The modders who spent 15 years fixing Knights of the Old Republic 2 - Ars Technica

Released on December 6, 2004, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (KOTOR2) was the first game from the then newly formed Obsidian Entertainment. At that time, the new studio was a shoestring operation with just seven veteran developers who had made the move from the recently shuttered Black Isle Studios, all holed up in CEO Feargus Urquhart’s attic. But publisher LucasArts, wanting to capitalize on the success of the original KOTOR from the year before, reportedly gave that threadbare new team just 14 to 16 months to create a sequel.

It’s no surprise that the finished product had some issues.

The most noticeable of these issues at launch might have been the conclusion to the HK-50 factory side quest. Specifically, that conclusion is just nowhere to be found in the final game.

That means players never get to discover the origins of KOTOR2’s most recurring threat. Several files buried in the game’s code reveal content Obsidian made for KOTOR2’s final planet—including dialogue and action set pieces—that the developers just couldn’t get working before launch.

And that’s where 15 years of collective modder obsession comes in...

Putting the pieces back together

• The Ebon Hawk lands on M4-78, a droid planet removed from the game's initial release. Modders wouldn't add it back into KOTOR2 until 2012.

  Zbigniew "zbyl2" Staniewicz.

• Mandalore reaches the surface of M4-78

  Zbigniew "zbyl2" Staniewicz

• HK-47 gives his good children the talk about the birds and the bees.

  Zbigniew "zbyl2" Staniewicz

• To market the Restored Content Mod, Staniewicz and his team edited an original KOTOR 2 graphic.

  Zbigniew "zbyl2" Staniewicz

When he first started modding KOTOR2 over ten years ago, Zbigniew "zbyl2" Staniewicz had previously been working with the mod toolset for Neverwinter Nights. That meant he already had experience navigating KOTOR2’s engine.

His initial focus was finishing a mod to bring cut planet M4-78 back into the main game. That’s the droid planet where players were supposed to originally find Jedi Master Lonna Vash hiding from the Sith threat stalking Jedi across the galaxy.

Progress on restoring the M4-78 file was halted while Staniewicz was waiting for a writer to return scripts. So he moved on to begin work on what would become the Restored Content Mod.

“Another group that was making a restoration mod was taking years to release anything, and I knew I could have done what they were trying to do much faster,” he recalled. “I met this other guy in the modding community [DarthStoney] that shared my sentiments and we just went for it.”

Originally, Staniewicz and his team planned to fix one planet at a time and release them accordingly as they were completed. Once the team finished working on Nar Shaddaa, however, they decided to keep going and release their work as one large mod encompassing all the cut content.

As development went on, Staniewicz started looking for more people to help get the project across the finish line. A modder named Hassat Hunter was brought in to perform beta testing and eventually began assisting with development. And another modder named VarsityPuppet was brought in to troubleshoot issues with that incomplete HK-50 Factory, putting together the unfinished second half of the mission.

This kind of modding was far from a direct process. Even something as simple as changing the location of an NPC required going into the game, finding the character, writing down the coordinates, then leaving the game and inputting and modifying the coordinates in a modding tool, as Staniewicz described it. But that mod tool gives no indication if the process worked, so the modders had to start the game back up and find the NPC’s new location to see if they had succeeded.

“With what was left in the game files, the dialogue worked, but there was no ending,” Staniewicz explained. So they put the final sequences of the factory mission together to fit the available dialogue from the factory and Malachor V.

After releasing a few versions of the RCM, Staniewicz stepped away from the project while the team was fixing problems with the game’s random loot system, saying he believed he no longer had substantial feedback to offer during the process. The involvement of the other team members meant progress never ground to a halt, though. “If it was just me and Stoney… we probably would have stopped way sooner,” Staniewicz said.

The Restored Content Mod entered open beta in 2009. It has more than 400,000 subscribers on the Steam Workshop.

Putting on a disguise

• Thanks to a dare, Effix decided to turn KOTOR2's murderous Wookiee companion into "Care Bear.

  Effix

• Effix' Mission Vao Deluxe pack allows the player to mimic the appearance of KOTOR's Twi'lek companion.

• Effix’s Cathar mod let you live your dream of being a Star Wars cat person.

  Effix

• One of Effix's disguise mods on Steam allows players to dress up as Darth Revan, Malak and Nihilus

  Effix

• Effix’s Boba Mandalore mod allows for cosplay as that one guy who looked cool before falling into a Sarlaac.

  Effix

Not all KOTOR2 mods are so intricate. Effix, who has posted more than 60 mods on Steam since 2010, focuses instead on more cosmetic changes. That can mean everything from changing a companion’s hair color to turning Hanharr, a darkside specific Wookiee companion, into a pink “Care Bear.”

“There was someone who suggested it, and a few others were also on board with the idea or daring me to [make the Care Bear mod],” Effix said. “I don't think they expected me to make work of it, but to me that was extra funny to turn that idea into an actual mod.”

Other work by Effix includes mods allowing the player to replace their standard human head with alien variants like the ancient Rakatan or dark Darth Malak. “The technical term [for these mods] is ‘disguise’ because that's the name of the [in-game] item property that lets you take on another appearance,” Effix said. “A lot of things from KOTOR [like disguises] were left in KOTOR2's files, even though they might not make an appearance in the game.”

The bulk of Effix’s work, he said, is done through Fred Tetra’s “KOTOR Tool,” a simple utility for editing modules, images, wire models, character appearances, dialogue, and items in the game. Focusing on these elements has helped Effix to retain his enthusiasm for modding the game, he said, as has concentrating on projects that are “fairly bite-sized” when compared to others. “I like doing retextures because I like giving something a new look, and for me it's pretty straightforward. I'm not that into more complex things like scripts, adding new areas, new 3D models and animations.”

“Making mods for a game that you really enjoy is great fun, so that's my motivation,” he added. “It's also satisfying to get positive feedback from people who use your mods and also are passionate about the same game. For me it's a fun and relaxing hobby. It's cool to create things and see your creation in a Star Wars game, and I get a lot of positive feedback from the community.”

Listing image by Effix

Romance? Yes, Please

Unlike the first KOTOR, there are no same-gender romance options in Obsidian’s sequel. Leilukin, a modder on the Nexus Forums, has focused much of her modding work since 2016 on fixing that oversight.

“As much as I love KOTOR2, I have always been frustrated by the fact that the romance content with the companions and certain NPCs… are all heterosexual,” she said.

Some of these fixes are relatively simple. In vanilla KOTOR2, for instance, only male characters can recruit The Handmaiden upon leaving Telos, while female characters are the only ones who can recruit The Disciple during the main quest on Dantooine. By default, Leiluken’s mod simply flips that gender check, so only male characters can recruit the Disciple and only females can recruit The Handmaiden.

But Leiluken’s mod goes further than that. The most challenging part, she said, was finding every reference to the Exile’s gender throughout the game spoken by gender-specific party members, then “add[ing] extra dialogue that replaces the pronouns and splic[ing] voiceover files myself.”

• Leilukin's same-gender romance mod let's Kriea manipulate The Handmaiden's feelings toward a female Exile.

  Leilukin

• Leilukin's same-gender romance mod lets The Disciple shoot his shot with the male player character.

  Leiluken

To recruit both The Handmaiden and The Disciple at the same time, players can install the PartySwap mod by DarthTyren. That mod was initially lacking the same-gender romance dialogue from Leiluken’s mod. But Leiluken has since added a compatibility installation option, letting the two mods now work together and fully opening up the same-gender romance options of your dreams.

Keeping it all under control

In the years since KOTOR2’s release, the mod community has known several homes. Originally, mods were housed on sites like Filefront and Lucasforms. Both sites have shut down.

Currently, mods for KOTOR and its sequel can be found on sites like The Nexus, Deadly Stream, the /r/kotor subreddit, and the subreddit’s associated Discord channel. And in June 2018, the administration of all three of those channels merged.

“As the subreddit grew, I became more familiar with the modding community,” chief moderator Snigaroo said. “Eventually I was approached by the Deadly Stream site owner, Tyvokka, with a proposal for the administrative merger we have now.”

As a member of the subreddit in 2013, Snigaroo started by putting together a list of compatible mod builds for both KOTOR games. Each list is separated into two versions, one with spoilers and one without.

“That's when I began to frequent Deadly Stream more regularly and started to work on transforming my private mod usage into a build that could be used by the community as a whole, including with censored versions for new players,” he said.

Despite having a single administrator, all three major channels for KOTOR mods have their own distinct focus, Snigaroo said. On the subreddit, for instance, Snigaroo said the most common discussions relate to build suggestions and character power analysis. Deadly Stream, on the other hand, often holds discussions on new mod releases and tutorials, while the Discord server sees more discussions about mod development.

Despite those natural focuses for discussion, Snigaroo said, he doesn’t want chat on any forum to seem too restrictive.

“We try not to be too draconian, but unless someone's asking a simple support question, we really want any submitted post to either be visual (like a video or image) or a text post that's able to generate a lot of dialogue,” he said about the subreddit. “We don't want to be just a nostalgia sub where half the submissions and comments are ‘I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT’ or other such memes, because we think that's unfair to new users who don't know those memes and who quite probably just need to get some help without being flooded with pointless comments and submissions.

“There's no gatekeeping to it; we want our communities to grow, to foster new projects, and to be cooperative spaces where both new and old players can get together,” he added.

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The modders who spent 15 years fixing Knights of the Old Republic 2 - Ars Technica
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