Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
In the summer of 2003, Star Wars fans were attempting to
recover from the one, two groin kicks that were Episode 1 (1999) and Episode II
(2003). While I’m sometimes inclined to
defend segments from those movies, I also remember being exhausted by the cycle of anticipation and disappointment that accompanied the first two prequel films. The Star Wars galaxy was starting to feel stale at that point, and after two disappointing films many fans of George Lucas’s adventures far, far away were becoming a little despondent. It’s around this time that Knights of the Old Republic, the first
Star Wars role playing game, came out and reminded a generation of players why
they fell in love with Star Wars to begin with.
Unlike most Star Wars games, which often take place
concurrent with the most recent film, Knights
of the Old Republic (KotOR) escapes
the tricky issue of continuity by taking place 4,000 years prior to the events
of the original trilogy. Originally, the
game was supposed to tie into the world of the second trilogy, specifically
Episode II which was in production at the same time. However, Lucasarts gave the developers,
Bioware, the option to set their game in the distant past, which they smartly
chose to do. This shift in time allows
the creators of KothOR to craft a
Star Wars game without worrying about questions of continuity or relevance to
George Lucas’s more recent cinematic creations.
In other words, KotOR rebuffed
corporate synergy in order to achieve a sense of artistic integrity. But despite the drastic temporal shift, KotOR wound up capturing the essence of
Star Wars better than the prequels, much less most Star Wars videogames.
The freedom inherent in setting KotOR thousands of years prior to the original trilogy allowed
Bioware to superimpose the motifs and archetypes of Star Wars onto a new and
exciting world. Like most RPGs, in KotOR you are able to pick and choose
elements of your main character, including gender and general appearance. The class system also generally conforms to
the archetypes used by Lucas in the Star Wars films, an element of the game
that extends to the varying characters that join your party throughout the
game. In addition to your self-made main
character, you also get to control a soldier (Carth), a Wookie (Zaalbar), a
resourceful street urchin (Mission), a Mandalorian warrior (Canderous), a
handful of Jedis (Bastila, Juhani, Jolee), and a couple of droids (T3-M4 and
HK-47).
Not every character is great (Carth can be awfully whiny for
a soldier), but every player will have his or her favorites (I was always
partial to the cantankerous Canderous and the gruff Jedi loner, Jolee). But more importantly, these characters fit
nicely within the world of Star Wars, judging by much of the extended universe,
a more difficult task than you might imagine.
You could easily split the characters into those who serve to maintain
order in the galaxy and those who live in the shadows of the two warring
factions of the Republic and the Sith. In
other words, they’re either rogues or acolytes, the same tension that exists
between Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in the Episode IV.
KotOR also captures
the visual essence of Star Wars. In
particular, they replicate the scope and sense of the infinite in the world of
Star Wars. While you can only explore a
relatively small fenced in portion of each planet, the use of a horizon,
whether it’s the dunes of Tatooine or the unending plains of Dantooine, gives
you a sense of the infinite. This
extreme scope has always been an integral aspect of Star Wars, from the initial
invocation of a galaxy “far, far away” to the seemingly unending pit Palpating
is drop into at the end of Return of the
Jedi. And yet, so few video games
have managed to really capture this visual and thematic element of the Star
Wars films.
But BioWare wasn’t just content with capturing the essence
of Star Wars; they also wanted to revamp the role playing genre. For many years RPGs had been associated with
turn based fighting and somewhat tedious class, weapons and magic
management. And while KotOR has
maintained those core elements, they have also made the genre far more
cinematic. KotOR was released shortly before World of Warcraft, and like those similarly detailed MMORPGs it
helped usher in the immersive qualities to the genre. There’s no switching perspective as you move
from the world map to the dungeons to the battles. Instead, everything maintains a fluid third
person view. And unlike the MMORPGs and
RPGs of the same era, there’s less emphasis on tedious fights and
minigames. There’s a limit to how far
your characters can level up, and you can only get into so many battles on each
planet. In other words, you won’t find
yourself wandering around for hours on end trying to find more random monsters
to fight. In order to emphasize story,
the game makes it easier to level up by completing tasks for non playable
characters rather than randomized battles. Many of the side quests are related
to characters in your party, making them more central to narrative elements
like plot and characterization. All of
these aspects help reinforce the game’s cinematic qualities, which seems
especially fitting for a Star Wars game.
There are numerous aspects of the game that add to its
replayability (that is, if you have the patients to replay a game that can take
upwards of fifty hours to complete). In
order to mirror the choices made by Anakin and Luke Skywaler, the main
character must choose to serve either the dark or light side of the force, a
decision made through a number of choices throughout the game. BioWare made the dark side of the force
suitably enticing, since it often leads to more fights and easier solutions. There’s a really fun assassination subplot
that you must take on a few dark side points if you want to complete it. You’re also given some freedom as to which
planets you want to visit in what order, but of course there’s still a correct
way of completing the game if you want to gather every character and finish as
many side quests as possible (Tatooine, Kashyyyk, Manaan, and Korriban).
The enticing possibility that you could play as a hero in
the Star Wars universe has lead plenty of fans to buy subpar Star Wars games,
so there’s something especially powerful when a Star Wars video game chooses
not only to capture the sense of fun and adventure of the best films but also
in general expands on what the medium can accomplish. In some ways, KotOR reinforces the power of myth and archetype inherent in
Lucas’s Star Wars by transporting the actions to a different time while
maintaining the core aspects of that galaxy far, far away.
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Quick spoiler warning: From here on out, I’m going to
discuss a major plot twist in the game and its general importance to the genre
and the themes of Star Wars.
As I mentioned earlier, at the start of the game you go
through the process of creating your main character, choosing the gender, class
and abilities of your blank slate. Well,
the main character has more of a history than you might imagine. As the story goes in KotOR, the Republic is in a life or death struggle against the
forces of the Sith, currently lead by a former Jedi Darth Malak. Malak’s mentor used to be Darth Revan, also a
fallen Jedi. But Revan was defeated prior
to the game by the Jedi Bastila. We’re
lead to believe that Bastila has killed Revan, but in a twist reminiscent of
the “I am your father” scene from The
Empire Strikes Back, it turns out that Revan wasn’t killed; rather, he was
captured by Bastila and turned over to the Jedi council who decided to wipe his
memory in order to bring him back to the light side. In fact, the character you created at the beginning
of the game is Revan, so you have been playing as the dark lord this entire
time without realizing it.
There are a few implications to this reveal. The tabula
rasa origins of your character has long been a staple of the RPG
genre. But the Revan twist adds a meta
aspect to the creation of the main character.
Just as you have conjured the elements of the main character out of thin
air, so too has the Jedi council. In
other words, at the beginning, rather than just going through the normal
motions of character creation, you are, unwittingly, in the role of the Jedi
council remaking Revan from the ground up.
The Revan reveal also adds a layer of truth to your dialogue
choices. While playing your character it
is possible to veer from being kind hearted to callous in the blink of an
eye. Character inconsistency was always
nagged me in games where you are given branching dialogue options. Where most critics focus on ways in which
dialogue options do or do not appropriately transform a game’s narrative, few
focus on how these dialogue options allow you to craft your own unique
character. Of course, this makes little
sense if you can be altruistic one minute and vicious the next. But knowledge that you used to be Darth Revan
actually explains your character’s extreme bi-polar disorder: any acts of evil
can be chalked up to your history as Revan bubbling to the surface, even if you
are trying to follow the light side.
Finally, the story of Revan and Malak ties nicely into one
of the stronger aspects of the prequel trilogy.
Prior to the battle between the Republic and the Sith, the Jedi were
involved in a war against the Mandalorians.
As Jedis, Revan and Malak managed to defeat the Mandalorians, but in
doing so they adopted a tough uncaring attitude towards casualties. It is suggested, then, that the necessity of
victory may have forced Revan and Malak to turn towards the dark side. Although KotOR
was released prior to the completion of the prequel trilogy, Malak and Revan’s
turn to the dark side seems to echo some of the themes from Episodes II and
III. Throughout the prequels, it is
suggested that the Jedi have lost their way, in part because they have
abandoned their role as peacekeepers in favor of becoming warriors, a choice
that makes sense in their given situation, but is ultimately their
downfall. And, of course, the real
threat behind the Clone Wars, Palpatine, has engineered it so that no matter
which side becomes the victor, he will be the ultimate winner. Both the prequel trilogy and KotOR illustrate the corrupting nature
of warfare.
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