Replay Value: Knights of the Old Republic

BioWare is a busy developer these days. It is working on Dragon Age: Origins, which will be released sometime this year and will undoubtedly quench my thirst for playing through Baldur's Gate 2 again. It is creating a sequel to Mass Effect, which basically rules out playing the original again, although it would be nice to try a Paragon Shepard.

The studio is also working on a The Old Republic MMO taking place in the KOTOR game setting. This basically means that it is not working on Knights of the Old Republic III and it makes me want to play the series yet again.

The first Knights of the Old Republic was a breakthrough when it was revealed. It had the graphics, the gripping story line, the dialogue, the combat and, best of all, it managed to attract the Star Wars fans without needing to rigidly fit in the space occupied by the movies or the novels available at the time. BioWare gave life to another game space altogether, moving the action back almost four thousand years to a point when Jedi and Sith were plentiful and when low level conflicts were being fought all over the galaxy.

Knights of the Old Republic is enthralling. My first playthrough took about one week and I took on pretty much all the quests that I could. I remember playing the Light side, doing good all over the galaxy as I tackled the threat that the Sith posed to the Republic and the Galaxy. My new playthrough, which I have just started, will be more geared towards evil but the kind of evil born more out of self interest than out of hate for the universe and a desire to conquer all. I'll try to offer some impressions about the game as I play more and determine at least some of you to play it even if it is quite old at the moment, being launched in 2003.

Unfortunately, LucasArts, the publisher of the BioWare developed videogames, is not offering it on its online store, so any gamer interested in the title should do well to look to sites like Amazon or eBay, which is kind of a shame, as this game should reach as big an audience as possible.