Inspired by the release of the latest Star Wars film (which, by the way, I won't have time to see for over a week - bah!) I've started playing Knights of the Old Republic again. I'd forgotten just how engrossing it can be.

I'd given up playing it many months ago due to a slightly bizarre oversight on my part. I should warn you that this is going to be spoiler heavy, so if you haven't played KOTOR, you might want just to ignore this whole article.

Wandering around Manaan, I found it confusingly large, and there seemed to be so many people to meet and talk to, and so many quests to follow up. I started following them up in dribs and drabs - a little here, a little there. Then I met a gentleman who wanted me to join a super-secret society of assassins. The target he wanted hit first seemed like a bit of a scumbag that the universe wanted to be rid of, so even though I was a light side Jedi, I wanted to take him out. However, doing so got me dark side points. I suppose I should've seen that coming - assassination isn't generally seen as the most goody-goody of professions after all.

Anyway, I didn't much care of this so I thought I'd go back a few save games and start Manaan all over again. I went around talking to all the people I'd talked to before and getting the same quests but ignoring the assassin master this time. This seemed fine, but sadly I'd forgotten to talk a second time to one particular Selkath, who wanted to know where his kid had got to.

So I broke into the Sith embassy and started slaughtering everything in sight. Eventually I came to a door that would not open. I tried bashing it to no avail. I tried lockpicking it, but it didn't budge. I yelled and ranted at my Xbox, but it refused to relent. I was not happy. But I left the door and went left the embassy and got arrested, tried and, after what seemed like an age of rather tedious legal dialogue, put to death.

I figured that the way out of the trial was to find something that was behind that door. So again I wandered in to the embassy, but this time I took along Mission and that annoying little droid both of whom have superlative door opening skills. They're rubbish fighters though, so it took me quite a while to get through the embassy levels. Coming to the door again I found that neither Mission nor the droid could get it open. I went through the trial again, and got put to death a second time.

By now, I was totally fed up with running round Manaan. I'd spent far too much time on it, so I just packed it in and started playing something else. I suspect it might have been Crimson Skies.

Turns out for the door to open, you need to have talked to that old Selkath a second time. I only found this out from a KOTOR walkthrough - the first time I'd felt the need to consult such a document. I checked my save game history and sure enough, in my original wander through Manaan, the quest text was different to my second time round - I'd forgotten to talk to the Selkath. Having rectified this I went through the base again, got through the door got the datapad and hey presto! Got let off the trial charges before official proceedings had even started. Has to be the shortest trial ever in galatic history.

All I'd ask though, of game designers, is to give me some sort of clue that would have indicated that door couldn't be opened by any normal means. It'd have saved me an awful lot of time, trouble and frustration. KOTOR is listed as an RPG after all, it doesn't have "intensely annoying puzzle-based adventure game" on the front of the box, does it?