Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic (X-Box)
Developed by: Bioware Corp.
Published by: Lucasarts

For whatever reason, Star Wars is the one universal fanboy gene that almost all geeks, movie lovers and gamers seem to share. Lucasarts could release a million different Star Wars videogames, and they’d all top the sales charts regardless of how good they are. Thankfully for us, they don’t suck very often. So is it any surprise then that within a few weeks of hitting store shelves, Knights of the Old Republic has dethroned Halo as the best selling game of all time for the X-Box? Actually it is a little surprising because, well… it’s an RPG.

While role playing games do have plenty of hardcore followers, they generally don’t appeal to the mainstream shoot ‘em up run-and-gun video game crowd. Make no mistake about it, Knights of the Old Republic is an amazing game, and it was the icing on the cake that finally persuaded me to buy a video game system I swore I would never buy. But I think it’s important to point out that it is not the same as the Jedi Knight series. Some people may be disappointed when they realize there’s a ton of dialogue and cinematic content and no freestyle lightsabre ass-kicking. This game requires a lot of patience and strategy, but the investment in story pays off a lot more than your basic action game.

The first thing to mention is that KOTOR was developed by Edmonton-based Bioware, who have already established themselves as RPG masters with Neverwinter Nights and various other games based on the 3rd edition D&D roleplaying system. For Knights Of The Old Republic, they modelled the game after the new Star Wars d20 roleplaying system. All tests of skill and combat calculations take place behind the scenes, though it still helps to have knowledge of the basic role-playing concepts so that you can choose weapons, skills and equipment best suited for your characters. Of course, if you don’t want to spend time hand picking feats and skills for your character when levelling up, you can just ask for a recommendation by the CPU. The interface is designed to be easy to learn and for the most part it’s quite intuitive.

I have to admit, I’ve often been uninterested in RPGs because I tend to find the combat boring and the gameplay restrictive. This is not the case in KOTOR. The combat system is rules based and real-time; it’s not so slow that it bogs down the action, but it’s not so fast paced that beginners won’t be able to keep up. If you spot an enemy the game pauses and gives you a chance to prepare your party for battle. There is a lot of strategy involved in the more important battles, but when your enemies are outclassed there’s no time wasted plowing through them (or vice versa). Although interactions with characters and environments are not overly complex (basically conversations and object exchanges are the extent of it), many of the puzzles give the illusion of something more flexible than it is.

This game immerses you in the Star Wars universe like never before. None of the major characters from the films are involved, but that’s a good thing because it adds to the authenticity. As far as continuity goes, KOTOR takes place 4000 years before the Galactic Empire and the timeline of the movies, a period in Star Wars history that has been pretty much untouched so far. The Jedi are at war with The Sith, and you start off on a Republic ship that is attacked by a Sith fleet, eventually marooning you on the decaying planet Taris. Although the game is set much earlier than the movies, all of the vehicles, weapons, droids, alien races, and culture that we know and love are still here. In fact, one of the most immersive aspects of the game is the variety of alien races and the way in which all of the alien characters speak in their native tongues with subtitles to translate (although after a while, the variety of character face models begin to repeat themselves, as does the extra-terrestrial dialogue).

In some ways I find that this game harkens back to the Lucasarts games of old, those classic point and click graphic adventures that are now all but dead. You have the freedom to go where you want, and the game consists of a lot of conversations (where you can choose from a number of different things to say), puzzle solving, and side quests. There are also some brief mini-games that jump out of the usual interface to allow you to gamble and play the card game Pazzak, enter swoop bike races, and also take manual control of gun turrets in certain situations.

One of the coolest things about the game is the opportunity to choose to follow either the light side or dark side as your character progresses towards becoming a Jedi. Many of your interactions with characters and choices in side quests will affect your alignment. This seems to have little bearing on events early on, but it becomes more important as the game progresses. The game does seem a little one-sided though… the potential rewards for heading down the dark path seem limited at times, although much of the mean-spirited dialogue is pretty funny to read anyways.

As much as it pains me to say it, however, Knights of the Old Republic is not perfect. Many reviews seem to have overlooked this, but the game is riddled with bugs. Some are harmless problems, resulting in nothing more than goofy animation glitches and camera problems in cut scenes. However, there are also more serious issues that made it into the final release, such as lock ups and confusing story progression bugs. Although X-Box games are theoretically patchable with the X-Box Live service, that doesn’t seem likely to happen, lending a pretty good case to waiting for the PC release instead.

Regardless, Knights Of The Old Republic is still one of the best games to come out for the X-Box so far, and it’s one of the most enjoyable role-playing games I personally have ever played. Now that they’re getting beyond all the flashy games that were designed solely to show off the X-Box’s hardware, the system is starting to harvest some quality titles aside from Halo. If you’re adverse to RPGs then this game could grow tiring for you rather quickly. But if you are an RPG fan, and also a Star Wars nut, this could very well be your must-own title of the year. — Sean