Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Review

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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Review by JenFebruary 2004

If ever there was the perfect “bridge” game for the adventure gamer wanting to cross over to RPGs, this is it. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has a high questing-to-combat ratio, doesn’t require much in the way of reflexology, and is adaptable to all manner of playing styles.

The premise is nothing special, just your typical save-the-galaxy fare. You start off with what amounts to the battle tutorial, in which you must escape a Republic spacecraft that has been boarded by the opposing Sith over the planet Taris. Bastila, a Jedi shipmate whose Battle Meditation ability will determine the outcome of the [cue music: da-dah da-da-da-daaah-da] Star Wars, is captured by these Sith. After you learn the controls (easy, and you don’t have to be very nimble-fingered as long as you know where to find the “pause” button), you crash-land on Taris and wake up in a strange apartment with a strange man in your room, the rakishly handsome yet disarmingly humble Republic soldier Carth, who becomes your first of nine possible party members. You set out to free Bastila, who has been captured and taken to a different part of the city.

As you progress, you will visit several other planets in the galaxy, er, Galaxy with a capital G, I meant to say. It is the individual stories on each of these planets that really shine, as well as the character development. Your party members, in particular, and many of the NPCs are fully fleshed out, living, breathing, human beings (or not). Each planet has its own political system, its own environment (although all are strangely Earth-like), and its own indigenous species (although all are strangely humanoid).  The overarching story, as well, despite its trite underpinnings, will keep you moving right along, and it delivers a couple of big surprises.

Battling is a combination of real-time and turn-based, which is to say that the D&D-style dice-roll fights play out automatically—you can pause between each turn to choose a particular attack or item if you like, but if you don’t take any action, the battle will continue to its conclusion without your input. In the first two-thirds of the game, the usual turn-based strategies do matter a little (on the easy setting); in the final third (except for the end game) it was practically impossible to get killed. I’d just put down the controller, get a drink or a snack or go potty or what have you, and pick it up again once the fight was over.

Combat comes in three levels of difficulty: easy, normal, and hard. And you can change your selection anytime during the game.  I started off with the “normal” setting and was doing just fine, but the battles were too long and too repetitive, so I switched it to “easy.” (I’m a lover, not a fighter, tee hee … although sometimes there is something supremely satisfying about kicking video butt.)

For the most part, combat really is an ancillary component of the game. The only reason for it, I think, is to serve as a vessel for delivery of experience points and items, and like as not to extend the play time—without the fighting, the game would be considerably shorter. There is not an overabundance of battling and, except in the areas populated by hostile wild creatures, enemies once killed stay dead.

If you find the prospect of the typical RPG stats management daunting, no worries—KOTOR gives you the option of auto-leveling or selecting the areas where you want to focus your abilities. I don’t dig the D&D, daddy-o, so I opted for the auto-leveling throughout the whole game.

There are quite a number of conundrums. Unlike most RPGs (at least the few that I’ve played), in KOTOR your tasks are not all fetch-and-deliver. There are actual puzzles—some unique and some familiar. Unique ones include the numerous times you must “spike” a computer and disable this or that in a “dungeon;” the familiar includes a Towers of Hanoi game and some number sequences (although among these latter were a couple of sequences I’d not seen before).

It is obvious Knights of the Old Republic is a big-budget game, and this munificence was extended to the hiring of voice actors. Included in the closing credits were Ed Asner and Charity James, although I must confess I did not recognize either of their voices whilst I was playing. Music, too, is top-drawer, including snatches of the original Star Wars movie music.

You can play either a male or female character, and you can play evil or angelic or any degree in between. You get light points or dark points depending on the moral choices you make in certain situations. On the whole, the game plays out much the same no matter what direction you take. There are different endings depending on whether you embrace the dark or the light, and there are some different weapons and armor usable only by one or the other. I played as light; after a while I started wishing I had chosen dark instead. Sometimes it’s good to be bad. Besides, the dark side gets better stuff.

I played the Xbox version. I’ve heard tell the PC version includes some additional material. Although the game played nearly flawlessly, I did hit one pretty big bug that entailed replaying an hour or so of the game, after doing something slightly different near the beginning of one of the dungeons (again, I use the word loosely; there are no actual dungeons in KOTOR).

Party members include three other Jedi, one of them being that snot Bastila (ooh, how I wished I could’ve reached into my TV and fattened her lip once or twice); a couple of robots, er, droids, I mean; a mercenary; that damned goody two-shoes Republic soldier Carth; and a big ol’ hairy Wookie and his interspecies gal pal, a perky Twi’lek named Mission (“Twi’lek” means “Two Blue Snake Butts Growing out of Your Blue Head,” I think).  Most of them are weak. I wound up choosing the same two for almost every outing, that bitch Bastila and my favorite bad-ass humanoid droid, the stylishly metallic HK-47. Sometimes I was forced to do a mission by myself, and sometimes I could not choose these two characters (your party has a three-character maximum) for whatever reason and had to use a lesser character. Like that damned Carth. Actually, that damned Carth was a halfway decent buttkicker.  I just did not like him much. No sirree Bob, not much at all.

All characters level up at the same rate, so even if you leave some behind on nearly every mission, when you do need them, their stats are there for you. The weak ones are still weak, though, so I guess all things are relative. I think part of the problem was that I put all of my weapon and armor upgrades into the characters that I used the most and then had nothing left over for the rest of ’em. I suppose I could’ve taken stuff back from the strong guys and given it to the weak guys to make them the new strong guys, but hey, I am always one to take the easy (read: lazy) choice.  It comes with the Fat Chick territory.

Now for the bad stuff: the turret. The turret is the only negative thing I can come up with. Several times, you must man the despicable turret and shoot at enemy spacecraft. Even this would not be such a bad thing if it were not for the reverse controls. Whoever thunk up reverse controls ought to be strapped to a chair and forced to actually play something with said reverse controls. For those of you who have never been blessed with this curse, “reverse controls” means simply that you move the joystick up and your gun or what have you moves down. It doesn’t sound very hard, and it probably isn’t for most people, but that is one dichotomy my brain simply cannot accept. Anyway, while I did survive all of the turret-manning (the time limits are exceedingly generous), it was the one part of KOTOR that was not fun for me. I loathed the turret with every fiber of my being.

There are two or three other minigames in addition to the turret, but the rest of them are optional. In fact, I don’t think you ever have to play the card game, Pazaak. You do have to play a racing game one time, but that first time there is a huge advantage built into the game and you’d be hard put to lose. There is also a boxing-ring type game near the beginning. You can win or lose money by playing any of these minigames, or you can skip them altogether, like me.

Knights of the Old Republic is fast-paced, linear, and consistently entertaining, and the goals are always clear. There are not very many side quests. I did almost all of them and the whole game still took me only around 50 hours, short by RPG standards.  That suits me just fine, though, since that’s about the longest I can maintain an interest in any one game.

I haven’t played a game this long that was this much solid fun all the way through since Anachronox, and KOTOR is a helluva lot less buggy. I was sorry to finish Knights of the Old Republic, and I am pleased to give it our Gold Star with no reservations whatsoever. This was a nearly perfect gaming experience, at least by my standards. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Bioware Publisher: LucasArts Release Date: November 2003 (PC); July 2003 (Xbox)

Available for: Windows Xbox

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System Requirements

100% DirectX 9.0b compatible computer Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP Intel PIII 1 GHz or AMD Athlon 1 GHz (1.6 GHz recommended) 128 MB RAM (Win98), 256 MB RAM (WinME/2000/XP) (512 MB recommended) 32 MB OpenGL 1.4 compatible PCI or AGP 3D hardware accelerator with hardware transform and lighting (T&L) capability (ATI Radeon 9200 or better, NVidia GeForce4 Ti or better recommended) 100% DirectX 9.0b compatible audio device 4X CD-ROM drive Keyboard and mouse DirectX 9.0b (included) 4 GB free hard drive space

Where to Find It

GoGamer PC 39.90; Xbox 46.90

Prices/links current as of 02/03/04Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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16 Responses to Screw the Internet

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    God damn, Scout, I’d never heard of this Lanier fellow, but that’s pretty profound.

    Information is not a manufacturable item… as you said, we are making less and less. This is either indicative of a larger-scale societal transformation, or a bad thing. I’m afraid I’m inclined to assumed the latter.

    Thanks!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Steerpike, that was exactly the argument Lanier was having with callers on the BBC. Lanier was all fatalistic about society’s drop in real productivity while his opponents claimed that this was a huge transformation and that he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all. If you notice, the web address of that first Lanier link is well.com. I mean, that is old! The Well?

    Lanier’s thoughts were pretty much echoed by David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire. Here he speaks with Bill Moyers about the fate of paid journalism in the face of the web.

  • Spike

    I’ve read many criticisms of Facebook et. al.  I’ve also read contradictions of those criticisms, namely, that social sites are making people more connected than ever.  I think that that connectedness is an illusion.

    For several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 my daughter badgered me to join FB.  I could connect with her and some of her friends that I know as well as renew old acquaintances with some of her friend’s mothers.  I finally signed up so she’d quit the badgering. I used to check in every day to see what daughter and friends were saying because if I didn’t she’d ask if I saw her post, or a friend’s post. 

    What I’ve learned is this:

    1.  “Karen Likes John’s photo (or post)” IS NOT communication.

    2.  The reason I lost contact with some of these “friends” in the first place is that we no longer had anything in common.

    3.  I am bombarded with so many ads in so many places that I can do without more.  My policy is to never click on ads on FB or on many other sites. 

    4.  While FB’s original mission was connectedness/communication, I think it has become “Let’s make as much money from these fools as we can.”  “Wanna have gobs of fun playing a free game on FB?”  That game is gonna cost ya big, folks. 

    5.  Social sites are just more places where your personal info can be stolen.  There’s enough risk out there as it is.  Additional risk is not providing any valuable payoff for me.

    6.  Why do I want to “friend” a certain handbag manufacturer?  Why do I want to take a quiz that tells me what my personality is?  FB content providers tell you up front that if you click the link to take their quiz (goes for other types of content as well) you are giving them permission to access your profile info.  That’s ok.  I’ll also give you my SSN, bank account number and the key to my front door.  Not.

    7.  Don’t even get me started on the number of people who start an account in a pet’s name, and even have the pets making friends and posting.

    “…he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all.”

    No, it’s just that most of us get to the age when we demand a bit of wheat with our chaff.

    At 38 my daughter is older than the average demographic of social sites although I know that that demographic is skewing up.  She seems to be cooling on FB.  Some of her 221 friends are as well.  Many of them do want some wheat.  When more cooling has taken place I will unjoin.

    I wonder, though, what new fad will come along when FB, Twitter and others run their course?  MySpace, anyone?

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    My favorite line from the BBC interview was when Lanier was comparing MySpace and Facebook. He admitted that MySpace had some eye gougingly bad pages but said that he liked the “strangeness” of personalities that you get with it. With Facebook, he claimed that it was like looking at a tax form. A boring, watered down, bland presentation of people.

    I joined Facebook almost exactly a year ago. Apart from sparking up a new friendship with a very dear buddy, I’ve gotten about zero back from it. I sort of read with bemusement the activities of people I hardly know and could care less about. And when you consider how much information the devs harvest there…it’s scary. Lanier claims that the information is so far worthless to the investors and that the whole thing has become a sort useless ritual serving no purpose. He claimed that Google’s ads on the other hand will probably turn out to be the greatest advertising model ever created. He also thinks Google should stop before it’s too late but says they probably won’t. Just a glance at the side bar reveals about 4 ads for advertising agencies. Heh.

  • lokimotive

    Has anybody read Anti-Oedipus? I’m slogging my way through it (the third attempt I believe), and Deleuze and Gauttari’s ideas seem relevant to this in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate. This probably has something to do with a conversation I was eavesdropping on that, coincidentally, mentioned a lot of Deleuze and Gauttari’s theories. Someone was talking about another theorist (whose name I didn’t catch) who was defending “Generation Y” essentially. The argument went that Generation Y is an example of a “de-Oedipalized” cultural group (that’s Anti-Oedipus jargon, just stay with me). Apparently this meant that they made connections in a different manner than other generations, the idea of bricollage was brought up and things were generally mired in a lot of reasons why I don’t have my Masters in English. What I got from it was this Generation Y shoots out connections everywhere and attempts to make up a whole idea with them as opposed to relying on predefined pathways. In Deleuze and Guattari’s language: the schizo as opposed to Oedipus. In language that probably makes sense: Peer to Peer as opposed to client-server.

    So, of course, no one’s really right. I’m skeptical of the idea that Generation Y (full disclosure: I’m 29 so I’m part of that group) has enacted some sort of paradigm shift in how to operate in social systems, but facebook has changed how I connect with people. Then again, it’s not like I don’t value face to face communication.

    The future is somewhere in between. I’m really not cynical enough to believe that we are at the end times of civilized society because of Web 2.0. Instead society will change and stay the same because that’s what it does. Facebook is not the future; it’s probably a rung up the ladder though.

  • kaythomas

    To me, Facebook and Twitter are 0’s. They are not worth my time.  I do not care what someone I know or don’t know did a half hour ago or will do next.  I have met up with people on facebook I had lost contact with.  But, in truth, the reason I had lost contact was I was not that interested in staying in contact.

    I think for many people the Facebook/Twitter world is great.  For me it has nothing to offer. 
    kay

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Tap has an automated device that twits… tweets… whatever whenever someone posts a new article. Just in case it draws some visitors.

    To be honest, though, I’m on Kay’s side of the fence, I don’t understand Twitter and I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I barely care what I’m doing from moment to moment, why should anyone else?

    I don’t get Facebook either, though I’m a member to keep track of all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school.

  • Lewis B

    Tweets are great for giving me snippets of news.  If I like what I’ve read in the short paragraph tweets give, then I will visit the main page for that tweet. (Very good for following world news, favourite columnists, etc.)

    However, reading tweets from people such as “Just woke up, Madonna is giving me a massage while I shave my nuts” is not my idea of a good read.

  • Toger

    I use tweets the same way Lewis does. Of the people/things I follow, if the tweet is interesting I’ll follow the link to read the entire article. I follow fairly intelligent people, so I’m not subjected to the idiocy of “Just brushed my teeth while sitting on toilet”.

  • Gregg B

    @loki: I’m afraid I’ve not heard of them. I’m a couple of years below you so that puts me in the same Generation Y as well. I read through a few of those links Scout posted as well as a few more on Lanier’s new book “You Are Not a Gadget” and it took me a fair while to get to the crux of what he is saying and he has a lot to say, most of which I find very confusing.

    As a graphic designer the whole “everything is becoming advertising” thing has been bothering me for years. The incessant barrage of advertising is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul, which sort of makes me a hypocrite. After all the years of tuning my art and design skillz my creative abilities have amounted to nothing more than crafting pretty ads that sell things. Non of it speaks any truth or has any sort of ‘beauty’; it’s just stone cold mechanical capitalism. Granted there are ads out there that are beautiful, clever and visionary but the front line stuff is as dull as it gets. I’m sure this isn’t strictly what he’s getting at but it’s definitely something that irks me in relation to Scout’s last remark.

    Anyway, I remember Twitter just exploding in what seemed like the space of a week and I still can’t fathom the allure of it aside from providing a direct stream of consciousness from famous folk to their ravenous fans. I wish I’d thought of it to be honest. I can see the creators sitting around a table staring at Facebook and then saying “I know! We make a website that’s just about status updates! You can even update them with your mobile phone!”.

    With regards to Twitter news snippets, unless it’s for a phone, I don’t see the point because RSS feeds do a great job. At present too great; I simply can’t keep up with my subscriptions. There’s too much information on this super highway.

  • Jen

    Twitter is officially the dumbest thing ever.

    That said, it looks like I will have to be the official “tweeter” for my day job before too long. I can’t wait! (roll eyes)

  • xtal

    I’m with everyone else here. I’m glad to say I’ve never signed up for Facebook; I fear that if I ever had I would have long ago died from loss of brain cells due to reading moronic status updates. It’s as Kay said: ninety-five per cent of people with whom you lose contact are probably no longer in your life because you have nothing left in common. And echoing Steerpike’s comment, me eating toast and jam on a Sunday morning watching Fawlty Towers is not interesting, not to me. Why the hell would anyone else give a shit?

    Twitter I signed up for about a year ago, not really understanding what it was. I now understand it…but don’t care to use it often. I have made 58 tweets over that year. I suspect for some that is a daily or weekly average. It’s just Facebook status updates without all the drunken photographs. I admit it can be mildly useful for following, say, a news site. Usually when I hop on my twitter (once every two weeks??) it reminds me that I should read The Onion more often. That’s about it.

    Let’s see… looking at the actual humans I follow, um… Wil Wheaton is happy that the LA Kings have won 9 games in a row, my sister-in-law thought our dinner tonight was “delicious,” and Kevin Smith’s batteries are recharged … or something.

    Wow, my life is already getting better!

    p.s.  <—– Gen Y'er (can we call ourselves that?) and proud that when I Google my own name a real estate company pops up.

  • Fraser

    Twitter is exactly as useless as the person who’s writing it. If someone is telling you boring shit over Twitter, it’s the person wasting your time, not the delivery channel.

    MySpace is the same, but it seems more intrinsically garbage because for some reason almost everyone who used it was an intellectual embryo with a fetish for unreadable hyperneon text on top of garish uninteresting photos. Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.

    That’s the argument against the whole of this post: the internet isn’t evil, but the people who use it might be. It’s people who make business models successful; people who make money flow to advertisers instead of artists, by buying into the advertising.

    This has been a pretty didactic post, so let me compensate by saying VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOOO!!!

  • Gregg B

    Good point about not blaming the delivery channel Fraser. I seem to recall Lanier saying that he preferred the personality that MySpace has over Facebook despite its Craptastic Pages of Illegibility. I’m trying to think of something intelligent to follow that up with but my brain is failing me at the moment, so…

    VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOO!!!

  • Jason Venter

    Fraser, I really loved your following comment:

    “Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.”

    I think that may just be one of the most hilariously true comments I’ve read in a comments area on any video game web site ever.  That sounds overly dramatic, I know, but I actually mean it.  Kudos to you!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Yeah but don’t you miss all the ugliness of MySpace? All those hideous pages at least had personality or what Lanier called the “strangeness of the person” to them.

    I actually don’t agree with a lot of what Lanier says esp “the hive mind must die” stuff. But I do think he is right about the spirit shriveling blandness of Facebook.

    I also suspect that Twitter is going to be around for a while. It will be more and more influential. People are simply not as willing to ingest huge amounts of information in the form of pages of text anymore. The delivery systems that succeed will be those that can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most days we want “glimpses” or “snapshots” not total immersion. Lewis, Toger and Fraser are correct in that you get out of it what you decide to follow.

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