As the game progresses, though,
you also get to shape their personality.
The game is filled with moral choices,
from the tiniest forks in dialogue trees
to major plot-splitting decisions. This
is the beating heart of Knights Of The
Old Republic’s many quests. The first
big mission of the game, after your
pod has landed on the planet-sized
metropolis of Taris, is to descend into
the undercity in search of a cure for
a terrible disease. As soon as you’re
handed the quest, you are presented
with two options: hand it over to the
medical centre, for nothing more than
the knowledge you’re helping out your
fellow man/tentacle-headed alien,
or get paid by selling it to the head of
Taris’ mafia.
This isn’t the toughest ethical
quandary. It’s pretty clear which
choice is going to land you in the
Good Place, and Knights Of The
Old Republicunderlines this by
handing you Light or Dark Side
points once you make the decision.
Your character starts out perfectly
neutral, but you can push their
moral alignment in either direction
with your actions.
It’s not exactly subtle, but it lines
up perfectly with how good and evil
are presented in most Star Wars
movies. Err towards the Dark Side of
the Force, and it’ll be easier to use
typically Sith powers like Vader’s
choking – the number-one cause of
workplace injuries for Imperial officers
- or lightning bolts like the ones that
shoot from the Emperor’s fingertips.
The Light Side, meanwhile, offers
protective and curative abilities, proof
BLOCK-ADE RUNNER
LEGO STAR WARS:
THE COMPLETE SAGA
Even the bad films are
enjoyable in this chunky
Lego game. Still the high
point of Traveller’s Tales’
expanding series.TROOPING THE COLOURS
REPUBLIC COMMANDO
BioWare might have
been smart to reject the
Episode IIsetting, but this
squad shooter shows that
fighting in the Clone Wars
can be fantastic fun.Knights Of The Old Republic
isn’t the only greatStar
Warsgame on Xbox. Here
are three other games that
we’ve enjoyed waving a
lightsaber around in over
the years.STAR
TURNS‘SABER RATTLING
JEDI ACADEMY
The culmination of
LucasArts’ Jedi Knight
series is generally
considered gaming’s best
realisation of swinging
around a laser sword.that doing the right thing is generally
much less fun.
Some of the decisions you’re
presented with, though, are a little
more nuanced than ‘heal the world
or become an intergalactic Martin
Shkreli’. On Dantooine, you meet
a widow, terrified for her missing
companion – who turns out to be a
Threepio-style protocol droid named
C8-42. When you find C8, and rescue
him from the giant Kath hounds
treating him like a metallic chew toy,
he reveals this was actually a suicide
attempt. The widow has become
obsessed with him, trying to replaceher dead husband with the droid
he left behind, and C8 fears this is
holding her back from developing
human relationships. He asks you to
destroy him.
You can choose to do as C8 asks,
and reduce him to scrap, or as the
widow asks, and return him to her. The
latter sounds like the obvious solution
to the quest, but the game will only
award you Light Side points if you kill
C8. Do this, and you’ll later see that his
plan worked, as it eventually leads his
former master to meet someone new.
Or, of course, you can choose the
definitively evil option, chopping up
C8 for fun and then lying to the widow
that he’s still out there somewhere, so
she’ll go looking for him and no doubt
end up as Kath dog food.In good company
In these branching morality-prodding
side quests, you can see Knights Of
The Old Republic laying the seeds
of the BioWare we know and love
today. It was a pivotal game for the
studio, which at this point was best
known for theBaldur’s Gateseries,
which not only used the setting of
Dungeons & Dragons but was built
around a tweaked version of the
tabletop RPG’s ruleset.
BioWare knew that aStar
Warsgame would require a more
cinematic approach. And so, it
zoomed in from the isometric
viewpoint of Baldur’s Gate, adopted
a more direct and console-friendly
control scheme, and pushed all“It’s not exactly subtle but it lines up
perfectly with how ood and evil are
presented in most Star Wars movies”
extra
ABOVEBeing a
master of evil
is great fun,
thanks to powers
like Force
Lightning.104 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE