Back to Star Wars Kotor II – Modders Finish Game – Review

For many RPG and Star Wars-loving gamers, ‘Kotor’ represents a kind of holy grail. The game made by Bioware, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in full, is considered an absolute classic. In many ways it was also important as a basis for later games, because Bioware used many elements from Kotor also in Mass Effect, a game that BioWare was already working on at that time. And Kotor? That got a new owner. The studio Obsidian Entertainment had received a request from LucasArts to come up with an action roleplaying game within the Star Wars universe. However, the studio’s pitch was declined. Instead, Obsidian was asked to make a sequel to the successful Kotor. Obsidian was familiar with the techniques BioWare had used to create the game. So the studio should be able to do a good second part while BioWare focused on other projects.

Not enough time to finish the game

The latter was correct, but there were quite a few snags to the development. Obsidian began work on Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords in October 2003 and was given 15 months to create the game. LucasArts initially moved the game to 2005, but then reversed that change so that the game had to be in stores before the 2004 holidays. That was a problem as it meant that the developers did not have enough time to complete the game. For that reason, all kinds of parts of the game were deleted or not finished, just to ensure that a normal working game would be released. It worked. Kotor II was not as good as the original, but the quality was high enough to entertain many gamers for a long time. On its own, the game does not have the same status as Kotor, but enthusiasts will often look back on ‘the Kotor games’, to which this successor is of course just part of.

Yet the story for Kotor II was not completely finished with the release and the place in history. After the release of the game, several mod makers found out that the code of the game still contained references to the removed parts of the game. In addition, unused files were found. That made all kinds of mod makers think: would it be possible to restore these unfinished parts of the game? The answer: yes! An additional advantage: in their work on the game, the modders were also able to fix many of the bugs that bothered the game. Where nowadays countless patches would be used, that was not so obvious at the time. So the work of the modders not only provided new content, but also made the existing content even better.

This HK unit will lead you to a whole new area thanks to the Tslrcm

The first The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod (Tslrcm) was released in 2009, followed by updates for years to come. At the time, several mod creators such as Stoney, Zbyl2, SWfan28, Jinger, Hassat Hunter, and VarsityPuppet all contributed. In addition, Savvy30039 provided animation work and Mono_Giganto provided various fixes in dialogues. Moreover, the restoration work created a whole new role, namely that of the character Kaevee, a Jedi Padawan who is hiding in the Jedi Academy on Dantooine. Her role was even filled by a voice actress, so that her text was also provided with voice acting. Besides that, content from other mods was also processed in Tslrcm, making the content package more and more extensive.

HK factory

It is clear that this content package adds a lot. The question of how much added value it offers is still debatable, and over the years this has been done frequently in various forums. Everyone agrees that Kotor II is better with the mod, with the rating ranging from ‘makes an already good game marginally better’ to ‘total game changer’. What exactly is that? It could be anything. You will not notice many of the changes if you have not played Kotor II before and are familiar with the options in the dialogues and the story. Tslrcm adds all kinds of new conversation options that explore the backgrounds of the characters in the game further than was done in the original game. The most eye-catching piece of content, however, is a whole new environment for you to explore. The mod content includes the HK Factory. You trigger the mission by taking a HK-47 droid, which you add to your party along the way, on your adventures until you meet at least three groups of HK droids. At that point, your HK droid can determine the location of the factory and open a piece of content that was never finished by Obsidian Entertainment and actually wasn’t put in the game.

We are not quite sure yet whether we just think the latter is very special, or whether we really like the extra content. The fact remains that it is very cool to play a game that was released almost twenty years ago with more content. To be clear: that content has been available in this way since the last update in 2015. The reason we’re writing about it now? Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords came out for Android and iOS in December, guess what? The version is compatible with The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod. An excellent opportunity to play one of the best Star Wars games again, with all kinds of new elements. If you want to know exactly what is different, you can go through this page. Note: several spoilers are mentioned in the descriptions.

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