Recruitable Kay

"I am proud to present the greatest recruitment mod to ever be made for the 2003 game of the year, Knights of the Old Republic. This mod is a year and half in the making and it�s finally here just in time for Christmas. So Merry Christmas everybody! Inyri Forge�s mod gets my vote as the best mod to ever be released in the year 2007. If there was a voting poll available, I would cast my ballot for this mod.

 

I�m betting a lot of people that have been waiting patiently are excited that it�s finally here and probably aren�t taking the time to read the review because they already have decided they want this mod after seeing a teaser trailer or two and are hitting the download button as soon as they click the link to the mod; of course that means there are others who still aren�t in on this recruitment mod and wonder why I�m calling it the best recruitment mod to ever be made and want to know if it�s worth downloading a 19.8 megabyte file. If you want to know why that is, just keep reading on and you�ll find out why it�s the best. I�m going to *WARN* you that spoilers will be mentioned in this review so if you haven�t had the chance to play Knights of the Old Republic all the way through and don�t want to be spoiled, then stop reading now or suffer the consequences!

 

Inyri Forge created a female character named Kay. She is a Jedi Sentinel that you find on the planet of Tatooine on a mission to investigate Czerka Corporation or at least that is what she will tell you. Remember the trio of Dark Jedi that confront you on Tatooine telling you that Lord Malak was most displeased that your PC left Taris alive? Right after that event you will see a female Jedi walking towards you with a golden lightsaber hilt (made by the author too) that will emit a yellow blade when activated. You will also notice her brown hair, blue eyes, and a red Jedi robe (assuming there isn�t a mod changing its look in your override folder) as shown in the screenshot. Go and talk to her so she�ll join your party in your quest to find the Star Forge.

 

There are many reasons why this character is special. She has audio dialogue which is provided by Inyri Forge herself. All the other recruitment mods have mute dialogue, so this part alone sets this recruitment mod leaps and bounds above any other recruitment mod out there. You can also have conversations with her as you level up and eventually you will trigger a side quest that starts on Tatooine. You will have to talk to Kay at least five times before her side quest starts. So talk to her as soon as she joins you and wait till you have to level up to talk to her again and do that five times and her quest will be ready to start. When the quest is ready to start, go back to Dantooine and talk to the Jedi near the Ebon Hawk. After you start the quest, you�ll have to go back to the Dantooine where the Mandalorian there will finally talk to you and eventually have to go to Manaan to get something, and back to Dantooine to return an item to complete the quest to the female Twi�lek Jedi in the training room. It is best to play your game when leaving Dantooine by going to Tatooine, then Kashyyyk, then Manaan, and Korriban last while finding the Star Maps in order to have time to complete Kay�s quest and pretty much get the most out of this mod because if you need to do it before you get captured by the Leviathan.

 

There are three other new characters with recorded audio just like Kay. One of the new voiced characters is a Jedi on Dantooine which you will see as you get off the Ebon Hawk. You can�t miss him. The other two are Mandalorians. One of the Mandalorians is on Tatooine and the other is on Manaan. The Mandalorian on Tatooine can be found near the exit out of Anchorhead on the far left side. He�ll be wearing the blue Mandalorian colored armor. The Mandalorian on Manaan that you will speak to wears red colored Mandalorian armor and can be found at the end of the module which is near where the Sith Shuttle is that can get you into the Sith Base.

 

For those who are familiar with how the game engine on Knights of the Old Republic works, you will know that if you add a recruit to your party, you will have to replace another party member. In the case of this recruitment mod the ousted party member is Juhani. Because Juhani is out and you never had the heart to kill her in your duel with her on Dantooine, or you wanted extra Jedi help from your party; now is the time to do it since she�s not going to be in your group. Well, that�s not entirely true since she will join your group still if you spare her and help will your PC out until you recruit Kay on Tatooine and that is when Kay will override Juhani and she�ll be out for the rest of the game.

 

There�s a specific reason why Juhani was chosen to be replaced. There are two party members you can complete the game with that aren�t necessary for the storyline and that is Juhani and HK-47. These two are optional party members while the rest of them will join you no matter what. It�s easy to pick Juhani because she is the less popular of the two party members and you�re replacing one female Jedi with another. It was also the easiest way to go for the author to do so that is why she was chosen.

 

Since it is Juhani that is replaced, the author did a lot of work in replacing situations where Juhani would chime in on certain events and has Kay speak instead. I believe this was the most time consuming part of constructing this mod. This adds a dimension that recruitment mods have never had before because recruitment mods in the past would have the party member you replace speak their dialogue instead of the new recruit and you get audio from Kay to make her seem alive which makes this really special.

 

Again since Juhani is replaced, Kay will go with Revan into the Rakatan Temple with Jolee. This means there is that confrontation on top of the temple with Bastila and Kay will have a role in it. Revan�s choice to stay on the light path or go to the dark side will have an effect on Kay�s fate. Kay also has a reaction to your PC being Revan so play with this mod to find out what she thinks of the whole thing.

 

I feel I should give you all a word of warning about this mod that you should know. Just because Kay is recruited on Tatooine doesn�t mean it�s best to find a saved game where you haven�t been to Tatooine yet. Yes, you can recruit her that way, but you will not be able to complete the side quest that comes with her character because two new Jedi need to spawn on Dantooine and in order for those Jedi to show up, you must have a saved game where you never have been on Dantooine before. This would mean you must have a saved game that is on Taris in order for you get the full effect of this mod. As mentioned earlier that one of the Jedi you can find on Dantooine can be seen as you exit the Ebon Hawk who is a voiced character. There is a female Twi�lek Jedi in the training room where the workbench is that uses the Huttese language that is provided by the BioWare.

 

So let�s do a short review about what you will get just in case I lost you:

 

- A new recruit who has audio dialogue

- She is an in depth character

- She has a side quest that spans three planets

- She has her own custom head

- She has her own custom lightsaber hilt

 

To prevent crying among the community, the author uses the TSL Patcher to install the mod. So just sit back and let the Patcher do its job and get ready to play your game. Enjoy this wonderful recruitment mod.

 

Here is the trailer to this mod in case that helps instead of reading through my lengthy review.

 

Note: Please leave the author feedback, especially if you download this mod and use it. It really helps encourage the author to make more mods in the future.

 

-Shem"

"Recruitable Kay has been an instant success since it made its public debut on Christmas Eve 2007. The download counts keep climbing higher and higher at an incredible rate as each day passes. As like most large mods that have been released in the past, there are some bugs that come with it. To me it�s not about the amount of bugs your mod gets in a situation like this; it�s how the author of the mod responds to it. Inyri Forge is one of those people who care enough about her work and your enjoyment that she will fix anything that needs to be fixing. Some authors choose not to care about it, so props to Inyri for her diligence.

 

The biggest issue with this recruitment mod is that amount of dialogue files that will use Juhani�s audio; a game like Knights of the Old Republic has so many dialogue choices that it depends on someone�s playing style to encounter certain situations that other people wouldn�t think of. This mod mostly will patch up areas of where Juhani�s audio will speak instead of Kay.

 

There are other little fixes included in this mod as some of the broken dialogue files have been fixed that have stopped some of the plot quests to be completed. Inyri has also recorded new audio for Kay to add or help replace some of the dialogue replacements for Juhani.

 

The TSL Patcher will install this patch. Make sure you go over Inyri�s readme file or you�ll regret it. I�ve noticed that many people didn�t heed my warning from my last review and were complaining about things that wouldn�t have been an issue if they had just took the time to read the instructions. Let�s see who is patient and who isn�t. Enjoy the patch!

 

Note: Please leave the author feedback, especially if you download this mod and use it. It really helps encourage the author to make more mods in the future.

 

-Shem"

"It�s been a while since Inyri Forge�s Recruitable Kay hit the public, hasn�t it? That mod made it to the public on Christmas Eve last year and was a very successful mod. Unfortunately like every huge mod ever made in the history of Knights of the Old Republic modding, there were bugs that needed to be addressed that weren�t taken care of in the original release.

 

Inyri even released a patch on January 29, of this year that addressed many different issues. This is what she�s calling a �Hot Fix� in this release. It just fixes two bugs. One was the new female Twi�lek Jedi that was spawned on Dantooine and the other is with the female Czerka officer on Tatooine that gives you the hunting license so you can leave the city of Anchorhead; both of the fixes are dialogue files.

 

What specific parts these fixes do is beyond me since Inyri didn�t explain specifically what is fixed about the two new files and right now I don�t have the mod installed so I have no clue what the trouble was there. If you were experience trouble with those two parts, then download this fix; if not, then don�t worry about it.

 

Note: Please leave the author feedback, especially if you download this mod and use it. It really helps encourage the author to make more mods in the future.

 

-Shem"

"For the second time (or third depending on how you look at it) this week, Inyri Forge is back with a new mod. This one is actually a little bit of an update to her massively popular Recruitable Kay mod, which she released in 2007.

 

While this update doesn't add any new content to the mod, it does update the voice overs, using higher quality mp3's than the originals. This increased quality should be a very welcome to anyone who has already played the mod, pretty much giving them an excuse to play it again.

 

When installing this mod, you should let it overwrite ALL the mp3 files and use the NEW localization.mod file, else the lipsynching won't match up to the VO's, which will look a bit strange.

 

To use this file, you will also need the original mod, the patch and the hotfix, which can be found at the links below:

 

Fair Strides:

<Old filefront links removed; the files are in the download button.>

 

Enjoy!

 

Note: Please leave the author feedback, especially if you download this mod and use it. It really helps encourage the author to make more mods in the future.

 

~Marius"