I recently downloaded from Steam the lovable old game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and installed the Restored Content mod that returned to the game content that the developers had to cut prior to the rushed release date. I love this game to bits, due to playing it all the time as a child, and I was fascinated to see what restored content I could fiddle with.

I had always known about the sub-level of the Telos military base, the one with the locked door that you can never enter. Cut content. I always knew it was the door to the HK manufacturing plant that G0-T0 took over after Revan abandoned it. So I was super excited once HK-47 initiated the quest to find out where the HK-50 droids were coming from so he could hunt them down and kill them.

So I did. I went to the sub-level and powered through the first area, which was a lot of fun. HK-47 has a lot of witty banter with three HK-50 droids he finds in a training room, and three more trying to stop him from getting into the manufacturing plant. So many jokes were to be had. For example, the three in the training room were amicable and answered all of HK-47’s questions just fine, only one of the three would always go too far and blurt sensitive information. The other two would turn and demand why he said it, and he’d just be like, “Hey, man, he’s a Hunter-Killer model just like us. Why shouldn’t he know?”

Unfortunately, once I reached the actual manufacturing plant once the funnies were over, I realized just how difficult this cut content is. The quest prompts you near the end of the game, after you visit all the planets looking for the lost Jedi masters. So HK-47, by this time, is a high level and has some good gear.

But the HK-50 models he fights always work in threes, always use repair packs, and others in the area always hear the commotion and open doors to lend a hand. I was fighting four or five at once. I had to turn the gameplay to easy, set deadly frag mines and run around so they would set them off, throw grenades, use shields, and generally just panic the whole time. On easy. It was really quite difficult.

Then I got through the majority of the manufacturing plant, and went to the main area where the HK-51 models were being produced. I had a nice chat with an HK-50 model about the art of assassination, which I thought would be the prompting to convince them to join the fight on Malachor.

It was not.

Eight HK-50 models attacked me at once. I lasted about thirty seconds on easy before they took me out, and that was while I was trying to run away and separate them so I could actually fight them.

So here’s my problem.

If I ever encounter something like this in any other game, some impossible scenario that one fails time and time again, I check forums to see what other people did to get past it. Aside from the in-game journal not updating to give me an idea of my goal, there’s one problem: the HK manufacturing plant was cut content. Very few people have actually played it. Every forum I saw just had people wondering what the door to the sub-level was, and why they couldn’t open it.

So please. If anyone out there in the big wide world of blogging has played KotOR II with the Restored Content mod and has finished HK-47’s hunt for the factory successfully, halp. I’m going to keep trying to separate them, but eight is a bit much.

Okay. Next post will deal with writingly stuff, I swear.