Before Dragon Age and Mass Effect, BioWare was known for one thing: Knights of the Old Republic. The studio's first Star Wars game blew people away, and work on a sequel began almost immediately after the release of the first game. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was praised as a huge technical improvement over its predecessor... though it would eventually be overshadowed by the first game's more memorable story.
Even so, Knights of the Old Republic II still has a loyal legion of followers who play the game to this day — and those fans are in for a treat. For the first time ever, Knights of the Old Republic II is headed to Steam on Mac and SteamOS platforms. Previously, the only way to play the game on something other than Windows was to have kept the physical CD for more than a decade. Thankfully, that's no longer the case, as of Tuesday, July 21.
That's not the only update coming to KOTOR II, either: along with the game's Mac and SteamOS release, a massive graphical update is headed to all platforms later in the day.
Considering the game was first released in 2004, it's no surprise that KOTOR II doesn't look quite as good as other games on the market today. However, the game's latest update bumps its resolution up to 5K — while it won't update the character models, it'll certainly look a lot better for those playing on bigger screens.
The updated KOTOR II also features Steam Cloud saving and controller support, but the biggest content addition is the Restored Content Mod. Basically, the original version of KOTOR II was missing certain sequences, and with the Restored Content Mod, these scenes are re-inserted back into the game. Even better, the updated Steam version already includes the RCM, meaning you won't have to worry about extra downloads and installs to play through everything KOTOR II has to offer.
It's a shame that more classic games don't get the same treatment, but at the very least, KOTOR II fans now have plenty of reasons to re-install one of the best Star Wars RPGs ever made!
If you're looking to pick up the latest version of Knights of the Old Republic II, just head on over to the game's official Steam listing.
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