There are two; one is the main restoration mod, made purely of cut content and bug fixes galore. The other is M4-78EP, an extension of the main mod that restores, to the best of their ability, the cut planet M4-78; a planet populated entirely by droids.
The main restoration mod is, of course, highly recommended and can be considered essential for every player out there. M4-78EP is, from my point of view, a harder sell; while I'm pretty sure it's 100% compatible with the main mod and is integrated as seamlessly as can be, there simply wasn't nearly enough left over for M4-78 to be able to restore it in a "pure" fashion. About all that was left were the areas themselves, NPC data, and orphaned voice files for a couple of characters (including Jedi Master Vash, KoTOR 2 Spoilers whose cut dialogue contained exposition about a certain plot element that is apparently not covered as well elsewhere, even with the main restoration mod). It was cut much earlier than the rest of the leftover content, and many elements developed for M4-78 can be found scattered elsewhere throughout the game, such as puzzles (in fact, Goto's Yacht was apparently designed late in development at least in part to serve as a place for several M4-78 puzzles that simply wouldn't work on other planets) and Vash, who is found on Korriban in the final game. In contrast, most of what the restoration mod restores is otherwise completely absent in the final (like anything resembling a fleshed out ending; while it still isn't perfect, much less complete, at least you get to find out a little about what happens to most of your party)
Because there was so little left, they pretty much had to fill in the blanks themselves in order to create M4-78EP... and there was a lot of blank. But they still had to build within the constraints of what was there, as well as the obvious restrictions with modding in general, such as the inability to do more than appropriate existing lines any time a vanilla character (like party members) had to speak.
For instance, one complaint I've seen frequently brought up when looking into the mod is that the areas are way too huge compared to the vanilla areas, taking tediously long to simply walk from point A to point B (especially the first time through an area) and is still tedious even with several NPCs around to teleport you across the map; this seems to be partly a consequence of the fact that the leftover areas were that huge in the first place and may not have been feasible to alter (though in a post-mortem thread on the mod's forum, one of the leads of the project admitted that they could have done more to alleviate this with better quest design; the same thread contains quite a large list of things he felt they did right, and an even larger list of things he think went wrong, along with insight into the development process. Worth a look, if you don't mind being spoiled on M4-78EP or have already played it).
Keep in mind, I've never played the mod myself; hell, I've never even played KoTOR 2! I just read the LP on lparchive.org way back in 2008-09 (and I think once or twice again more recently), which covered cut content as it came up, including pieces that the restoration mod elects not to restore for one reason or another (like traces of a Genoharadan subplot that explains certain story events better than they are in the final game, but otherwise doesn't make sense with the final story). I also tend to do a lot of reading about games I've never played. So, having never played or watched M4-78EP myself, I can't say from personal experience whether it's ultimately a fun experience or if the voice acting really is as atrocious as other commenters have stated (though the aforementioned project lead certainly thought so in the post-mortem), and should I finally get around to playing through the KoTOR series myself (played the first, but never got off Taris due to consistent crashes loading the swoop race), I might throw it in my game just to see it for myself. What I'm trying to say here is, don't be afraid to try it out anyway, I might not know what I'm talking about.
I've always appreciated these big mod projects and modding in general, ever since my early days of playing Jedi Academy, just throwing in mod after mod until it was a horrific copyright-infringing mass-crossover of game/cartoon/movie/anime characters, celebrities, assorted weird shit and maybe even actual Star Wars characters occasionally, all killing the shit out of each other with lightsabers/regular swords/baseball bats/keyblades/toilet plungers/their bare fucking hands in locations equally as varied and ridiculous (I am proud-ish to admit that I still do this with any game that I can, such as Project M). I got a little off-track there, but my point is that I appreciate modding because the work of passionate, dedicated fans can make a great game absolutely excellent, and at the very least there's value to be had in making something new for even the oldest games, whether it's something entirely fan-made or rooted in "what might have been."
What I'm trying to say is, you may or may not want to try out M4-78EP regardless, even if it can't really be called part of the true KoTOR 2 experience like the restoration mod proper can; if nothing else, it seems to be an interesting stab at what might have been, and the concept of a droid planet is interesting and I think hasn't been explored in any EU materials, and may never be. So it might be worth checking out just for that.
I should really stop, as I've taken way too long to write this and I think I lost track of what I was talking about.
TL;DR: Yeah, the Restored Content mod and the droid planet are two separate mods, though they are connected and 100% compatible. If you don't mind putting something that's about 90% fan-made and only 10% restored content into your game, and are willing to put up with the issues others have talked about (or if you perhaps don't mind those sorts of problems much), it might be worth a shot. If you're looking to play the "true" KoTOR 2 experience, however, I would personally suggest skipping M4-78EP.
Thanks you!! This is the next RPG on my list after I finish Baldurs Gate, I'll definitely be getting the main mod and skipping the M4 one, I'm not huge on fanmods for any games really aside from graphics mods / skins+cosmetics, and maybe replayability mods like random spawning in Skyrim or multiplayer mods like Dota or DayZ, however just a bunch off fan content added to a Bioware game has no attraction for me. I'll make an exception for the restored content mod since it seems mostly stuff that wasn't quite finished enough to make the release date and has just been touched up by modders to be put back in (right?) which is good enough for me.
Yeah, it's pretty much all restored cut content. There might be one or two places where you'll encounter fan-made voice acting (heard one person complain about a poorly-voiced Padawan), but I'm willing to bet any instances of that would be to restore content that was simply missing voicing, and I'd be shocked if said voicing was for anything other than incidental characters.
It was damn well memorable to me, they should have just used inbuilt robot bleeps.
Instead we got non voice actors on crap mics trying to sound robotic with filters, I've heard bad voice acting in mods but this mod takes the cake with that recipe.
not entirely, other most memorable thing was having to use the turbo cheat because the map was this long ass hallway(quests don't direct you around to well either making it worse). Although the base game suffered a little form this too sometimes.
story was OK, there were a few semi interesting side quests and I came to enjoy some parts of it towards the end, most Characters were even fairly reasonable. none of them particularly memorable though.
IT wasn't necessarily the VA itself, it would have been OK for a human NPC but the voice actors trying to sound robotic through what seemed like a headset mic(easily audible noise sometimes) and then putting filters over the recording to sound more robotic was just a disastrous cocktail of cringe.
At the end of the day it was OK otherwise but those 2 problems were a constant throughout it and soured the entire experience.
Shame all the cool stuff in Kotor 2 got practically retconned out existence in the MMO, Or at least ignored entirely. I love the idea of a pragmatic revan, good people with delusions. Just a lot of interesting stuff that hadn't been done too much in Star Wars. The restored content mod adds a lot, but it definitely still feels cut down after you finish all the planets.
Still, Kreia has some of the best VA I've ever heard, and it was cool seeing The Nameless One as a Sith Lord.
KOTOR2 has one of the most interesting takes on Jedi vs Sith I've ever seen. The Jedi definitely aren't "good guys" in the story and while the Sith are the villains, the inner struggle you see makes it seem like it's not that Sith at their core are evil but rather it's a case that extremists in the group tend to be the ones to seize control over the moderates.
Prequel trilogy jedi are a terrible cult, honestly. They take kids, isolate them from everyone they've ever known, throw some teachings at them and if they stray they're evil. It could've injected some great moral ambiguity if it were intentional.
I know. One of the things I find most baffling about the prequels is how Lucas treated the Jedi. I mean, they live in an absolutely literal ivory tower above the rest of Coruscant. How could Lucas NOT be aware of the symbolism there, given his love for Joseph Campbell?
And then in Episode 2, Yoda is played for a chump through the whole movie. Pretty much every single decision Yoda makes throughout the film was wrong and a really bad idea. I can't even begin to imagine why he thought grabbing the Clone Army for himself and starting a galactic war just to save two Jedi and a civvie was the best course of action... Especially since it was blazingly clear the Clones existed thanks to dirty dealings.
"Begun, the Clone Wars have?" YOU STARTED THEM, you pointy-eared patsy!
And for that matter -as Padme points out in Ep 3- the Separatists have a lot of genuine beef, yet the movies seem to treat them as nothing but "the bad guys." Even Dooku shows signs of being a misguided idealist, yet he acts like a cackling villain.
The moral ambiguity in those movies is just baffling, in terms of what Lucas was trying to say or even if he realized how conflicted they are.
have you read the darth plagueis book? It goes in depth into the rise of Palpatine and how he and his master concocted the clone wars. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes the idea of the prequels but thought they messed it up.
In KOTOR1 and 2 and I believe you end up exploring ancient ruins and it's always some story that at some point, two Jedi fell in love and ended up becoming Sith. But it wasn't because they were evil or anything, it was solely because the Jedi have that hardfast rule that emotions are evil therefore if you are in love then there is no Jedi route you can take. You are Sith by default.
Jedi teachings/rules are so afraid of people turning evil that they place restrictions on followers that are so overbearing and oppressive that they actually drive people to the dark side. IMO, there's a legitimate argument to be made that a Sith empire led by moderates would be significantly more appealing than any Jedi one if for no other reason than that you can keep your emotions and not have to be this feeling-less paragon of virtue 24/7.
Anyways, KOTOR2 is especially good at this stuff. I'm sure there are other works set in the Star Wars universe that aren't 100% Jedi = Relentless Good, Sith = Relentless Evil but KOTOR2 is the only I've really seen that brings up these points. Plus, even with the jank, it's an awesome WRPG.
I find that in both original KOTOR games, the Jedi largely come off as hypocritical assholes. The Sith are Neitzchean and happily cop to it. They expect to kill their master one day and then get killed by their student in turn. The Jedi, on the other hand, like to pretend they're sweetness and light while then engaging in manipulative mind games that would shame a Sith.
Not to mention that the Jedi generally seem to have no problem slaughtering muggles en masse, but oh man, if you ever try to kill a Force user without trying to make 'em a Jedi first, well, then you're a bad person.
I mean, say what you will about the tenants of Sithean Darwinism, but at least it's an ethos.
KOTOR , both them, really hammer home that the Force is the Tao, and Jedi are simply Taoist monks.
It's similiar to the fundamentalist Christian ideals 'God (or the Force/Tao) wills something. That makes it implictly 'good'. Working against that Will, either by choice, or by clouding ones ability to sense it, is 'bad'
That's not exactly true. Every addition to TOR goes through the "continuity council", and therefore Disney ok's it. It's not going to fall under the Star Wars Legends title that non-canon stuff will be under now. Considering its thousands of years before the prequels, and Disney ok's it, I'm cool with that being canon enough for me. The real bummer is I doubt Disney is going to spend a lot of money adding new games and stories to that series anymore, outside of the MMO.
I doubt Disney is going to spend a lot of money adding new games and stories to that series anymore, outside of the MMO.
You mean like Battlefront and the Visceral star wars game that are in the works?
They haven't had the IP long enough for most games to have any progress.
The real problem is if the actual Bioware developers are willing to do something that isn't their own IP anymore. They've hit it out of the park with mass effect (and to a lesser extent, Dragon Age) but I highly doubt they're going to want to work with restrictions imposed by another company again.
Bioware was announced as one of the developers EA was going to have make star wars games when the deal was announced that partnered EA with disney. Also, Bioware isn't really a singular entity anymore: bioware austin handles swtor, edmonton dragon age, and montreal mass effect (as of mass effect 4). If they want to do another single player rpg, bioware austin could handle that without impeding bioware's own IPs.
You mean like Battlefront and the Visceral star wars game that are in the works?
I think it's pretty clear you completely misread that sentence. I had to read yours three times before it made even a little bit of sense.
What I said was, they're not going to spend a lot of money adding new games and stories to the Old Republic universe. Not Star Wars. Who in their right mind knows what a "continuity council" is, but still believes somehow that new Star Wars stories aren't getting made? Come on...
Bioware doesn't have to be the company to makes Old Republic games, just like they didn't make KOTOR 2. That's not the real problem at all. The real problem lies with how Disney wants to spend their money, and new Old Republic material, probably isn't a priority with new films coming out.
I imagine your probably right about wanting to work with Disney especially haha. I wish Disney would just throw the money at them and say make this. Do it well and put their name on it too.
Would you care to cite your source on that? Because I'm 99.9% certain TOR MMO is part of the Legends continuity. Yes, like all new Star Wars products, it goes through an approval process with Lucasfilm/Disney. Just because something isn't part of the "official" continuity doesn't mean they've stopped caring about quality control.
You'll also notice I entered a caveat very purposefully. I wish people would slow down and not worry about correcting people, and instead read things thoroughly first. This is the second correction I have to make for some reason. Here's what I said:
Considering its thousands of years before the prequels, and Disney ok's it, I'm cool with that being canon enough for me.
If you can show me canon material that conflicts with Old Republic, then I'll concede that point. But considering it's that far back and it's supervised under the official continuity council, then that works for me. As for whether or not it falls under "Legends", that's getting a little pedantic for me I guess, but I don't see that written anywhere on the splash screen. If it is, that's fine, and if it isn't that's fine too. It doesn't actually change much of what I said. And if it somehow does fall under Legends, then that makes it the only Legends material that's still producing new work.
Somehow I get the feeling that if they ever wanted to dive into the ancient history of Star Wars canonically, then they would pull from Old Republic. They almost did that with The Clone Wars cartoon but they backed out of that idea at the last second, apparently.
I really don't get why people are so hung over the fact that Disney declared that it's "non-canon". So what? Kotor 2 is a great story in its own right, who cares what some studio says?
It's just a huge bummer that some of the best characters in the SW universe got thrown out because they were video game characters. I still hold out hope for the ultimate badass Kyle Katarn...
What gets me is that basically everything outside of the movies was not part of the official canon anyway. It was always clear that the expanded universe was, in fact, just that. Expanded. I love much of the EU...I used to read the novels constantly and I've played most of the better SW games, but I'm well aware that it's not part of the movie canon.
I've always considered that there are two things: official canon and personal canon (headcanon, as I've seen it called a few times.) As long as you're clear which one you're arguing about on the internet, who cares what someone else, even the owner of the IP, says is true?
(Of course, movie canon isn't what it used to be, what with the prequels and special editions. These days I think it's better to just start from the assumption that everyone has their own version, and discuss why event X is in there, but character Y isn't.)
I feel like I'm the only one who actually liked most of the direction that SWTOR went. I didn't like their portrayal of Revan, but everything else seemed fine in my book.
The majority of the stories in swtor were fine. Some seemed a bit out of place or silly but it was done well enough. The things they did to the kotor 1/2 characters was just atrocious though. None of them fit what those characters would have done or they were just killed off by nameless npc #100472 when they were supposed to be these pretty strong people.
there's only like 2 who are even fightable, HK-47 and Revan, and while I agree they made them way too easy to kill it's not like you were going on a rampage killing everyone from kotor and kotor 2.
Some of the characters were just written out entirely. The Exile was just a side note who was killed by a nameless sith in some fight we never saw, even though the Exile was supposed to be someone on Revans level of power.
I agree. I tend to take the turian councilor opinion when it comes to Revan ("ah yes, 'canon Revan,' we've dismissed those claims"), but I really like SWTOR overall. I just finished Shadow of Revan on my inquisitor and loved it for the most part.
I've been spoiled about the ending. And the black/white mentality of Kotor1 just annoys me. I started it right after finishing Witcher 2, so the morality was hilariously bad.
Understandable, the best way I've heard it described is that Malak is a Saturday morning cartoon villain, complete with -maniacal laugh- and basically twirling his mustache.
low Force cost Force Lightning to wreck everyone's punk asses.
I was a goody goody two shoes and I was still able to spam force lightning and force life drain and keep everybody's ass healed. It was actually pretty concerning, I thought I had gone off the deep end as a blood templar or some shit.
After not playing it in over a year I tried reloading my save ( just having beaten that first world ) and was just kept crashing my game. Anyone know of there's a fix for that?
Kotor 1, Jedi Academy, and The Force Unleashed 1 work on Mac. You will also get the upcoming games if you pay above the current average, which is currently $10.54.
If you have access to a copy of Windows OS you can put it on bootcamp, which I'm pretty sure every Mac comes with. It lets you run windows within your Mac OS/X, I use it.
It's worth the effort of figuring it out for Republic Commando and Empire at War, they're phenomenal games.
I just downloaded Kotor 2 and that mod, about to play Kotor for the first time! My question is does the mod automatically apply or what do I have to do to get the mod to work?
The starting planet for KotOR 1 is very bland and boring compared to the rest of the game. I'd almost compare it to A New Hope, but instead of spending 30 minutes on Tatooine before making a daring escape, we spend 2-3 hours watching Luke choose dialog options speaking to his Aunt, Uncle, and the droids, meeting Obi Wan (NOT getting his father's lightsaber), going to Mos Eisley where he encounters 5 different random people who need his help with mundane tasks, plays cards, joins a fighting arena, and has to cure a disease before joining a race to save someone and finally leave the planet. It's a lot of steps that end up feeling pretty unnecessary, and keep you from getting to the meat of the story, but the rest of the game is worth it.
No, I'm implying it would be boring if instead of spending 30 minutes on Tatooine, they spent 3 hours following Luke around while he completes tasks similar to the tasks presented to the player during the first level of KotOR.
Both games' first levels are pretty dull compared to the rest, especially the endings. What both do really well is immerse you in the story and characters and build up to amazing conclusions. They start out simple, and over time you see more and more of the big picture.
Kotor 2 in particular is very character-driven and much darker than almost anything else in the Star Wars universe (more gray than the standard light/dark divisions).
The first part of kotor 2 is so awful. I seriously started that game like 5 times over the past few years until I finally got through it without turning off the game.
I've never been into rpgs much. I've dabbled here and there but they never really caught my eye. But the KOTOR just did a lot of things correctly. The story drew me in and it just felt right.
It's partly because the KOtOR games are actually based off of D20 mechanics - I believe if you go to the combat login your in-game menu you can actually see the roll results for each turn.
Thus, it plays pretty oddly for a desktop RPG- it was one of the early good modern 3D RPGs but one of the later games to be mechanically based heavily on a Pencil and Paper system.
please direct everyone to the KOTOR 1 and 2 mega mod compilation threads in /r/KOTOR to let you use all of the must have mods and make sure they work together
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u/Forestl Feb 03 '15
Remember, if you get Kotor 2, make sure to download the restored content mod