Three New Star Wars: KotoR II Previews

Star Wars: KotOR II: The Sith Lords was being presented at LucasArts’ Editors’ Day, causing a handful of new hands-on previews to hit the web. The first is at GameSpy:

There was also one new character introduced today, and his name is Darth Sion. As you can probably guess by the “Darth” in his name, he’s a bad guy, and he’s a bit like Darth Malak, in that you battle him a few times over the course of the game. Darth Sion is definitely a candidate for “nastiest looking Star Wars character”, as he’s basically a rotting corpse that is being held together by the power of the Dark Side.

The character model is very detailed so far, with mottled, cracked grey skin, lots of rotting holes in his flesh, and one disgustingly milky eye. According to the producer, Darth Sion does not fear death, as death would be a blessing to him. It will be interesting to see why Darth Sion is being kept alive at all. I’d say that there’s a good chance that it will be for some insidious reason known only to the Siths (and the insidious developers at Obsidian).

The second is at IGN PC:

While the combat is almost unchanged, some good progress has been made in terms of your character’s internal battle between the Dark and Light Side of the Force. For one thing, there will be NPCs who will not join your party unless you are of a particular alignment, raising the value of playing through KOTOR II as both Light and Dark Side. As you progress through The Sith Lords, you’ll actually influence your entire party with your choices. So that if you have a very moral character on the team and you begin heading down the darker path, the moral character will begin to move towards the gray area as well. Corrupt the pious? I am there.

And the third is over at GameInformer:

Perhaps the most notable new features of KOTOR II are the new force powers and feats. In all there will be about 60 to 90 new force powers, including the impressive Force Crush that allows you to lift an enemy into the air and essentially crush their internal organs using the power of the Force. Feats will include 60 new abilities, most of which will touch on new combat-oriented aspects of the game. Taking into account that the first KOTOR suffered form some imbalance between melee and ranged combat, KOTOR II will sport more ranged combat oriented feats to help balance out the two styles of combat. The game will also include new fighting classes to go along with the new combat-based feats as well as 10 different characters that you can enlist the help of. This time around these characters will also change in appearance and ability depending on whether you take the Light or Dark path of the Jedi. If you’re a bad Jedi and eventually transform into a dark, foreboding bad-ass, they’ll also change accordingly.