Star Wars: KotOR II Interview, Part One

RPGVault has posted the first installment to a new Star Wars: KotOR II: The Sith Lords interview, where they quiz LucasArts’ Mike Gallo and Obsidian’s Chris Avellone and Chris Parker about the much anticipated RPG sequel. A snippet to follow:

Q: In overview, what’s the story about this time? How much of it and the backstory had been planned or written before Obsidian started on the project? And who’s principally responsible for these aspects?

Chris Avellone: The Sith Lords takes place five years after the end of the first game; much of the backstory of what happened will depend on choices the player makes in the first portion of The Sith Lords, which describes the events that followed after the end of the original KOTOR. I don’t want to give any spoilers right now, but there’s no one answer for what happened – it all depends on what happened in KOTOR 1.

The story is a classic tale of good vs. evil, humanity vs. the Force, punctuated by a lot of blaster fire. Not much of the backstory was in place before Obsidian started the project – there were some early drafts that were tossed out, and the current version was all created from scratch by Obsidian. LucasArts did have a number of story elements that they wanted to see (and didn’t want to see in the game) that we have adhered to: the player must start as a Jedi, the Sith must be a prominent force in the game, don’t play head games with the character with memories or future sight, and a few others here and there that would be spoiling things if we mentioned them.

Those mandates aside, I’m primarily responsible for the whole story, some of the locations, the companions, and then chopping up everything else into bits and dividing it amongst the design team: Ferret Baudoin (Black Isle, formerly Van Buren and Jefferson), Michael Chu (Worlds of Warcraft), Kevin Saunders (C&C: Zero Hour, Shattered Galaxy), Scotty Everts (every Black Isle game ever made), John Morgan (first project, but willing to suffer for his art), and Tony Evans (Secret Weapons over Normandy).