KotOR - Retrospective @ Elder Geek

ElderGeek has a retrospective for this game. A quote about making the moral choices:

The other half is about talking to people and making the now infamous moral choices. There are a lot of choices you have to make and most of them are either super nice or super nasty. For example, you can give money to someone to help them buy medical supplies, or you can just kill them on the spot because you can. As you make choices your morality meter goes towards the light side or the dark side and you get boosts in certain force powers depending on how much of a dick you feel like being that day.

More information.

For me personally, at least back then, KOTRO was THE breakthrough in RPGs and games per se. Finally I was able to make choices, not only in the ending, but all through the way. I think games still need to progress along that avenue, that you have choices that have effects. Games set us still too much on one path. The moral choices had some nice echo from the Ultima virtue idea of moral dilemmas, though the Ultima virtue dilemmas were a lot more refined. But Bioware did generally well bringing back the ethical questions into games, givng games meaning beyond mere entertainment.

I'd rather see them go the other way and work on adding some actual gameplay along with the choices that are not choices. Doesn't really feel to me like there's much adventuring to be had in RPGs anymore, and don't even get me started on exploration. Being led by the nose through an interactive movie where there's very little to do besides hit the triggers to advance to the next dialog isn't really screaming "roleplaying game" at me. I'm hoping now that they've seen with Old Republic you actually can dumb things down so much and create such a narrow and shallow environment that even casual gamers get bored PDQ they'll go back to the drawing board. But who am I fooling? This has always been Bioware's recipe. Even with BG2, which is one of my all time favorite games. I just didn't notice it back then because the tactical combat was so new and cool compared to what had come before. The combat in their games now is similar to what you'd find in a shooter, only worse. Doesn't provide much of a distraction.

KOTOR is in my opinion one of the most overrated games I know of. I think almost the sole reason it did so well is because it was an RPG set in the Star Wars universe which was a very attractive idea at the time. It also does a pretty good job of capturing the setting and feel but I think the trouble for me is… well, that doesn't make for a very interesting RPG story.

Couple that with horrendously boring gameplay (like playing D&D with a *lot* of options just ripped out, as well as no party-control) and, well…

Just the opposite of the prior post, I was surprised to find a great RPG in KoTOR despite the Star Wars theme.

Never was into Star Wars except I enjoyed the original movie - a surprisingly well constructed cinema experience. Otherwise, Star Wars was like Trix — i.e., for kids, as I saw it at the time. So when I saw that a Star Wars RPG had been released, I ignored it, expecting cheesy to the max.

Lots of buzz on the 'net, but I still ignored KoTOR. The buzz continued, and grew. And I still ignored it. Finally after the buzz grew, and continued to grow, and on and on and on… about a year, I reluctantly decided to try KoTOR. Still expecting cheesy.

Shocker. A great and innovative game (at the time). Loved the characters. Loved the story. Loved the good/bad meter. Replayed KoTOR numerous times (varying choices, order of play, finding new areas and characters, improving combat, etc). Recommended the game to many after that, always with an intro to the effect — "a surprisingly good and enjoyable game despite the Star Wars theme…'

KoTOR was a "game changer" for the RPG genre. It brought a lot to the table and did so many things right. A really really pleasant surprise.

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Love KotOR - one of my all-time favorites, and a truly cohesive and comprehensive experience.

The original KOTOR is one of few games i've finished twice, love that game, Star Wars is imo the ultimate RPG setting, lots of interesting characters, factions and settings. Clearly the best Star Wars game.. For some reason i've never manged to finish the second one.

KotOR was fun despite the dark/light side thing which was silly. You either wanted to be saintly good or RAWWR baby-eating evil. Anything in between actually hurt your character.

Originally Posted by Starwars
KOTOR is in my opinion one of the most overrated games I know of. I think almost the sole reason it did so well is because it was an RPG set in the Star Wars universe which was a very attractive idea at the time. It also does a pretty good job of capturing the setting and feel but I think the trouble for me is… well, that doesn't make for a very interesting RPG story.

Couple that with horrendously boring gameplay (like playing D&D with a *lot* of options just ripped out, as well as no party-control) and, well…

qft

I'm not getting into that again…….

Originally Posted by RPGFool
Just the opposite of the prior post, I was surprised to find a great RPG in KoTOR despite the Star Wars theme.
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My feelings exactly, I really got into the game despite it being absolutely zero on my radar of interests. Like the Witcher, all the cool kids were doing it and I thought I'd give it a shot, and like the Witcher I fell in Rpg Geek Love w/ the title!

I just recently scored a copy of the sequel for Xbox (i feel the game is best played on console), now I just have to solve my RROD problem w/ my 360.