SW: KOTOR Review

There is another.

A few months ago, I popped a new disc into my Xbox and had the pleasure of
playing the best Star Wars game I have ever seen. The epic story fit perfectly
into the Star Wars universe, was longer than all five movies combined, and if
you ask me, was better than three of them.

Since
that time, Knights of the Old Republic has never moved more
than six inches from my Xbox. Whenever I wasn’t forced to play some revolting
excuse for a game because I had to review it, I would return to the Ebon
Hawk, practice my Pazaak, or try to win that last swoopbike championship.

Now, even those of you without an Xbox get a chance to experience the KOTOR
adventure, and it’s not one to be missed. A lot of this is taken from
my Xbox review, because other
than different controls and a few bug fixes, this is the exact same game.

It all takes place 4,000 years before a young farmboy from Tatooine asked
old Ben Kenobi for the truth about his father. In this ancient past, the galaxy
is reeling in the aftermath of the Mandelorian Wars. Two of the Republic’s greatest
generals disappeared, taking much of the victorious Republic fleet along with
them. When they returned, it was as Sith Lords, and they have come back not
as returning heroes, but as conquerors.

Your ship is attacked by the Sith fleet, and the few survivors’ escape pods crash to the planet Taris. You and a fellow Republic soldier, Carth, are left alone to fend for yourselves in the teeming cities of Taris and to search for another survivor, the mysterious Jedi Padawan known as Bastila.

But
first,
you
must
figure
out
who
you
are
going
to
be.
Knights
of
the
Old
Republic
uses
a
tweaked
version
of
Bioware’s
Aurora
engine
–
the
same
one
used
to
make
Neverwinter
Nights
–
so
fans
will
feel
right
at
home
making
their
first
character
since
the
system
of
stats
and
D20
rolls
is
almost
exactly
the
same.
There
are
three
classes
to
chose
from:
Scout,
Soldier
and
Rogue.
Each
features
different
balances
of
“feats,”
like
two-weapon
fighting
or
sniper-shot,
and
“skills,”
like
demolitions
or
repair.
I
won’t
give
anything
away,
but
let’s
just
say
that
later
there
are
three
classes
of
Jedi
to
choose
from
as
well.

Your party can consist of up to 3 people at any one time, so you can focus

further to have a heavy combat party, a mix of skills or an all-MacGyver squad

of sneaky tech-spies. There are 9 possible teammates you can enlist during the

game, ranging from a clever teenage Twi’lek to a psychotic assassin droid.

The action gets frantic, with blaster bolts flying and plenty of fancy lightsaber

moves, but underneath the glossy exterior, it’s typical RPG combat: your skills

and stats vs. theirs. You can pause and unpause the combat at any time to give

your characters specific orders and queue up to three combat moves. However,

if that sort of micromanagement isn’t your style, your party actually fights

pretty well on its own and you can just sit back and watch the show instead.

It
all depends on how you want to play the game, and there are truly a lot of ways
to play KOTOR. Want something from inside that room of enemy droids?
You could (a) burst in with guns blazing and try to destroy them all, (b) use
your stealth skills to sneak in and steal what you need, (c) use your computer
skills to hack the system and turn off the droids, or (d) use your repair skill
to refurbish some droids of your own to do the fighting for you. This is only
one example; the game is simply chock full of choices in tactics, conversations
and even morality.

But no matter how you want to play, you’ll look good doing it. KOTOR
has moved the Neverwinter camera in closer, giving the game
a more action-oriented feel. And for the most part, it looks great. Character
models are much more detailed and animated than in Neverwinter,
but they’re still a little blocky around the edges compared to games like Max
Payne 2. With a high-end video card, everything will be nice and smooth,
but be prepared for some chunky framerates during the battles if just meet those
system requirements.

Also, there just aren’t quite enough faces in the game. You’ll soon notice that a lot of people look the same. One green Twi’lek in particular seems to be following me around the galaxy assuming different identities. These little problems are noticeable, but forgivable when you observe all the little pretty details and the sheer number of people or aliens that might be walking around a given area, like a busy city street. On the whole, the game looks great.

And the sound might be even better. The classic John Williams scoring can

be heard here and there, but for the most part the soundtrack is excellent original

work. The sound effects are taken straight from the movies, so they can’t fail

to please. And the voice work is simply exceptional. A whole cast of professional

actors (including Ed Asner)

was used to give voices to every single person in the game. That’s right – every

single line of dialogue (other than your own) is spoken. Every shopkeeper, every

person in your party, every main character and even random people you accost

in the street all speak aloud. Aliens speak in their respective alien languages

with subtitles below. When you consider that most conversations have a few different

ways to go based on your responses, KOTOR must have more hours of dialogue

than all five Star Wars movies put together.

It’s your actions and dialogue choices that really define your character in

every sense of the word. KOTOR lets you be as good or as evil as you

like. Recover the serum for the dreaded rahkghoul disease and you can turn it

over to the clinic to help the sick and needy, or you can sell it to crimelord

Davik who will supply the cure only to those rich enough to afford it. Your

choices will move you towards the Light or the Dark side, and even change your

appearance.

My first time through on the Xbox, I was so evil I could have made Darth Vader
cry. This time, I have kept to the Light side (mostly) and am exploring quests
that the dark-side-Duke never saw.

KOTOR
is truly epic in scope as well, spanning seven planets you can visit using your
own starship, the Ebon
Hawk (which for some reason, is not black). Bioware claims KOTOR
has 40 hours of gameplay, but I’ve played it far longer than that. Those
guys must have been rushing through as fast as they could.

Which, by the way, is the wrong way to play KOTOR. There are dozens

of side quests you might choose to undertake. There are mini-games here as well,

like Swoopbike racing, arena fighting, or a collectable gambling card game called

Pazaak. There’s more extra stuff here than you can shake a light saber at.

The Xbox had a few major bugs, some of them game-enders, which was a real
problem for those unfortunate to run into them. The PC version seems to have
fixed those bugs, but if you check the Bioware message boards, you’ll
see that it has several new ones of its own. Most of them seem to be performance
issues and some hardware incompatibilities. However, I am happy to report that
it runs great on my machine. Of course, there are always the inevitable PC patches.

The PC controls are clearly different since they use the keyboard and mouse,
and I thought they were awkward at first until I grew to appreciate them. Rather
than just trying to emulate the Xbox controller, they took full advantage of
the ability to point with the mouse and use smart contextual popups, which was
the right way to do it.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is the deepest foray
yet into the Star Wars universe and well worth the price of admission. Obviously,
if you already have the Xbox version, there is no reason to get this one, too.
But if you have ever looked across the room at a cold beer and tried to use
the Force to bring it to your hand instead of getting up (one of these times
I know it’s gonna work), this should be an easy decision. Go
out and get it now. Just do it, there
is no try.