I thought about how much I enjoyed KOTOR 1 and 2, and think the story and presentation is just far superior to any class story on the imperial side, I haven't done the Republic yet. What makes it so much better? Your companions. They actually have an impact on your story. If you haven't played either game, then this a SPOILER. Having to deal with spoiled brat Bastila and slowly breaking her down with your witty humor. Having to rescue her on the Leviathan and decide to let her get tortured and having her get upset that you did nothing to end her pain. Bastila turning to the dark side and you professing your love to her, or keeping her down the dark path. Telling Carth you're going to kill him because he knows you're Revan and he run's for his life. Killing his son just to see how upset he gets so you can laugh about it (there's actually many occasions he gets upset with you). Even the characters Mission (now Vette in TOR) and Zaalbar were very interesting and you can trick Zaalbar into killing her and he then wants revenge! There's many more great moments that I won't get into, but what makes this so meaningful is that these are characters you've learned about and have grown to either like or dislike on your journey. All this is very well done and is definitely what gave it so many awards as game of the year and is an all time classic. This type of presentation is non existent in TOR.

 

I also loved how the first and the second game had party banter. Now obviously you can't have that in TOR with just one companion, but a way should of been found to incorporate this as it adds a lot to the immersion. You could of done it at your ship, instead of having it as a boring lifeless place to be and just listening to the constant humming of your ship. How about having Vette and Jaesa talking about me when I get on the ship? Or even having Pierce getting in a fight with Quinn because he doesn't like him? I mean there's really creative ways to really spice up the game.

 

So in KOTOR 1 and 2, you actually have characters with personality. They are brilliantly intertwined into the story. You don't have that in TOR. The second game's story is not as good the first, but is still great and it was done by Obsidian. In KOTOR 2 the companion interaction was there like in the first one, and you could influence their alignment by what you told them and how you behaved in general, and they would even comment on this or get upset. I really loved how Atton looked when he turned to the dark side and talked about how he felt violent urges now because of you. In both the first and second game there is a lot of empathy for your characters and sometimes would even make you mad if you didn't agree with them. This type of emotional appeal again non existent in TOR.

 

Now TOR did keep affection like in KOTOR 2, but it wasn't done right. Now you can just buy dozens of gifts just so your companion talks to you whereas before you had to actually make sure you said the right thing so you can advance the plot line, you couldn't buy any gifts. Also again characters played a major role in your story line and some could even be trained as Jedi. What was very rewarding was that you spent a lot of time to gain your companions' trust to learn that Hanmaiden's real name is Brianna. Or how Visas passionately talks about how her home planet and how it was consumed by a dark lord's hunger, and how she will remain loyal to you no matter what. The lines spoken are really deep and meaningful. It was also very rewarding to confess your love for either one that you picked near the end of the story. Not like in TOR where you learn a little about their past and now suddenly they love you and wanna get married, it's pretty weak and has no impact on your class story. Nowhere near the caliber of built suspense like the first 2 games.

 

In TOR there's so much potential. I'll give you an example of much needed improvement. SPOILER. In the SW class story you can bring Quinn in front of your crew after his betrayal to you. Your crew tells you what you should do and you can force choke him to death or let him live. Now what I don't understand is why is it not talked about afterwards. No meaningful conversations with anyone about their thoughts or even Quinn himself (if you let him live). Quinn and Baras never even confront each other and life presses on. It's like it never even happened and has no bearing at all to the rest of the story. SPOILER. Here's a better concept. How about having Quinn being really apologetic and feeling really bad about what he did, professing how he will never forgive himself. You then eventually forgive him and then your next holocall with Baras he force chokes him to death and now you have a moment where you can add another emotional element. He is now grasping for life in your arms, whispering his last dieing words of what an honor it was to serve. Now I don't mean to get too sentimental, just trying to make a point. There's no emotional ties to this game. You don't really care what they have to say because in the end, it doesn't even make a difference.

 

Now why didn't the development team at Bioware take a look at the first two games, and see how they can take all the positive elements to make really great stories in TOR and even make improvements. Isn't that what a sequel is? I've heard so much bragging from Bioware how TOR is KOTOR 3-9 etc, but I want quality over quantity. The reason they said this is because of the the amount of class stories in the game. I would hardly call each class story a sequel... and really they don't even compare to the first or even second game. For the amount of reassuring Bioware makes that story is the most important factor in their game, I would expect to see and feel something more engaging.

 

Here's what AllisonBerryman had to say just yesterday.

I talked to Principal Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert about the concern being expressed in this thread that story will not be important in our future Game Updates. He wanted to reassure everyone that story will continue to be an important part of Star Wars: The Old Republic in any efforts that we make going forward. Bioware is built upon making the best story-based gameplay we possibly can, and that philosohpy has always ben a cornerstone of SWTOR's design - that won't be changing. We'll have more details as we're able to share them.

 

Best story-based gameplay we possibly can??? All all I have to say is fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Edited September 14, 2012 by Devious_

While I have yet to finish any of the class stories thus far I definitely agree with you from what I have seen. I actually enjoy a lot of the personalities that come aboard your ship, but they just seem half developed. They could do so much more with it, and perhaps they will once they game gets more updates and content. As for now it just feels like it could be on par with Biowares greatest work. I'm a happy subscriber and am pleased I get 8 KOTOR/Mass effect caliber main quests but still. I played through the first two KOTOR games 7 or 8 times just to try things differently. I beat Mass Effect 4-5 times, and Mass Effect 2 a few times. Reason is because the story and characters were so compelling that it made me want to see what would happen had I done something a different way. As for this game, I'll be shocked if I play through any class more then once. Maybe if I really wanted to roll as the opposite spec. So far I got a 47 BH that I purposely haven't finished because I am waiting on lv cap, a 30 inquisitor and a 28 knight. Every other class I have completed their first planet. And out of all of this, the only character I really felt a ME/KOTOR like connection to is Mako. I like others too, like Gault and Kira for example. But just because I like a character and find them interesting doesn't mean I don't strongly wish they were fully fleshed out like in previous Bioware masterpieces. Its very disappointing when you like someone and have amazing voice acting, and yet you don't get to properly influence them. The main thing I loved about Obsidian's KOTOR was the influence system and how it effected your crew mates morality and decisions. I loved how if you didn't build a relationship with the person in Mass Effect 2, they would probably end up dying in the end. That stuff is awesome. Sure kids can whine that they messed up and their tank is dead... But if you don't have strong choice and feelings of regret or future curiosity, why would you play that story through again?

 

Anyway I think Bioware has taken a lot of ridiculously unfair flack for this game overall. I really like it, but I feel EA probably pushed to rush it. I have a hard time believing this is best Bioware could have done with characters and overall single player features. I bought this game solely because I wanted KOTOR 3 and this was the closest I was going to get. I never was big on MMO's. For me the flash points, heroics, pvp etc was an added bonus. I have grown to like those things to my surprise! However, that being said, do I honestly see myself sticking around forever once I've played through the 8 classes? I guess only time will tell. One thing I do know is that I still think Bioware should have finished KOTOR properly. If anything the MMO should have came after they finished the masterpiece they started. Obsidian may have failed to complete the second installment, but I am confident that when I will play through the finished content and do another run through I will thoroughly enjoy it. All the MMO enjoyment I get out of this will still fail in comparison to how badly we deserved KOTOR 3. That is all

I think KotOR II: TSL is the best of all three, by a very large margin, BiOWare has a tendency for making characters way too 'chosen one-ish' for me, as if we don't already have one in the saga and tend to focus very little on anything else.

 

It's why I feel a lot of people prefer the non-force user classes, even though I don't.

I don't know if I'd say KOTOR II TSL is the best. For the record I haven't played through the latest finished installment, but I did have Team Gizka's restoration (I believe the incomplete version of this) about a year or so ago that I played through. For the record I love the second game, but the reason I don't think its the best is based on the corner they wrote themselves into. I think the main reason this MMO has celebrated the first game over the second is not because the game was made by Obsidian, but because a) It would have been much more difficult to build an MMO out of The Old Republic with some of the second games issues and b) Because The Revan had a much bigger impact on this universe at the time and is the true main character of The Old Republic. Sure you could argue the whole unoriginality of being "the chosen one", but to say there was any bigger moment in a SW game, or even in Star Wars as a whole that rivaled The Empires Strikes Back cliffhanger other then Malak revealing YOU are Revan is a joke. If you were to make a new Star Wars trilogy, you could easily have an exciting masterpiece using the KOTOR 1 saga. Could you make movies out of KOTOR 2? No. I loved the influence system to death, the added features to combat, the improved upgrade system, random item drops, and all the amazing extras KOTOR 2 brought to the table. One of my favorite missions of all time is the one you do on Dxun with your companions while your character is on Onderon. But story wise, connection wise, KOTOR prevails. As far as SW game stories go that will never be topped. For its time, the gameplay and RPG cutscenes were jaw dropping to me. The Exile and her companions never quite made me feel that connected even though it was a great successor.

But they did base this entire game on the underlining story of The Sith Lords, where did Revan go and what is out there? then that joke of a novel happened, which made the Exile a plot device and despite ignoring pretty much all the events in KotOR II, they still used it's story for this game, the Sith Empire returned and is down the Republic's throat, which Kreia and multiple other people suggested.

 

And as much praise as Revan gets, the galaxy would be long dead by now without the Exile.

The novel did an alright job of tying things up, but I do agree The Exile was short changed. They completely belittled her powers and abilities, and although The Exile may not have been the inspiration or quite as powerful as Revan... whatever happened to the wound she made in the force? Had she realized the severity of what was happening in the lost regions of space I have a strong feeling the exile would have been willing to sever all of the force if it meant destroying the emperor... I guess we will never know. Just like we will never know Kreia's true master plan if she had one. Part of the reason KOTOR 2 isn't my favorite because nothing ever got resolved, lots of ideas and concepts never made sense in the overall story, restored content aside it never really got fleshed out. Obsidian really needed another year minimum to have made the game work to the full extent.

The novel did an alright job of tying things up, but I do agree The Exile was short changed. They completely belittled her powers and abilities, and although The Exile may not have been the inspiration or quite as powerful as Revan... whatever happened to the wound she made in the force? Had she realized the severity of what was happening in the lost regions of space I have a strong feeling the exile would have been willing to sever all of the force if it meant destroying the emperor... I guess we will never know. Just like we will never know Kreia's true master plan if she had one. Part of the reason KOTOR 2 isn't my favorite because nothing ever got resolved, lots of ideas and concepts never made sense in the overall story, restored content aside it never really got fleshed out. Obsidian really needed another year minimum to have made the game work to the full extent.

 

Bypassing everything else, I should point out that Obsidian didn't even get a year to make the game in the first place, they had about 9 months before LucaArts forced them into releasing it for Xmas, then when they asked to patch the game and fix it, they were denied, when they asked to make a third KotOR game, they were denied again, in favour of this MMO.

I agree with everything the OP said. I really wish they would spend more time integrating the companion characters into the story, especially the romanceable ones. Bastila's story was incredible, and I haven't seen anything in a subsequent Bioware game that comes close (or in any other game for that matter). She was sent to defeat you, but ended up saving your life and keeping you alive through the force, and this is all revealed to you with that wonderful twist near the end of the game. I'm not saying this game doesn't have some compelling storylines, because it does, but nothing on the level of the companion stories and relationships from KotOR.

The novel did an alright job of tying things up, but I do agree The Exile was short changed. They completely belittled her powers and abilities, and although The Exile may not have been the inspiration or quite as powerful as Revan... whatever happened to the wound she made in the force? Had she realized the severity of what was happening in the lost regions of space I have a strong feeling the exile would have been willing to sever all of the force if it meant destroying the emperor... I guess we will never know. Just like we will never know Kreia's true master plan if she had one. Part of the reason KOTOR 2 isn't my favorite because nothing ever got resolved, lots of ideas and concepts never made sense in the overall story, restored content aside it never really got fleshed out. Obsidian really needed another year minimum to have made the game work to the full extent.

 

Canon Exile was LS which means she was "healed" by returning to Malchor V and finally coming to terms with the events of the final battle of the Mandalorian Wars. DS Exile is a little bit interesting in the context of TOR. Keria's ultimate plan was initially for Nihilus to succeed at what is basically The Emperor's goal, but after Nihilus betrayed her she wanted wanted The Exile to be the one to devour the galaxy. Her goal was the Death of The Force, which meant the death of all living things.

Canon Exile was LS which means she was "healed" by returning to Malchor V and finally coming to terms with the events of the final battle of the Mandalorian Wars. DS Exile is a little bit interesting in the context of TOR. Keria's ultimate plan was initially for Nihilus to succeed at what is basically The Emperor's goal, but after Nihilus betrayed her she wanted wanted The Exile to be the one to devour the galaxy. Her goal was the Death of The Force, which meant the death of all living things.

 

She didn't want the death of all living things, she says as much herself, she wants to kill the force and remove it's control from the galaxy, little did she know that is also, as you stated would mean the death of everything.

I'm going to argue that some of the characters impact the story. (Most companion characters play a role in the class story of the planet you find them on, you do get to break Jaesa or keep her good, etc.) But I do really, really miss a lot of the companion story arcs and interaction. (I so wish that you could have two companions out at a time and that they'd talk.)

 

I think a lot of it is resources, and I do understand that there are a lot of challenges in getting everything to sync up for an MMO.

 

Alternately, there's some stuff I like better than in the KOTOR games. For instance, I love that I don't have to be a Jedi or a Sith. I can be an every day Joe. Esp. stories like smuggler, agent, bounty hunter, and trooper are really missing from the Star Wars gaming universe. (Some of the books admittedly cover Mandalorians, troopers, smugglers, and even vaguely agents.) So that's fun. And I love how the stories overlap and intertwine - that's pretty freaking awesome. I also really love playing the game with friends.

 

So disadvantages and advantages. I do think that if it was a one class kind of story (where we only played, say, Jedi Knight) that we would get a more coherent story with a lot more depth. But we'd also lose a lot of what I think makes the game great...

I'm going to argue that some of the characters impact the story. (Most companion characters play a role in the class story of the planet you find them on, you do get to break Jaesa or keep her good, etc.) But I do really, really miss a lot of the companion story arcs and interaction. (I so wish that you could have two companions out at a time and that they'd talk.)

 

I think a lot of it is resources, and I do understand that there are a lot of challenges in getting everything to sync up for an MMO.

 

Alternately, there's some stuff I like better than in the KOTOR games. For instance, I love that I don't have to be a Jedi or a Sith. I can be an every day Joe. Esp. stories like smuggler, agent, bounty hunter, and trooper are really missing from the Star Wars gaming universe. (Some of the books admittedly cover Mandalorians, troopers, smugglers, and even vaguely agents.) So that's fun. And I love how the stories overlap and intertwine - that's pretty freaking awesome. I also really love playing the game with friends.

 

So disadvantages and advantages. I do think that if it was a one class kind of story (where we only played, say, Jedi Knight) that we would get a more coherent story with a lot more depth. But we'd also lose a lot of what I think makes the game great...

 

I agree that it's more of a challenge to get everything running right than say compared to an RPG. I too love how you can be a non force user. However, I don't think the stories overlap or intertwine at all in TOR. SPOILER. Sure you can turn Jaesa to the dark side with the option to romance her. I think this should of a been a slow decline to the dark side, not instant. She's kinda like the bad girl Morrigan in Dragon Age Origins. Still she doesn't have much to say, or any companion for that matter when it comes to your actual class story. Yes she plays a role for the time you first confront her, but there's nothing meaningful after that point. For example, why doesn't Jaesa have anything to say at with your final fight with Baras. Wasn't she the utmost importance for Baras to have? Now I have her and there's no interaction with her at all in that scene, even after already completing the romance plot. How about Quinn? He tells you that Baras is still his true master. Then if you let him live and take him with you to fight Baras, there's again no interaction at all. SPOILER. That's a pretty big oversight. There's no closure whatsoever and makes completing your story and companion story (very little) feel empty. If I had to compare this to a better story, that would be the Agent story. There's nice twists and turns that keeps you interested, but it still falls short from the mark because again having a lack of meaningful companions.

 

Also a little bit of cutscene romance would be nice like in Dragon Age Origins. Or even Mass Effect where you sleep with Ashley or Kaidan (Carth from KOTOR). The anticipation and the music that plays before and during the scene is very well done. Maybe these are hard to do in an MMO, but I think they are really needed to feel the romance plot of your companion in TOR.

 

Now more on intertwined stories. Planet stories should have lasting consequences on the choices you make. I also would of really loved to see planet stories interact with your class story. Maybe having a completely different line of quests depending on if you're light, neutral, or dark side. Then have those quests branch off into different side quests. Returning to a planet at a higher level and finding a very different set of quests and different scenery because of your previous actions. There is no choice, you get what they give you. I like the idea of having a friend with me on a class story, but it's only same-class. Make it any class, and at least add in some interaction from that person instead of just standing on the sidelines. There's so much that could be improved with how the stories are designed and interact. I hope Bioware really does commit themselves on improving this important aspect of their game.

Edited September 14, 2012 by Devious_

Well it's a MMORPG rather than RPG, SWTOR already got the best story among all MMO. I think if EA gave Bio more time the companions will have bigger impact.

I always liked the first KOTOR more than the last one. KOTOR 2 did improve some gameplay, but I never got as into it as I did with the first one. I didn't like the romances in Kotor 2. I talked to the people involved but I never thought of any of the romances getting serious. Your romance just shows up and says that they will "wait for you". That can't really compare to turning Bastila back to the light or Carth getting over his paranoia. In KOTOR 2 I just wanted to tell the two people fighting over me what I thought about the situation.

 

The looking for Jedi masters part was okay, you got to pick your own reason for going after them. On the other hand I never got why the Exile was cut off from the force. Obi-wan feels an entire planet die and nothing bad happened to him. Maybe I missed something but I thought that part was never explained well enough. The influence/approval system was flawed in that I could get Visas to like me in one conversation, but other companions were a lot tougher. HK-47 was hard because I was only ever able to get him late in the game and I could never be sure what conversations he would even care about. Gifts would have been fine to have as long as there was a real reason to give people the gifts. Like the alcohol that you could give to the drunk dwarf.

 

I am not saying that KOTOR 2 was bad necessarily. I had a lot of fun going dark side in that game just because some of the heads had awesome dark side corruption. It was nice knowing if a container was empty. The different lightsaber styles was interesting, and I liked how you got bonuses for going completely Dark or Light.

I had a lot of fun with the game, but the first KOTOR was a fuller experience.

I liked how in KOTOR, I could just walk up to Juhani and start talking to her. There were times that you had to get more xp to continue down a story arc, but there was enough to the conversations that it didn't usually become a problem.

 

KOTOR 2 had some cool ideas, what with having conversations be dependant on the amount of influence you have over someone, but it wasn't handled quite right. You couldn't just talk to Visas. Visas had one conversation she'd have with you, essentially. If you wanted to, you could go through it again, but the only differences would be in what you said. You could literally have the same exact conversation twenty times. And after you left Peragus, you could only ever ask Atton if he wanted to play pazaak until he liked you.

 

There needs to be a mix of the two. Have conversations you can just have with them, but have certain subjects only broachable after a certain amount of affection.

Really ? You want they make the companions like KOTOR I and II ? Do you know those are rpg game so yours pc could run it. But this is an online game. Just the varieties of the choices in each main quest and FP already weight down the main server, now you want companion interact with each others along with the choices ? We have 8 freaking stories in this game thousands of players each servers. Your ideas could destroy the server. And you can't bring more than 1 companion, it would bring the game to RPG.

The only thing they could do for you is allow the CS with all companion interact in that.

I think KotOR II: TSL is the best of all three, by a very large margin, BiOWare has a tendency for making characters way too 'chosen one-ish' for me, as if we don't already have one in the saga and tend to focus very little on anything else.

 

It's why I feel a lot of people prefer the non-force user classes, even though I don't.

 

Um..the Exile wasn't too 'chosen one-ish'?? What with all life- the force itself hanging on what your choices were? All of your friends and masters and everyone else being influenced by you, all of them telling you how special you are, especially Kreia. Almost everything anyone ever did in that story was because of you, all anyone else's motivations were because of you, most people had pretty much no other motives or goals in life that didnt involve you or whatever you did or were doing. Except maybe Atton, because he wanted to get out of dodge and Kreia wouldn't let him and Bao-dur because he wanted to deal with the Czerka-Taris thing on his own. But canon wise they end up doing what the Exile wants, becoming Jedi and rebuilding the order, anyway (correct?). Canderous was the only one that didn't give pantha poodoo about what was going on and did what he wanted.

 

Not saying your wrong about BIOWare(?) character's, just sayin' TSL did that too imo. =/