“Worse, it didn’t contain a lot of the expectations players might have from playing the first game (since we didn’t know what those elements were)!” “Suffice to say, that pitch was pretty bad,” Avellone continued. As such LucasArts “decided it wasn’t wise to send out a build of to us until that was done.” While an earlier copy of KOTOR would have saved valuable development time, Avellone emphasizes he doesn’t hold it against LucasArts for holding it back, but this left the team essentially guessing at the storyline.Īvellone explains, “When LucasArts asked for our pitch we had to put together story pitches and ideas without knowing a thing about KOTOR beyond what was on the LucasArts website…”Ĭonsidering the complexity of KOTOR’s story, and the various characters, pitching a sequel blind was difficult. The team began working on the sequel and being paid for milestones before having the full contract in place. Obsidian faced an uphill battle from the start. This research also allowed me to assemble some themes and questions I had about the franchise I thought would be something to carry into the game, even if I didn’t have answers for them.” “Despite my initial reaction, though, it only took a few weeks of research and becoming re-immersed back in the universe to rekindle my childhood love for the movies and the franchise ( Empire Strikes Back was still great to watch).
It’d been a long time since I’d followed what was happening in the Star Wars universe, and…my excitement had peaked with Empire Strikes Back. Project lead, Chris Avellone, wasn’t initially intimidated by the idea, “I have to confess, when I first heard we were doing a Star Wars game, I was underwhelmed. The nascent company consisted of only seven employees at the time, thus making KOTOR II its very first endeavor. “Especially as a fledgling studio – they’re the reason we got the chance to work on the sequel, so we owe Ray and Greg (the studio heads at the time) a big debt.”
“We were enormously fortunate to have BioWare recommend us to work on KOTOR II,” Avellone is quick to point out. This relationship ultimately brought them to LucasArts’ attention. Each had come from Black Isle Studios, working on iconic RPGs like Icewind Dale and Fallout 2, while collaborating with Bioware to publish the Baldur’s Gate series. Created in June 2003 by Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan and Chris Jones, Obsidian’s founders came with a solid RPG pedigree.
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