Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in 2021

(Darth Malak on the loading screen)

Introduction

Back in August 2020, I sat staring at the Good Old Games website, wondering if I should really buy Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel The Sith Lords. They were both on sale for the combined price of about seven dollars, and while I thought that was a great deal, I didn’t know if the games would be worth the space they’d take on my computer.

I searched the internet, wondering if people would recommend a game that was 17 years old.

And boy, they sure did. Every review I found praised KOTOR 1 for its story and insisted that the graphics still held up even after nearly two decades of technological advancements.

I have been a Star Wars fan since 2015, when my dad showed me Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in an effort to educate me in Star Wars lore before seeing The Force Awakens. I love the world of Star Wars, its lore, its stories, so when I was presented the chance to roleplay as lightsaber-wielding Jedi in the KOTOR games, I took it, despite my fears that the graphics would be ugly or the story too strange or lackluster.

Well, guess what? All those reviewers who said the game was fantastic? They weren’t wrong.

(Tatooine’s twin suns bake the Dune Sea.)

Summary

KOTOR 1 is an RPG developed by BioWare and published by LucasArts in 2003. You choose a gender (male or female), appearance (from a set of predetermined faces), starting class (soldier, scout, or scoundrel), and a name of your own invention. You then customize your character’s starting stats (like strength and charisma) and skill sets (demolitions, treat injury).

No matter what starting class you pick, you find yourself aboard the Endar Spire, a Republic ship overrun with Sith forces, in a war set 4,000 years before the prequel era. You and companion Carth Onasi barely escape the ship before it explodes and crash-land the escape pod on Taris, a city-wide planet under the control of the Sith. Your goal? Find the Jedi Bastila, a Republic general lost after the ship’s destruction. Along the way, you pick up more companions, get trained in the ways of the Jedi (and Sith), and travel from planet to planet on an epic quest to save the galaxy from Darth Malak’s ambition.

You start the game morally neutral, but through your choices, you gradually grow closer to the light or the dark side of the Force. Each of your companions have a specific alignment as well. Most are light-sided, but some are dark or gray-aligned.

Graphics

The visuals are simple, and that’s their strength. I love that the settings have few details, that nothing is hyper-realistic, because it helps me focus on the items and characters I can interact with instead of getting lost in an overload of visual information.

Yes, many of the character models are reused heavily (I’m looking at you, green Twi’lek man), and there are also some glitchy spots, especially during character conversations. Sometimes, the camera will clip through a character’s face (creating a nightmarish image that fortunately vanishes after the dialogue). Many times, when I had to replay the boss battle against a group of Mandalorians on Dantooine (those Mandos kept slaughtering my Jedi), the camera during the cutscene would show such an extreme long shot that I couldn’t see which Mandalorian was speaking, only for the camera to immediately switch to an uncomfortable close up of one of my companions making a snide remark before battle.

Despite the reused NPC faces, each location is visually distinct. Ahto City features sleek white walls and an open atmosphere. The planet-wide city of Taris feels distinctly claustrophobic with its skyscrapers crowding the sky and dark interiors. The majority of its quests take place in the Lower City and Undercity, places completely cut off from the outside by windowless, grimy walls.

(A partly cloudy day in Ahto City)

(A sketchy cantina in the Lower City of Taris)

Each environment has just enough detail to let you know where you are and what you’re looking at. So, sure, it’s not visually stunning like Ghost of Tsushima, but I find KOTOR 1 easy to look at.

And I just love how planets like Dantooine and Korriban are caught in a perpetual golden hour.

(Some ancient ruins on Dantooine, caught in the sun’s last rays)

(Golden hour in Korriban’s Valley of the Dark Lords)

Story

The story itself follows the themes and plotlines of the Star Wars movies: an ordinary person discovers that they are strong with the Force and uses their newfound powers to vanquish an objective evil. Along the way, they meet new friends, fall in love, and have their entire view of the world shattered by a surprising yet foreshadowed plot twist (this is basically the plot of every Star Wars trilogy). I won’t spoil KOTOR’s plot twist here, even though the game is 17-going-on-18 years old. I had the plot twist spoiled for me before I even bought the game, and while that did not ruin the experience for me (far from it, I found myself anticipating the moment when the twist would reveal itself), I do wonder what it would’ve been like to have been genuinely surprised.

While the game features a fairly linear story, the player does have a lot of control in shaping it, from the less significant decision of which planets to explore first to major decisions like killing your own companions. The main goal remains the same no matter what you choose: kill Darth Malak. But how and why you do that depends on the choices your character makes. Will you kill Malak to save the Republic? Or would you rather replace him as the Dark Lord of the Sith? Both choices are open to you, and both choices lead to significant differences in the climactic battle and the final cutscene.

Along the way, you can choose to help the NPCs who cross your path, to redeem dark Jedi, and to resolve your companions’ personal issues. Or you can be a massive jerk and exploit the hapless NPCs, slay the dark Jedi as rivals, and convince (or force) your companions to solve their problems through murder and mayhem.

Or, you can choose a combination of both and refuse a strict alignment to either side of the Force.

Light Side vs. Dark Side

While KOTOR 1 does have its subtle moments, the morality system of light side vs. dark side is straight up good vs. evil. If your character chooses polite dialogue options and shows compassion to NPCs in need, then they gain light side points. Gaining light side points enables your character to spend less Force points when casting light side Force powers (like Burst of Speed and Heal), as well as to equip items restricted to the light side.

Same thing for dark side points.

It’s always obvious which choices will lead to the light and dark sides.

(The dark side tempts my female Jedi to be a jerk.)

Because the dark side choices are often so obviously malicious and psychotic, it is difficult to play as a nuanced or clever dark sider, but if you want to play as an insane, rogue Jedi, KOTOR 1 lets you go to town

Of course, most conversations give you three to four dialogue choices, with the middle choices offering some moral and emotional neutrality to the situation.

There are a few moments that allow for shades of gray, one of those being the plot twist. For me, though, the best example of this game venturing into gray morality comes during Jolee’s side quest. Jolee is an ex-Jedi companion who left the Order. He has a gray alignment, neither light nor dark, and his side quest (as well as his dialogue) encourage you to consider whether all choices are purely right or wrong. Personally, I enjoy the nuance in Jolee’s side quest. To make the “light” choice, you must betray someone’s trust, knowing it will result in their death. To make the “dark” choice, you must deceive a court of judges in order to save that person’s life. Interestingly, you can’t get light side points from this quest, but you can get dark side points.

(My female Jedi, dedicated to the light)

(My neutral male Jedi before the corruption of the dark side)

(My male Jedi has joined the dark side!)

Of course, if you don’t like all this moral grayness interfering with a black-and-white morality, the game certainly won’t stop you from choosing your own way, and Jolee won’t condemn you no matter what you choose. The only disappointing aspect about having a gray alignment, however, is that there are no bonuses to having this alignment, and there are no special items specifically designed for it (for example, the Circlet of Saresh, which offers a +5 wisdom bonus, can only be equipped by a light-sided character). The game expects you to choose a side.

Companions

You can have a total of nine companions, but only two may go on missions with you at a time. Five are light-sided (Carth, Mission, Zaalbar, Bastila, and Juhani), two are dark-sided (Canderous and HK-47), and two are neutral (Jolee and T3-M4). With the exception of T3-M4, each companion has their own side quest that triggers after completing enough dialogues with them and exiting the ship with them on different planets. Each companion has a distinct personality, great voice-acting (with the exception of T3-M4, who only speaks in beeps, and Zaalbar, who is a Wookiee), and dialogue that is by turns campy, insightful, and a downright joy to hear.

For example:

• Canderous: “Working for Davik was like driving a spike through the side of your head… Sure you get something new in there, but in the end, you’ve lost something as well.”

• HK-47: “I will mourn you when you perish, master… Amendment: *If* you perish. So far I am three out of three, remember, through little fault of my own.”

Companions also come with special skills, abilities, and items. Mission is best for stealth missions (ha!) and disarming mines while T3-M4 is best for hacking computers. Canderous comes with a special implant that restores 4 health points per turn, and Bastila comes with her yellow double-bladed lightsaber.

Female characters can romance Carth and Juhani. Male characters can romance Bastila. While the Carth and Bastila romances contribute to the plot in significant ways, you do have the choice to play their relationships platonically (I did that on my first playthrough).

Combat

The game features a turn-based combat system where you can pause mid-battle to line up certain feats (like sniper shot or critical strike), health items, grenades, and force powers for your fighters to use or just let the computer auto-attack. You can customize your player character and companions to be ranged or melee fighters, to be dual-wielding maniacs or more practical single weapons users. Some weapons feature limited upgradeability, like Carth’s blaster or your character’s lightsaber, that improve their damage and ability to stun enemies.

(My male Jedi and co. slaying wildlife on Dantooine.)

Enemies include wild animals, gangsters, bounty hunters, killer droids, Sith soldiers, and dark Jedi seeking Darth Malak’s favor.

Of course, if the prospect of dual-wielding lightsabers as you shoot force lightning at all your enemies doesn’t excite you, then why even bother?

(My male Jedi electrifying more wildlife on Korriban.)

Replayability

This game is absolutely replayable. From character generation to Force alignment, you can choose any number of ways to replay. I’ve played this game twice already. I played as a light-sided female scout/Jedi consular for my initial game, then switched to a dark-sided male scoundrel/Jedi sentinel on my second. I’m already planning my next playthrough to be a psychotic dark-sided female. (When I played as the male scoundrel, I decided to roleplay as a person who wants to do the right thing but who keeps giving in to a desire for revenge before eventually pledging himself to the dark side. I spent most of that playthrough with a neutral alignment as a result of choosing a mixture of light and dark choices. A psychotic playthrough would just be doing dark things for the sake of doing dark things.)

Some people even do no-lightsaber runs! They just have their player character run through the entire game shooting blasters at their enemies. Check out this Youtube video of someone fighting the final boss battle with two blaster pistols instead of a lightsaber (Warning: contains MAJOR spoilers, so if you care about that sort of thing, steer clear!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eHtPkUw_XE&t=348s.

Conclusion

I had a blast playing this game. I love the story, the character interactions, and the lightsaber combat, but I especially enjoyed feeling immersed in the world of Star Wars, able to make significant choices and feel in charge of shaping the story and character.

Technical info: I played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on a Windows 10 PC.  KOTOR 1 is available on Good Old Games (gog.com), Steam, and lots of other places that would take too long for me to hunt down in their entirety.  It can be played on PC, Xbox, Android, iOS, and Classic Mac OS.

ESRB Rating: Teen (for violence)

All images are my personal screenshots from the game.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Windows PC Version, BioWare, 2003.