Update, 06/22/2022, 1:43 p.m. ET: Aspyr recently followed up on this situation, telling Stephen Totilo of Axios that it only affects a “small number” of Knights Of The Old Republic II players. The studio also shared a workaround in the form of a dev warp that bypasses the spot where the game crashes.
The original story follows below.
Er, whoops. Aspyr, the developer/porter behind the recent release of Knights Of The Old Republic II on Nintendo Switch, has tweeted that it’s aware the game is currently impossible to finish.
The Austin-based Aspyr made its name porting classic games to new systems, most recently bringing a slew of Star Wars titles to the Switch. The most recent of these is the achingly named but utterly wonderful Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II - The Sith Lords, released a couple of weeks ago.
But after some pressing from a customer, the studio acknowledged it’s aware the game is presently bugged such that it cannot be completed on Nintendo’s handheld.
It was an impressive effort from Daniel Moore, who first asked if the company was “aware there is no way to complete this game?” Aspyr replied with a rather ambiguous comment about “a known issue that will be addressed in the next patch,” then linking to its support pages. But Moore pressed the studio further, making clear he was well aware of the issue, then repeating his question. Are they aware?
Aspyr then replied fessing up. “Yes, we are aware,” it said, before adding, “our dev team is working on delivering the patch as soon as possible.”
It appears the game crashes after playing the “Basilisk Crash” cutscene, shown when players arrive on Onderon. Which, very troublingly, is about halfway through the game.
It raises some rather significant questions about the QA on the game, that it could be certified and released in a form impossible to finish. There’s also the question of for how long Aspyr has been aware its product has a game-breaking bug that affects all players, but haven’t communicated this to potential and current customers. We’ve contacted Aspyr to ask these questions.
Nintendo can be particularly difficult when it comes to releasing patches for games, which will add to the delay before this is fixed. But crikey, what a mistake to have made, albeit a strangely fitting one given the bug-ridden history of this 2004 game. Certainly worth holding off picking up this wonderful Obsidian RPG until there’s better news.