KotOR 2 - On Steam

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Another question, can the first game saves be transferred to KoTR 2? I'm sure the answer is no, but just wondering.
No.
But shortly after KotOR 2´s start, there´s a dialogue where you can set few of the first game´s protagonist´s characteristics.
 
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How bizarre. It seems as though they just waited until the Restoration mod was finished to release it. But then they don't include the mod (and compensate the modders) in the retail product? Does customer support for this game consist of people suggesting they install the unofficial patch?
 
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How bizarre. It seems as though they just waited until the Restoration mod was finished to release it. But then they don't include the mod (and compensate the modders) in the retail product? Does customer support for this game consist of people suggesting they install the unofficial patch?

Why is that bizarre? How often do you see mods included with official products on Steam?
 
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there's serious copyright considerations that you have to figure into doing something like that. Besides, Bioware licensed the NWN engine to Obsidian to do this so there were three parties involved. When Bio officially allowed modding in NWN, NWN2 and DA their EULA gave the company 100% rights to the modder's work.
 
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A bit off topic, but has anyone bought KotOR1 on steam and played it on Win 7?

I had horrible experience with copy I bought at EB breaking my WinXP PC so I'm quite cautious this time. I do want to try this game since many people go on about how good it is.
 
I didnt mean to imply that there was a legal implication for them to include or compensate the modders. I do feel that, going forward, there is a bit of an ethical consideration. As more and more companies rerelease decade+ old products, do they possibly owe anything to the modders who have kept their games alive? I'm not thinking of bank-breaking stuff either, offer the modders a credit and a tiny royalty. I bet 99% of modders would jump at that, and the ones who don't, fuck em, you do have your legal protection. Either way, what about the customers? Why would you release a decade-old game knowing that half the purchasers are either going to mod it on day one, or complain in the forums about all the broken shit? All I'm asking is, at what point do we cross from *pretend mod doesnt exist* to *have customer support create a walkthrough for installing unofficial patch which fix the thousands of bugs we were too cheap to fix*..? I think that if the community is so passionate about games that they, with no regard to personal cost, want to support these games into eternity, that is fine and awesome. I also think that, as more and more publishers release sometimes 20+ year old games for various systems, they should consider... fixing (by whatever means available to them) all the stuff that was broken, so that new customers don't have to slog through the same crap we did!
 
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They probably don't think it's worth all the paperwork (legal work etc) / time / costs, unfortunately.

A bit off topic, but has anyone bought KotOR1 on steam and played it on Win 7?

I had horrible experience with copy I bought at EB breaking my WinXP PC so I'm quite cautious this time. I do want to try this game since many people go on about how good it is.

Had much worse experience with KOTOR2 on Win7 than with KOTOR1. It was a lot more problematic to get widescreen working too.. Like always with Obsidian they seem to "break" the engines (FO:NV is buggier and runs worse than FO3 too).. I didnt have any problems with KOTOR1 (steam), at least not that i can recall.
 
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Why would you release a decade-old game knowing that half the purchasers are either going to mod it on day one, or complain in the forums about all the broken shit? All I'm asking is, at what point do we cross from *pretend mod doesnt exist* to *have customer support create a walkthrough for installing unofficial patch which fix the thousands of bugs we were too cheap to fix*..?

I don't think the bugs are anywhere near as bad as you describe. I played Vanilla KOTOR2 twice and never had any issues. The restoration mod just brings in half finished stuff that Obsidian cut due to time constraints (with some poetic licence on the part of the modders). If anything, the mod *adds* bugs because of balance and integration issues.
 
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It fixes around 500 bugs if i remember correctly, not all major ones, obviously. I doubt it introduces more bugs than it fixes, but yes, sometimes fixing something breaks something else, it's always like that with patches..
 
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How bizarre. It seems as though they just waited until the Restoration mod was finished to release it. But then they don't include the mod (and compensate the modders) in the retail product? Does customer support for this game consist of people suggesting they install the unofficial patch?

Obsidian wanted to include all stuff that was cut off in the game patch, but LucasArts said - no. We'll never know if LucasArts planned something else for it.

Imagine if that game was released today instead of ages ago. HK factory maps and story would be released as separate DLC. Maybe even the character himself like partymember NPCs in Bioware's games. I bet in DA3 you'll play just the main hero and if you want a party member you'll have to pay 10-20$ for DLC about that member, and then 10-20$ for another, etc. Since Kotor2 is not a CDprojekt's game, it would be an expensive DLC. So in a way, it turned out good. A story with a happyend.
 
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I only had a few technical issues with Kotor 2. First there was the crashes (which were less frequent than in the predecessor on my system), second the game sometimes jumped through cinematics without playing the sound (Nar Shaddaa after the capture of the exile was the most frequent occurrance). The only way to avoid bug number two was to reload and hope for the best. Very annoying for cinematics playing after long fights.
 
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I didn't experience any bugs in KotOR2. It was just obvious in the last third of the game that they didn't have any time to finish it, especially the Malachor parts. I liked the game, anyway.

Also Lucas seems to hate the game, and it was more or less written out of Star Wars canon (the canon refers to it, but it's totally rewritten). I'm surprised LucasArts allowed the game to appear on Steam at all.
 
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It fixes around 500 bugs if i remember correctly, not all major ones, obviously. I doubt it introduces more bugs than it fixes, but yes, sometimes fixing something breaks something else, it's always like that with patches..

I think if you take the most polished piece of software and start counting mercilessly by a programming veteran, you'd probably get near that figure. As I say, I found nothing major or annoying in two playthroughs.

The restoration mod was known for major bugs (I found a few) like CTD's and lines out of context or NPC's in Vanilla areas thinking I'd done the opposite to what I had in the restored areas. Also - balancing. One reason the project took so long was that Vanilla was designed to give out light side / dark side, XP etc at a certain rate. If you add in more content you'll start reaching buffers the Vanilla version does not expect. I believe the restored content did not have any default XP/light/dark points, so the modders were uncertain how to allocate. This was one reason the thing was almost ditched (that, along with the huge workload). That said, I've yet to play 1.8 and so hoping it will be a playable and balanced experience.
 
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The RPS article is wrong (or at the very least misleading); the mod has to be properly installed and can't just be "dropped in the folder". Also, it's not as easy as it should be to verify that the 1.8 patch actually has indeed been applied to the Steam version. As far as I know it should work, though.

I've installed it and so far everything seems to work fine, but I have no clue if the restored content is in or not. It seems to be difficult to know for sure at the start of the game, as the steam version ditches the launcher.

Does anyone know about some early-on changes? The mod/patch notes are sadly unhelpful.
 
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So far, this is what I got. Seems legit:

How to know if the restore mod worked

Minor first-5-minutes spoiler:

When you first meet Kreia, the very first conversation you have with her, she should mention the Ebon Hawk. She will mention "the ship" as well once or twice, but on one instance she will refer to it by name.

After that, on the next room you need to go to progress, you should find a Vibrocutter (unique vibroblade) inside a corpse
(not to be confused with the Plasma Cutter on the body in the morgue).

As far as I can gather from the interwebs, this is already mod-content and should mean everything installed correctly.
 
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