birds, and I've missed the poorly-animated fictional Space Opera characters onboard this ship. All their superb little nuances.
And I'm looking forward to seeing my favourite, Jolee, again so damn much. He was a better Ben Kenobi than Alec Guinness (or even Professor Frink), if you took the time to keep pestering him.

That's all I can think of, at any rate. Let's return our thoughts to the mission, please. I'm here if you want something done right, you know?

I should go.

Vibroblades and Mirrors

Since Buch isn't gonna do it, I WILL!

Mister Buch recently finished a piece of fanfiction based on the haphazard ending of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. It's a great piece that pretty much gives the characters an ending that I can actually agree with. One that I actually teared up at. *sniff*

Instead of the real ending, where I was so distraught I could have flipped a fucking table!

(ﾉ ಠ益ಠ)ﾉ ┻━┻

Anyway, this was a great story, so I'm going to throw up the link here:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383123/1/Vibroblades_and_Mirrors

Give it a read! Seriously!

Only the Master of Facebook, Darth.

Knightfall and I have just created Darth Malak's personal Facebook fan-page!

Here, the Man Who Would Be Ruler of the Galaxxxeeeeee will keep his many fans, admirers and colour-co-ordinated Sith Apprentices informed on his doings, comings and goings, and his breathy whinings.

It's not exactly a secret that Knightfall and I are big, big fans of masterpiece RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Malak is a big part of that. He's bald, he's got a big, metal jaw, he's evil, he has a red cape. He thinks he can destroy a planet by bombing it from one position. He's awesome.

Hero. Villain. Saviour. Lover of brightly-coloured jumpsuits. He is all things to all men. But, in the end... he is nothinnnnnnnnnng without your support.

If you love old Malak too, why not 'become a fan' (if not an evil disciple of the Sith) and see what he's up to these days. Has he recovered from his humiliating defeat? Does he still have an army of ninjas? Does he still keep long-haired guys in glass tubes? Now's your chance to find out!

We've just now started the page, but be assured:

This is but a taste of the daaaaaaark siiiiiiiiiiide!

Oh Reginald... (Dragon Age and the 'KotOR feeling')

Aside from work, I've done precisely two things over the last three days: read Knightfall's blog posts and obsessively play Bioware's 2009 D&D-style RPG, Dragon Age: Origins.

And I'm absolutely loving the game, quite a bit more than I did the first time I played it. At that time I played through in a grumbling hurry, confused by the lore and plot, being punished horribly by the steep difficulty, and almost losing it after the largely-dodgy endgame (luckily the very end bits are great.) Then Mass Effect 2 came out, and I forgot all about DA:O (It looks like the initials and then a shocked emoticon) until the extremely meh expansion pack was released, and I read the surprisingly great prequel novel.

This past two weeks, I've been playing DA:O again, and this time... I've just been completely absorbed in it. It's been constantly on my mind. I play long into the night, and I wake before my alarm clock, so I can get juuust one more conversation in with Shale, or kill juuuust enough darkspawn to level up, so as I can wear that heavy chainmail that's a slightly lighter colour than the one I'm wearing now. I think because I now understand the plot better, and I'm revelling in how flexible it is - the dialogue options, the plot decisions, the inventory. My character feels like my character, whereas Commander Shepard feels like Bioware's.

This is what I call the 'KotOR feeling'! And it's More than a Feeling. It's... a way of life, or something. What I mean is, this is exactly what I want from a role-playing videogame. I want it to be like Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic, the game which brought me back into games, made me into a Star Wars fan, thrilled me for a year and even influenced my writing. It brought me into fanfiction, and thus into renewed writing. I know Knightfall has a similar story. He and I truly revere KotOR, and with good reason. The plot was incredible, the voice acting was a cut above (at the time). This is what I would call a true role-playing experience. You felt like you were that Jedi apprentice. For the week and a half it took to play through, the Ebon Hawk was your home, Jolee Bindo was your mentor, Mission Vao was your respnsibility and Lord Malak was most displeased to learn you had escaped Taris alive. Through its tight, excellent and immersive story, it sucked you in and forced you to abandon every other part of your life until you were done.

I remember the first time I beat that game... It was my first RPG unless you count Zelda. At the first I had no idea what I was supposed to do or why clicking people initiated lengthy, casual conversations about seemingly trivial things. After a couple of days I was hooked, and a week later I was astounded. I remember excitedly telling my brother about this amazing new game: 'I just finished it - I saved the Republic, fell in love with my Jedi teacher, resisted the dark side, conVERTed the girl from the dark side, and even convinced the Sith Lord that I was right and he was wrong - right before killing him with my YELLOW lightsaber! And holy crap... there's this twist... you've got to play this!!' And what's great is that all those things I mentioned are optional. None of those are set as part of the plot. I chose to persue those goals, and when they came together into a perfect Star Wars story, it blew me away. Oh, and the 'evil' decisions I made a few weeks later were also incredible.

At the very end, when the classic John Williams theme music kicked in and the credits rolled over the story's climax (and a teasing hint at a sequel) I was so excited I pumped my fist into the air like a fool. I couldn't help it! I beleive it's called the 'Manly Arm Pump' expression, but it didn't look so manly then. The game occupied me for the best part of a year: I had KotOR weeks and non KotOR weeks. I dreamed I was playing the game, I read fanfiction and heard the game's plot in every song on the radio. And every time I got to the end, I involuntarily did the arm pump, reviewing the choices I'd made, the character I felt I'd co-created and the ending s/he had created. It was like being in love! But with a videogame about Jedi Knights. I know this blog doesn't exactly make me sound mature.

When I reached the end of KotOR 2 (the somewhat disappointing, rushed sequel by Obsidian Entertainment) I did not do the arm pump. I did it for Jade Empire several times, and Mass Effect once or twice, but that game wasn't so immersive. I loved Jade Empire, KotOR 2, Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 (and also Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion), but never became so obsessed as the first time.

I also loved Fable 2, when I played it through twice more than a year ago. Like Knightfall, I was amused but not thrilled by the first Fable. But number 2 was a triumph. It's a fun, action-RPG set in Dickensian England, with guns, goblins who wear top hats, Julia Swahala, Zoe Wannamaker, Shepard Book and Stephen Fry... those Scottish gargoyles... a cockney hero... and in general, a great deal of loving passion and a magnificent sense of humour. I don't really care for the silent hero, the button-mashing and the halo that forms around my 'good' character's head, and the plot is generally very shallow and silly (but much better than you'd expect). But that's deliberate, and that's fine. It's an excellent game, and a perfect example of what a sequel should be: it's like Fable 1, but with all it's major faults removed apologetically (and even joked about in-game), and great, new innovative features added.

And now... I come to the point of this post. Knightfall said something in his Fable 2 review on Friday, which chilled my blood.

"That's the sin that BioWare keeps committing, but shouldn't. Sure, they rectified this in Mass Effect 2, FINALLY giving you the ability to keep playing after the main storyline is done, but there's nothing to that galaxy. There's nothing to do outside of the quests. I can't get a job, because I'm already the effing savior of the universe. I can't own a house, because I got captain's quarters and, you know, your life is your job. That's the one thing that I'd take to BioWare on a flag or something: if we're gonna save the galaxy, give us a reason to save it besides blue women."

Whoooooah there, Billy.

Bioware, if you're reading, ignore him. Good, solid endings are not a sin. The tangible, beautifully-acted love of a blue woman is a better reason to save the galaxy than ownership of a house in which there is a nameless woman who says 'Welcome home, darling' when you walk in.

What I'm trying to say here (and what this article was supposed to be about) is: I HATE carrying on the game after the end. I really like endings - I think they're the best part of almsot any story - the bit where everything ties together, and everything is resolved. The author's points are driven home, the characters demonstrate how they've changed, the world is changed for good. So why would you want it to... carry on for a bit after that? It's like The Return of the King! It should have ended long before they returned to the Shire and drove-out Sharkey!

I like my Bioware RPGs (as opposed to Lionhead or Obsidian) because they have solid, well-crafted stories. The endings (although lately they are suffering... ME2...) are powerful and contain complete 'closure'. In the last moment, I always think about (and very occasionally do) the Manly Arm Pump - because I know the epic story is finally over and I'm looking back. In the run up to the end - when I have my final conversations with the party-members or take one last stroll around the places I've been - there is a wonderful bittersweet feeling. 'This character will never talk to Kaidan again' ... 'That's the last time I'll fight alongside Canderous; I wonder what he'll do now the war is over' ... 'I'll spend all my remaining money on the special armour now, and equip Duncan's swords for the final battle.'

I don't like it when the story ends... but you don't. Rather than ending on a bang, the character ends with a whimper. He ends when you get bored of side-quests. I hate seeing the world AFTER the cataclysmic events of the ending... and seeing it's just the same.

That said, I played Fable 2 for a while after its end. Not having my dog was indeed heartbreaking. God damn, I love that dog. Bravo, Lionhead. And it was nice to wander about, aquiring and collecting things for fun. But I wish this could all have happenned as part of the story proper.

And as for Mass Effect 2... you win, you fly around... nothing happens... you fly around more. You go to some place and fight some mechs, you get credits. You go back. No-one talks to you.

Story-based games should end when the story ends. Bioware made me pump my arm into the air every time I beat KotOR and Jade Empire! It was a rush.

Dragon Age is giving me something very close to the KotOR feeling as I play it now. I've been playing for 54 hours, which is a record. It's an excellent game, (if one with a complex plot and too much backstory required.)
I just played through this one scene where one of the characters (my elven PC's love interest at that) randomly sings a goddamn beautiful ancient elven song - just before the endgame kicks in - and the camera shows us reactions from the hero and the other members of my party. The song reflects the quest we just finished, and some of the greater themes of the plot. And it tied itself into my own backstory and character seamlessly. Above and beyond the call of duty, Bioware. More songs please.
I've shaped my character and her story arcs, making my Grey Warden and Alistair mirror Loghain and King Maric in their pasts and relationships with each other and their party. I've grown immensely fond of talking to my followers and getting their pasts out of them, earning their favour and loyalty through carefully chosen questions and gifts. I'm going to be genuinely sad when I find out which one of the two lead heroes will die this time, and imagining what happens to the other one.

Leave that feeling in. I like endings.

Her name was Naresha.

When Knights of the Old Republic came to an end, and the redeemed Jedi Knight Revan stood before a cheering crowd of victorious Republic soldiers, I couldn't fathom what could possibly come next. The Star Forge had been destroyed, Darth Malak's reign had come to an end, and Revan and Bastila now had an entire future to look forward to. Bioware's epic tale had come to a gripping conclusion.

But I never would have guessed that it would end there.

I finished the game over four years ago, and for months afterward, I scoured the internets for any hint or rumor of a true sequel to KotOR (that incident with Obsidian Entertainment doesn't, doesn't count). Once a week, I would look over the biggest fan/mod page available to hear what was going on with Bioware and why they weren't making this thing!

Eventually, I would give up on any prospect of seeing the continuation of Revan's story. It was a slow death for me.

To keep the memories alive, I started working on a KotOR fanfic called Revan's Shadow, the story for which I had quietly been working on ever since I first finished the game. About one year and 90,000 words later, I'm fast approaching the publication of the last chapter. Thinking it might be fun to throw around a bunch of little references, I start looking over the Knights of the Old Republic page on Wookieepedia. And, to my surprise, there's an actual entry for KotOR 3.

"No way," says I, and immediately click on the link. What I find is information yanked from a recently published book on LucasArts called Rogue Leaders, and what I read absolutely breaks my heart.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 is a canceled video game in the Knights of the Old Republic series and is a follow up to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. According to designer John Stafford, "we got quite a bit of traction... we wrote a story, designed most of the environments/worlds, and many of the quests, characters, and items." However, when the game was close to starting development, LucasArts hit a difficult period in the company's history which led to the project being canceled.

I was devastated. Here, after four years of waiting, I was finally being told that not only had a sequel been in production, but that it had been CANCELLED as well. And they were basically saying, "Hey, we totally got everything ready and were THIIIIS close to making that game but...man...you know...shit happened." It was a terrible letdown. I can still imagine all that the game could have been. All that it could have accomplished and I hang my head in disappointment.

This should have been the game that we got instead of this MMO that Bioware is set to make a bunch of internet-money on. Maybe someday. If Sysyphus' punishment is to always push a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down when it reaches the top, then my eternal punishment will be to forever cleave to a small fragment of hope that we'll see Revan's story continued in some way.

And hopefully not in shitty comic form again.

Enjoy the picture I've posted above, because it is all that remains of the game that could have been Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3.

/cries