Knights of the Old Republic Appreciation Thread.

[WarLocke]

Yeah, I know, KoTOR isn't a "port" per se, but anyway.

I picked this up this afternoon, then promptly got lost and crossed over into West Virginia before I managed to get home. Man, West Virginia's scary. :blink:

Anyway, after installing the 3.53gb beast, I was treated to the iconic Star Wars scrolling plot marquee. Then the game opens with a blast as a Republic ship is bombarded by Sith fighters. Even before I've seen the actual game engine, KoTOR is more Star Wars than Episodes 1 & 2; ships in this game actually look good.

Then I got into the actual game. The assault wakes your character (incidentally, the faces on characters blow away pretty much everything else. If I could figure out how to take screenshots I'd show you. Wow.) and there's a very Star Wars-ish "run through the disintegrating ship to the escape pods" segment which works as a handy tutorial.

Here's the next good bit: combat (versus almost Cylon-ish Sith troopers) just feels like it came out of a Star Wars movie. It's obvious that everything is being handled by the dice, but it works well because everybody stood in the middle of corridors and exchanged blaster fire in the movies anyway. B)

And the melee combat is even better. Characters dodge, parry, and riposte similar to the way NWN shows melee combat, but it just looks better. I'm stuck in a duel against a dual-blade weilder right now, but I don't mind because the moves he pulls off are just amazing - and my character blocks him with a plain vibroblade just fine! There's even some of that Ep1 hopping-boot-to-the-head action going on if you look closely. :lol:

Oh man, and if you would have asked me before if a 3.5gb install was okay, I probably would have said no. But you just have to experience a game that's totally voice-acted to believe it. Every scrap of dialogue is voiced - human and alien! I have captions on so I can tell what all the Hutts and Twi'leks and the other races I don't recognize say (actually, those captions might stay even if you turn them off in the options, I haven't tried that yet). It's amazing how quickly you can get attached to a character when there's actual emotion conveyed in the dialogue.

I'm only about two hours into the game, and haven't even gained any Jedi abilities, but this is looking to be a Torment-quality game so far...