Blog #96 - What do you HATE about the M4-78 EP? (version 1.5)

Sith Holocron

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In your own words, can you tell me what you are disappointed with or downright hate about the M4-78 Enhancement Project.  At the very least, it would be amusing to read some short entries about what you thought was annoying about the mod.  If I were to work on the documentary again, it also might prove to be a helpful repository of quotes I could work from.

If you like (or even love) the M4-78 Enhancement Project, I have a whole other blog dedicated for that topic.  It’s just easier to make a pros and cons list if I have the two sides separated. I’m just trying to keep these two columns separate. Yes, you can post in both blogs.

Note: This is only regarding the version 1.5 of the M4-78 Enhancement Project.  I am completely uninterested in previous versions as some complaints may have been fixed by later versions.

Blog #87 is now locked so traffic can be directed here.



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Not really a "hate"-hate, but I find some of the voice acting is rather uneven. Starting with robtic filtering that is way too strong, so much it warps the character's voice when they speak, having no filtering at all for some lines, like IS-43's system overload warning for example. Some of the lines are way too quiet, such as the Escort Droid's. Other times it's simply the writing, making them speak in a fashion that is way too humanized, or not using the proper words. I've seen too few instances of "organics" or "sentients", but that might just be me.

Speaking of Escort Droid, it seems he can only take you forward to the manufacturing part of the industrial zone, but won't take you back to his initial post in that zone, only to the Archon, Back to Central, or the Enviro Zone's locations. Also, it would be prudent to also add him to the maintenance area of the Industrial Zone, as currently the fastest way to get there is to warp to manufacturing and go back into maintenance from there, as the alternative is to leg it all the way through the long reactor corridor.

A glitch can also occur when multiple copies of I1-02 will spawn in the small diagnostic shed in the industrial zone, and play the same diagnostic cutscene with the droid there, way past the point of the plot when it was supposed to happen.


The doors leading further into the Industrial Zone, and in the Environmental Zone cannot be crossed until their canned animation finishes. It seems the script keeps the invisible wall and the interaction reticle in place until that is done.

The infamous crash when entering the Enviro Zone with party members is still present, so many years after the initial report, and can only be circumvented by going in solo and re-adding the party once there. Some of the droids later on still have their wallhack abilities and can shoot you through the walls, without any way to fight back until the door opens.

Some quests like the Fixing Droids or Deadly Upgrade seem to be unable to be completed, either due to glitches in the script because the player skips a step in the quest log chain, such as not informing the droid in the Central Zone that they found the War Droid with the illegal upgrade installed and simply went on to destroy him and bring back the part, which in theory should complete the quest, but the journal entry is stuck on "inform the droid" entry, or because the item necessary to fix a droid, namely the Central Droid Processor, doesn't spawn at all, apparently because the main plot progressed too far.

 

That's what I spotted during my latest run through the place, at least.

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Well, as this is 1.5 we're talking about and I did Beta test 1.5 and know about the previous versions I think it'd be best to leave my opinion on M4-78.

 

First of all, Zybl revamped the intro to Korriban on the Hangar platform to use cut Atton lines from the E3 Demo instead of the spliced lines of 1.2 and before. While most of those splices where pretty bad *cough* HK-47 *cough* I felt some lines where remarkably good such as the one with Kreia where she says "Droids gather while we wait here" was absolutely well done it sounded completely natural, the only way someone could guess it was a splice was because the line "Our enemies gather while we wait here" is so iconic.

 

Most of them have been removed except for, you guessed it, the HK splices I hate. The Atton lines are alright though they do sound a bit awkward and Atton does say "you should keep your Lightsaber up or do whatever you Jedi do in these situations" despite the fact you may not have a Lightsaber.

 

In previous versions, the player would have to play as either Goto, T3 or HK through the radiation sometimes walking long distances to get to a location. To make the walking less like torture an optional sidequest was added in and was odd in the fact you got the quest from one foreman droid but depending on who your character was whether it be T3, HK or Goto this one Foreman droid would have an entirely different purpose, personality and sidequest with a different plot but same overall pacing. For HK this foreman droid was an off-world assassin droid hunting down a specific droid, for T3 it was a droid tracking down a computer virus intent on destroying the archon M4-78 and for Goto is was some sort of package retrieval mission.

 

At some point, you'd be stopped by three police droids who question your droid over the deaths of recent droids (2 droids or more depending if you did the optional sidequest) and they'd put your droids arrest on hold until they fixed the radiation leak. Once the Exile arrives on the planet the Exile can destroy the police droids once they threaten to arrest him/her for refusing to hand over the droids. All of this was removed in favour of a teleportation transport system to make the radiation section quick, the teleportation is, in my opinion, would be better if it showed your droid move away and then teleport to give that immersion that your droid did move away instead of being teleported.

 

While that filler sidequest is good for being removed I felt those Police droids should have stayed, Zybl2 actually forgot to remove the police droids 100% last time I played the mod which may have been the late Beta/first release of 1.5. Just before you fix the radiation backtrack a bit and you should be able to find the Police droids and approach them from behind.

 

On top of turning the industrial zone into 2 sections to reduce lag the actual research centre part has been severely downgraded lacking lots of the droids and placeables from the earlier version making it feel empty and incomplete, while I can understand they are the cause of the lag I felt that downgrading the level severely was somewhat uncalled for, cutting down was inevitable though I felt they went a bit too far. Not that I'm complaining about my less laggy experience though.

 

The new ending is kinda weird, and by weird, I feel it is bugged. You can go to the environmental zone first, fight the droids and convince Kaah to help you get to industrial archon to reach M4-78. I'm loving the freedom of choice with that though of course, this method is somewhat hidden (You need to use Bao Dur's shield breaker to break into the environmental zone). What I don't like is how Darth Sion on Korriban is tracking the Exile as he does on Malachor in cut content with the meditation and the hologram (Which is broken for females). On Malachor he says 'prepare my ship, I'll attend to this myself' but here he instead sends the Sith Assassins.

 

The Sith Assassins, with basic attack and no force powers, kill Kaah and Vash in an ambush and once this ambushed has happened I fell that is where M4-78 ends. I much preferred the original ending as it felt more... like an actual ending and it had an actual resolution with M4-78 and the droids as well as Kaah and Vash in a believable way. Not that the new ending can't be bug fixed and enhanced, however.

 

For 1.5 that's all I can think of. For M4-78, in general, I dislike the infinite medical equipment droid merchant and the inconsistencies with the environmental zone droids.

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While being a good mod, unfortunately it is not quite as tested and polished as one would like. This is especially evident in version 1.5, which introduces a large number of regressions (mostly cosmetic, but some of them quite serious; see https://deadlystream.com/topic/4979-bugs-errors-reporting-with-m4-78ep/) compared to version 1.3.

In addition, the ending from version 1.3 was replaced by a more awkward, less elaborate, and less believable one, with no gameplay courses to trigger the original ending (despite the voice-overs and dialogues still included in the game).

And to add insult to injury, version 1.3 (which appears to be the most stable released version of the mod at the time of this writing) was never released for non-Steam users; neither on DeadlyStream, nor on ModDB.

All things considered, version 1.5 is a formidable case of "newer is not always better" both story-wise and quality-wise. Version 1.3 is recommended to play at this point. As of version 1.5.1, the 1.5 release is not recommended until/unless the regressions are fixed and the original ending is made available as an option.

Spoiler

It would also be nice to let Kaah actually leave the planet alive for light-side players. Neither 1.5 nor 1.3 give the player this option unless they kill the 3 Jedi masters on other planets. This is understandable and believable for Vash, at least in version 1.3 (given no content for her at the Jedi Council meeting); but this is wrong for Kaah, especially given how lame his death is and how easy it would be for the player to prevent it. The player has plenty of opportunities to kill Kaah if they so desire; they should have an opportunity to save him as well.

 

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Well, I've played 1.2 several times, and I think I liked that version better than 1.5.

1. I didn't like bringing the Sith Assassins in. Though not great, I liked Vash dying better in 1.2 than in 1.5.

2. Didn't like Kaah's death all that much either compared to 1.2. I would rather he and Vash live somehow (re casting the voice may be the way to do this like you said).

3. Not sure if I missed it, but I didn't like removing that quest with the droid who gives you a mission when you play as Hk, T3 or GO-TO.

4. The droid that gives the mission to find out where the true colonists come from appears to be have been removed sadly.

5. Not sure if it just me, but the black market droid crashes every time I click on it.

6. I liked the original opening scene better and this one didn't seem as good IMO.

7. I didn't like the police droids being removed either.

8. This version felt a lot more buggy over all (one quest I completed (rogue assassin part quest I think) opened back up in the Research and Development center after it was already closed.).

9. Not sure why the recent events mission was removed. I liked that one.

10. I would also just get rid of the new sequence on the landing pad at the end. Felt weird and out of place imo.

 

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1.  I'd love for there to be a way for at least Kaah to survive the sith assassins. 

2. The ending was kind of abrupt and unfulfilling and I actually thought something was broken for a moment. 

3. Black market droid worked fine for me, perhaps because I didn't interact with it until after fixing the radiation leak?

4. 'Deadly Upgrade' could not be completed on my own, I had to fetch CS-28 for it to complete.

5. Found the sound mixing to be quite annoying with some voices quite loud and some whisper quiet.

6. Found the Industrial Sector much less laggy but still had a strange bug where it would freeze for a moment then fast forward for a few seconds.

7. Some of the Sith assassins don't become aggressive and remain standing around after the fight.

8. Atton acts like he isn't a Jedi in the intro(Provided you made him one).

9. I get Bao-Dur's shield breaking allowing you to sequence break into the environment zone, But why not your Lightsaber?

10. Never had a problem entering the Enviro-Zone with party memners.

11. Never got the fixing droid quest, perhaps because I progressed too far? On a similar note, I never returned to Telos right after the academy; Instead doing so before/after completing M4-78 and now Telos is messed up with Grenn missing and me being told to wait for Grenn to arrest me again among other things.

12. Found the teleporting to get thru the radiation leak stuff to be kind of jarring but understand the limits. Shame the 'teleport-via-map' from K1 was never implemented...

13. Lip flaps for Kaah and Vash are broken.

14. Part of me wishes I could take all 3 droids to deal with the radiation.

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