KOTOR thoughts

Welp, beat Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I'm glad I replayed it a decade after last beating it, because there was certainly a lot of depth to the game I missed before... however, it's also a grim reminder to me that RPGs are a balancing act between writing and gameplay, and in this case the gameplay both didn't really hold up and was far larger a presence than the writing, with the bulk of the game being running from one combat encounter to the next with dialogue sprinkled over. I definitely felt unsatisfied by the end because I found the combat boring and the dialogue great (though it was fun becoming a god of the force that could instantly freeze in place and then cut down entire groups of enemies).

My issues with the gameplay amount to thus: combat is brainless at its best and irritating at its worst. Battles will either be against grunts so easy your party will cut through them like butter, suffering no wounds in the process, or you'll be at the very end of the game, where waves of Dark Jedi throw themselves at you until you're exhausted more of fighting for 10 minutes straight than worried about dying. In between battles, you run around very linearly designed maps and talk to people. The linear map design is very shocking retrospectively, despite being able to visit 4 worlds of your choosing to explore after the beginning planet and the jedi planet, they planets themselves all very linear with not an ounce of wasted space, which is effective game design but makes everything too easy - sidequests will almost always be solvable without any thinking at all because the solution is placed on your linear path, unmissable. There was only one puzzle I struggled with in the game, everything else I never even had to think about. Getting 100% map completion isn't just easy, it WILL happen if you make a point to do sidequests.

The main quest has a good setup that covers a total 7 planets with a good amount of player choice, but it - along with the sidequests - ultimately fail to make a good narrative about the Light Side vs the Dark Side (of the Force). Dark Side choices amount to calling strangers mean names and murdering people over nothing (almost every conversation with any NPC has some form of "You're boring me. I'm going to kill you now." as a selectable statement). Light Side choices amount to refusing money for completing sidequests and as well as being polite to strangers. There's little depth to it and I recall only a single mission that had a challenging light vs dark side choice. This is at its worst in the final confrontation with the Final Boss and his Dark Apprentice. What should have been the best conversation of the game, Light Side philosophy clashing with Dark Side philosophy, ended up being - I apologize for the harshness - a pathetic, shallow conversation wherein absolutely nothing worthwhile is said. The Dark Side characters say - The Jedi are stupid and weak etc etc. The Light Side character, the player character, says No. The Dark Side is evil and you're just being dumb. You can come back to the light. And that's basically it. There was no battle of wits, clashing philosophies, no nothing. There was just platitudes being thrown at each other. To their credit, the Dark Side characters actually make a few arguments, but they're wasted on a Light Side character that just says "no. you're wrong". without making any arguments himself. It's truly, truly pathetic and makes the game's ending far weaker than it should be.

Anyway. The sidequests themselves are fairly lame from a gameplay standpoint, since most revolve around "go here and get me this", but the dialogue that surround them can range from good to great. There's a fair amount of depth to NPCs, *especially* your companions, and that means it's interesting to talk to people and do the quests. That said, not all sidequests are that good, and the best dialogue remains with companions.

However, both side quests and companion dialogue suffer greatly from having not received enough dialogue content. Side quests consist more of running around than of talking, so despite there being many of them, the time spent running around outweighs that of listening to dialogue. Companions, the best NPCs in the game with the best dialogue, have maybe 5 conversations total before they're done saying anything but occasional comments during side quests and the main quest. This really, really bummed me out. I suppose it has to do with voice acting costs, but I would have been fine with unvoiced unconvos. By far what darkened this game the most for me spending the whole game with mostly silent companions because I exhausted all of their possible dialogue within the first quarter of the game. One character even said "we can talk about this more after you defeat [the final boss]", when I was exploring the very first non-linear world out 4. I then beat the entire rest of the game never talking to them again, because they never had anything to say.

In conclusion - I was very surprised to learn this is considered one of the best games of all time. The flaws in the gameplay and the lack of companion dialogue are major sore spots that even in 2003 I think would stand out. However, KOTOR is nonetheless a solid RPG worth playing for fans of Star Wars. I can see why it is so well liked.

P.S. - Bastila is a truly excellent waifu despite her crippling lack of dialogue. A+ would romance again.