page_title: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Chris Avellone at e-Services 2009, SMX, Manila
context_page_description: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords is a role-playing video game developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and was released for the Xbox on December 6, 2004, for Microsoft Windows on February 8, 2005, and OS X and Linux on July 21, 2015. Like its predecessor, it is set in the Star Wars universe 4,000 years before the events of the film Episode I: The Phantom Menace and is based on the d20 System developed by Wizards of the Coast. The game uses the Odyssey Engine, which was originally used in Knights of the Old Republic. The plot first started being written before the original Knights of the Old Republic was released, and development began in October 2003, after BioWare offered Obsidian their Star Wars license due to being confident in their previous work.
  Knights of the Old Republic II starts five years after the events of the first game and follows the story of The Exile, a Jedi Knight who was exiled from the Jedi Order. During this time, the Jedi Order has been almost completely wiped out by the Sith.
context_section_description: Knights of the Old Republic II was developed by Obsidian Entertainment and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic, and it uses the same Odyssey Engine as the original game. BioWare suggested that Obsidian should be offered the Knights of the Old Republic license due to their familiarity with Obsidian's past work and the good relationship between the two developers, as well as due to finding LucasArts' development schedule for the sequel to be too tight. The game was released in PC and Xbox versions, but due to the Xbox version being released two months prior to the PC version, it has multiple unfixed bugs.
  Development of the game began in October 2003. The overview of the game's story was originally drafted before the first Knights of the Old Republic was released, after which it saw many revisions and also some major redrafts. In preparation to write Knights of the Old Republic II, lead designer Chris Avellone tried to learn as much about the Star Wars universe as possible. He read many books, guides, modules, and graphic novels, and the Obsidian team also relied on the first Knights of the Old Republic and the original Star Wars films for inspiration. Avellone said that Obsidian recognized one of the things that made Knights of the Old Republic great was the story and the companions, and that they tried to expand upon this by adding more depth to them.
  Knights of the Old Republic II uses the same d20 System as the first Knights of the Old Republic with some changes, and the level cap has also been removed. For the most part, the team didn't want to redo any of the design elements from the first game, as they felt that there was no need to change anything that had already proved successful; instead, they opted to look for areas that could be improved and expanded upon them in a way that retained the base style of Knights of the Old Republic. Obsidian put much work into the game's graphics, including the appearances of non-player characters. Other technological improvements include the lighting and weather effects, in addition to increasing the level sizes. Knights of the Old Republic II's lead artist was Aaron Meyers; he decided which people would join the art team after looking through "tons of applications, resumes, and demo reels", and he said that he was pleased with the number of people who wanted to work for Obsidian. Meyers also complained about the short deadline the development team had to deal with. Obsidian's COO, Chris Parker, said that the schedule set for the development team was "extremely aggressive", and that the team felt a lot of pressure because they were "making a sequel to the game of the year for 2003".
  For the music, the development team felt that symphony orchestra would work best for Knights of the Old Republic II. The musical score was composed by Mark Griskey, who developed music and themes for characters and places, including the Jedi's theme, Darth Sion's theme and Darth Nihilus's theme (which both have many similarities with the Emperor's theme from The Return of the Jedi). He also created a theme for the main character, which is heard occasionally when he or she experiences internal conflict. The ~55-minute score was recorded by the Sinfonia Orchestra in Seattle. The opening crawl utilizes the version of John Williams' main Star Wars theme that was re-recorded for the prequel trilogy.
  When Obsidian was preparing to present Knights of the Old Republic II at E3 2004, they tried to fit as much information as they could, saying that it would need to be a duration of 30 minutes as it was the only E3 event it would be showcased at; however, due to the limited time frame, they would have to cut it down to a five- to ten-minute presentation. During this time, none of the levels Obsidian designed were ready to be shown, so they picked three levels and put them through a schedule to finish them on time. The demo was finished a few days before the event, and the game was presented in May 2004. The first trailer for Knights of the Old Republic II was later u
caption: Chris Avellone (pictured) was the lead designer of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.
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