Fandom Freakouts Show Us How To Build a Better Internet
By: Alex Mell-Taylor
Tags: Trolls, Star Wars, Fandom, Internet Culture, Fans

The first Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) video game was a breakout success in the fall of 2003. The Star Wars RPG took the most popular elements of the franchise to build a compelling story that still enjoys appreciation from fans to this day ( i.e., a Jedi-in-training teams up with a ragtag group of outcasts to stop an evil Sith from conquering the galaxy).

The game currently holds a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, and it’s not hard to understand why this is the case: the Bioware game not only broke ground by displaying one of the first LGBTQIA+ relationships in video games, but raised the bar for RPGs in terms of mechanics, narrative, and worldbuilding. GamesRadar has placed KOTOR on its list of 100 best video games ever made, and it’s on many, many more lists. As one of their critics, Lorenzo Veloria, wrote retrospectively in 2012:

“Every encounter in KotOR is a thrill, whether it’s a lengthy lightsaber duel between the Jedi and the Sith or a business negotiation with a slimy crime lord. The story and setting keep you immersed in every world you explore and every character you interact with.”

It was with high expectations that fans awaited the sequel to KOTOR, Knight of The Old Republic II — The Sith Lords. Sequels always hold the dubious task of honoring what made their predecessor good while also breaking new ground. Many studios have tried to make highly anticipated sequels only to produce mediocre products that do no stand the test of time (see Duke Nukem Forever, Bioshock 2, and Mass Effect: Andromeda).

The makers of KOTOR II wanted to break the mold of the OG title. While the first game was an escapist fantasy that replicates the “Hero’s Journey” formula of the original Star Wars movies, KOTOR II attempts to deconstruct this formula by questioning our very concepts of good and evil. The main character serves as a tool to challenge core assumptions of the Star Wars mythos such as the goodness of the Force and the necessity of the Jedi Order. These provocative questions could have made for a fascinating game, but KOTOR II did not meet these expectations. The end product was a poorly-made mess, forever overshadowed by its predecessor.

Obsidian Entertainment took over production from Bioware for the sequel, and the company allegedly had to keep up with a demanding release schedule that compromised the overall quality of the game. The end product was released to the public on December 6, 2004, and it had a host of bugs. This reviewer personally played through the original version of the sequel to prep for this article, and it is not a good game. KOTOR II glitches out way more than the original, and it feels rushed with levels that are short and underwhelming to play. As Kevin Saunders (then a senior designer at Obsidian) wrote of the game’s failure in an April 2005 issue of the magazine Game Developer:

“Given the short production period and modest staff for the project, our goals for number and size of areas, quests, and non-player characters were unrealistic, resulting in some aspects of the final product feeling unfinished. Simply put, we were too ambitious in terms of total content, and this was realized much too late.”

The issues Kevin Saunders brings up are not surprising. Rushed development cycles lead to shitty products all the time. It’s perfectly fine to appreciate the ambitious vision Obsidian Entertainment was trying to create, while still recognizing that commercial limitations compromised the playability of the sequel. KOTOR II had exciting ideas that could not be properly executed, and while that’s sad, the lost potential of this creative vision doesn’t make it a great game.

The frustrating thing about fans of KOTOR II is that they point to the fact that “KOTOR II has something to say” as proof of its superiority. As Phil Owen wrote in Kotaku in defense of the sequel:

“KOTOR 2 is the sort of adventure that manages to haunt long after it’s done — the text of this game is likely Obsidian’s greatest achievement in its long history. It’s a rare Star Wars story for the thinking human, and KOTOR 1 with all its mass appeal can never match it.”

KOTOR II is art, man. It says things about life.

Here’s the thing, Owen, all stories have something to say about life. That’s the nature of storytelling.

Anyone who has watched a student film can attest to the fact that not all “art” that brings up big ideas plays with those ideas well. KOTOR II may have wanted to talk about “real” issues, but for many reasons, those ideas don’t come together.

Whenever we talk about KOTOR II, we end up going down this weird rabbit hole where we have to compare the reality of the end product with what fans believe were the creator’s “original” intentions. One of the first things super fans will tell you to do is install the Restored Content Mod, which was a fan-driven attempt to fix bugs as well as to restore axed content. This lost content includes cutscenes and dialogue options that were removed last minute from the game due to time constraints. This mod is a big deal in the KOTOR II community and is currently advertised on the launch portal of the game’s Steam Page.

Source: KOTOR 2 Steam Page

There is an opinion among a minority of fans that this mod transforms the entire game. As one fan remarked of the mod on Reddit:

“[Played] 27 times without, 3 times with here. It turns the game from a 9/10 to a 10/10.”

This reviewer has lost hours of their life playing the game, both with the mod and without, and it honestly doesn’t change much. While the mod might make the ending go from being incomprehensible to somewhat coherent, the game is still a difficult slog to play through. It still crashes all the time. The NPC’s still spin in circles for minutes on end. The levels still feel incomplete and underwhelming. As another fan wrote on that same Reddit thread:

“To be honest, as someone who’s played through KotoR II at least twelve times before trying [the Restored Content Mod] for the first time, I don’t see what’s the big deal with is.”

KOTOR II is still bad.

Yet here I am combing through the minute differences between the original version and what is effectively a fan cut. There is a problem here when I have to go to such lengths to critique a work. I have nothing against fanmade creations, but this tactic of “fixing” content seems to be a defense mechanism fans use to absolve a product of its flaws. It allows fans to move the debate away from talking about the thing they love, and more towards critiquing a perfect idea that doesn’t exist; a form of revisionist archeology where fans delicately brush away the dust of reality to find the ideal product sitting just below the surface.

This phenomenon of pivoting critique to an idealized cut is not limited solely to KOTOR II and often happens whenever a popular franchise produces a bad work. We saw the same justification used when the superhero movie Justice League bombed in theaters. 300’s Zack Snyder initially directed the film before being handed over to Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Joss Whedon. For a myriad of reasons (e.g., time constraints, worried executives, Zack Snyder mismanaging the DCEU), the movie did not do well.

Rather than try to understand why this film failed, though, devoted fans launched a petition to see Snyder’s “Original Cut.” I do not think this impulse was about the creative process or holding Warner Brothers accountable, but instead about defending the DC Comic’s tribe to which these fans belong. As the author of this over 170,000-signatory petition freely admits in its mission statement:

“We as members of this fandom have supported WB, DC Films, Zack Snyder, and the cast and crew involved in providing us a movie we love. We have supported the movies distributed in the theatres with multiple viewings and defended DC Films in the public domain when others would seek to damage, insult or condescend.”

Ultimately these edits are about defending the franchise from criticism. Whether these fans are aware of it or not, it’s about saving face. The theater release wasn’t the “real” version. Waste 3 hours of your life watching this edit. It will explain everything.

Director’s cuts and mods are the tamer end of this tribal defensiveness. When there isn’t a less popular version to point to, fans will go to intense, dare I say crazy, lengths to explain away the failings of their cultural tribe.

Let’s pull out our pipes, and get to the bottom of this case.