You muse play the game, the rest is up to you
Finally Bioware decided to take a crack at it by releasing the masterpiece Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). KOTOR takes you back 4000 years before George Lucas’ epic movies. That means there’s no Death Star, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, or any character that we all know so well. As KOTOR begins the famous yellow scrolling text informs us that a giant war between the Republic and the Sith is going on. Unfortunately things aren’t looking so good for the Republic. Darth Malak, a former Jedi who fell to the darkside and is now the head honcho of the Sith has nearly wiped out the Republic. He is also destroying the Jedi order, which seems to be the Republic’s only hope against the ruthless Sith.
Hope isn’t lost for the Republic. Once you begin on the Ender Spire, a Republic spaceship under attack by a bunch of Sith (after this area Halo vets will get a sense of déjà vu), you are informed from a comrade that a Jedi named Bastilla has a battle meditation that was strong enough to destroy Malak’s master, Darth Revan. With this the Republic stands a chance against the Sith, which is my Malak has made her his primary target. Although she has a cool British accent and huge Breasts, she is a real pain. Not only does she constantly criticize you and think she’s superior to everyone else (well I guess she is), but she dresses in very sexual attire (preferred by her over the standard Jedi robes), and the option to have her run around in her underwear makes her an obvious sex target. The problem with that is for some reason she doesn’t want to lose her virginity. The slightest comment about romance, especially when she’s talking about the force or something Jedi-related, will seriously piss her off and make her hate you. I can understand why she puts saving the galaxy over pleasure, but with the clothing she wears how can she expect any man, Jedi or not, to not want to sleep with her?
As soon as you select new game you will receive a sample of the incredible amount of freedom granted to you in KOTOR. Instead of letting you play as the role of an already created character, you are allowed to customize almost every aspect of your character; which includes the gender, appearance, name, job (you can choose between a soldier, scout and scoundrel), starting stats, abilities, and much more. Everything you choose, with the exception of your character’s name and appearance will affect the game. For example your tactics will have to change depending on what class you choose. A soldier is a strong character that excels like no other at combat. On the other hand a scoundrel’s best bet is to avoid as much fighting as possible and use other skills such as stealth, persuading, and computer slicing skills to his/her advantage to survive. If you want a mixture of both your best bet is to pick a scout. The best part about the character creation is the fact that there is no really cool, badass, or manly character such as Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell) or Ryu Hayabusa (Ninja Gaiden) to appear in Star Wars. So instead of settling for some Luke Skywalker wannabe such as the goofy Kyle Katarn from the Jedi Knight/Outcast series, you can create your own, tweaked to your perfection. It would’ve been better if there were more character models available, but what you have is very good.
Your quest to save the Republic (or destroy it, more on that later) will take place across the entire galaxy, and you will visit many interesting planets in the process. Everywhere you visit seems to fit perfectly in the Star Wars atmosphere. Your first stop is Taris, a planet with a huge urban area with dangerous slums beneath it made up of bars, gamblers, criminals, and bounty hunters. The top is a perfect example of a science fiction metropolis/trading area with sleazy bars that were seen so many times in the Star Wars films. You will stop at Tatooine, which appears exactly as it does in the movies. It is made up of deserts that stretch forever as well as low class huts and sand people. Kashyyk, the home of the Wookies, is nothing more than dark, murky forests with swamps and a village in the treetops; the perfect environment for such creatures. Manaan is an amphibious planet with bustling trade ports on top of water. Fish-like creatures inhabit it, which just might be ancestors of the Gungans. Korriban, home of the Sith is made up of one small colony with many spooky, sinister catacombs that portray the Sith perfectly. Besides the planets, many other aspects bring the Star Wars theme into KOTOR. Enemy spaceships look like retro TIE fighters, and the Ebon Hawk, your personal spaceship is the perfect model of the Millennium Falcon; it has gun turrets, a similar room layout and exterior, and much more. I could go on and on bragging about the unblemished environment Bioware created, but believe it or not, this is nothing compared to some of the other aspects that make KOTOR better than any Star Wars game you could’ve ever imagined.
Along the way you will team up with many interesting characters besides the beautiful but arrogant Bastilla. The first person you’ll team up with is Carth, who is a freakin' loser. At first he seems like a cool guy but it isn’t long before he starts acting like a big jerk by whinning every half hour that he’s afraid you’ll betray him and about the dark hours of his past nobody cares about. He will give you a perfect reason to want to join the darkside (hehehe). You’ll also befriend a Wookie named Zaalbar who agrees to be your ally after you rescue him from a bunch of monsters. His best friend, a cute Twi’lek named Mission (cute for Twi'lek standards that is) agrees to come with you as well. Although she’s young (14-15 years old the most), her scoundrel skills are sure to come in handy during your adventure against the Sith. You will also team up with Canderous, a badass Mandalorian bounty hunter who decides to join you because he seeks revenge against his former boss. You will also meet two more Jedis; Juhani, a cat-like creature you’ll find in the desert planet Tatooine, and Jolee, and old but wise man you’ll meet up with in the dark Kashyyyk forests. You can also acquire two druids, T3-M4 and HK-47. The former is great for opening doors, deactivating mines, and operating computers, and the latter, is great to have in combat and known for his priceless lines. Humor (although he doesn’t try to be funny) is just what you need while traveling through the galaxy. Although I hated listening to Carth’s winning and Bastilla criticizing me for hitting on her, these characters are the ideal characters for an RPG. The variety is simply amazing; what other game allows you to fight with a Jedi, robot, and Wookie simultaneously?
The best part about KOTOR’s freedom is not the freedom of character creation, but the freedom of who you can become. You don’t have to be a hero who saves the Republic from the galaxy; if you want you can perform heinous deeds throughout the game and fall to the darkside. Who you become all depends on the choices you make throughout the game, mostly through the large amount of dialog. Most of the time I hate games with a lot of dialog, but KOTOR handles the dialog perfectly. For example, you might run into a person being attacked by a group of Sith because he’s in debt. You will be given the option to either bribe/attack the Sith to save the poor scoundrel’s life or order him/her to pay back the Sith or you will kill him. Choosing the former awards you light side points, which brings you closer to being good, and the latter awards you darkside points, which brings you down a path similar to that of Darth Malak. As you make your choices, your party members will react accordingly. For example, Carth and Bastilla will criticize you for performing a heinous act, and brutes such as Canderous will sometimes call you a sissy for choosing a good action. KOTOR requires you to pick a side early on and stick to it, you must become either a light or dark Jedi; there’s no lingering in the middle.
KOTOR isn’t only about interacting with people and creatures across the galaxy; a lot of time will be spent fighting. KOTOR uses the 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons rule system, which means the amount of damage given/received is determined by a combination of the character’s statistics and an invisible dice behind the scenes. Battles are fought in real time (imagine how dull a turn-based lightsaber battle would be), but you are given the option to pause the game at will during battles and select moves for your party members. The best part about the battles is the force powers available to Jedis. These powers include all of the powers seen in any Star Wars movie or game, plus many new ones, such as Force lightning, drain, heal, stun, and many others. Imagine three Jedis all equipped with a full arsenal of force powers. Pretty cool, huh?
The battle system isn’t perfect, though; your allies aren’t too bright. Generally they know what they are doing, but they will often screw up to a degree that greatly affects you, especially towards the end of the game. Since you can only control one character at a time, the not-so-bright AI will control the other two. The only way around this is to constantly pause the game (I previously mentioned you can pause during battles) and queue up new moves until they are done executing them (which is usually a matter of seconds) and then repeat the process before they mess up again. It would’ve really helped if you could select the AI’s tactics, such as attack, use force powers, heal allies etc as seen in Star Ocean 2. Luckily the enemies rarely, if ever outsmart your allies until the very end of the game, so this isn’t too much of a problem.
Sooner or later, you will realize that the story is nothing more than find and defeat Darth Malak before he destroys the Republic and wipes out the galaxy. Luckily there are a number of sidequests that keep KOTOR’s plot from being a typical one that we’ve seen so many times before. Throughout your quest, you will investigate murder mysteries, enter swoop races, join a fight club, gun down enemy fighters, and much more. You will also acquire cards that are necessary for playing Pazaak, an addictive card game that is played by pretty much every gambler in the galaxy. Even if you don’t want anything to stand in your way of defeating Malak you’ll find many reasons to want to take a break and attempt the sidequests. They are extremely fun, and you will always receive something great in return, such as credits (the game’s currency), light/dark side points, or a gift of some sort that makes your break worthwhile.
Regardless of the situation, you will always have the opportunity to interact with your party members. At first the questions you are able to ask them are general questions about their feelings, lives, and their opinions on you, but as you begin to know them the questions become deeper. Some of these questions will open up even more sidequests. For example, if you continually talk to someone about their pet (I’m making this up to prevent spoilers) and speak about it often maybe someday a quest will open up involving their pet. An in-game journal is included and automatically updates whenever a new point to a conversation is made, which is a relief, since memorizing stories that occur amongst eight characters (you can’t communicate with T3-M4) will become confusing due to the many other events going on. Your responses to your party members will also affect how they feel about you throughout the game, so if you continuously act like a jerk your chances of them wanting to speak to you about deep and personal issues will be a lot slimmer. So if you’re trying to win over Bastilla, you better treat her like a queen (that is a pro-force anti-romance Jedi)!
There are some bugs that will slow down your quest quite a bit. There were several times when my game crashed or froze when I tried to enter a new area. Luckily there is a quicksave feature that can be used whenever you want to use it. These bugs shouldn’t be too much of a problem if you save your progress often, and the game will even save for you automatically every fifteen minutes when you enter a new room (don’t worry, it won’t overwrite your previous file). Another problem is the excessive loading times. When you enter any major area the game will have to pause for at least 10 seconds to load. Fortunately Bioware included several interesting facts to read while the game is loading. Too bad after 6-8 hours of playtime you’ve read them all, making it pointless from there on.
KOTOR’s main quest is about as long as that of most RPG’s, cloaking in at around 30-35 hours, but the depth is surpassed by few. As I previously mentioned, there are numerous sidequests that will add quite a few hours to your in-game clock. There are four possible endings (light side and dark side endings for male and female characters), and most gamers will want to play through it at least twice to get the two “main” endings (light and dark sides). There is also some downloadable content that can only be acquired through Xbox Live that includes new weapons, armors, and items. KOTOR is a game that will remain in your Xbox for a while.
Visually KOTOR is either beautiful or ugly, luckily the former much more than the latter. The gorgeous lightsaber combat is easily the best I’ve ever seen in a Star Wars game. The character models, environments, effects, and Bastila’s breasts (sorry, had to add that) all look fantastic. As I previously mentioned, the various environments look amazing; they look as if they came straight from the Star Wars movies. Many visual affects that push the Xbox’s graphical capabilities to the max, such as bump mapping on armor are present. Some aspects aren’t so pretty, though. The framerate will often slow down when there are many characters on the screen at the same time. Throughout your long quest you will often see many characters that you could’ve sworn you met before (although you haven’t), because they look identical. Although the game looks great, many of the cutscenes, especially those involving your character look hideous. In these cutscenes character models are horrible and the animations are atrocious, especially the lip-synching, which is sometimes way off. Luckily the visuals’ strengths greatly outweigh its flaws.
The voice acting in KOTOR is easily the best I’ve ever heard in a videogame. A bunch of professionals handled every line of the game’s hours of dialogue wonderfully. Besides the voices in English, which sound excellent, the numerous different dialects spoken are spoken perfectly. The famous Wookie roar sounds as good as ever, and so does all of the other dialects, which include the slushy-sounding language spoken by the inhabitants of Manaan, the gangsters’ language (which sounds JUST like it does in the movies), and much more. The music is also great. It features many classic John Williams tunes plus many new ones that fix the atmosphere perfectly. The sound affects are also outstanding. Everything, including lightsaber hums, footsteps, gun/turret blasts, and background noises (wind in the Tatooine desert, animals in the Kashyyyk forest etc) are dead-on.
KOTOR is a masterpiece that shouldn’t be missed by anyone. There are many shortcomings, but the strengths make them seem nonexistent. KOTOR excels in every way it tries; it’s deep, lets you take whatever path you want, perfectly portrays the Star Wars atmosphere, and most of all is a lot of fun. It is easily the best RPG to appear on Xbox to date and definitely worthy of a play by anyone. Even if you’ve never been fond of Star Wars or RPGs in general give this game a try, right now. It will completely change your opinion.