Developer Reveals Bioware's KOTOR 2 Would Have been Darker Than Fans Realize
691Credits:
Eurogamer Interview with James Ohlen: https://www.eurogamer.net/bioware-kotor-making-of
Chris Avellone Interview: https://www.cinelinx.com/interviews/knights-of-the-old-republic-ii-developer-chris-avellone-discusses-the-games-impact-15-years-later/
Kreia: thru the eyes of the exile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq1N8K0IyWs&t=44s
Recently I stumbled across a forgotten article by Eurogamer, that honestly shocked me, revealing Biowares ORIGINAL DARK STORY for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. The article will be linked in the description of the video.
Now, if we forget about Obsidian's sequel for a moment and imagine it was BioWare staring at a piece of paper wondering how to follow a twist like Revan's. Because once upon a time BioWare was - and it came up with an idea.
Yoda. Not the actual Yoda, because canonically he's untouchable, but someone a bit like him; the reason? we know so little about Yoda's almost nonexistent species even someone in his likeness would have the same effect: trust.
"We felt like Yoda was the ultimate - everyone trusts Yoda," James Ohlen told Eurogamer, lead designer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
"The initial twist in the first two-page concept we had for Knights of the Old Republic 2 was you were g oing to be trained by a Yoda-like figure," Ohlen says, "someone from the Yoda race. That character was going to train you in the first part of the game but then you were going to discover this Yoda figure was actually not the good Yoda you expected...
"He was training you to essentially be his enforcer, a Dark Lord to conquer the universe, and he was going to become the main villain."
But this KOTOR 2 concept never made it any further. BioWare bosses Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk called it off. "It was a very smart decision on their part," Ohlen says. "In order for a company to be successful and control its own destiny you need to own your own IP, and we didn't own Dungeons & Dragons or Star Wars. Mass Effect was something we decided we had to do instead of another Star Wars game."
From the death of BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic 2, Mass Effect and Dragon Age were born.
However, interestingly although it sounds like a similar storyline of Obsidian’s Kotor 2: the developer that eventually helmed the sequel, it was actually a coincidence as Obsidian writer Chris Avellone shared:
Obsidian faced an uphill battle from the start. The team began working on the sequel and being paid for milestones before having the full contract in place. As such LucasArts “decided it wasn’t wise to send out a build of [KOTOR] to us until that was done.” While an earlier copy of KOTOR would have saved valuable development time, Avellone emphasizes he doesn’t hold it against LucasArts for holding it back, but this left the team essentially guessing at the storyline.
Avellone explains, “When LucasArts asked for our [KOTOR II] pitch; we had to put together story pitches and ideas without knowing a thing about KOTOR beyond what was on the LucasArts website…”
Considering the complexity of KOTOR’s story, and the various characters, pitching a sequel blind was difficult. “Suffice to say, that pitch was pretty bad,” Avellone continued. “Worse, it didn’t contain a lot of the expectations players might have from playing the first game (since we didn’t know what those elements were)!”
When Knights of the Old Republic released a few months into KOTOR II’s development, the team rushed to play as much as possible. Obviously, it drastically changed their ideas for the sequel. Nearly everything from the original script was scrapped, “Not much survived between the first and second versions of the script, but trust me, that was a good thing!”
The fact that KOTOR 2 still resembled Biowares initial idea with a dark master revealing their true identity, is a minor miracle or perhaps as they say the will of the force.
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