O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
I think, none of the other BioWare games had the impact on gaming as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic had. Originally released in 2003 on Xbox, it was the culmination of everything the company did up until that point, but streamlined (in the best possible way) for consoles and due to that (and the Star Wars setting) it managed to cover an audience so huge no “western” RPG covered before. It kickstarted the rise in popularity of morality systems, romance options, “home bases” with companions to choose from… All of it existed in games before, but KotOR became a template for lots of games to follow. All while also being, arguably, the least controversial and most beloved Star Wars product from the whole prequel period of the franchise.
I played this game a lot back in the day, but after the sequel (which I loved so much more), I revisited it less and less and the last time I’ve played it was more than 15 years ago. Now that the game is turning 20, I’ve decided to finally revisit it and see how it fares.
BioWare made a very smart choice when creating the game in an established universe – they chose a time period where they had full freedom of writing. So, KotOR takes place 4 thousand years before the movies and is thus free of all the story and character baggage that would’ve implied. Which even in 2001 when the game was first announced was a lot. And now after the stupidly crazy amount of products Disney churned out, all dancing around the original trilogy (including the sequel trilogy), the story of the game feels especially fresh. Lots of the familiar concepts and ideas are here. Some things are just being established, some are only hinted upon and a lot of the ideas are new or at least were new for the time. For how dreaded the prequel period of the franchise seems to be with lots of people, the lore building it inspired in talented writers led to a world that was far more exciting and interesting than the constant circling around the Skywalkers that used to happen before that.
The core of the story and its big twist, are still excellent. They might no longer surprise people in this day and age, but BioWare crafted a really good adventure for its time and, also being smart about it, only ever attempted to repeat a twist of this kind with Jade Empire (their next project). A lot of the writing is wonderful, the planets you get to visit along your path to save the galaxy from the Sith led by Darth Malak are varied. BioWare continued with their usage of “The Four Map Pieces” structure from Neverwinter Nights, except this time it was literally four map pieces, just like in Monkey Island 2. Visually the game was impressive and even today it looks very good, though, sadly, it does not natively support high resolutions or widescreen ratios. And the music is fittingly “very Star Wars” in the best way. So much of the experience of the title remains impressive and wonderful even 20 years later.
Yet, so much of it aged so poorly or haven’t been great in the first place. The companions, for one, are among the least memorable characters in the whole BioWare history. People tend to love HK-47 for a reason – he’s possibly most amusing character in the whole game. The rest of the crew ranges from “oh, I forgot you’re here” to “oh no, I have to talk to Carth and Bastila again…” All characters (except for T3-M4) have optional dialogues and even side stories you can do, but some are there seemingly just to exist and some end before you can blink an eye and the character has zero impact on the rest of the story. It’s weird to think that even in NWN1 or BG1 characters had more personality and charm, even though in the first they were used more as tools and in the second almost all of them were skippable and killable.
Another thing that has been a problem since the day the game got released, is the way pathfinding and action queue constantly breaks. You and your companions, despite being directly controllable (which was an option in NWN1), constantly get stuck on nothing or queue up actions in a bizarre order or ignore things they shouldn’t ignore. Except now, 20 years later, I’ve experienced the game breaking even more spectacularly. Cutscene triggers teleporting me into other locations, items duplicating inside my inventory to ridiculous numbers, cutscenes that refuse to start or fade the screen to black and never unfade it… Game can also crash while saving corrupting your save file or crash at some other random spot. The game used to be frustrating, but now the problems only multiplied.
Although, even if all issues were to be fixed and the title would work as designed without issue, you’d get extended sections of genuinely boring gameplay. For how cool in ideas and stories some planets are, the level and encounter design is horrible. The entirety of the last act in the game is at times insufferable with how much combat there is and how boring it gets at the character levels you’re at. Given that BioWare essentially adapted a simplified version of D&D rules (from their previous BG and NWN experience) into Star Wars universe, it means that sometimes you’re just watching characters dance around missing each other because invisible dice just rolled that way, and sometimes you critical hit your opposition into oblivion before the fight even starts.
Still, there’s a lot of great stuff about the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic that BioWare would continuously revisit in their later games… Which is also damning to this title. Original Mass Effect trilogy, for example, repeated basically every single aspect worth repeating across the games with new twists, turns and often better gameplay and more nuanced stories. All the character traits from this game were revisited, but improved in every way, in future titles. With only Light/Dark vs Paragon/Renegade being handled better in KotOR (as Mass Effect motivates you to grind those points). Though at the same time, it’s not like they didn’t revisit this idea with a twist in Jade Empire as well. And the non-linear choice-driven main character personality shaping gameplay was done far far better in the first two Dragon Age titles. BioWare cannibalised KotOR so much, it almost loses relevance…
But I still think there’s an audience for this game. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic still has plenty of cool ideas and elements worth experiencing. As long as you can solve the technical issues with the game. Would I revisit this game again in the future? Probably no. But I’ve already played it many times before. If you haven’t – it’s still a game worth checking out. And if nothing else, it’s still a game worth remembering.