Quie frankly, I’m surprised there isn’t a thread already for this game. The first installment was an amazing RPG, with as much or more responsiveness to character actions than the much-ballyhooed Fable.
Sure, it was passed on to another development team, but the team that got it was responsible for Planescape:Torment, possibly the best RPG ever made. And computer games tend to be the opposite of movies: because of advances in technology, combined with higher budgets because of known profit, sequels tend to be better than their originals. (Not in all cases, but it’s the general trend.)
So, I had high expectations for this game. And, quite frankly, it mostly delivered. It lost a bit due to being a bit buggier than the first one: my character fell into clipping errors at least three times, none of which- thankfully- screwed me up, but that’s still three more than I remember from the first game; in addition, some of the quest results and displays- and the quests themselves- didn’t seem to flow correctly. But still- the writing was great, the modulation (slowly turning party members into Jedis, and making most of them darker or lighter as you choose) was amazing, and the flow… I think this was a great game.
But I don’t understand the ending. Not at all. Can someone explain it to me in simple terms? By “the ending”, I mean everything that happens after you get all the Jedi Council back together.
My understanding- sketchy at best- is that the Council decrees you to be the hole in the force that Lord Nihilis (also?) is, but Kreis comes in and kills them all before you suffer your fate. Atris fell, and had set you up as a target to draw out the old Sith, so that she could destroy them and take the lead as the new Sith, though that doesn’t fit in with Lord Nihilis- a new Sith- being the one drawn out. You attack Nihilis’ ship, and despite him being built up the entire game as something no longer human, something more powerful than anything yet ever experienced, a minor skirmish takes him out. (I think I can rationalize this one as Nihilis having knocked himself senseless trying to feed on you, an equal hole in the force.)
You go after Kreis because she’s the one who set everything into motion with her manipulations, and eventually best her, and get a long winded “this is what will happen to everyone in the future” discussion because that’s what the dev team did with Fallout 1 and 2. (Which I liked in Fallout 1 and 2, but seemed kinda tacked on to this game.) And Kreis’ explanation for why she did everything she did to you: set you up, helped Atris fall, destroyed Lord Nihilis, attempted to cause the Force-death of the universe is… because you were too beautiful to deserve the universe? Because she hated the Force, and therefore wanted to destroy it by setting up plans guaranteed to not work? Whudda?
Oh, and G0-T0 sets up a nasty situation in which he truly controls what will happen, but somehow- without any explanation at all- everything works out the way you want it to. Huh?
So, to reiterate: great game. Loved it a bunch. I’ll probably go back and play it as Dark Side. But I still don’t understand anything about what happened for the last three or four hours of the game.