2003 was an interesting year for Star Wars fans. The franchise was experiencing somewhat of a nadir, following the release of Episodes I and II. In terms of games, there was the Obi-Wan title on Xbox that was a fun romp, and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, but not much beyond that from my perspective. But, regardless of how other people felt at the time, eleven year-old me remained fascinated by Star Wars.
Ever since I saw Episode I in theaters, I couldn't get enough. I watched the original trilogy on VHS, and I read gaming magazines to stay up to date with games in the Star Wars universe. Eventually one caught my eye: a roleplaying game called Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, set thousands of years before the rise of the Galactic Empire. I was already a fan of roleplaying games by then, having played through Morrowind. Merging two of my favorite interests was a no-brainer, so I immediately put it on my wishlist.
Soon after KOTOR released, I walked into a Toys "R" Us and picked up a copy for my Xbox with a sense of optimism and anticipation. I had seen the commercials with Bastila and Darth Malak facing off against each other opposite the Xbox logo, and I had consumed all the bits of information about the game that I could find. Still, nothing quite prepared me for the sensation I would get on the Endar Spire and in the initial sections on Taris. To this very day I don't think a game has inspired the sense of wonder and immersion that those early hours of gameplay gave me.
News outlets at the time shared my enthusiasm, as KOTOR received heaps of praise from most gaming journalists, with publications like GameSpot bestowing a 9.2 and calling it the "best thing to happen to Star Wars in ages."
Two decades later, Knights of the Old Republic still has its grasp on me and how I define myself as a gamer. It remains a high-water mark for the genre, and deconstructing its brilliance reveals not only a masterclass in game design, but a blueprint for how to build quality roleplaying games for years to come.
After a lengthy and memorable discussion with Carth, the mission becomes clear: find and rescue Bastila Shan, a powerful Jedi who escaped the Endar Spire, and whose battle meditation technique was key to the Republic winning the war against the Sith. To reach her would require navigating the city’s complex social strata and recruiting additional allies like Mission Vao, a Twi'lek street urchin, and her loyal Wookiee friend, Zaalbar.
Anyways, the game's first act concluded with a display of wanton Sith destruction: Darth Malak and his underling, Admiral Saul Karath, executed the destruction of Taris via planetary bombardment. With the help of the Mandalorian mercenary Canderous Ordo, my team and I formulated a plan to steal the freighter Ebon Hawk and break the Sith blockade as the city began falling apart. We ascended into the atmosphere just as the world I had spent hours exploring, and every character I met, was glassed. The feeling I felt at the time was not one of despair, but of desiring revenge against Malak and the Sith.
The game truly begins upon reaching the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. I started my Jedi training, recited the Jedi Code (which took a few tries to get correctly) and, in a moment of incredible catharsis, donned my robes and ignited the blue lightsaber of a Jedi Guardian. Like a few of you perhaps did, I failed to save Juhani and killed her in my first playthrough, not realizing she was meant to be a companion until I finished the game. The Jedi Council then gave me the game's main quest: find five ancient Star Maps scattered across the galaxy, which together would reveal the location of the Star Forge, a mysterious superweapon/factory capable of churning out the Sith's endless fleets.
The search for the maps required exploring several planets and dealing with the problems of the people inhabiting them. I took part in a complicated legal case on Manaan that I, to this day, feel like I bungled and failed to understand completely. I braved the depths of Kashyyyk and saved that world from enslavers. And I spent far too much time aimlessly wandering Tatooine's desert collecting Gaffi sticks in an age before open world gaming was the standard.
The final act became a desperate race for the last Star Map on Korriban, and then to the Star Forge. On the ancient Rakatan world of Lehon, I confronted a fallen Bastila, now Malak’s apprentice, before facing Malak himself in a final, climactic duel. I remember it being a nail-biting experience that I barely squeaked through. I can still recall the sweat dripping down my body from how intensely I was focused on staying alive and beating Malak as he kept (unfairly) draining captured Jedi for more health. In the canonical light side ending, the Star Forge gets destroyed, and my Revan was hailed by the Jedi Order as the "Prodigal Knight" who returned to save the order that he had initially endangered.
Then there were the game's companions. These characters made the galaxy feel alive, like you were exploring a galaxy with realistic and complicated individuals by your side, who you could befriend and even romance. Carth wrestled with betrayal, Bastila confronted her pride and her attraction to you, and the assassin droid HK-47 gleefully satirized the franchise's "helpful innocuous droid" archetype. Others, like the former Jedi Jolee Bindo, knew from the start you were Revan and tried to carefully navigate around that reality while conversing with you. They argued, they confided, they challenged my decisions, and in doing so, they made the universe feel populated, real, and worth fighting for.
Its successors are a testament to the compelling world it built. Obsidian Entertainment’s sequel, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, offered a darker, more philosophically complex snapshot of the KOTOR universe. It was a brilliant but rushed follow-up that I loved almost as much as the original. I still have the dog-eared guide I used while tearing through the game over winter break in 2004. Then, the massively multiplayer Star Wars: The Old Republic expanded the era's lore for millions of new players (though not without controversy). While it has its weaknesses, I enjoyed SWTOR's Jedi Knight story as a take on what could have been in terms of a KOTOR 3.
Speaking of which, the originally planned Knights of the Old Republic 3 is one of those gaming "what-if" titles that I wish we got to see. According to developers, it would have sent players into the unknown regions to confront the "true Sith" lurking in the galaxy's farthest reaches. We did get a semblance of this in SWTOR, but I'm sure that it ended up being a shadow of what the singleplayer version would have been.
Ultimately, Knights of the Old Republic succeeded because it understood the core of what makes Star Wars great: the balance between fantasy and reality, the exploration of good versus evil, and the fundamental power of choice and consequence. For me and for millions of others, it remains not only the greatest Star Wars game ever made, but one of the finest role-playing games of all time.
Two decades later, Knights of the Old Republic still has its grasp on me and how I define myself as a gamer. It remains a high-water mark for the genre, and deconstructing its brilliance reveals not only a masterclass in game design, but a blueprint for how to build quality roleplaying games for years to come.
Recapping My Journey (Spoilers Ahead)
Knights of the Old Republic begins with you creating a character, and I made a strength-based Republic soldier. Then you get the traditional Star Wars opening crawl before the game hones in on the Endar Spire amidst a Sith ambush. A fellow soldier named Trask Ulgo teaches you the game's mechanics before sacrificing himself to allow you to escape alongside a decorated pilot, Carth Onasi. Then you crash-land on Taris, a sprawling ecumenopolis and outer-rim version of Coruscant that serves as a microcosm for the galaxy at large: decadent at the top, rotting underneath, and straining under an oppressive Sith lockdown.
After a lengthy and memorable discussion with Carth, the mission becomes clear: find and rescue Bastila Shan, a powerful Jedi who escaped the Endar Spire, and whose battle meditation technique was key to the Republic winning the war against the Sith. To reach her would require navigating the city’s complex social strata and recruiting additional allies like Mission Vao, a Twi'lek street urchin, and her loyal Wookiee friend, Zaalbar.
Their knowledge of the Taris Lower City and Under City was instrumental, leading to our involvement in a brutal gang war between the Hidden Beks and the Black Vulkars. We eventually agree to help the Hidden Beks by working as their swoop racer, competing against the Black Vulkars, who have taken Bastila captive. After failing to get a good time in the race several times, I eventually won, defeated Brejik and his Vulkars, and secured Bastila’s freedom.
Along the way I was sure to finish various sidequests regarding a "promised land" in the Under City and become champion of the Taris arena. All the while, I kept wondering when and how my character would eventually get force powers and acquire a lightsaber. Getting Bastila as a companion on Taris and finding her double-bladed yellow lightsaber was a tantalizing preview of what was to come. As an eleven year-old, the possibilities were fascinating to me, and I don't think I can properly put into words how cool it was to think that my soldier would eventually ascend into the role of Jedi. I think I literally daydreamed in class about it.
Anyways, the game's first act concluded with a display of wanton Sith destruction: Darth Malak and his underling, Admiral Saul Karath, executed the destruction of Taris via planetary bombardment. With the help of the Mandalorian mercenary Canderous Ordo, my team and I formulated a plan to steal the freighter Ebon Hawk and break the Sith blockade as the city began falling apart. We ascended into the atmosphere just as the world I had spent hours exploring, and every character I met, was glassed. The feeling I felt at the time was not one of despair, but of desiring revenge against Malak and the Sith.
The game truly begins upon reaching the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine. I started my Jedi training, recited the Jedi Code (which took a few tries to get correctly) and, in a moment of incredible catharsis, donned my robes and ignited the blue lightsaber of a Jedi Guardian. Like a few of you perhaps did, I failed to save Juhani and killed her in my first playthrough, not realizing she was meant to be a companion until I finished the game. The Jedi Council then gave me the game's main quest: find five ancient Star Maps scattered across the galaxy, which together would reveal the location of the Star Forge, a mysterious superweapon/factory capable of churning out the Sith's endless fleets.
The search for the maps required exploring several planets and dealing with the problems of the people inhabiting them. I took part in a complicated legal case on Manaan that I, to this day, feel like I bungled and failed to understand completely. I braved the depths of Kashyyyk and saved that world from enslavers. And I spent far too much time aimlessly wandering Tatooine's desert collecting Gaffi sticks in an age before open world gaming was the standard.
The climax of the story, which was probably my most memorable moment in gaming, arrived aboard Darth Malak's flagship, the Leviathan, which captures your ship after you find the third Star Map. Brought before Admiral Saul Karath, who also happens to be Carth’s former mentor, we were subjected to a brutal interrogation over what we've been up to. After an escape attempt we eventually get cornered by Malak in the depths of the ship, who then reveals the truth about my character: I was not a simple Republic soldier who miraculously trained to be a Jedi in a few weeks. I was Revan, the former Dark Lord of the Sith and Malak's master, my mind having been wiped by the very Jedi Council that had sent me on this quest with Bastila serving as my minder.
To this day, the Revan reveal remains the most consequential and surprising twist I've ever experienced in gaming. It fundamentally re-contextualized every decision I had made up to that point, and goes on to affect the story and character interactions in a million cool ways after the reveal.
The final act became a desperate race for the last Star Map on Korriban, and then to the Star Forge. On the ancient Rakatan world of Lehon, I confronted a fallen Bastila, now Malak’s apprentice, before facing Malak himself in a final, climactic duel. I remember it being a nail-biting experience that I barely squeaked through. I can still recall the sweat dripping down my body from how intensely I was focused on staying alive and beating Malak as he kept (unfairly) draining captured Jedi for more health. In the canonical light side ending, the Star Forge gets destroyed, and my Revan was hailed by the Jedi Order as the "Prodigal Knight" who returned to save the order that he had initially endangered.
KOTOR's Greatness and Impact on Gaming
Beyond its narrative achievements, the enduring power of Knights of the Old Republic lies in its uncanny ability to make you feel like you were living inside the Star Wars universe. Few videogames have achieved such a profound sense of immersion.
I can still recall my formative memory of stepping out into the Upper City of Taris for the first time. The sky was a tangle of transport lanes, with aliens of every description bustling past, Sith troopers telling me to get out of their way, and the air buzzing with the energy of a vast, living world. It was a place filled with its own history, politics, and simmering conflicts.
Then there were the game's companions. These characters made the galaxy feel alive, like you were exploring a galaxy with realistic and complicated individuals by your side, who you could befriend and even romance. Carth wrestled with betrayal, Bastila confronted her pride and her attraction to you, and the assassin droid HK-47 gleefully satirized the franchise's "helpful innocuous droid" archetype. Others, like the former Jedi Jolee Bindo, knew from the start you were Revan and tried to carefully navigate around that reality while conversing with you. They argued, they confided, they challenged my decisions, and in doing so, they made the universe feel populated, real, and worth fighting for.
The game's morality system, while being simplistic, nonetheless provided a sense of player agency, where dialogue choices and plot decisions influenced a character's standing with the light or dark side. It could feel comically binary, with choices that were often stereotypically good or cartoonishly evil. It was a blunt yet functional system that fits the Star Wars ethos. While its sequel would deconstruct this moral clarity and provide several layers of gray, KOTOR’s light/dark binary was, at the time, a fresh system that made it easy for me to understand my choices and which directions I wanted to take my character. It also made a second playthrough choosing the opposite alignment that much more fun and engaging.
For all these reasons and more, Knights of the Old Republic became a landmark title for me and in the history of the role-playing genre. It set a gold standard that later became the blueprint for BioWare's other celebrated RPGs, like Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. Stylistically, it is something that developers keep trying to emulate to varying degrees of success. We see it in Baldur's Gate III, Greedfall, the Outer Worlds 2, and even in the upcoming Owlcat game based on The Expanse universe. Whenever I fire up a new RPG, I'm always hoping that it will give me that sense of wonder I felt with KOTOR. To this day, I've been left mostly disappointed.
The Future of Knights of the Old Republic
More than two decades later, Knights of the Old Republic continues to influence me and many of you. It set a new standard for mainstream story-driven RPGs, proving that they could be approachable, narratively ambitious, and emotionally resonant works of art.
Its successors are a testament to the compelling world it built. Obsidian Entertainment’s sequel, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, offered a darker, more philosophically complex snapshot of the KOTOR universe. It was a brilliant but rushed follow-up that I loved almost as much as the original. I still have the dog-eared guide I used while tearing through the game over winter break in 2004. Then, the massively multiplayer Star Wars: The Old Republic expanded the era's lore for millions of new players (though not without controversy). While it has its weaknesses, I enjoyed SWTOR's Jedi Knight story as a take on what could have been in terms of a KOTOR 3.
Speaking of which, the originally planned Knights of the Old Republic 3 is one of those gaming "what-if" titles that I wish we got to see. According to developers, it would have sent players into the unknown regions to confront the "true Sith" lurking in the galaxy's farthest reaches. We did get a semblance of this in SWTOR, but I'm sure that it ended up being a shadow of what the singleplayer version would have been.
In a similarly depressing fashion, KOTOR's modern remake has been indefinitely delayed, trapped in development hell for the past several years. We can only hope that, one day, those of us who were so heavily impacted by this game will get to see it properly and faithfully remade for modern systems and new audiences.
Ultimately, Knights of the Old Republic succeeded because it understood the core of what makes Star Wars great: the balance between fantasy and reality, the exploration of good versus evil, and the fundamental power of choice and consequence. For me and for millions of others, it remains not only the greatest Star Wars game ever made, but one of the finest role-playing games of all time.
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