Star Wars: KotOR 10-Year Anniversary Retrospective

In case you’re in the marketing for another ten-year anniversary retrospective for BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, there’s such a two-page feature awaiting you over at Bit-tech.net today. A sampling, as usual:

The way it deals with the lightsaber issue demonstrates this perfectly. From the very beginning of the game, heck, from the moment you lay eyes on the title, it’s clear that it will feature Jedi in a big way. But the gratification of owning Star Wars’ most iconic weapon is delayed. For the first few hours you’re not allowed so much as a sniff of the Force, and any mention of constructing your own weaponised glowstick is a planet and a half away.

Instead, Kotor initially casts your lot with the other, grimier side of Star Wars, seeing the player trapped on the planet Taris by an enormous Sith blockade of starships. Any hope of escape lies in dealing with Taris’ criminal underworld, liaising with Hutt cartels, corrupt businessmen and slave traders, and participating in underground swoop races and getting into blaster fights with scum and villainy from all corners of the galaxy.

It’s much more Solo than Skywalker, the tone further set by the personalities of your initial companions. Carth Onasi, the honourable yet cynical soldier and pilot, Mission Vao, the cocky but inexperienced Twi’lek tween and her exiled Wookie companion Zaalbaar. All are burdened in some way by their past, and their personalities often conflict, resulting in arguments in which you often have to intervene, cleverly drawing you into their stories.

And these are supposedly the light side characters; we haven’t even mentioned the magnificently masculine Mandalorian Canderous Ordo, or the misanthropic assassin droid HK-47 – perhaps the most famous of all the Kotor characters with his penchant for casually referring to humans as ‘meatbags’ and politely suggesting mass murder as a solution to almost every problem the player encounters.