[Force Persuade] Play KOTOR

All right, I know my force powers don’t work through the printed word. I guess I’ll have to persuade you instead withthe actual reasons why you should play this game, and if those don’t work, well; you are strong-willed indeed.

SWKOTOR (Star Wars – Knights of The Old Republic, for those in the know) is an RPG developed by Bioware, the developer that more recently has given us Mass Effect and Dragon Age. KOTOR often appears in lists of the best games of all time and its influence can be seen in many areas of the gaming world. It manages to keep quests fresh and entertaining, and to supply us with an assortment of interesting, memorable characters (HK-47 the homicidal droid being a particular favourite, providing a lot of comic relief). However I will just say this, the game is from 2003 and so has graphics from that period. Graphics whores beware, this is probably not the game for you, but if you want an engaging game and are able to put on your nostalgia glasses then I thoroughly recommend it.

The plot of the game is set 4000 years before the rise of the Galactic Empire and revolves around the return of the Sith who are (surprise, surprise) out to destroy the Republic and the Jedi order because... Jedi are weak and emotionally stunted? OK, so the game’s overarching story is fairly generic, but since when is the highlight of Star Wars the overarching story? We have come to expect the battle between the light and dark side, but it is the smaller stories that are told in KOTOR that are the real highlight of the game, along with a well handled plot twist near the end.

Many of the quests are beautifully crafted mini-stories. One of my particular favourites is a tearful woman that wants her robot ‘companion’ returned to her, as he has gone missing. What seems like a generic fetch quest quickly becomes a memorable gaming experience. Upon finding her robot you find out that he ran away because after the death of her husband, the woman had made the robot a surrogate husband, which he thought was unhealthy behaviour. Her somewhat questionable relationship with her robot chum can be solved in a few different ways. You can tell him to return, destroy him, telling the woman he’s dead or destroy him and lure her out into the grasslands as well. This humour shows off the writing talent at work for the game and makes you wonder why more games can’t offer a similar degree of humour and choice.

The game also offers a few different worlds to visit, each with different environments, inhabitants, and potential party members. These are travelled between in your ship, the Ebon Hawk, a forerunner of the Millenium Falcon. The galaxy map and the ability to speak to party members on board were such good, well implemented ideas that they were reused as main features of the Normandy, in the Mass Effect series.

The game also constantly presents you with moral choices, allowing you to be a light-side hero or a dark-side villain. This mechanice of its binary choices, it has its failings. Whilst allowing access to different powers and dialogue options it basically boils down to: do you want cool lightning powers, or are you a morally driven person, even in a videogame? The choices in dialogue are very plainly good or evil, detracting from the experience. There is no real moral grey area explored, as has been done in the recent Witcher games, you either choose good or evil, never really being given a choice between two evils.

The gameplay itself is a real-time combat system in which you can choose a variety of options (such as throw grenade, lightsaber attack, lightning etc.) with your commands then queued and carried out by your party. Combat can be paused at any time to issue commands and you can also switch characters to give them commands. This allows for a versatile battle system that can be light touch or micro-managed to your tastes.

The success of combat options is governed by your various stats, with behind the scenes dice rolls deciding your actual success. This system gives a sense of progression through the game, as early in the game, nearly all of your sword strikes or blaster shots miss, but later in the game your attacks will do large damage and will give you a real sense of power.

As to the sound used in the game, you definitely get a Star Wars-y feel from the score which still manages to remain fresh, the voice actors aren’t bad either. The majority of the game is spoken in Galactic Basic, which luckily remains the same as our language here on Earth. The few lines of Huttese and others that are used are just a few lines of recorded dialogue, repeated to mean different things. This may aggravate hard core Star Wars fans, but thankfully I’m not one of those and so can happily go on living my life without a care about whether that Hutt actually asked me to kill that guy or if he just wanted me to get him a drink.

So I’ll end as I started – thankfully the time that you have taken to read this article has allowed me to get close enough to use my force mind powers on you… at least the article served its purpose.