author: Luc
The Mod Awakens – how a modder helped in recreating the content of KotOR II
Not many games can take pride in what Knights of the Old Republic II does – 10 years after the release, thousands of gamers still play this game every day. Mainly because of a certain mod…
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic will probably be remembered forever. The game by BioWare almost perfectly hit the sweet spot of RPG fans, making a huge impression on every person that tried it out. On one hand, we have a fantasy world of Star Wars with many interesting planets to visit, and on the other, there is an extremely engaging plot and a really nice – although not perfect – combat system. However, the most important thing in the game was a plot twist concerning the true identity of the main hero. Although we probably can’t compare it to Darth Vader’s memorable admission, we can certainly count Revan’s plotline into the category of the best ones in history, and not only in case of games placed in this universe.
The great reception of the first part of the game resulted in creating a sequel. However, it must be noted that Knight of the Old Republic II was “doomed” from the beginning – expectations after the first KotOR were so high that matching them with a sequel would be a miracle. Nevertheless, the game turned out to be quite good, some of the mechanics were improved, the plot seemed to be interesting… but at the same time you could get a feeling that something was missing. Moreover, there were other problems with the game that in the end made it “the worse KotOR”. How did this happen? Was Obsidian simply lazy and Chris Avellone & Co chose to take a shortcut in the creative process? It turned out that… the publisher was the one to blame. LucasArts put a lot of pressure on the developers to make them speed up the creation of the sequel and finish the game within 14-16 months. The game was supposed to be released in 2005, maybe even right before the release of Revenge of the Sith, but someone from the marketing department made a call, and KotOR II appeared on gamers’ hard drives in December 2004.
The great absent ones
The developers realized that the game will need to be seriously cut, but they didn’t have much of a choice. However, what did not end up in the game, was not lost forever… not long after the release, it became clear that the game contains lots of code fragments and assets that refer to – theoretically – non-existent areas, characters or quests. Today, 10 years after the release date, KotOR II is still alive, and it’s mainly because of those “deleted” fragments, that the community of fans was able to retrieve. The most famous modification, The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod, put the game back on its tracks and gave it a form that the creators wanted it to have in the first place. It’s not possible to count how many changes were made in the original, but because of those changes the game is currently in a fantastic condition. We need to be thankful to a small group of people, without whom there would be no point in talking about KotOR II; now, some people even say that the sequel is as good as the original game.
Before we get to the game’s present situation, let’s focus on its beginnings. The prevalent opinion was that the game was “nice, but it lacked something”. It wasn’t long before people started to post that this “lacking something” has its proof, because there are files in the game that are not used in the final game. Although it sounded interesting, there wasn’t much going on for the following months apart from listing all the information hidden in the code. We had a chance to talk to one of the modders working on the game – Zbigniew “zbyl2” Staniewicz. This is how he recalls the time when he decided to take a look at the secrets hidden in The Sith Lords:
“When I joined the modding community of KotOR II, there was already a group that worked on restoring the additional content for few years. These people published on their forums a really nice list of things that were cut out of the game that was divided into two groups: what they’re currently working on, and what they want to skip. That was the first time when I found out what was supposed to be included in the game… and that’s when I decided to restore some of the things that they were going to ignore – on my own.
When the work started, I was unlocking various quests on different planets and I was forced to carefully look through files with dialogues. Really often I found astounding amounts of content that was cut out: from single dialogue lines to alternative dialogues, creators’ notes asking for additional animation or a certain camera view; sometimes there were even huge quests that were not present in the game because of a spelling mistake in the name of a used variable!”
In the shadows of “an accident”
The beginnings seemed to be promising, although they did not foreshadow what was to come in the future. Apart from small modifications, serious changes started to come up along the way and Staniewicz wasn’t working on them alone.
“It’s important to mention Stoney here – another modder who was working on a fix that would add a droid planet into the game. He was looking for some help in his works, and – since I already had some mods in my portfolio – I decided to contact him. And that’s how our collaboration started – Stoney was happy to have someone to help him, and I was happy because I could be a part of a mod that many fans were waiting for.
Sometimes we talked about a mod of another group that was our “competitor” (mentioned in the previous utterance – ed. note) and how annoying it was that they were working on this for five years now and they still haven’t released anything. We both knew that we will be able to finish this much faster. It was a pure accident that we were forced to take a break in our works on the droid planet and we came up with an idea that we could spend this time by looking into the stuff that was cut out.”
Both Stoney and zbyl2, when they started to look through the files, had no idea how much content will they find in the future… and how much of it will keep them occupied. The initial assumptions were completely different from what the players got in the end.
“At first we didn’t plan to recover everything with Stoney. He mentioned in one of our conversations that he wants to recover – for his own needs – Kaevee, a padawan that was supposed to appear in the ruins of the academy on Dantooine. Back then I decided that I can script the whole battle of Khoonda. In the initial version of the game, the player was to complete a number of quests that would aid the allies in combat, but everything always ended with the same cutscenes. I corrected this and recovered the cut-out dialogues, during which we position few squads around Khoonda; I also made it possible to take part in fights with the mercenaries. In the end, we decided to publish what we both created – and that’s how Dantooine Restoration came to life.”
“Our initial assumptions were different, but somehow it happened that we did not stop there. At first I started to publish all the fixes for Korriban, than the Ravager…. And then we decided that since we already recovered half of the hidden stuff, we might as well finish it. I focused on the endings, Stoney started working on the HK Factory. For about 6 months we worked in secret, telling no one what we were going to do, and then some time in 2009 we announced that our mod recovering the whole content is almost ready, and that we’re looking for testers.”
The Mod Awakens
As you can probably imagine, it was quite a shock for the community (not very huge back then) gathered around KotOR II. The list of the content that was cut out was quite impressive, and now it seemed that there’s much more where it came from. What’s more, everyone was to be able to check it out on their own. The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod started to take more finite shape and even during tests it became a real sensation. The possibility to discover the world anew “in the way that the creators wanted it to happen” worked as a drug even for those who have long forgotten about this game. However, working on recovering next parts of the deleted content was not an easy job. During the testing phase a lot of smaller as well as more significant errors came to light. Of course, with such an amount of content it was impossible to avoid bugs, but – as Staniszewski admits – making everything playable was not a matter of hours or even days. The zbyl2 & Stoney duo was later joined by one of the previous testers – Hassat Hunter – and it simplified some of the work, but fixes and changes still took a lot of time.
“We spent the longest working on the HK Factory. We basically had to start it from scratch at least twice. The location had two levels, and we were to enter it as a single HK-47 unit. The first level was basically finished in the game files; although camera was crossing through the walls in every dialogue and consoles didn’t work 100% correctly, you could basically finish the whole first level. The troubles began with the second floor. Apart from a few cutscenes and dialogues with no context, there was nothing more and we spent a lot of time thinking and trying to understand how all of this was supposed to end. It even came to asking Avellone himself about this.”
There’s yet another interesting thing related to Chris Avellone that came up while working on The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod. After all, the mod showed the world the true idea of the Obsidian team regarding the game, and that couldn’t go unnoticed by the creators. In this case we can only guess, but taking into account that it was LucasArts that forced the creators to release the game quickly, we can’t exclude that they were simply grateful for the work that Staniszewski and other modders had done. We can conclude with no doubt that the whole project made a huge impression on the team.
“The developers from Obsidian congratulated us and mentioned our mod on multiple occasions. Chris Avellone in particular. If you look on his older tweets, you will see at least a dozen mentions of our team. Once or twice he even said that playing the game for the first time with TSLRCM is a good idea (although he didn’t play it himself yet). One of the most memorable moments regarding Avellone was when he praised us during a livestream regarding a Kickstarter campaign of Pillars of Eternity that thousands of people watched. Imagine my surprise when I’m talking to someone on Facebook, then I switch to a tab with the stream and I hear the name of my own mod. Once we managed to talk Adam Brennecke (programmer in Obsidian, KotOr II was his first game) into recording few dialogue lines for us, and we even managed to record a podcast with some of the creators of the game… back then I succeeded in creating the most awkward silence in streaming history, when I mentioned The Old Republic. Generally, you can say that I have a good relationship with the creators.”
Return after a decade
The mod developed beautifully, it evolved into something much bigger than Staniszewski and the rest of the team expected; however, that wasn’t the end of the journey. KotOR II began its second (and maybe even third) life in 2015, during a very special time for all Star Wars fans. The creator of the biggest turmoil of this year on the market of Star Wars games (at least up until Battlefront was released) was… Aspyr Media – the publisher accountable for the port of the game to Mac OS, Linux, iOS and Android. The game got released on the platforms that never had this game before, and although it was almost a decade since the game got released, it is understandable with The Force Awakens soon to be released. That still wasn’t the end. PC version of the game got an official patch on Steam. As you can probably imagine, this undertaking was more than just a visual fix. The game got 37 new achievements (and for many people that’s already a big deal!) and now it officially supports mods. Steam Workshop makes installing mods much easier… that also includes the mod created by zbyl2, Stoney and Hunter. What’s interesting, the publisher knew perfectly how much the abovementioned team managed to accomplish even before they released the patch, and they decided to do everything they can to make sure that the best mod “expanding” KotOR II makes it to the Valve’s digital distribution platform as quickly as possible. That’s how Staniewicz recalls the beginnings of their cooperation with Aspyr Media:
“I knew about this patch since June, which is about a month before it was officially announced. I admit that the first info from the Aspyr team looked so weird and vague that I had no idea what it was all about. Back then they just couldn’t tell us that they plan to update KotOR II – as you may realize, they were bounded by various agreements. They contacted me and Hassat and we planned a group conversation via Skype. Once it happened and they finally shared their plans with us, my jaw dropped to the floor. I just couldn’t believe that after so many years KotOR II will get an official patch… and I’m the first to find out about this!
Their representatives told us that they really like The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod and that they would like to have our mod available on Steam at the same time when the official patch gets released. They gave us precise instructions on how to upload everything to the Workshop, then we set a specific day and time so that both things appear at the same time. We also got a chance to talk about some errors and bugs that we couldn’t fix ourselves, and the team might not have been aware of their existence. We even talked about the mod in mobile versions of the game (Android and iOS), but nothing is certain regarding the fate of it. The worst thing was that we couldn’t say a word to anybody about what was going on.”
“Despite very precise arrangements, not everything went according to plan. All the achievements appeared on Steam (without any descriptions) a little bit earlier than the patch itself; moreover, we uploaded the mod on Steam half an hour earlier (we just wanted to see if everything is working fine). Although The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod was only visible in the Workshop for two minutes, it was enough for Eurogamer to contact me and ask me what’s going on. We worked with Aspyr for few more weeks, tweaking some minor details regarding the mods. For example, it turned out that one of the achievements didn’t work with our mod in certain conditions. We weren’t able to fix that ourselves, but since we were in touch with the devs, we quickly found out what was wrong and the next fix “repaired” the issue on their end. Back then I laughed really hard, because it seemed that I did something right if someone was making patches to make my mod work better. It’s also worth mentioning that Aspyr made installers for the Mac version of The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod on their own, which was a really nice gesture from them.”
Recipe for success
The news that KotOR II got an official update after 10 years of doing nothing hit the world with the speed of light. Every gaming website was writing about it, and as a result people took more interest in the game again. On the game’s page on Steam you could find a note that was encouraging everyone to download the mod prepared by Staniewicz and the rest of the team, and it meant more popularity not only for the mod, but for its creators as well. Those who weren’t too keen on technicalities related to downloading and implementing mods themselves, now could do it with just one click of a mouse. At the moment when I’m writing this text, there are 2500 people playing the game, and if you take into account that this is an old game – the number is impressive. I bet that most of these people is using The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod… but it still doesn’t mean that the mod’s authors’ work is done. The latest update for the mod (1.8.4) was released on the 24th of November, and although it only changes small things (because the most significant content has already been restored), it clearly shows how much the mod’s creators cared – and still care – for their work. When you compare their current work to what they’ve already done, it seems that now these are only cosmetic changes.
“It would be impossible to say how much time I spent working with this mod. Somehow it was a big part of my life for the last 6 years, although I sometimes gave it up, because I was fed up with doing this. To be honest, I couldn’t even stand looking at the game for 18 months after the release of 1.8 patch that was the last big update we did – I only took care of some technical issues. It was Aspyr’s update that made me launch the game again. It would be a shame if I didn’t have the Steam achievements maxed out, wouldn’t it? By the way, there were additional achievements added after some time, so I will probably need to play the game again soon in order to catch up.”
“If I were to sum up our work, I’d say that I’m really proud that we even managed to finish this project. I think that the main reason for not abandoning it (as it actually happens with 99% of really ambitious mod projects) was that our team constantly changed. In the beginning there was only me and Stoney, then Hassat joined us. Few years later VarsittyPuppet joined us, and he finished the HK Factory and helped improve the really bugged system of randomizing items. After some time he gave up on the project, Stoney started to get a little tired as well, and I actually got my motivation for modding back after a short brake, so I came back to the team to finish another update with Hassat. Currently there’s only Hassat and me overseeing the project, but I must admit that I’m only taking care of installers and making sure that everything is compatible with different language versions of the game. Just to make it clear – in the last patch it was me who fixed the bug that appeared as a result of Aspyr’s patch, and because of that some of the sounds weren’t working properly. I didn’t give up work on the project completely.”
A new (fulfilled) hope
And that’s how we got to the present times. The game functions with the mod on its own; what was supposed to be restored and fixed, now can be enjoyed by every player thanks to Staniewicz and the rest of his team. The history behind the game, despite a really forced and not-really-promising beginning, has now came full circle – with a huge delay, but finally the game looks as it should on the release day. Whether or not the game can compete with the first part of KotOR is totally up to you, but undeniably this game is something completely different a decade after it was initially released – and at the same time it is much more complete.
Surely we all remember the fuss around the paid mods on Steam. The idea was finally reverted, but some people were actually willing to pay for those mods that are really worth it. During my conversation with zbyl2 I asked whether he ever considered monetizing his mod – after all, The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod definitely deserves donations from the fans.
“Honestly? I never seriously thought about it, mainly because I know for certain that LucasArts (and now Disney) would not be happy with someone else making money of their brand. I remain completely neutral in regards to making money on mods – I just know that 95% of existing mods to all games are not worth any money. Hypothetically, TSLRCM could make some money, but I’m sure that even if the mod would be priced at $1, the number of downloads would significantly decrease. Additionally, it’s also about respecting the players. All of us are KotOR fans and I want the people to experience the best possible version of the game without the necessity to spend any more money… however idealistic that may sound.”
You can see the majority of changes introduced by The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod here. There’s much too many of them to list them all here, but it’s worth mentioning new quests, dialogues, locations, companions that you couldn’t meet before, and some alternative ways of playing the well-known scenarios. You can find the rest of the information regarding the introduced changes on the game’s Steam page. The mod is compatible with many other mods, but in order to find those that are worth your time the most, please visit the Steam Workshop.