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Star Wars game an interactive miniseries
By DWIGHT N. ODELIUS
Special to the Chronicle
IT'S an age-old story, one of redemption, one of hope in the face of absolute evil. A story of sinners and saviors. A story, as it happens, for the holidays.
You won't find this story on any television or at any passive entertainment outlet near you. It's in a PC game. And it's a fine 50 or more hours of interactive entertainment on the cheap. That's a dollar an hour, with no commercial interruptions.
Knights of the Old Republic, a PC game based on the Star Wars Expanded Universe, offers fans of science fiction and Star Wars a chance to role-play as a character who lived long before the events of any of the Star Wars movies. Star Wars junkies will enjoy the expansion of its prehistory, while fans of good sci-fi will appreciate the strong narrative, a quality that has been absent from George Lucas' recent films.
The story takes place 4,000 years before the era of Darth Vader, during the war with the Sith, a legion of powerful wielders of the dark side. Leading the armies of the Sith is Darth Malak, whose dark power is matched only by his unrelenting cruelty. He is, unsurprisingly, bent on galactic domination.
Players begin by creating a main character, male or female, one around whom the storyline will eventually revolve. Three starting character classes -- scoundrel, scout or soldier -- are available. The soldier is unequalled in combat, while the scout is stealthy and in tune with his environment. The scoundrel is gifted in computer hacking and can be persuasive in discussions.
Although the player begins his adventure alone, he will soon recruit other members into the group. By the end of the game, the player will have nine allies, including droids and Jedi.
Each character in the group can equip weapons, armor, implants, shields and assorted paraphernalia, depending on their qualifications. Over time, some qualifications may change as each character earns experience.
Any two members of the group can accompany the player's main character on an outing. The party will automatically follow whichever character is under player control. When in combat, the game pauses to allow the player to choose combat actions for each character. When the game is resumed, the characters perform any actions that are queued and will volunteer their own if the player does not supply any.
Choices made by the player during the game also determine the main character's path toward the dark side or the light. These choices affect dialogue and mission options through the game, affect relationships with characters and even determine what kind of equipment the character can use.
Early on in the game, the group will acquire a ship, one that looks like a clumsy Millennium Falcon. This will enable them to travel to a half-dozen other locations in the game. Each world is beautifully rendered, teeming with life and opportunities to make credits, hunt for sport, race swoop bikes, engage in myriad side quests or gather more clues to advance the primary quest of defeating Darth Malak.
It's tough to discuss the game in much more detail without spoiling the fun. The developers have done a good job of burying some nice twists in the plot. Think of it as an interactive Star Wars miniseries.
The game play is clever and well-designed, for the most part. Some battles require an immense amount of strategy and planning because there will only be three in the player's party and potentially dozens of opponents.
Knights of the Old Republic began life as a console game, and more often than not, PC versions of console games leave something to be desired. To make an easy buck, publishers rewrite key parts of the game's code to fit the PC platform and push the product onto store shelves, with little regard to the quality of play. Thankfully, this game feels right at home on the PC.
Knights of the Old Republic permits the player to save the game anywhere, anytime. The graphics have been beefed up to accommodate high-resolution monitors, and it looks simply amazing. And the controls are as natural as if the game was developed exclusively for PC.
My only major beef with the game, actually, is the constant references to die-rolling. A particular weapon may produce an attack with a bonus of +2d6, for example, meaning two six-sided dice rolled and added to the score of the base attack. This is a reference to the tabletop role-playing games upon which the game is based and tends to strip away some of the immersive qualities of the game.
If you can get past that, it's an experience not to be missed.
Price: $49.99
Rating: Teen
System requirements:
OS: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
CPU: 1GHz (Pentium or Athlon)
RAM: 256MB RAM
Video: 32MB, OpenGL 1.4
Sound: DirectX 9.0b-compatible
CD/DVD: 4x
Disk: 4.0GB
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