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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Review
Chris Leyton
12/09/2003
Believe the hype Knights of the Old Republic is all that good...
Whenever a game receives as much hype as āStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republicā we always find ourselves a little weary, a tad sceptical you might say. However there is good reason, weāve been let down so many times in the past when a game has been billed as āthe best thing everā that itās hard to count; thankfully BioWare have delivered beyond all expectations, resulting in a must-have title for any Xbox owner and finally a game to restore some faith in the weakened Star Wars franchise.
Ever since we first laid eyes upon KotoR, itās always grabbed our attention, the sheer scope and attention to the smallest details has picked our attention on numerous times, whilst it seems that we can always guarantee on BioWare to deliver the goods in the RPG genre.
Set 4000 years before the events of āEpisode 1: A Phantom Menaceā, players create a character in the traditional RPG manner, selecting from a range of different classes and adding points to varying attributes. Eventually your party will grow to consist of nine different members (however you can only take a total of two out with you), each with a story to tell and discover over the course of the game.
The main story tells the tale of two powerful young Jediās corruption to the Dark Side at a time when the strong Sith are threatening to take over the Galaxy. As with any game of this nature, plot progression and character development are crucial to the overall enjoyment from the game, so we donāt want to ruin the experience for any of you; suffice to say the story told through the games events is deserving of the Star Wars franchise (albeit a tad generic) and superior in every way to the recent slew of videogames and movies coming from LucasArts.
Played in a third-person perspective, the game does a good job of concealing the exhaustive RPG mechanics that are working beneath the surface and give the appearance of a typical action title; however for anyone thatās interested the game makes use of the ā3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons Rule-Setā dice-roll system. Whilst this might not mean a lot to the most of us, it ensures the game has a strong foundation to base its combat system upon by making heavy use of stats and what essentially boils down to dice rolls. Thankfully you donāt need to be a D&D geek to gain any satisfaction from the combat system.
Although it initially appears to be in real-time, the system is in fact turn-based and allows you to queue up moves for any of the members in your party. Once an enemy is spotted your characters will begin to automatically attack it, however youāre free to press the āwhiteā button, which in turn pauses the combat and allows you to decide your tactics and queue up a selection of different attacks and actions.
The combat scenes throughout the game look absolutely amazing with a very fluid and dynamic look, youāll notice characters deflecting blaster lasers with their lightsabres, ducking and dodging when involved in melee combat and providing covering fire with their blasters. Combat plays a heavy role in the game and thanks largely to the look of these scenes youāll never grow tired of it; the wide selections of impressive animations, the dynamic that governs it right down to authentic sounds for the lightsabres and blasters, everything just makes you go wow.
However without doubt the most impressive feature of āKotoRā is the use of conversation, and boy you can bet your bowcaster that youāll spend a lot of time talking to people. No other game has managed to convey it so well, usually just adding dialogue to pad the game out and provide important information. KotoR truly makes you feel as though your choices make a difference, and more importantly it feels as though youāre conversing instead of just skipping through a load of selections that are ultimately meaningless. To improve the cinematic sensation, every line within the game has been expertly voice-recorded even down to the accents of the various aliens youāll come across.
Your choices in these conversations throughout the game help to decide your alignment to the force, make too many bad decisions and youāll find yourself slipping towards the Dark Side whilst a kinder approach will guide you towards the Light Side. Such examples include helping those who have unfair bounties placed on their heads or killing them to receive the bounty yourself, to lying to the Jedi Council about your ambitions and presumably taking a big step down the path towards the Dark Side. Again this is just another aspect to KotoR that pulls you in and refuses to let go. Thanks to the completely open-ended game design, itās entirely possible to become a masterful Jedi or a hideous Sith lord as you progress through the game. When developers master this approach it can lead to an enthralling experience to completely immerse you within, however there are often many pitfalls for a game such as this to fall in. Thankfully BioWare have recognised the need for strong direction, as such the game contains an excellent quest system to aid you on your way in the main quest and the dozens of mini-quests that populate each level.
Itās not spoiling the game too much to say that youāll eventually learn the ways of the Jedi and become a member of the order. Similar to the initial character selection, youāre presented with a choice of three different Jedi classes at this stage, which place emphasis on either your prowess with the lightsabre, force powers or a mixture of both. This opens up exciting possibilities and the game includes a wide range of different Force Powers that become available to you as you level up; classic force moves such as āMind Controlā and āThrow Lightsbareā joins darker powers such as Darth Vaderās infamous āChokeā attack. As with any RPG worth its XP, KotoR gives the player a wide choice of customisation through the huge selection of items on offer and the various different attributes and skills that you can tinker and tailor with whenever your characters level up.
Although the visual look was one of the main areas of interest when the game was first announced, itās fair to say that the overall look isnāt as impressive as when we first laid eyes upon it. The game suffers from jagged edges and slowdown, whilst the textures arenāt the most detailed weāve seen and miss out on some of the fancy Xbox effects that we love but havenāt seen since the likes of Halo. To be fair the sheer scope soon makes you forget about these little misgivings; touches such as individual blades of grass that move out of your way on the Jedi Training Academy based on Dantooine help to create the illusion, whilst the overall look captures that Star Wars feel perfectly. If we had to continue moaning weād have to say that some of the cut-scenes could have been tidied up, KotoR is an epic game in every sense of the word, however some of the scenes look crude at best.
Whilst weāre on the games misgivings it would have been nicer to see a stronger level of interaction with the environment. Admittedly the computer terminals that you can hack into and use to your advantage to kill unsuspecting victims is a touch of genius, as is the way you can repair various druids and use them to your advantage. But beyond this all you can really do is open up chests/containers and loot dead bodies; the joys of āMorrowindā showed us an environment that included everything down to the smallest detail, whilst weāre not looking for something equal to this level, somewhere in between would have been more appropriate. A personal gripe comes when itās time to learn the ways of the Jedi and craft your own lightsabre; instead of some mini-game to test your force and lightsabre skills, youāre just told how hard it is in a cut-scene, why not have a little mini-game to create your lightsabre and add the scope of failing this supposedly ātoughā task placed on all Jedi apprentices.
That said the game does contain a number of mini-games to break up the action. Throughout the game youāll be able to collect āPazaakā cards and play against various people for extra credits. This is essentially a card game along similar lines to BlackJack, whereby youāve got to score up to 20 and can use bonus cards to help you on your way. Other mini-games include manning the gun turrets of the Ethan Hawke and taking part in a shallow racing game thatās similar to drag racing.
Progress through the game will see you travel to many different planets and locations, including the desert planet of Tatooine to the Sith world of Korriban. The main-game could invariably be completed within 40 hours, however watching the cut-scenes in their entirety and completing mini-quests along the way are likely to boost this to over 100 hours of gameplay footage ā“ the promise of downloadable content makes the overall product even more enticing.
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