If ti weren't for deadline pressures, this game could have been KOTOR's "Empire Strikes Back."
The morality system that KOTOR began, was even more prominant in this game. Chocies you made drew certain NPC's toward you, while pushing others away. There was no right or wrong choice that pleased everyone. Which was executed wonderfully.
There isn't a single traditional 'hero' among your group. Everyone is a flawed soul, seeking ways to redeem themselves, forget themselves, or destroy themselves and everyone they care about. The reasons why are believable, and the moral challenges these characters raise are poignant, and far more subtle, than the choices explored in the first game.
The main character, most of all, is a moral enigma. To some, he is simply someone who is so in tune with the force, he can almost 'force' (no pun) the ones he cares about to follow his actions, despite their own morality. To others, especially the ones who follow his actions, he is simply a person who is a leader, and his strength compels others to follow, because his strength means more to them than their sense of morality.
Unfirtunately, the game was obviously cut short. The bad guys, who, as the story progresses, seem truly misguided and capable for far more destruction than weapons are capable of (they destroy hope), are haunting...until you confront them. Which is where the game was cut short, and every boss battle you were dreading up to that point was reduced to a simple hack and slash victory. It made all the poignant themes feel pointless, and unfulfilled.
Alot of content was abandoned to get this out in time for Christmas, which is too bad. It feels like an incomplete game, and many fans hold onto the idea of what this game could have been. I'm one of them. It did alot to seperate itself from Bioware's instant classic, and chose to explore more personal, and more difficult moral themes, rather than pure good vs. evil.
Unfortunately, the story, and the full development of the characters within it, was cut short, and the themes were never fully satisfied/realized/resolved.
The ending made this game more painful than if the game had never been released, because I, like many others, will only be left wondering what could have been, playing it once again in the hopes of discovering it somewhere in the game, only to finally resign to the fact that what were searching for was left on the cutting room floor.
It's too bad. It really could have been one of the best games I ever played. Unfortunately, it's premature release, obvious incompletion, and ambivilant response from the press almost insured that a third will never come around to salvage this hope of what could be for me, or anybody else wondering where it could have gone from here.
Though, apparently, if the rumors of the Bioware/Lucasarts proect are true, the last installment of KOTOR will cost you 15 bucks a month, and the time requirements of a full time job, to find out what challenges await for you next in this universe.
It's too bad. This game was like a rollar coaster from beginning to end, only to see no track laid down for the final drop. Whoever is to blame, gamers were the ones that paid for it in the end.