One of the interesting things about the games in this mod roundup is that many of them are RPGs. There’s something about the engagement of a roleplaying game that clearly secures the loyalty of fans more so than other types of games. It’s also the case that RPGs are more likely to have abandoned but restorable content, and none more so than our first entry in part 2. (For part 1, click here.)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod
This 2005 follow-up to BioWare’s classic, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, continued the storyline of the first game, where the Sith swept most of the Jedi off the galaxy map. Although the game is 3/4ths a masterpiece, due to deadline pressure it suffered from a cruelly abrupt ending, as well as notably missing content.
Fans soon discovered that some of this missing content was actually on the game disk, and they set to work restoring it. For a long time, a modding team by the name of Team Gizka seemed to be making excellent progress on restoring and updating the missing content—but while one leaked beta escaped, no official release ever appeared. Eventually modders hosted at Deadly Stream took matters into their own hands and produced the mod fans of the Old Republic had been waiting for: “The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod” (TLSRCM).
As well as fixing a host of bugs and gameplay issues, TSLRCM is more remarkable than the others in this list because it actually adds significant new content—content that had been intended for release by Obsidian if they’d only had the chance. So TSLRCM both adds to the game and also stays true to the original…truer, arguably, than the game that was originally released. Along with alternate endings, you’ll finally be able to visit the infamous HK Droid factory. In some places the modders were able to restore not just missing levels and plot but also original voice acting and NPC dialog exchanges throughout the game. (There’s a long and spoiler-full list of details here.)
Get the mod at Deadly Stream or ModDB.
Baldur’s Gate I and II: Fixpack and Tweaks Mods
Before they became better known for Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, BioWare originally made their name producing a series of excellent 3D-isometric RPGs, based so faithfully on 2nd edition Advanced D&D you could practically hear the dice rolling.
Based on the Infinity engine, both games (from 1998 and 2000, respectively) make heavy use of pixel-based sprite images. That makes it hard to improve their look without redoing the artwork entirely (more on this later), but modders found plenty of opportunities to fix up and improve the gameplay. One hub of this activity is the Gibberlings 3 site, where you can find a “tweaks” mod for Baldur’s Gate 1, and both “fixpack” and “tweaks” mods for Baldur’s Gate 2, along with related mods for Infinity-based stablemates Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment.
Each mod archive contains a number of separate installable mods, but in each case one text-based installer takes care of all of them for you. The BG2 fixpack, for example, consists of core fixes (the only thing you absolutely need), plus a bunch of “optional but cool” extras that the accompanying notes explain. There’s also a separate widescreen mod that works for all the Infinity-based games.
(If you’re dusting off your old install CDs, you should apply the official patches first. While they’re not linked from BioWare’s modern EA-era website, you can still find them on the download servers here, here, and here.)