Uh, oops. Aspyr, the developer/porter behind the recent release of Knights of the Old Republic II on Nintendo Switch, tweeted that it is aware that the game is currently impossible to complete.
Austin-based Aspyr has made a name for itself by porting classic games to new systems and has recently brought a slew of Star Wars titles to Switch. The most recent of these is the painfully named but absolutely gorgeous Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II – The Sith Lordsreleased a few weeks ago.
But after some urging from a customer, the studio acknowledged it’s aware that the game is currently being bugged to the point where it can’t be completed on Nintendo’s handheld.
Yes, we are aware and our development team is working to deliver the patch as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience in the meantime!
— Aspyr (@AspyrMedia) June 20, 2022
It was an impressive effort from Daniel Moore, who first asked if the company knew “that there is no way to complete this game?” Aspyr replied: with a rather ambiguous comment about “a known issue to be fixed in the next patch”, then a link to the support pages. But Moore pushed the studio further, making it clear that he was well aware of the problem repeating his question† Are they aware?
Aspyr then replied fessing. “Yes, we are aware,” it said, before adding, “our development team is working to deliver the patch as soon as possible.”
The game seems to crash after playing the “Basilisk Crash” cutscene, played when players arrive at Onderon. Which, very disturbingly, is about half way through the game.
It raises some rather important questions about the game’s QA, that it could be certified and released in a form that is impossible to complete. There is also the question of how long Aspyr has been aware that its product has a groundbreaking bug that affects all players, but has failed to communicate it to potential and current customers. We reached out to Aspyr to ask these questions.
Nintendo can be particularly difficult when it comes to releasing patches for games, which will increase the delay before this is fixed. But crikey, what a mistake to make, albeit an oddly fitting one given this game’s heavily loaded history from 2004. It’s well worth putting off this great Obsidian RPG until there’s better news.
