KOTOR IS SET IN THE OUTER
RIM – THE WILD, LAWLESS
PART OF THE GALAXY
basically a refinement of KOTOR
minus the Star Wars stuff. Flying
between planets, chatting with
companions aboard the Ebon Hawk
and facing tough moral choices in
quests, I can’t help but think of
Commander Shepard and the gang.
KOTOR is BioWare’s first really
successful transition from 2D games
like Baldur’s Gate to three
dimensions. Although interestingly,
the combat is still rooted in
Dungeons & Dragons, borrowing its
d20 system – although the developer
does hide this here more than it does
in its Infinity Engine games.
And the good news is, it runs fine
on modern PCs. To play in higher
resolutions you’ll need to do some
modding, so check out the game’s
entry on the PC Gaming Wiki for
instructions. It’s worth reinstalling,
even if you’re burned out on Star
Wars. KOTOR is detached enough to
still feel like a fresh take on the
material – which is a weird thing to
say about a game that came out when
George W Bush was president. But
with Disney still sticking closely to
that familiar pool of characters and
events, KOTOR’s distance from them
is worth celebrating even more.Why do Star Wars games always
make you fight so many animals?EXTRA LIFE
DIARY I MOD SPOTLIGHT I REINSTALL (^) I WHY I LOVE
Mandalorian raiders looking for
something to do now that they don’t
have a war to fight. And, of course,
there’s a stop at Tatooine, the most
significant planet in the entire Star
Wars mythology, whose desert
surface is being strip-mined by the
Czerka megacorporation.
But is it still fun to play? KOTOR
regularly makes lists of the best Star
Wars games, but I often wondered
how much of that was fuelled by
nostalgia. So I was glad to discover
that, while rough around the edges, it
remains a great RPG. The
environments are nicely varied, with
compelling self-contained stories
relevant to each world’s politics and
history. The personal journey of the
hero, and how they handle that big
revelation, is well written and
emotionally impactful. The
companions are memorable; both in
their interactions and how they
respond to your decisions. It’s still
clunky, with a messy UI and stiff
animation, but the challenging
combat, reactive quests and strong
writing absolutely hold up.
It’s also interesting, as a Mass
Effect fan, to see the genesis of that
series here. The first Mass Effect is
Mandalorian armour might have
looked like thousands of years ago.
It’s actually quite different, but the
T-shaped visor is a nice visual link to
the Beskar gear that we’re used to
seeing being worn by the likes of
Boba Fett and Bo-Katan.
OUTER SPACE
And like The Mandalorian, most of
KOTOR is set in the Outer Rim – the
wild, remote, often lawless part of the
galaxy where all the best Star Wars
stories take place. Taris, the first
planet you visit, is like a rougher
Outer Rim take on Coruscant – a
planet-sized metropolis plagued
by crime and ruled by ruthless
swoop bike gangs. You also
get to visit the quiet
agrarian planet of
Dantooine, which
Princess Leia
mentions briefly in
A New Hope, and find it besieged by