Brotherhood of Shadow: Solomons Revenge

Description
Silveredge9. A name that you, as a member of the community here at KotORFiles and maybe of the KotOR section of LucasForums should be very familiar with. In 2007, Silveredge9 won the LucasForums Mod of the Year Competition with Brotherhood of Shadow. Brotherhood of Shadow has since gone on to be one of the most popular and successful KotOR mods ever to have been released.

After releasing the original Brotherhood of Shadow, Silveredge found that his urge for modding still hadn't gone away, so he began the production of a second Brotherhood of Shadow. Therefore, it is my pleasure to present to you here today, the sequel to the 2007 Mod of the Year, Brotherhood of Shadow: Solomon's Revenge.

I was one of the few people lucky enough to be a Beta Tester for this mod, meaning I had a chance to play through it a few times before it was released publically for the community to download. This mod really does prove what can be achieved if you have the determination. This mod is extremely professionally done, and has been put together very well. It has taken the storyline of the original Botherhood of Shadow and revamped it, as well as adding the Solomon's Revenge portion. This essentially means you're getting two mods in one. This download contains the Brotherhood of Shadow, as well as all of its patches and updates, with the storyline alterations, as well as obviously, Solomon's Revenge.

This mod has two things that the original didn't have. Voice Overs for main characters, and custom modelled area's. These two parts of the mod seem like as good a place as any to start describing, so here we go!

The Voice Overs are very professionaly done, and are mostly of excellent quality. Kobayashi's voice in particular is very well done in my opinion, as it is done very professionally, and you could realy believe the performance that the actor was giving. Silveredge stated previously that Kobayashi would have a similar personality to Atton Rand, in [i]Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords[/i], and I have to say the Voice Actor really did achieve that, along with Silver's dialogs. The other voice actors also did a wonderful job, and coupled with Silver's writing skills they produced a very professional and believeable set of performances. Kobayashi's as I said was the main one that caught my attention as being one of the best. That's not to say the others were inferior in any way, as all the voice actors did a wonderful job.

The custom modelled areas in this mod were made by one of the most talented 3D Modellers that this community has ever had. He is someone you are no doubt as familiar with as you are Silveredge. His name is as you have probably guessed, Quanon. Quanon will probably embarassed to see me say this, but he really has done a superb job on these areas, and really does deserve his reputation as one of the most talented modders the community has. As you will see from both the quality of the area models, and the content that Silver has filled them with, Quanon and Silver really do make a formidable team. The modelled areas are of a superb quality, and look very professional. Quanon spent a lot of time on each one, working very hard to get them to look as nice as they do. Many was the time when Quanon and I would be having a chat via IM and he'd be saying how he was working on an area for Silver. Even before the areas were all textured and lit properly, you could tell just by looking at the models on their own how much work has been put into them. Quanon would send me a batch of renders every so often throughout the project, and I would give him my opinions. More often than not my response would be 'wow'. :p

On top of the area's, there have also been a number of weapons modelled and textured by Quanon in this mod. You'll tell which ones they are as you come across them. ;) Inyri Forge also deserves a mention here, as she also modelled one of the weapons included in this mod. This weapon being Mandalore's Battle Axe. Incidentally, Inyri is also one of the people who leant her voice to this mod. She may not be active in the community here any more, but it's nice to know she'll still lend her skills to projects that other people are producing.

The attention to detail in the areas is extremely good, as you can tell just by looking at them. 3D Modelling is an incredibly skilled job, especially to the quality that Quanon works to. Both Quanon and Silveredge worked a great deal on these areas and the content included in them. It's nice to see that people really will pull out all the stops to get the best result possible. Well done to the two of them!

In addition to the custom modelled area's, this mod also contains a lot of reskins of existing area models, which were done by Silveredge himself. Skinning and texturing is one of Silveredges strongest skills, I feel. The reskins he has created for the areas are very professional looking, and have been worked on very hard, as is evident by the screenshots. He has obviously gone to a great deal of effort to produce these reskins and you can tell by looking at the screenshots just how much.

Silveredge has also produced several item skins for this mod, mainly Jedi Robes and various armours. Some of these, such as the Republic Shock Armour, (which is one of my favourite skins from this mod) are not obtainable through the course of the mod, so unless you have a little knowledge of how textures relate to the models in the game, you're stuck with having to watch other people wear them. One of the first things I did upon completing the mod was set the Republic Shock Trooper armour texture to replace the texture of the default male soldier outfit, however. ;)

I really don't want to say much about the storyline, as I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so i'll just say this. The dialogs have been very well written, and are mostly skippable for those among you who read quicker than the VO's speak. They are very professional, and have had as much effort put into them as the other parts of the mod, if not more, as dialog is the most important part of the mod, I think. Along with the main quest, there are also a few side-quests you can play, for a little extra fun. There may even be something nice waiting for you when you complete all the quests included in the mod. ;)

The storyline of the mod has been well implemented, and the mod fits in damn near seamlessly with the rest of the game. The original Brotherhood of Shadow quest has been revamped, as I mentioned earlier, and is included in this mod release. I don't want to spoil anything for you, so I won't talk about any features of the storyline, apart from that it is very interesting, well put together, and well thought out. Without Silveredges imagination and creativity, this mod really wouldn't be as good as it is. To play the entire mod, side quests and all, you're looking at something like 6 hours game play. When I tested the mod, I took just over 5 hours, and that was with the turbo cheat on, to speed up the pace ast which my PC was walking. Without that, you're definitely looking at about 6 hours, possibly longer. You'll definitely need to set some time aside if you plan on playing through the entire thing, especially if you do it in one sitting, as I did.

One of the features that impressed me most, was the fact that you get a [b]lot[/b] of new Party Members throughout the course of the mod. They're only temporary, but its nice to see that Silver went to the effort to do it, to make the experience feel more whole. He could have just had the NPC's follow you around and fight on your side, which would have been a lot easier, but no, he went the full distance and had them actually recruited to your Party.

To begin this mod, you must go to Korriban, after you have completed the Leviathan, and speak to the Rodian Drix Kellwit in the Dreshdae Cantina. He will start everything off.

This is a very well put together, and well thought out mod, which has been carefully implemented, and constructed. Silveredge9 has worked very hard on this, as he did with the original Brotherhood of Shadow, and who knows, maybe he'll win Mod of the Year again this year? :p

I'd just like to thank Silveredge, and of course Quanon, Inyri, and the various other contributors all of which were very well chosen by Silver, for making this such a fun mod to play through. I thank Silver for making this mod what it is, for inventing it, constructing it, and obviously for releasing it to the community to play. Silver has also said that with this mod, he is retiring from modding, which is obviously sad for the community, but in a way it's a positive thing, as he has achieved what he set out to do here. He has said he will be supporting this mod, and making and releasing patches and fixes as necessary just as he did with the first mod. Congatulations Silver for making it through it all. :p

That's the main part over, the only thing left is a little bit of technical info related to the mod.

The mod uses the TSL Patcher obviously, as there are a lot of files here which need to be edited/replaced/merged. However, due to the sheer size and magnitude of this mod, I recommend installing this mod in to a clean Override folder. I might even suggest going as far as a clean install of KotOR, just to be sure. Yes, that's a little bit of hassle, but it's worth it to play through this mod. If you have a save after completing the original BoS, there will be a few problems of you use it to play this mod. It would be best to use a new save, where the original BoS hasn't been played, so as to get the full experience. You do [b]not[/b] need the original mod installed to install this one. In fact, it's preferrable that you don't have it installed.

Well, that's it from me. Now it's just up to you guys to download the mod and play. Make sure to post back here and give Silveredge some feedback, it's the least he deserves for all his hard work.

Enjoy!

[b]Note:[/b] 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