Star Wars: KotOR II Wrap Report, Part Two

RPGVault continues their “wrap report” series for Star Wars: KotOR II, once again with lead designer Chris Avellone and producer Chris Parker offering feedback on various topics. It sounds as though we missed out on an entire planet:

From a production perspective, the best thing we did was to cut M4-78, the Droid Planet. I won’t go into details, but we had this incredible design for a planet of droids. We actually did the first pass on art and built the character models for the location. But we had to look at the schedule and make a big cut after E3. We cut the entire planet. At the time, we were afraid it would make the game too short – but fortunately, there is so much other content, that wasn’t the case. And we used a lot of elements from that planet elsewhere in the game. Ultimately, I think it made the game better, but it really hurt at the time, especially for the designer who had almost finished the planet, Kevin Saunders.

Beyond that… Moving the PC version out? Cutting (or adding) a certain area or creature? Putting QA onsite at Obsidian? Using LucasArts’ resources to assist with movies, heads, and props? Sacrificing the production schedule for the E3 demo? Who knows, there are a ton of things that get decided over the course of a project, which is more important? All I know is development is a fluid thing, and so many little things change, it’s hard to say which had the most impact.