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How BioWare explored the galaxy in
Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic ALEX SPENCER
PUBLISHER LUCASARTS / DEVELOPER BIOWARE / FORMAT XBOX ONEOf a galaxy so
famously far, far
away, the Star
Wars movies have
spent the past
four decades
exploring one very
small corner: three generations of
Skywalker family and their nearest
and dearest. Even the recent spin-off
movies have been squeezed tightly
into this timeline, attempting to fill
every possible gap in the established
sequence of events. However, with
the less-than-stellar box office for
last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story,
which led to Lucasfilm cancelling
its slate of similar single-character
prequel movies, it’s starting to
look like this might not be the best
approach for expanding the Star Wars
universe. Luckily, this is a problem
that legendary RPG developer
BioWare already solved, all
the way back in 2003,
with Knights Of The
Old Republic.
LucasArts first
approached BioWare
at the turn of the
millennium, in between
the release of the first
two Star Wars prequels.
The studio was offered two
choices: make a tie-in game to the
forthcoming Episode II: Attack Of
The Clones, or explore a new period
in the universe’s history. BioWare,
wisely, chose the latter option, taking
inspiration from the Dark Horse-
published Tales Of The Jedi comics
for a tale set four thousand years
before the films.
This gave Knights Of The Old
Republic room to tell its own story,
without worrying about infringing
on existing continuity or having to
shoehorn in cameos from familiar
faces (or, rather, low-poly versions of
them). As James Ohlen, the game’s
lead designer, put it in an interview
with Eurogamer: “With Star Wars it’s
harder to tell a larger than life story
during the movie era, because all of
the big events – Luke Skywalker, Darth
Vader – happen in the movies.”
At the same time, though,
the setting is still recognisably,
undeniably Star Wars. The game opens
with text crawling across the screen,
and cuts straight to a space battle,
where a cruiser is being harried by
dozens of smaller ships. They might
not be X-Wings or TIE Fighters, but
they’ve got that trademark sleek-
meets-clunky design sense to them.
A short while later, an escape pod arcs
towards the surface of the nearest
planet. It’s almost a beat-for-beat
recreation of the opening minutes of
the original movie, complete with the
unbeatable John Williams score.
The two stories might be set
millennia apart, but the basics remain
pretty much the same: a galactic
republic brought low by the Sith,
fighting back the best it can, as the
baddies assemble a planet-sized
weapon of terrifying power – in this
case, the Star Forge. Once
again, there are two
figureheads of evil, a
robed dark lord and
apprentice – Darths
Revan and Malak,
respectively.
By the time Knights
Of The Old Republic’s
story begins, Revan has
been defeated, th k t th
combined efforts of a L
Jedi, Bastila Shan, and
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wormy crimelord
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no relation.‘WARE NEXT?
BioWare’s sequel would
have come with its own plot
twist – a sweet Yoda-like
master who, it turned out,
was grooming you to
become the Vader to his
Emperor. But not to
be, it was.More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxmthankstothe
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