Knights of the Old Republic EP55: Non Mothma

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 2, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 61 comments


Link (YouTube)

I’m starting to suspect this was a deliberate design choice for classic BioWare:

  1. Have a game of modest difficulty. After all, it’s “all about the story”!
  2. Give the player frequent auto saves.
  3. At the end, have a sequence of wall-to-wall combat for a solid hour.
  4. Remove 90% of the auto-saves.
  5. Throw in a couple of surprise difficulty spikes.
  6. LOL YOU DIED AND GET TO REPEAT THE LAST 15 MINUTES OF BORING COMBAT.

I’m convinced that stuff like this is how gamers end up with immersion-shattering, flow-breaking, OCD-driven quicksave habits.

The next episode will wrap this series up.

 


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61 thoughts on “Knights of the Old Republic EP55: Non Mothma

  1. I’m pretty sure Baldur’s Gate is where I developed my Quicksave habit. The difficulty in that game was all OVER the place. I cheesed my way through so many encounters via careful pulling and quicksave abuse.

    1. Tektotherriggen says:

      Hear hear!

      In BG2, I got through most of the game by using one member of my party to stealth through an environment, one-shotting most of the monsters. In Throne of Bhaal the difficulty rose high enough that this didn’t work – but I now had no practice in group tactics, so it was much harder than intended. I put the difficulty setting to easy, but finally gave up when I was faced by a huge swarm of small enemies (the bit where you fight mind-controlled slaves) that just looked far too tedious to wade through.

      It might have been OK if I’d let party AI handle most of the fighting, but so far I had micro-managed everything, and had little idea how well the AI scripting would work. It’s a shame, because otherwise I liked the game a lot, but the clunky combat and high-stakes random numbers (a single number can be the difference between being one-hit-killed, reload saved game; and winning the combat) eventually stopped it being fun.

      1. Incunabulum says:

        Party AI worked decently for the fighter types.

        The magic users . . . imagine seeing off in the distance a single kobold. Now your magic user cast his most powerful AOE spell then all his buffs.

  2. John says:

    And on that jolly note, here’s the comment I said I’d write after the last episode. It turned out to be pretty long, so I’ve broken it in half. Rather than clog up this post with two massive walls of text, I think I’ll save the second half for the final episode. Now, without further ado:

    Why I Love Knights of the Old Republic–Part I: The Personal

    Knights of the Old Republic was the game that got me back into PC gaming. I bought a new computer in 2003, you see. I realized that for the first time since 1999–the glorious year in which I bought Alpha Centauri and monopolized the family computer–I owned a machine capable of playing contemporary games. I had heard somewhere that Knights of the Old Republic was a pretty good RPG. There were, I was informed, many sidequests–and what’s more these sidequests generally had more than one resolution. I was intrigued. The last CRPG I played, you see, had been The Bard’s Tale III. While I’m sure it embodies the finest design principles of 1988, Bard’s Tale wouldn’t know a sidequest from a side of beef or an immersive experience from an immersion blender. (But if you like making maps on graph paper–and the Etrian Odyssey series says that some of you do–it’s aces!)

    So Knights of the Old Republic blew me away. I though the graphics were amazing. I spent a long time wandering around the Upper City on Taris just looking up at the buildings and down over edge of ledges. I was also impressed by the interactivity. I clicked on everything and talked to everyone. They all had so much to say! Out loud, with voice acting even! The game also let me be Luke Skywalker, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. If Tie Fighter let me realize the space-dogfight fantasies inspired by A New Hope, Knights of the Old Republic let me realize the be-a-Jedi fantasies inspired by Return of the Jedi. I played a Consular with one green light saber. I was nice to everyone I met and helped them with their problems. I was a calm but compassionate force (so to speak) for good in the galaxy.

    And yet the game didn’t really get its hooks into me until I had beaten it once and realized that I could play it again–and that if I was evil this time, then the game promised to be substantially different. I did, and it was. Most of your opportunities for incidental evil are cartoonish and silly, it’s true, but Korriban was a delight. And then I bullied and mind-controlled a Wookie so that he killed the girl who was his best friend and I couldn’t believe that the game let me do that. After I beat the game a second time, I thought to myself “You know, Force powers almost never work on the final boss. Would this be easier if I made a character who was good at lightsaber combat instead? Let’s try a Guardian.” So I did. Then I thought “I haven’t been an evil Guardian yet.” Then “Maybe I should try the Sentinel this time.” Then “What if I make a character who wears armor rather than robes?”

    I admit that the game starts to suffer when you play it so much. When you aren’t so impressed by the newness of it all, you notice the little failures. The sometimes less-than-stellar dialogue, for example. Or you realize that the swoop race on Taris is rigged. Things like that. And yet whenever I play Knights of the Old Republic I remember how I felt the first time. And I’m still finding new things to do. Spoiler Warning inspired me to try the Blaster Jedi–pistols, no lightsabers–run I’d been contemplating for years. (It’s surprisingly effective.) I don’t play the game nearly as often these days as I used to, but unless my discs give out or it turns out to be completely unplayable on my next OS I’m quite certain I’ll play it again.

    1. Frankenbeer says:

      Well said sir. A beautifully expressed description of how good it can be when a game hits all the notes just right for the player. We’ve all had those moments, with one game or another. I wish I’d stated it as nicely.

  3. ehlijen says:

    I think one of the reasons some games have too long combat sections is because the developers don’t see it as boring? As in, to a theoretical player who enjoys the KOTOR combat, that starforge assault would be pretty good:

    -You get to feel powerful spamming all your latest attacks and pwning mooks
    -The big bad gets increasingly desperate in the cutscenes throwing more and more underlings at you
    -You get to see the space battle happening as you progress
    -the action ramps up nicely till you reach the final boss when he’s finally cornered

    …assuming you like the combat (and I did in my initial playthroughs). As soon as that’s not the case, yeah, it falls apart and hard.

    But would a game developer really think in terms of ‘am I boring the players with this game’ at that point? I’m not sure doing that would be easy. You made a game, with gameplay, and you’re proud of it. Some players will reach the final level. How much will they like the combat gameplay at that point? How much is too much, and what if that’s too little for too many other players? The final battle should feel epic, and when this game was being designed, Diablo 2 was still popular and showed that fighting hordes of mooks is something at least some players wanted.

    For late playthroughs, I personally enjoyed the starforge a lot more when I discovered you can just run past all enemies on level 2 and 3 (though you won’t get the starforge robes), until you get to the blocked door just before bastila. And there you only have to kill those three guys and open the door to lock all other remaining enemies behind you.

    One other question/idea:
    You’ve had a few games in spoiler warning that didn’t suit the show well and created tension as they went on (Bioshock, alan wake, now KOTOR), and you’ve known to exclude games like DA:O for its deep roads because of that.
    But what if you space the games out and alternate? Your half life 2 episodes fared a lot better, I think, possibly because you only played it in between other games.
    Could having 2 or 3 games running at once with you guys switching when you feel the need for a change of pace be helpful, or would the loss of focus mean neither game gets done?

    1. Nidokoenig says:

      Another point is that when you get to the end, you’ve had the whole game to invest points in your stats and skills, so you’re probably deadly enough to handle a few waves, something they can’t really rely on in the earlier areas which you can take on out of sequence. So level 1 has a certain difficulty level, then levels 2 through 6 are just above that, then you jump to level 7 and the shift just feels rather abrupt.

    2. Matt Downie says:

      I’ve seen RPGs where the final stage of the story cuts out the standard party combat, and people were all, “Hey! I just finished levelling my characters up and giving them all the best equipment, and then I never got a chance to use it!”

      You can’t say that about KotoR.

  4. Hector says:

    I didn’t find the final section difficult, per se, but it had a bad design. As far as I can tell, there’s some kind of invisible triggers which spawn dudes to come beat you up. This on its own isn’t that bad, but these triggers don’t appear to deactivate. If you’re going back and forth, you can spawn dudes multiple times, with no clear reason for it. I’m also pretty sure you can spawn more if you, say, go loot the Sith for spare medkits, which is supremely annoying and completely against everything in the game. (Technically, there was one similar event back on the Leviathan, but it easy and you were fairly warned.)

    Also, the game tends to reward glass cannon builds heavily. It’s not very practical to make tank characters in the game since you have relatively few options for it, but loads for demolishing your foes quickly. In fact, in most cases it’s irrelevant how high you defenses are, because enemy attacks outpace your AC very quickly. This is perfectly fair and I don’t fault the game for it, but this doesn’t work that well when they suddenly begin a battle of attrition.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      The end slog isnt difficult.But it is tedious.You get to fight the same mooks that youve been fighting the whole game,only this time there are more of them,and they cant really do much to you(unless you are Josh).

      And I get why it was made.Its so that we can have an epic fight with an army of enemies.But its not epic,its boring.Mowing down through a plethora of mooks is rewarding only the first,maybe second time you do it.But when you have to do it dozens and dozens of times,it loses the punch.

      And bioware loves their end game slog.Aside from me2,Ive never played their game where the end game mook fest was anything but tedious.

    2. Ninety-Three says:

      I think you outright can’t make tank characters. If I remember correctly, there is a cap on how high your armour class can go (never explained, you’ll just notice if you try to get your AC too high), and it’s not an especially high cap.

      1. Supah Ewok says:

        I’ve made tank characters by just boosting the CON up along with AC. You get the Heavy Exoskeleton from Yavin, the best STR gauntlets you can find, Force Wave, and level in Guardian, and you can quite literally solo your way through the Star Forge (on Normal). I’ve done it.

  5. Daemian Lucifer says:

    – The droids did not stop them.
    – Strange.How did they manage to destroy all of my droids so quickly?Its like they posses some power that can destroy a bunch of droids en masse.How could that be?!

  6. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Rutskarn,your problem is that you played the vanilla game,when you shouldve played mask of the betrayer.Mask of the betrayer was so good,you shouldve played that one instead.Shamus knows what Im talking about.Right Shamus?Isnt mask of the betrayer just such an awesome game?

    1. ehlijen says:

      I know you jest, but I’m with Shamus, sort of. I didn’t like Mask of the Betrayer. I tried it. I got confused as to where to go (everywhere seemed to have too high level enemies), the companions weren’t quirky and fun like I came to enjoy in NWN2 (yes, i liked that game, despite its stupid plot door and the crime it committed on the poor farmer lady who just wanted her house not to burn down for a change), and then the game got to the point where it told me that I’d have to occasionally press the good or evil button to not die.

      Uninstalled and never looked back.

      1. Fizban says:

        If you start a new character rather than loading one that’s finished the main campaign you’re quite short on gear, as well as spells known for a wizard. It’s not too hard to get caught up-if you already know what you’re doing and loot every single crate, barrel, and pile of rocks (yes really) in the city and shadow-city. But if you don’t know what you’re doing then it’s not gonna be pretty.

        I quite liked Mask of the Betrayer, my biggest problem is same though: the soul-eating. Compounded by the fact that I actually read instruction manuals so I knew all the mechanics beforehand, and further by the fact that a number of the mechanics were cut or don’t work, and yet further by the fact that in order to have a good set of gear you need to craft and in order to craft you need to eat lots of souls for extra materials.

        The story was nice, continuing my character from the first campaign just trying to get rid of a curse followed by rage at the gods was solid motivation, and it went to some nifty places. Bogged down by epic level dnd mechanics as expected. The best companion is hidden in a sort of guide-dang-it way: you have to kill the bear, then go into the shadow temple (which requires fighting guys over your level) and give his corpse to the furnace. If you don’t kill the bear, or dealt with the furnace first, no dice. If you know what you’re doing, you get a super-wraith that’s a fusion of a thousand tormented souls commanded by a creepy child and capable of eating more souls in order to switch character builds to different classes. The rest are admittedly kinda lame and if you don’t take them to the right areas you miss most of their story.

        1. ehlijen says:

          I did actually continue a main game character. I foolishly assumed that as the game let me do that, it’d also let me continue to expect the same tone, which I’d enjoyed in the main game for the most part. No dice :(

  7. Alex says:

    Re: Fixing the hyperdrive

    You are literally travelling to a factory that builds spaceships. If you don’t need your hyperdrive to get there, taking some brand new parts off the shelf to fix your ship for the escape would seem to be a much better plan than scavenging millenia-old parts from a wrecked ship which already crashed once.

    1. Drew C says:

      Maybe the Hyperdrive is like the warp core in Star Trek in that it’s the source of the ships power? I admit I know very little about this.

      1. Yep, this is how it’s shown to work at the start of Kotor 2. In the prologue you need to get components to repair the hyperdrive so the engines have power.

        1. ehlijen says:

          This is subverted by the Empire Strikes Back, however, where the Falcon is clearly fully capable despite not having a working hyperdrive. Going against the movie, an official primary and a practically more likely source of info than the sequel game, KOTOR needed to explain itself if it wanted to be different in that way.

          And it’s not like the broken part being the hyperdrive specifically was important. They literally could have left out the ‘hyper-‘ and just made the generic engine broken.

      2. Atarlost says:

        I’m pretty sure it’s just an FX gaffe like when the Enterprise fires torpedos from a hangar or phasers from a torpedo tube or whatever it is. The dialog tells you you need to fix the stabilizers, which makes sense. If you need stabilizers you really need them. It’s just you go to a part of the ship labeled hyperdrive to do so either because someone labeled the object incorrectly or because some artist figured it would be easier to make the hyperdrive look broken than a wall panel somewhere.

  8. Grimwear says:

    Malak was super annoying my first time through because his attacks stun you. It also turns out my force powers weren’t strong enough so my plan ended up being put on jedi speed to run away from him, then just cast lightsaber throw over and over. It does a set amount of damage and cannot be blocked. You can literally just kill Malak by doing this over and over. It is also the way I beat the bosses in KOTOR2 because it’s a guaranteed way to do damage without any risk to yourself and without worrying about their saving throws.

    1. ehlijen says:

      With life drain you can also use Malak’s recharge batteries yourself (evil, of course), or using destroy droid to turn them off.

      But for the Kotor2 villains, I didn’t worry much about their saving throws because I had 40+ Wisdom (WIS boosters in every slot). Only Kreia can occasionally save vs that, but she can still be beat that way.
      You can even boost WIS to 50+ if you abuse the respawning enemy trick on Korriban and grind yourself to lvl 50 (max), but that’s an actual exploit.

    2. Ninety-Three says:

      I had the most miserable possible experience against Malak: I was a lightsider without Destroy Droid (“A power that doesn’t work on everything? Why would I ever want that?” I foolishly said). So I had to knock him down to zero health, have him drain a battery, then do it TWENTY MORE TIMES. There was a lot of “Use force speed to outrun him and heal”.

      1. Supah Ewok says:

        You could also use Saber Throw, and I’m pretty sure Lightning.

      2. John says:

        You can also use Choke/Wound/Kill.

    3. Grudgeal says:

      He’s also a solo boss in a game that’s seen you comfortable with teambuilding. If you didn’t make your Revan into a solo murdermachine, too bad for you. Also, he’s nigh immune to force powers due to saves up the wazoo, so there’s that too. Really, unless you’ve built a melee monster with saber throw or force lighting, your first Malak experience is probably going to be like mine, i.e. running around the Star Forge throwing Thermal Detonators at him for thirty minutes while the Benny Hill theme plays inside your head.

      1. ehlijen says:

        His saves are tough, but can be overcome by a min-maxed Jedi Counselor. He was clearly intended to be smashable by a min-max guardian as well (I found it quite possible).

        It’s anything in between, including the entire Sentinel class, that’s gonna have a hard time :(

        1. John says:

          If you use the non-Force buffs (energy shields and the various stims), then Malak can’t de-buff you. In that case you only need a certain minimal competency with light sabers. Min-maxing isn’t really necessary, even on Hard mode.

          1. Arkhanian energy shield and his saber attacks become as effective as shooting at a Death Star saying pewpewpew with a wooden gun.

  9. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Back in the day bioware used to allow you to take only a handful of npcs with you,and you got to interact only with that small group.And everyone asked them to allow them to allow them to take everyone with them.So they did.But in the transition they forgot to include one key fact:Allowing you to not take with you someone you didnt like.

    1. ehlijen says:

      The real problem wasn’t that you couldn’t take them all, it’s that they kept making ridiculously sad puppy eyes and gave you ALL THE DARMA when you wanted someone in your party to wait for you at the Inn/wherever to free up a slot to go do someone else’s personal side quest.
      Mechanically, you were saying ‘bye, see you tomorrow’, but in character they were responding with ‘why would you leave me? I thought we were friends!’.

      It was…messed up :/

  10. omer says:

    not nearly frequnt enough. I my be spoiled by modern games and not having this quick save habit (and i don’t like when games force me to save scum, it’s choosing between complete cheapness and treamendous frustration), but the amount of times i play a segment again becouse of some random death was not short.

  11. Ian says:

    I have F5 no idea F5 what your F9 what you’re F5 talking about.

  12. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Checkpoints?Quicksaves?Pfft!Back in the day we used to get only three lives,and if you squandered them you had to go AAALLLLLL the way back to the beginning of the game.And even if you were lucky enough to cheat,you still only got 27 more lives,and that was it.You kids these days with your F5s and your options menus are the worst.

  13. Killbuzz says:

    How are quicksaves flow-breaking? They don’t interrupt the game by making you go to a menu to save or something.

    1. Zekiel says:

      You still have to remember to do them though. Its a lot more annoying if (like me) you play everything on a gamepad where possible, and there isn’t a quicksave key. I’m replaying Dishonored at the moment and its quite annoying to have to bring up the menu > Options > Save > Confirm to do my save-scumming. (But I’m weak and can’t kick the habit)

      1. Killbuzz says:

        Well, that’s one of the great joys of PC gaming. Since you’re using mouse and keyboard to play, hitting the quicksave button (usually f5) is just a slight flick of the finger away. I do it pretty much instinctually.

    2. modus0 says:

      My keyboard has alternate functions available for the F keys, with the FN key normally used to access those. But the vendor’s software allows me to alter that, so that the alt function is the main one, and I have to press FN+F key to get the F key function.

      That would kind of tend to take me out of the game as I have to move my hand off my mouse, and look for both keys since I don’t tend to press them often.

      I suppose I could try to remember to switch that option, so in games it’s F key, and out of games it’s the alternate function, but I know I’d forget it and either have the computer pull focus from the game to the program I just pressed a button to start, or I’d not realize that I didn’t actually quick-save, and have to replay 15 minutes of minutiae.

  14. Zekiel says:

    Ending games well is a real talent. Bioware frequently seem to do it very badly (with the tactics Shamus described here). I seem to recall Baldur’s Gate 2 had a reasonably decent ending sequence, but Dragon Age Origins was a huge slog.

    As far as I see it there are two good ways to end a game (from a game mechanics perspective):
    a) A carefully-calibrated challenge which forces the player to use everything they’ve learned so far in the ultimate test
    b) Give the player some sort of super-weapon and let them go crazy (e.g. Half-Life 2)

    (a) is very difficult to pull off, since its very hard to predict player skill; (b) seems highly satisfying to me, so I’m mystified why very few games seem to do it. Instead we get games that either jack up the difficulty for the last level or so (e.g. Psychonauts, Assassin’s Creed 1) or chuck in waves of enemies who aren’t especially hard but are a slog (e.g. KOTOR). I’m not sure why.

    1. Trix2000 says:

      I think another option that might work better than a) is to make a situation where it SEEMS like you’re overcoming a big challenge and things are tense, but in actuality there are measures in place to ensure the player can make it through (unless they completely fail it).

      Like throttling the strength of the multitudes of enemies thrown at them, so the player can get a feeling of being overwhelmed but not actually reach the point where they can’t keep up. Or just amping up things like visuals (big giant things!) that don’t impact the combat itself. Still might take some real thought and balance to get right, but at least might not run into as much trouble with players of varying skill levels… so they all get a similar experience.

  15. John says:

    Remember how Josh said he was over-powered? He technically is. He just got cocky. The waves of mooks in the Star Forge will wear you down if you don’t play strategically and ration your use of Force powers. Unfortunately, the Star Forge is, as Shamus suggests, pretty much the only place in the game where that sort of thing is necessary. Of course, it would help if Josh remembered to level up his party and exploit their healing powers from time to time, too.

    But if you really want to breeze through the Star Forge, you should make a Scoundrel/Jedi Guardian 7/13. Force Jump plus sneak attack equals massive damage. You will kill enemies just about as fast as they spawn and almost never need to use Force powers.

  16. Rodyle says:

    Like most Obsidian products, Mask of the Betrayer is very good yes

    In fact one might say they’re the best RPG developer (or were, until The Witcher 3 happened).

  17. I developed my quicksave habit in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. That game hardly ever autosaves for you, and even on low difficulties, you can die in combat a any moment. I’m not ashamed to say I F5-F9’ed my way through that entire game.

  18. Steve C says:

    What should have been anticipated in the comments is this:

    Josh… You know that force wave is the “I win” button. Yet you did not use force wave. Why are you not using force wave?

    {sees Josh’s byline in the credits}
    Hmmm… ok. Carry on.

  19. Drew C says:

    Shamus I object! I never found the Auto save reliable. I can’t begin to count the times I died only to discover I’ve lost half an hours worth of progress.

    But seriously, as someone who likes the combat even I can see the problem with the Star Forge since unlike the rest of the game once malak starts throwing everything at you, mooks spawn in timed waves often behind you so you wind up back tracking a lot, literally taking one step back for every two steps forward (unless you aren’t quick enough in which case it’s one step forward one step back).

    Looking forward to this series ending though since I love this game (I’m playing it right now) and the shows been getting harder and harder to watch.

    Edit: Actually on re-reading what Shamus said is it the combat system you find boring or just the combat on the star forge you find boring?

  20. Heregoesnothing says:

    “T3 is the key to all of this.”

    This actually becomes true in the sequel.

  21. Darren says:

    Terrible final levels are so frustrating. The worst one I’ve encountered recently was Pikmin 3 of all things, which had a final level that was so far beyond what the rest of the game demanded that I just put the disc back in the box and moved on. I’m trying to think of what I think the absolute worst final stretch of an otherwise good game I’ve played is…maybe the final stretch of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines?

  22. Peter H. Coffin says:

    The next episode will wrap this series up.

    Episode 56 is 2:37:42 and will be finished converting and ready for publishing on Sunday.

  23. Grudgeal says:

    8:40 — So, basically, Zathras?

    1. Phill says:

      Oh, no no no no, you mean Zathras.

      1. ehlijen says:

        Sigh, Zathras does not understand Zathras.

  24. Many times I’ve read that “Malak is invulnerable to force powers”, but it is false. The truth is just his saves are very high so you have to build to get high DC for your powers. I wouldn’t say to forgo leveling in Taris because I’ve never been good with power building, I don’t like to be studying the powers and skills to find out what combinations get me the biggest and best numbers. What I know is in my second play through I went for a level 1 scountrel / 19 councilor and I beat Malak very easily: I kept him stunned and I didn’t even had to worry about him recharging with the dead jedi.

    1. ehlijen says:

      That’s true. The counselor is the best class for getting through saves with powers (assuming enough D20 system knowledge which the game alone does not provide in full), and if you want to beat Malak that way, you need to be the best you can be. Same with Guardian and sabre hacking.

      Poor Jedi sentinel doesn’t get anything, though. Their special powers are purely reactive (and thus offer no help in actually defeating anyone, let alone malak) and the jack of all trades stat balance they get falls apart in face of the min-maxers challenge that is this boss fight.

      1. Incunabulum says:

        “in face of the min-maxers challenge that is this boss fight.”

        This is why I consider boss fights to be shit.

        The only thing god to say about this one is that its a rare one that M-M builds that didn’t focus on soaking HP pumping out physical damage has a shot at winning.

        I remember one fight in Neverwinter Nights OC – I, a Socerer/Rogue poped into the room with a boss. He aggroed on me because I was the first one he saw. Then promptly ignored all my spells and cut me in half in one round with his double sided axe.

        Reloaded and ran in a circle while he chased me while he was chased by my companion. He couldn’t hit me, I couldn’t stop running, no one else could hit him to draw aggro. Cue ‘Yakety Sax’.

        1. Ninety-Three says:

          That is exactly how I beat the first boss of Dragon Age on max difficulty. It has a billion hitpoints and you just cannot fight it fairly, so so I had one guy draw aggro and run in circles while the others shot it with bows. Every now and then it would switch aggro to a bowman who would become the new Yakkety Saxman.

  25. Incunabulum says:

    “I'm convinced that stuff like this is how gamers end up with immersion-shattering, flow-breaking, OCD-driven quicksave habits.”

    Or you could go with Bethesda’s favorite training method – have the game crash if you haven’t hit quicksave in the last two minutes.

  26. Ofermod says:

    BG2 had a pretty fantastic ending, in my mind. Plenty of breathing/saving possibility, and then leading up to the climactic final fight.

  27. Cuthalion says:

    So, I know the thing is to complain about how long this game is taking, but honestly I’m still being entertained. I still enjoy it. So… thanks for sticking with it? I’m curious if the next episode wrapping the series up means beating the game or quitting the game. :P

  28. Steve C says:

    There’s a problem with quicksaves and Rutskarn touched on it. It’s possible to accidentally destroy an entire game with autosaves assuming the save overwrites a previous save.

    If you save in a bad spot, or get corrupted data in that save then poof! Start from scratch. I’ve had that happen a few times and I haven’t trusted any quicksave system since then. I always go for manual saves in separate slots. In fact I think it was Baldur’s Gate 1 that made me go to the extremes that I do now. I zip up backup copies of saves.

    I remember a PS2 game where I did not have the option. I had to go with their autosave system. I ended up getting too much health and it wrapped. I would load with zero health, take a step then die. It was immediately before the end of the game too. I had to start a new game from scratch. Except I didn’t as I never played the game again. I ditched it in disgust.

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<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

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Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

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