“With what was left in the game files, the dialogue worked, but there was no ending,” Staniewicz explained. But that mod tool gives no indication if the process worked, so the modders had to start the game back up and find the NPC’s new location to see if they had succeeded. Even something as simple as changing the location of an NPC required going into the game, finding the character, writing down the coordinates, then leaving the game and inputting and modifying the coordinates in a modding tool, as Staniewicz described it. This kind of modding was far from a direct process. And another modder named VarsityPuppet was brought in to troubleshoot issues with that incomplete HK-50 Factory, putting together the unfinished second half of the mission. A modder named Hassat Hunter was brought in to perform beta testing and eventually began assisting with development. Once the team finished working on Nar Shaddaa, however, they decided to keep going and release their work as one large mod encompassing all the cut content.Īs development went on, Staniewicz started looking for more people to help get the project across the finish line. Originally, Staniewicz and his team planned to fix one planet at a time and release them accordingly as they were completed. “I met this other guy in the modding community that shared my sentiments and we just went for it.” “Another group that was making a restoration mod was taking years to release anything, and I knew I could have done what they were trying to do much faster,” he recalled. Several files buried in the game’s code reveal content Obsidian made for KOTOR2’s final planet-including dialogue and action set pieces-that the developers just couldn’t get working before launch.Īnd that’s where 15 years of collective modder obsession comes in. That means players never get to discover the origins of KOTOR2’s most recurring threat. Specifically, that conclusion is just nowhere to be found in the final game. The most noticeable of these issues at launch might have been the conclusion to the HK-50 factory side quest. It’s no surprise that the finished product had some issues. But publisher LucasArts, wanting to capitalize on the success of the original KOTOR from the year before, reportedly gave that threadbare new team just 14 to 16 months to create a sequel. At that time, the new studio was a shoestring operation with just seven veteran developers who had made the move from the recently shuttered Black Isle Studios, all holed up in CEO Feargus Urquhart’s attic. Released on December 6, 2004, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (KOTOR2) was the first game from the then newly formed Obsidian Entertainment.

Kotor 2 companions