Star Wars: KotOR

[ChosenOne54]

Well, I've just bought Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and it is currently installing on my computer. I've heard a lot of good things about this game. So, has anybody else here played it? If so, what are your opinions on the game? How do you like it? Does it still hold up nowadays?

[Stark]

Man, imagine if we had a kind of gaming or computery forum to talk about games or sort of computer stuff?

The first KOTOR is pretty dated and has a lot of gamey nonsense in it (you didn't notice everyone wearing visors in Star Wars, I bet). Aside from the licence, I'd go so far as to say the ME series (particularly the second one) is better in every respect.

[The Romulan Republic]

I've started playing it, but never finished it. Despite that, I think its a fairly enjoyable game, and true to the general feel of the films. Not as awesome as some make it out to be, but good.

[Stark]

Some people really enjoyed the story, but I never got into it at all. I actually preferred the story for KOTOR2.

[Stofsk]

When I first played it I thought it was really good. But it hasn't aged well, and many things about it seem painfully primitive and stupid. The way skill points and such things are calculated is needlessly complicated, for example.

Also the story is... well, one of those things that seems really cool in your first playthrough, but then seems really stupid in any subsequent playthroughs. And it has too many stupid/silly side-quests. And it suffers from Bioware style 'boring intro' which lasts for hours (basically everything on the Endar Spire and Taris). Everyone knows you want to play a Jedi, but you don't actually get to be one until after you leave Taris, and that's a good solid few hours of gameplay and the first 8 levels of your class (you can 'game' it by not leveling up after you hit 5, 4, or even 2 in some builds, but the game assumes you level up at the earliest).

The characters are a bit hit and miss too. Bastila is alright especially as she seems to be a Jedi character that was largely informed by the prequels coming out (so many of her attitudes reflected what the writers took to be 'old republic jedi'). Carth is a whiny prat, Mission's annoying, TK-47 is basically R2-D2, and Zaalbar is basically Chewie and has no real depth to him. He even swears a life debt to you (for some reason; it must be a wookie past-time). On the other hand, Canderous Ordo, Jolee Bindo and HK-47 have interesting stories to tell, and at least have something about them that strove to be unique.

In any case, I'm with stark in saying I much prefer KotOR 2 to the first game. Many of the gameplay elements were tweaked and improved while still sticking to the core system (whether this is good or bad, I dunno - but as a sequel it actually improved upon its predecessor, and that's noteworthy). I also found the story way better and the characters far more interesting.

[Panzersharkcat]

Hmm. I actually liked Mission as a character. Never used her in combat unless I was forced to, though. As fun as it was, I've only managed two complete runs of it before I got bored with it vs something like dozens of runs on Fallout 3 and New Vegas. (I really need to get a new game.)

[Darth Yan]

Kotor kicked ass. by the way, they finally showed an unmasked Revan. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/wn1k.jpg/

[Juubi Karakuchi]

That image is going to cause severe controversy. Among a significant number of fans, it is taken as an article of faith that Revan is a woman. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/I ... VideoGames).

EDIT. If you've ever played Jade Empire, KOTOR has a lot in common with that.

[Stofsk]

Meh. Revan to me is a guy, while the Exile from KotOR 2 is a girl. That just feels right.

[Thanas]

Indeed. He was also male in the comics iirc.

[Stark]

What is it about nerds and Bioware games that makes people unable to handle results different from their own? Is it some kind of learning disability? Its certainly not limited to the SW games (I think its even worse in ME) but seriously, the gender of these characters is meaningless and not up to people who aren't playing.

People who take it as an 'article of faith' that 'Revan' is anything at all when someone else is playing are morons. The whole Revan thing is even largely why the Kotor plot is so bland.

[StarSword]

Well, I've just bought Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and it is currently installing on my computer. I've heard a lot of good things about this game. So, has anybody else here played it? If so, what are your opinions on the game? How do you like it? Does it still hold up nowadays?

With the possible exception of Dragon Age: Origins, I think KOTOR is possibly the best single-player RPG BioWare's ever made. Graphics are a little weak compared to current games (for example, clothing textures are a bit pixellated), but on the other hand this lets relatively low-end computers run it with graphics on full.

WARNING! If you're running any Windows OS later than XP, you're going to need to do a serious patch job to make it runnable. This thread gives the instructions in the second post.

The way skill points and such things are calculated is needlessly complicated, for example.

The game mechanics are straight out of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, which at the time was based on Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules. You don't necessarily need to know D&D to play KOTOR (not as much as you need to for, say, Neverwinter Nights), but it helps some. I enjoyed the game more when I wasn't guessing at what "Keen" meant for a weapon, for example.

One tip for the OP during character-building: put more attribute points into Strength than into Dexterity. Force powers aside, Jedi are melee characters, and the only real effect DEX has on a melee character is increasing chances to evade attack. By contrast, STR increases chance to hit with melee weapons and adds a damage bonus.


On Revan being male in canon: Got no problem with that. On the Exile being female in canon: no problem with them picking female for canon, but the Handmaiden tops the Disciple for actual gameplay.

[Stofsk]

What is it about nerds and Bioware games that makes people unable to handle results different from their own? Is it some kind of learning disability? Its certainly not limited to the SW games (I think its even worse in ME) but seriously, the gender of these characters is meaningless and not up to people who aren't playing.

People who take it as an 'article of faith' that 'Revan' is anything at all when someone else is playing are morons. The whole Revan thing is even largely why the Kotor plot is so bland.

Well, Bioware likes to say they put in a lot of 'choice' for their games. And you're right, it's a lot worse in Mass Effect. Like you can choose what Shepard looks like, whether he's male or she's female, etc. Fatty nerds like this illusion of choice because it makes them feel in complete control of 'their' game, and 'their' character. But what if a movie gets made and it's the default male Shepard as the central character? ZOMG the outrage! They can't do that to MY Shepard! How dare they? Or hell the controversy of putting female Shepard on the back cover of the N7 collector's edition of ME3, as well as at some point getting her own trailer for the game. You have people who seriously play the default male Shepard that was based on Mark Vanderloo and treat it like he's the ONLY Shepard possible. It's really bizarre. As far as Revan and the Exile are concerned, those are just the canon genders for each. Each character also remained with the light side, but in each game they can fall to the dark side; just for added complexity.

The long and short of it is fatty nerds are lame. But it's interesting how nobody treats, say, the Witcher franchise in this fashion. Geralt is Geralt, you play him, you make the choices that are available and they are meaningful choices, but you play a 'fixed' character. And nobody bats and eyelash. Or any game that has a set, fixed character.

The way skill points and such things are calculated is needlessly complicated, for example.

The game mechanics are straight out of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, which at the time was based on Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules. You don't necessarily need to know D&D to play KOTOR (not as much as you need to for, say, Neverwinter Nights), but it helps some. I enjoyed the game more when I wasn't guessing at what "Keen" meant for a weapon, for example.

Uh no, the way skill points are calculated has little to do with the way they are done in D&D 3rd edition. In KotOR 2 this was fixed, but in KotOR 1 it was some awful formula that wasn't straight forward. I remember that much at least. That's what I was saying.

Even so, you had the hilarious phenomenon where you could stand out in the open and trade blaster fire for ages with someone who was just a short walk down the hall, and things were resolved with dice rolls. At low level, you can barely hit anything. At high level, there is virtually nothing except Malak who you can't simply chainsaw your way through. That's fine for Mooks but it makes the game pretty boring. Blasters also did very little damage, which was hilarious considering how much damage they did in the SW RPG WotC had published.

One tip for the OP during character-building: put more attribute points into Strength than into Dexterity. Force powers aside, Jedi are melee characters, and the only real effect DEX has on a melee character is increasing chances to evade attack. By contrast, STR increases chance to hit with melee weapons and adds a damage bonus.

It depends entirely on whether you want more defence = harder to hit or more strength = more damage. In KotOR 1, lightsabres attack is determined by whichever is higher between STR and DEX. In other words, the game assumes you have the feat for finesse combat, the one that replaces DEX with STR for attack rolls with the lightsabre. (making that entire feat worthless to get because you've already got it, the game just doesn't tell you)

And what the hell are you doing telling him Jedi are melee characters? There are three Jedi classes, only one which focuses entirely on melee. The consular is essentially a spell-caster, and while you still need to know how to swing a lightsabre the force powers are more important for that class.

On Revan being male in canon: Got no problem with that. On the Exile being female in canon: no problem with them picking female for canon, but the Handmaiden tops the Disciple for actual gameplay.

The Handmaiden is cute and all but the dynamic between Atton Rand and the Disciple was actually a lot better.

[Stark]

The difference between using or choosing an existing character to control, and creating a player stand-in to fetishise, is perhaps the key difference between traditional 'western' RPGs and others.

[Stofsk]

Yeah people love to play dress-up as well- look at the criticism of DA2 versus DA:O over how in the former you can't control what your party members wear/wield. People coming from DA:O also didn't like how you had Hawke as a fixed character, even though you could customise his appearance and his gender.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

In the DA games I can see where people were coming from - in DA:O you could also choose your race, which actually had some gameplay consequences and was taken advantage of for influencing a number of things, so it felt strange that they would further restrict rather than open up that process in DA2, especially since they didn't really take much advantage of having a fixed character with fixed relations (though that may be another aspect of the whole 'DA2 was amazingly rushed and had an extremely short development time').

[Stark]

I don't think Hawke compares to Geralt. Hawke has a set backstory, but didn't seem to have a fixed character - he's more a pre-named player insert than a pre-existing character to control. I think DA2 suffers in many ways from this sort of falling between two stools: not as open as expected, but not as rich as fixed-character games either.

[dworkin]

All I remember of KOTOR was my wife asking me what I thought of the romance sub-plot and my response was:
"What romance subplot?"
"With Bastilla dummy."
"Bastilla's a romantic interest?"
The conversation went downhill from there.

[Ritterin Sophia]

All I remember of KOTOR was my wife asking me what I thought of the romance sub-plot and my response was:
"What romance subplot?"
"With Bastilla dummy."
"Bastilla's a romantic interest?"
The conversation went downhill from there.

Supposedly she's a romantic interest. I, however, felt that HK-47 was by far the most romantic character in the game.

[Purple]

Well as far as I recall (it's been a while) if your character is a good guy you are supposed to sweep her off her feet with your brightness without actually doing anything or noticing. You only find out about it when she falls near the end of the game and cites her romantic feelings for you and the frustration of not being able to act on them as one of the main causes.

[Panzersharkcat]

No, you can tease her throughout the game. She keeps slipping.

[StarSword]

I always found it a lot of fun teasing her. BioWare did a hell of a job.

[Purple]

Wait, that teasing was romantic? I just thought I was being a dick.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Apparently Jedi are like your stereotypical elementary school boy, where teasing means "I like you" instead of "I'm making your life hell because it's funny."

[Purple]

Hm... in hindsight and considering their (well her at least) upbringing in a covenant of sexless monks that might actually make sense. Sort of. I don't know.