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et in the Golden Age of the Republic, the events in Knight of the Old Republic take place 4,000 years before the events of the Star Wars films. At this time, both Jedi and Sith number in the thousands. The Sith, some of them with Dark Force powers and some simple soldiers gone over to the Sith side, are on a mission of conquest. The Jedi are leading the republic's forces, trying to crush the Sith and drive them back into extinction.
Against this backdrop is set a third-person, 3-D role-playing game where the player takes the role of a character thrown into the conflict. A young Jedi critical to the war has been ambushed and lost on a Sith-controlled planet. It is up to the player to find her and then lead her to her final confrontation with the Sith. Along the way, other characters join the cause. Most play is done controlling a party of three of these characters: the player's and two others of the player's choice. The characters can be humans, droids, Twi'leks or Wookiees. The action plays out on 10 different worlds, including the deserts of Tatooine, the Sith world of Korriban, the Jedi Academy on Dantooine and the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk.
Each character has its own class and skills. Different parts of the game require different combinations of skills. The tools, weapons, clothing and armor that the characters scavenge and buy are all held in common until equipped on a character. Many of these items can be upgraded as the game goes along.
Most of Knights of the Old Republic is spent talking to non-player characters to get background and quests, and then fulfilling the quests after lots of fights. In addition to this, however, minigames abound. There is a blackjack-like card game that can be played for more money, there is a race on swoop bikes (a lower-tech version of pod racing), there are turret guns (like the ones Luke and Han used in the first movie), and many more.
Even longer ago, but just as far, far away.
In the way that Star Wars did not invent space opera and yet has come to define it, so it is that Bioware did not invent computer role-playing games, but their work bringing the Dungeons & Dragons system and background to the computer has served to define what American-style computer RPGs are. Knights of the Old Republic meets Bioware's high standards.
The player's character eventually ends up becoming a Jedi, but it is completely up to the player whether the character becomes a light or a dark Jedi. The ability to play evil characters has been a feature of Bioware's games, but in this one they really go for it. There isn't a talk tree in the game that doesn't include the option to do something direct, heartless and efficient. For example, when the character encounters some plague victims, the player is given the choice of promising to find and bring them an antidote, simply leaving them alone or killing them all. The light, gray and dark choices are all clear, but each of them can be defended. After all, killing the victims stops the spread of the plague and frees up the character's time to pursue the main quest, which in a big-picture view is much more important. The game does a great job of making the dark side seem just as appealing as the light.
The graphics in the KotOR are passable. The animations are good, and the characters are properly expressive in the cutscenes, but what really shines are the voices. Almost every word of talk-tree dialogue is actually spoken aloud. The humans speak in English, and the aliens speak in their alien languages. There are subtitles for those. It is an amazing technical achievement to get all that audio on the disk, and it really helps bring the characters to life to not only see them but hear them.
Knights of the Old Republic may not be the best game Bioware has ever created, but it is definitely the best Star Wars game ever released.
The hardest part of the game is only being able to have three characters in the party. I kept wanting to have four or five, not just because of their skills, but because I liked them and wanted them around. — Eric
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