Now with character closure!

Knights of the Old Republic II was a deeply flawed game. Legend has it the developers were pushed to release the game in time for the holiday season and as a result giant chunks of plot, missions, even entire worlds were left out of the game and it was riddled with bugs.

I played (or should that be suffered?) through the original version once, sent Matt a text immediately afterwards saying “OMFG worst ending EVAR!”, then uninstalled the game and tried never to think about it again. Little did I know, however, that others reached the end and instead of sending derisive text messages they decided they could improve the game. Now there are dozens of third party mods and patches for the game which do everything from improving its graphics to resurrecting missions that were cut from the original to … uh … making the characters wear less clothes. Bless you, shut in programmers!

The most complete effort to date has just been released in beta format – the TSL Restored Content Mod v1.4. Snappy title, huh? It won’t litter the game with n00dz and it won’t make your lightsaber any bigger, but what it will attempt to do is restore all the bits of plot that were cut from the original game.

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Exasperated query: Can I finally have my mission now?

Remember those good times back in 2005 when you were playing through Knights Of The Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords?  Remember how you thought the game was really well made, had a compelling plot and interesting party mechanics?  Then remember how the game all went to shit because it had a forced ending that tied up nothing at all and gave you a four second light side/dark side cut scene?

KotOR 2‘s development team, Obsidian, had basically been pressured into a rushed release for the Christmas period and because of this, by the time you reached it’s conclusion, there were gaping plot holes and a load of missing character development.

Well four years later, you might actually be able to play through sections of the game the way they were originally intended.  This is all thanks to the efforts of a couple of modders by the names of Zbyl2 and DarthStoney who’ve made it their business to restore the game’s cut content.  Among the elements removed from the game was practically the entirety of HK-47′s story arc, which you could never get enough influence to investigate through the regular course of the game.

The mod has now entered open beta status for everyone to poke and prod at.  The Deadly Stream forums contain everything you need to know about installing the patch and mod.  For obvious reasons, this will only mod the PC version of the game, so all you poor chumps who played it on Xbox like I did may have to buy another copy of the game if you want to try it out.

If you want to see some of what’s waiting for you, you can check out the trailers on YouTube.  I’ll probably get my brother to check this out for me, since not only does he own the PC version, but he recently played through the game for the first time too.  It’s far easier to heal a freah wound, after all.  I look forward to hearing the results, we may very well have to do a write-up for it.

Cheers for the heads up, Eurogamer!

"I'm selling these fine leather space jackets"

You’ll have to excuse me while I restrain my wife and one of my friends over this one, they probably couldn’t be more excited … even if Jeff Goldbum was involved.

So an intrepid programmer called Stacy Davidson has begun a fan project called Han Solo Adventures. We’re talking all the classic 2D adventure action of a SCUMM adventure game, blended with the antics of everyone’s favourite nerf-herder Han Solo. Here’s a snippet from the game’s FAQ section:

If you enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and you are at heart a Star Wars fan, then do I have a treat for you. This game was born out of my frustration that LucasArts seemed to throw everything but the kitchen sink into their adventure game lineup, with the exception of their flagship property: Star Wars. As awesome as Fate of Atlantis was, it always rubbed salt into the wound for me. I felt like, “OK, Indy’s awesome… now where’s Han?!?” For me, that’s what it’s all about, so if I am going to properly bring one of my life dreams into reality, I want it to look and feel as authentic as possible. The idea is, you just suspend disbelief and play the game as if it’s that one, long lost LucasArts adventure title you never got around to playing.

-Stacy, we love you (but of course, “you know”)

Has anyone ever heard of nobler sentiments? I know I haven’t in a long while. Now while I’m actually really excited to see where this project could be leading, you’ve got to be wary with things like this (especially when they begin gaining publicity!). LucasArts as a whole has never looked too favourably on people touching their stuff, even if it’s for free distribution (or maybe even because it’s for free distribution!). I remember back when I used to cover the Half-Life/Quake modding community, there were bundles and bundles of Star Wars mods that used to have cease-and-desist notices served to them.

With any luck, hopefully Uncle George will view this little project favourably, and we can all look forward to giving it a go. Maybe given that Ron Gilbert seems to have given the project some love, Stacy can look forward to a little leniency from the legal departments.

Either way, head on over to the game’s home page and show a little support. There’s even a video showing Han shooting first … this time in SCUMM format!

Like a thousand voices cried out at once, and were then silenced...

After building us up over the weekend, it turns out that LucasArts’ big secret reveal for this week is adding the classic Super Nintendo Star Wars games to Wii’s Virtual Console collection. Super Star Wars, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi will all be available over the coming weeks for 800 Wii points each. Oh, don’t forget to add a whole bunch of trademark and registered symbols to that last sentence, people playing along at home.

Now that’s all well and good, but when are we going to get to the real issues here, LucasArts? If that IS your real name? If we’re going to be milking old Star Wars franchise games, why aren’t we milking X-Wing Vs TIE Fighter yet? I’d let myself get heavily gouged for a working copy of that game, easy.

At this rate, we’re probably going to see the god-awful Rebel Assault before any classic X-Wing action!

It's kind of equal parts creepy and beautiful

This one is thanks to Lizbt, via Twitter:

Ever thought that what you really needed, deep down, in your heart of hearts, was a big, stitchwork picture of George Lucas watching over you from your wall?

Well thanks to the hard work of many contributors, the Bear and Bird Gallery has put on an exhibition of Star Wars inspired craft: the aptly named Stitch Wars.

The exhibition shows off a vast (sensor) array off different takes on the Star Wars themes, from a bounty (hunter) of plushies, to needlework and fashion. You can check over the entire collection through their Flikr stream.

Best of all, being a gallery, everything is also on sale, so if a particular piece catches your eye you can head over to the store and pick it up. Given that it’s art, however, things can get a little pricey.

Just looking deep into George’s dead, needlepointed eyes is giving me a deeply disturbing feeling …

I’m finding it a little overwhelming to sort through the stuff that’s actually interesting and stuff that seems overhyped in the massive inundation of details from E3.  Here’s one of each then.

LucasArts has dropped a new teaser trailer for the next Star Wars game: Star Wars The Old Republic.  Note that they may have dropped the prefix “Knights Of” to avoid any residual bad feelings.  As someone rightly mentioned, the trailer looks better than some of the movies Star Wars has seen of late, so hopefully the gameplay side of things will be up to standard too.  Still, for those who didn’t dig Galaxies, it’s another stab at the MMORPG genre for LucasArts.  Looks good, anyway, will have to wait for more details.

As far as the overhyped side goes, it’s hard to avoid reading about Microsoft’s new Project Natal, a full motion body sensor for the Xbox.  Now don’t get me wrong, it sounds interesting, but all the talk of what a “revolution” this will be frankly seems a little over the top to me.  Full body motion gaming, where have we heard that before?  Oh, maybe on that technological BEAST of a machine: the Playstation 2?  Seriously, until they come up with something interesting to do with it, this is just an EyeToy on steroids, well programmed chatbot youngster or no.  I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on this one, but the previews so far don’t really seem to convey the “revolution” they’re touting.

Plus the last time I trusted something to come out of Molyneux’s mouth, I was inflicted with the uselessly short ending to Fable.  Bring me a Black & White for the Natal and we’ll talk!