Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

The Good
Clearly SW:KOTOR is one of the best Star Wars games that have been recently released. One had to wonder whether LucasArts had lost their edge, respect, and credibility in game design…that is, until KOTOR hit. They were wise in privileging BioWare as the developers: BioWare is a highly talented design studio who (along with Black Isle) crafted the excellent Baldur's Gate, which this game seems to be heavily drawn from.

The best aspect of this game is the depth of the RPG system, seamlessly presented in an understandable, easy-to-pick-up format. Couple the game with its graphics that can be nothing short of amazing, and one can easily find the value in this title. Subquests are also varied (at one point, I was the lawyer and chief investigator in a murder case) and the minigames refreshing; minigame resembling pod-drag racing and futuristic intergalactic Blackjack fused with a bit of Magic: The Gathering.

Knights of the Old Republic also possesses a strong story that, while clichéd, is compelling and addictive; it will draw you in just as it had with me, complete with several good twists that will have you saying "why didn't I realize this before?". I especially like how thoroughly the designers worked in your actions with the game; I experienced the consequences of my choices hours down the line in several instances. Character interaction is another strong point: not only is every single line of text in the game voice-acted (something surprising for an RPG), but the acting is well done and quite convincing. I especially love Carth's voice; his performance is convincing and emotional and the diction alone lends a unique aura to who you perceive him to be. Equally cool are the alien languages, which are not spoken in accented English but rather their native alien tongues with subtitled text.

Speaking of sound, KOTOR's sound is excellent. The music is original yet retains the Star-Wars theme without sounding too clichéd. Any game I seriously consider hacking into just for extracting the music is surely worthy of a complement. The sounds themselves are pulled straight from the Official Star Wars soundbanks, so everything is realistic.

Another fine point are the character animations. You can tell everything was motion-captured and then refined, as the animations are varied, realistic, and wholly believable to watch. Sabreplay, a critical element of the game, is truly breathtaking to observe in it's full fluidity.

The Bad
That said, KOTOR has it fair share of flaws. Unfortunately, as good as Bioware is at storytelling, and as good, compelling, and solid as the game design is, it is also riddled with cliché dialog and half-baked plot events. The term "Battle Meditation" is used frequently--referring to one character and her unique ability, and you are given no clear indication as to what it specifically does, even to the game's ending.

The game is clearly tailored for the younger teenage audience. Most mature subjects are quickly skirted over, if not completely skipped altogether. While this isn’t such a bad thing, it takes away from the gamer’s experience and feeling of immersion as the superficiality of the virtual world becomes evident. As expected, there's no blood (is there any in Star Wars at all?). The game feels very family-friendly, which I suppose is an asset to many, but as I mentioned before, I see it as a downfall. Also present in are a couple of unnecessary political statements being made: the consequences of following the "right" way seem to be blown out of proportion a little too harsh. At one point, I was permanently banned from one of the game's cities for not acting as the EPA and PETA would have wanted me to act: I chose to play a morally neutral individual, and saw the quickest means to an end in deploying a sort of pesticide to rid the game of an objective-blocking nuisance. This in turn destroyed an entire planet's worth of important material and got me banned for life.

Part of the problem was compounded by the game designers’ city-centric method of designing the game’s location. The entire planet is a barren, useless wasteland, with the exception of the one inhabited city. Even though I was engaging in interstellar travel, I didn’t feel like the planets were truly worthy of their size; as in the above case, I was wondering, “Did I just wipe out the entire planet’s supply of _? Yeesh!”.

I also have a few complaints with the interface, that of which could have been further refined for the PC audience. All interface screens seem to be designed for low-resolutions--a necessity paying homage to the game's Xbox roots. The text inside this interface is extremely large, and on a 1024x768 game resolution I could read no more than two sentences' worth of descriptor text when looking at my inventory. The target size of 640x480 is apparent.

Sound wise, some of the alien voices become redundant. There are only so many suitable clips for each type of dialog, that in some cases, they become audibly redundant and mildly annoying. Also, (and this is just a really minor qualm) the crossbows sound like blasters. They had their own unique sound in every other Star Wars game I can remember, and I think I even spotted the crossbow sound bite being used for another weapon. That said, gunplay sounds are extremely generic: the same blaster sound is used for almost every gun. It just sounds...odd.

Finally, the game should have spent a little more time for debugging, as there were a number of problems I experienced. My system runs dual monitors--something unusual but not as different as you might think--and the game crashed on me constantly. The mouse cursor would not lock onto the monitor the game was running on, so frequently I would click on something on the other monitor without realizing it, and the game would minimize to the desktop. The fix is simple enough; open the game again and everything is fine.... usually. Sometimes, the game would become unbearably slow or just flat out crashed. I also noticed crashes whenever I went to unexplored planets in the first half of the game.

The Bottom Line
Knights of the Old Republic is to Baldur's Gate what Anachronox is to Final Fantasy. Both are Sci-fi RPGs, and both use a gameplay style that is both inherited and simplified from their ancestors. Both are excellent games marred with a few minor flaws.

Once you get past the game's minor quirks, you have a highly enjoyable Star Wars gaming experience. My save file registered almost 38 hours of gameplay from start to finish, and I still want to go through the game again, just explore the possibilities of playing the dark side. I think it falls just a few marks short of “Game of the Year”, but then again most of my complaints are either nit-picking or based on a unique playing style: all problems that are easy to overlook.

High in both fun factor, length, and replay value, KOTOR is a title not to be missed.

The Good
Just when you thought Star Wars games had nothing to offer except arcadey Rogue Squadron-type garbage and generic movie spin-offs along comes BioWare to save LucasArts from it's own stupidity. I mean, I was surprised myself after playing it, and it goes without saying that this is the best Star Wars game since XW: Alliance, not to mention one of the best games ever based in the adventures of a galaxy far, far away.

As mentioned BioWare deserves all the credit for making this game the stellar success it was, applying all their experience and design prowess to Lucas's franchise, besides they had their work cut out for them from a gameplay point of view. BioWare can be credited for being the developers that brought back D&D to the CRPG world, in no small part due to their success at translating the D&D mechanics in a way that was both novel and efficient. Unlike most gamers seem to know, Star Wars already has a P&P RPG adaptation know affectively as the Star Wars D20 system and it is this system that KoTOR uses instead of the D&D system as noted elsewhere. Of course, one can argue that the Star Wars sys. is really a cloned version of the D&D mechanics, but in fact it has a skill system of it's own and already defined class and racial distinctions. Thus BioWare only had to readapt their already superb D&D translation to fit the Star Wars system and presto! Instant Star Wars RPGing!!

Playing KoTOr thus has a lot in common with previous BioWare titles like Baldur's Gate, with it's paused real-time combat system, inventory management and spell/item usage being just like those good old Infinity engine games. A few refinements have been added, like the option to queue a series of actions for each character and lay out a basic battleplan (for instance, heal then attack, then use shield, then attack, etc.) but it's basically the same old thing, which is good, no need to mess with a good thing.

The look of the game is however substantially different from the Infinity engine games, switching to a third-person perspective 3D environment from which you interact with the gameworld from a much closer perspective. No need to worry about subpar 3D action/rpg hybrids tough, KoTOR doesn't have you jumping around or doing stupid arcadey things, you still handle the game from a mouse-driven interface (tough the wasd keys have been added to the mix for obvious reasons) with the interaction with the gameworld being based around single clicking for targeting whatever you want to use and then selecting the proper action from a context-sensitive pop-up menu.

The party has also been modified in it's size now toned down to 3 party members including your main character (created through an instantly recognizable BioWare-esque character creation scheme that also allows you to choose sex and model). These party members include everything from Wookies to droids to Jedis, each with unique personalities, backstories and personal quests that enrich the gameworld. In true BioWare-form these characters offer a lot of free conversations and information not only on each quest but also on the locations and character they meet, including each other, which also means those wonderfully amusing exchanges between party members from the BG games returns, with some truly funny moments that include a certain Jedi using her powers to make someone else trip, or a droid having psychotic outbursts.

The skills and force powers (the "magic" in the game) are very well executed, and the game manages to include everything from sneaking (which requires you to ditch your party momentarily) to hacking, repairing and using the good ol' Jedi mind trick on the NPCs for your benefit. Weapons are also very well balanced, with a good mix of meele and ranged weapons, some which can be modified (like the lightsabers) to include different items that cause unique status effects or modify stats for more customized combat.

The 3D engine is surprisingly robust, being able to handle the complex game mechanics as well as providing some of the most amazing graphics for a game of it's kind. Truly KoTOR is a gorgeous game to behold, and probably the most beautiful rpg ever made. With incredibly hi-quality models, texture details and effects that are nothing short of amazing. The engine is also quite scalable by 2003 standards as it not only includes special effects like smooth shadows for pixel shading-capable cards but it also allows for gameplay on lesser cards all the way down to GeForce2 MX series boards. Basically anything that has T&L will do, thus ensuring no one has an excuse for missing out on this masterpiece.

The graphic quality however shouldn't be too much of a surprise when you consider the gigantic resources LucasArts must have thrown at the game. If there's something that can be said of all Star Wars games, regardless of whether they are good or bad, is that they look and sound the part, and KoTOR is no exception. The game is your all-around triple-A product, with the fantastic graphics I mentioned above, plus incredible SFX straight from the Lucas sound libraries, a dynamic orchestral soundtrack befitting the Star Wars name and other niceties such as a streamlined interface that manages to take most of the clutter out of inventory management, with separate slots for accessing health, power-ups and force powers in an orderly fashion. Animations are incredibly well made, with most combat animations being a sight to behold, truly seeing two Jedis duking it out will leave you speechless as you see them dance around, lash at each and parry unsuccessful attacks. Most amazingly EVERY line of dialogue is spoken, with no exception!! (save for the lines your own main character says), this is a baffling achievement (and surely accounts for most of the 4gbs or so the game takes up during installation) specially when you consider this is a classic PC RPG (even if it was released first for the X-Box) with lots of dialogue trees. Plus, dialogue is fully lip-synched and acted, with characters frowning and smiling believably depending on the tone of the conversation... heck! In true Star Wars spirit, the aliens speak their own wacky languages with the subtitles being your only way of knowing what they are saying!

Finally, the cornerstone of every good RPG is acknowledged with a superb storyline that truly makes the game stand out from the competition. The story deserves a chapter of it's own, and by the time you pick the game up you'll find out that all that hype and critical acclaim wasn't missplaced. It not only manages to be a surprising and twisty ride that manages to keep you glued to your seat and playing through it just to find out where the plot takes you next, but it also works wonders to justify the way the game introduces the Jedi classes, and most importantly captures that adventuring, planet-hopping, good vs evil fantasy spirit Star Wars enbodied (a long ago...). In typical BioWare style, the game also has numerous subplots and sidequests for you to toy around with, with some extremely interesting examples that prove sidequests don't need to be just a distraction to build up experience, like a court-drama trial where you put your ethical beliefs in the stand while trying to defend an apparent murderer with interplanetary interests in the balance among the finest examples.

The Bad
There are some rather annoying touches that I blame mostly on the broader approach to please console gamers as much as hardcore RPGers the game has. For instance... does EVERY console rpg need to have a stupid card-collecting Pokemon-esque mini game? It appears so, and if KoTOR wanted to play with the big boys in console land it needed to include one, as well as two other needless but mostly harmless minigames.

Also some stuff is simplified for the sake of "consolity" such as no inventory weight or space limitations (meaning you have the classic "black hole" with you in which everything fits and you never get encumbered). More importantly, there's no penalization for changing equipment on-the-fly, and that is a somewhat cheap detail.

However that is mostly bitching, a true problem with KoTOR lies in the fact that all the characters level up regardless of whether they are in the party or not. This IS a significant design flaw as it negates the main reason for you to specialize certain characters with certain skills, and that I'm afraid I can't blame on console sensibilities...

But as you can see there is hardly anything wrong with the game, sure we can start bitching all you want about every detail you can think of, as everyone wants to do when discussing truly great games, but it's just that: bitching. I mean, if it really bothers you that there's no blood in the game or that the alien languages are actually looping soundtracks meesa thinks you should get a life boyo.

The Bottom Line
BioWare does Star Wars. That pretty much should tell you everything you need to know about the game, a superb CRPG with excellent gameplay, outrageous production values and fantastic storyline. Knights of the Old Republic not only manages to be one of the best Star Wars games ever made, but also one of the best CRPGs released to date. Truly not one to be missed, a masterpiece in every sense of the word.

The Good
It is a dark time for the Republic. The Jedi heroes of the Mandalore War have fallen to the Dark Side. The Sith have taken over the Outer Rim worlds and their armada approaches Coruscant. Every day they add fallen Jedi to their numbers. Every day more planets fall to them; more races are enslaved. High above Taris, the ENDAR SPIRE, a Republic capital ship, is falling before DARTH MALAK and his Sith Fleet. Republic escape pods trace meteoric trails against Taris’s skyline. It’s up to you to make it on to one of those escape pods, find BASTILA, a Jedi Knight whose Battle Meditation may turn the tide against the Sith, and get her through the Sith blockade back to the Republic.

Such begins Knights of the Old Republic, the first computer role playing game set in the Star Wars Universe (though it is a port of the Xbox game). KOTOR has three starting character classes for the human male or female character and three Jedi classes after your character is trained in the ways of the Force. With a game lasting considerably longer that the two trilogies combined, Bioware has created a rich gaming experience blending traditional arcade elements, story driven role playing, and challenging third person combat.

KOTOR is based on the 3rd edition of AD&D, meaning that while your character is attacking something, behind the scenes the computer is busy rolling virtual dice to see if you are hitting, how much damage you are doing, and checking to see if you are making your saving throws. KOTOR includes the traditional AD&D attributes with their relevance adjusted for Star Wars (i.e. Wisdom affects your command of the Force). Your character also acquires skills (like persuasive speech and computer hacking) and feats, which are largely combat centered. The feats determine the type of armor you can wear and the kinds of weaponry you are proficient with. Finally, once you enter Jedi training, your character can add Force powers, like Heal or Choke and strengthen them as you gain levels of experience.

When I first heard that a Star Wars RPG was making its way to the PC I expected the game would play out from an isometric view point. I would have been pleased with that, but KOTOR is a stunning (if limited) 3D game played from a third person perspective. The limitation comes from a camera which moves 360° along the x-axis, but only has a limited y-axis. What you can see is beautiful. KOTOR contains over five worlds to explore from the lush forests of Kashyyyk to the ocean world of Manaan. These worlds contain ambient life, large populations, and vivid scenery.

As you might expect, exploring these worlds often leads to combat. Combat in KOTOR is real-time, turn-based. Clicking on an opponent activates your character’s default attack. Using the HUD above the enemy allows you to cue a wider variety of attacks including special feat-based ones (like a Sniper attack), grenade attacks, or Force Powers. There are many weapons to be found: the clumsy, random blaster, the elegant lightsaber, thermal detonators, and the more visceral vibroswords. There are also many armor options, biomechanical implants, personal shields, and various useful equipment items for you and your party, including armor and weapon upgrades.

If any element stands out in KOTOR, it has to be the characters in your party. Every character has depth and a detailed back story: murderous droid, renegade Wookie, fallen Jedi, and more. They react with each other, offer their insight on the game’s developments, and flesh out the gaming experience. Unlike most CRPGs, these guys are far more than pack mules or cannon fodder.

I should probably wrap this section up by saying that the music and sound effects in this game are top notch, including hours of the best voice acting I’ve heard. This is vitally important in KOTOR, since so much is determined by conversation. I think the conversation options in KOTOR are the strongest example of role playing in the game. You customize your character far more by determining what to say, than by assigning points to specific attributes.

The Bad
In spite of all KOTOR has going for it, KOTOR comes off as an unpolished gem. This game is already racking up Game of the Year nods, and definitely deserves it, but doesn’t make the leap to “Best Game Ever”. First off, this release is buggy. There are a few typos, some crashes, and interesting quirks that motivate the player to save frequently.

Here are some other nitpicks: Aliens speak to you in their native tongue with the translated dialogue appearing in subtitles. This is great even though it seems that each species has the same looping dialogue. However, their speech tends to go on longer than it should. While not everyone reads at the same speed, it would be nice if the designers had either cut some of the alien soundtrack down or used more dynamic visuals during the dialogue scenes—added interesting camera angles, made the characters more animated while they spoke, etc.

Minigames. KOTOR has three types of minigames found throughout the game. The first one you experience is Pazaak, a card game closer to Blackjack than Sabacc. I think elements of Pazaak will always be problematic, but playing it could be more fun if the characters you played against taunted you, if you could actually see people turn over cards (attempt to read their expressions, etc), or at the very least, print the name of the person you are playing against instead of just having “Opponent” written over their deck of cards.

The other two minigames: swoop racing and a space combat turret sequence, are arcade games you run into while playing KOTOR. While I enjoyed these games, at certain points you have to beat them to advance in the game. RPGs shouldn’t require great dexterity on the part of the player, so I’d call making these minigames mandatory a misstep.

If there’s one thing that didn’t ring true in this game it’s the setting: 4000 years before the movies. I’m not familiar with the Expanded Universe, but I expected a more primitive setting than the one found here. Familiar names like Organa and Fett kept popping up. Sith ships looked similar to Imperial capital ships. Maybe I’m wrong, but think about Earth 400 years ago, let alone 4000.

Finally… well KOTOR is an RPG, but it’s scripted such that your character has to be human and become a Jedi (there’s a level capping issue I don’t even want to get into). It would be nice (in a sequel) to have the chance to play the game as a nonhuman and a non-Jedi. I think more adaptability would redraw the line between RPG and Third Person Action/Adventure—a line that seems blurred in KOTOR.

The Bottom Line
At one point in KOTOR, your character is presented with a hypothetical situation: You are the commander-in-chief. You have intercepted an enemy transmission. In five days, one of your cities will be attacked. In ten days, the enemy will exhibit a critical weakness allowing you to defeat them. Do you alert the city, letting the enemy know you’ve intercepted their plans or do you let your city get destroyed so you can beat your enemy? While this situation is hypothetical, it is similar to the choices your character will have to make throughout KOTOR.

KOTOR is an action-packed RPG, with worlds full of scum, villainy, valiance, and nobility. The story is focused, gripping, and poignant. I highly recommend this game.

FYI: I completed the game in a little under 36 hours.