Tag Archives: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Technology

The Sith Lords On Switch Is Finally Playable

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Screenshot: Aspyr / Obsidian / Nintendo

Yesterday, the studio behind the Nintendo Switch port of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords announced that it’s finally fixed a game-breaking bug that had previously rendered the game impossible to finish.

Previously, those who bought the port of the Obsidian Star Wars RPG were forced to cheat their way past game-crashing cutscenes. This was resolved via an in-game cheat menu, but it was still a band-aid solution at best. Kotaku attempted to use this method to skip past a game-breaking cutscene at the end of a late game questline, but boarding the ship would just cause the game to crash again. But rejoice: the buggy cutscenes have finally been fixed. Sort of.

After updating the game, I was finally able to play the previously problematic cutscenes without being ejected to my Switch home screen. There’s one caveat though. KOTOR 2 has a special ability that increases your movement speed, and it’s indispensable for a game that forces you to traverse quite a bit of empty space. The trade off is that the game forces a blurry filter over your screen while the skill is active. The new patch may have fixed the cutscenes, but it makes it so that these blurry filters carry over to said cutscenes. So you get gross looking screenshots like this:

Screenshot: Aspyr / Obsidian / Kotaku

KOTOR 2 has a lot of cinematic scenes that automatically play when you cross an invisible boundary, so you can’t really turn off the filter manually when they start playing. The blurriness stops after the skill duration has elapsed, but it has arguably made my experience a little bit worse. But hey, at least I can get around to other planets now!

Did Aspyr knowingly release an unfinishable game? Yes. Am I annoyed? Also yes. But I recognize that the vanilla version of KOTOR 2 was also released in a broken and buggy state. Maybe it’s one of those games that’s always doomed to imperfection. In any case, I recommend keeping multiple save backups just in case more horrible bugs await you at the very end of the game.

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Technology

KOTOR II’s Switch Port Has A Bug, But You Can Cheat Around It

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Screenshot: Aspyr / Obsidian

This week Aspyr, the studio behind the Nintendo Switch port of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, acknowledged the existence of a bug that caused the game to crash during the main quest, preventing at least some players from completing the game.

Today, Aspyr told Axios that the bug only affected a small number of players. The developer also posted an immediate solution on its website and promised a more permanent fix “in the next patch.” There is currently no estimated release date for the official patch.

For players impacted by the bug, KOTOR II crashes shortly after the player crashes on Onderon as a part of the planet’s main questline. Players can attempt the main quests in any order, but the Onderon quests require you to leave the planet in order to proceed with the second phase of the storyline, so most players are likely to finish the quest fairly late in their run. Luckily, you don’t have to wait for the patch to proceed with the game.

Instead, the studio suggests clicking the left thumbstick three times, which opens the cheat menu. From there, select “Warp” and then go to “OND504,” which is where the quest continues from Onderon. Kotaku was one of the unlucky few who were affected by the bug, and was able to independently verify that the workaround does indeed work.

Screenshot: Aspyr / Obsidian / Kotaku

However, there is a catch. You’ll be stuck using the same party as the one you selected to explore Dxun (which occurs right before the buggy quest), and you can’t change your party composition. So if you left the weaker characters on Dxun…well, good luck. They’ll be spearheading the entire attack by themselves. If you severely underleveled your B squad, have no fear: the cheats menu also includes an invincibility toggle. Kotaku reached out to Aspyr about switching out party members, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

On the original PC game by Obsidian, KOTOR II would brand your save files with a yellow “CHEAT” overlay if you attempted to modify them with external tools (even to fix major bugs). So it’s pretty hilarious to me that in 2022, cheating is the officially recommended way to complete the game at all.  



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Technology

Aspyr Admit There’s No Way To Complete KOTOR II On Switch

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Screenshot: Aspyr / Obsidian

Er, whoops. Aspyr, the developer/porter behind the recent release of Knights Of The Old Republic II on Nintendo Switch, has tweeted that it’s aware the game is currently impossible to finish.

The Austin-based Aspyr made its name porting classic games to new systems, most recently bringing a slew of Star Wars titles to the Switch. The most recent of these is the achingly named but utterly wonderful Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II – The Sith Lords, released a couple of weeks ago.

But after some pressing from a customer, the studio acknowledged it’s aware the game is presently bugged such that it cannot be completed on Nintendo’s handheld.

It was an impressive effort from Daniel Moore, who first asked if the company was “aware there is no way to complete this game?” Aspyr replied with a rather ambiguous comment about “a known issue that will be addressed in the next patch,” then linking to its support pages. But Moore pressed the studio further, making clear he was well aware of the issue, then repeating his question. Are they aware?

Aspyr then replied fessing up. “Yes, we are aware,” it said, before adding, “our dev team is working on delivering the patch as soon as possible.”

It appears the game crashes after playing the “Basilisk Crash” cutscene, shown when players arrive on Onderon. Which, very troublingly, is about halfway through the game.

It raises some rather significant questions about the QA on the game, that it could be certified and released in a form impossible to finish. There’s also the question of for how long Aspyr has been aware its product has a game-breaking bug that affects all players, but haven’t communicated this to potential and current customers. We’ve contacted Aspyr to ask these questions.

Nintendo can be particularly difficult when it comes to releasing patches for games, which will add to the delay before this is fixed. But crikey, what a mistake to have made, albeit a strangely fitting one given the bug-ridden history of this 2004 game. Certainly worth holding off picking up this wonderful Obsidian RPG until there’s better news.

 



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