Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic - Retrospective @ RPS

Writing for Eurogamer, John Walker has penned a KotOR retrospective titled Bastard of the Old Republic. Here's his plan:

When I play a BioWare role-playing game, my characters tend to not only lean toward the nicer side, but almost immediately start twinkling with the magical pixie dust of purity. It's embarrassing, but I just make the decisions I believe I'd really make, and end up that way.
The task I set myself was to play the original Knights of the Old Republic, making the worst, cruellest, most spiteful, murderous and downright evil choices available at every choice. I've played the game before - in fact, it's one of my all-time favourites - but I was the most angelic creature in the galaxy. This wasn't going to be easy. This is the story of mysterious Republic Scoundrel, Simon Evil, and his adventures on the planet Taris.

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More information.

:lol: I think this is a light hearted take on the point people make about how badly (being) evil is handled in many rpgs.

I play the same as this guy normally, as myself rather than a particular character, and also always end up being a goody good.

I would love to play a game that really tempted me to make bad, wicked decisions for my own benefit, but just haven't found one.
Something like the Witcher doesn't do the job as i still feel i should always pick the lesser evil.

I think it would need a very cleverly written game to be able to achieve that.

That's how I see it, too. Evil in KotoR is usually petty and dumb. Sure, that kind of evil exists, but I don't see the fun in playing this. An intelligent evil guy would still make friends, then use these friends to his own means against their convictions, while making sure that the blame for this outcome falls on someone he doesn't like. Instead we are supposed to steal lunch money from schoolchildren. Not exactly enticing.

I loved the assassin droid though....what a personality...or was that part 2?

I thought that KOTOR 2 handled good vs evil play pretty well, dunno about KOTOR, and yes, the droid is from 2 Rune

Yeah I kinda thought so....anyways, I think one was more a show off that they could get the game up and going on the new engine. I almost wish they got that engine going an pounded out a bunch of games using it perfecting the story part. They did a couple but that engine is still viable.

sege said:

:lol: I think this is a light hearted take on the point people make about how badly (being) evil is handled in many rpgs.

I play the same as this guy normally, as myself rather than a particular character, and also always end up being a goody good.

I would love to play a game that really tempted me to make bad, wicked decisions for my own benefit, but just haven't found one.
Something like the Witcher doesn't do the job as i still feel i should always pick the lesser evil.

I think it would need a very cleverly written game to be able to achieve that.

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It would take an incredible amount of effort to pull that off well. Then there remains that rubric that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of their audience.*



*I know the actual quote, but don't want to inflame uninformed readers.

I didn't like the petty evil options in the first game (but then, I play Light Side, so it wasn't like I was going to take them anyway), but they were at least recognizable as evil.

In the second game, I got actively pissed off when dialog options that were only sarcastic earned me dark side points. I don't complain if talking about love of battle or people deserving to die gives me a dark side point, but if being snarky is enough for me to suddenly grow black veins on my face, that's just stupid.

That may be the difference between Obsidian and BioWare in a nutshell. BioWare can be clumsier, because that clumsiness is an attempt to make sure that everybody knows what's going on and what choices they're making at any given time. Obsidian's dialog can flow more naturally, and the choices are often more ambiguous morally. The good news is that that's more nuanced. The bad news is that nuanced doesn't help when you put the game down for a week and then come back to try to remember what you were supposed to be doing -- and can also lead to times when the player is pissed off because the game didn't explain things to them.

As somebody who gets huffy about being slapped with Dark side points, I think I'm at the right company. That doesn't make me better. I suspect some people will quite vocally declare that it makes me worse. I don't think it's either, though. It's just a difference in playstyles, why we play and what we want. I want to be Mister Glowy Sparkly aura of awesome. That's what I paid $60 for.

(I also can't wait to see how Obsidian does with Alpha Protocol. I think it's a better IP for the type of games they produce. I enjoyed KotOR 2 despite its flaws, and I enjoyed what I played of NWN2, but I think they'll shine in an IP that doesn't have an actual hard and fast morality unless they want to make one. I hated having Darth Old Lady explain moral ambiguity to me, when I knew that she was evil the whole time, and she and I lived in a world where evil spellcasters got ugly crap on their faces to make it pretty damn clear that no, giving the guy some money was not actually a morally twisty act with consequences that I couldn't possibly understand, Darth Old Lady was just being a dink and needed to stay on the ship.)

PatrickWeekes said:

I didn't like the petty evil options in the first game (but then, I play Light Side, so it wasn't like I was going to take them anyway), but they were at least recognizable as evil.

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I definitely prefer playing light side, too. Usually, that worked. Although, later in the game, I sometimes had to cringe. Three choices, one of them holier than thou and quixotic, one "I have no idea, and no opinions anyway", and one "hahaha, I'm EVIL!". Hard decisions .

PatrickWeekes said:

In the second game, I got actively pissed off when dialog options that were only sarcastic earned me dark side points. I don't complain if talking about love of battle or people deserving to die gives me a dark side point, but if being snarky is enough for me to suddenly grow black veins on my face, that's just stupid.

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I had the feeling that the fine comb was missing here.

PatrickWeekes said:

I hated having Darth Old Lady explain moral ambiguity to me, when I knew that she was evil the whole time, and she and I lived in a world where evil spellcasters got ugly crap on their faces to make it pretty damn clear that no, giving the guy some money was not actually a morally twisty act with consequences that I couldn't possibly understand, Darth Old Lady was just being a dink and needed to stay on the ship.)

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Well, yes. When someone asks me which KotoR version I like better, I have a hard time answering. Honestly, I generally found KotoR II more interesting. But then again, it was not finished. And I don't only mean in the sense that the last two locations were an editing disaster with huge obvious holes and unfinished placeholders everywhere, but I had the feeling that the game makers had not really decided completely how to wrap the whole thing up. Kreia's explanations didn't really make completely sense (nor did "the wound in the force").

In this sense, KotoR I was definitely better. The story was more pedestrian, but it all made sense, the locations were all interesting (except the Starforge) and varied, and yes, who could forget HK-74. I even didn't mind Imoen .

Bedwyr said:

Then there remains that rubric that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of their audience.

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PatrickWeekes said:

That may be the difference between Obsidian and BioWare in a nutshell. BioWare can be clumsier, because that clumsiness is an attempt to make sure that everybody knows what's going on and what choices they're making at any given time. Obsidian's dialog can flow more naturally, and the choices are often more ambiguous morally. The good news is that that's more nuanced. The bad news is that nuanced doesn't help when you put the game down for a week and then come back to try to remember what you were supposed to be doing -- and can also lead to times when the player is pissed off because the game didn't explain things to them.

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Well, these two statements look quite similar .

Like several others here I also tend to play "myself" most of the time, and end up being redicilously good. It's as if BioWare considers normal behaviour heroic. Helping someone who's about to die is not a heroic act if there's nothing to lose for the "hero" - on the contrary, it's expected, and doing otherwise would be the morally wrong choice.

In KotOR2 it's a bit different. Kreia is actually so good at discussing morals (based on Nietzsche), that I sometimes feel I did something wrong when helping others out (i.e "can't believe I just gave that poor guy some credits; now I made his whole life miserable!").

However, I have to agree with Turjan - while KotOR2 may be the most interesting game, KotOR1 is actually polished, and feels smooth from the beginning untill the end. Also, like Turjan said, the whole plot actually makes sense in KotOR1 (unlike 2 where I kept going "Huh?"), which is main reason why I rate KotOR1 above 2.

Oh, in case rune_74 is still wondering: The evil assassin droid (HK47) is a partymember in both games. The evil assassin droids that want to kill the main character (HK50 models I believe), however, only exist in KotOR2.

I was so tired of the good/evil concept. Building a social network of allies and contacts comes natural to a normal person. It's beneficial and can even be seen as fulfilling a personal (selfish) need. Acting upon this however means "good" in these games.
To be "evil" you simply must play as you have a range of anti-social derangements, such as being psychotic and have problems with anger management.

I have also noted that sometimes fulfilling duty is treated as "good" while other times breaking duty is treated as "good".

Maylander said:

In KotOR2 it's a bit different. Kreia is actually so good at discussing morals (based on Nietzsche)

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I dunno. Nietzsche was himself a very good person. He just argued that an institution that had a front that made them "appear" good or had been known as "good" throughout history, could in fact stand for selfish and sinister reasons that weren't good at all. That's why he attacked the pious who wanted to appear pure and flashed their "goodness" to the outside world, but beneath that mask wasn't good at all. He also argued that giving someone shelter/money could be for selfish reasons since you are taking control over that person, forcing them to be in debt to you. A form of slavery and a display of power.

I never said Kreia as a character was based on Nietzsche, but her teachings most certainly are (or more specifically, Daybreak). Kreia is not evil; she merely questions the current perception of "good" and "evil". I also read somewhere that some of her dialogues might've been based on Übermensch (existentialism if I recall correctly), but I haven't read it yet, so I wouldn't know.

My only beef with KOTOR 2 is that it's so obviously rushed. KOTOR 1 was a finished product; KOTOR 2 was about three quarters of a game. If it had been properly finished, though, in my book it would have been head and shoulders above KOTOR 1. I'm still kinda hoping Team Gizka manages to finish their Restoration Project and won't make a complete pig's breakfast of it.

I'm starting to feel that I'm in the minority, because I consider structured, absolute systems of fantasy morality as superb aids to storytelling -- *especially* storytelling about moral ambiguities. Planescape: Torment would've been pretty anemic without the Hells and the Heavens, the fallen angels and the repentant demons. I really like Neil Gaiman's Sandman for the same reason, and the Lucifer spin-off is pretty damned (heh) good as well. And the real *point* of the whole thing is that there are devils and angels, Michael and Lucifer, the voice of God, Adam and Lilith and their offspring, Loki the cruel trickster and Odin the crueler father-god, the amoral, soulless folk of Faerie, the tragically law-bound but fundamentally limited Morpheus; the whole shebang. What would be left of that without the Fall, the Plan, eternal torment on the one hand, the cold and soulless Silver City on the other, and poor humanity somehow muddling along between them?

Re the Dark Side Points -- my main beef with it is that the mechanic in the game was too transparent and too coarse, and didn't scale properly. I have no problem getting dark side points for saying little hurtful things; I only have a problem if, say, calling someone an annoying prat is worth one point, whereas gratuitously killing a passer-by is worth five points. The proper scale should be more along the lines of one to five million points IMO.

In fact, if I did a Star Wars game (actually, I have done a Star Wars game, in PnP role-playing), I'd implement dark-side and light-side points a bit like Cthulhu Mythos was handled in Chaosium's classic Call of Cthulhu: every time you do something good or evil, you roll a die and add that to the "good/evil value" of whatever you did, and only if the result is higher than your LSP/DSP score, it moves by some small amount.

However, I'd add a twist: I'd make both the dark-side and the light-side points sticky rather than canceling each other out, with your current level the sum between the two (assuming good is positive and bad is negative).

This means that in order to change your score, you'll still have to beat the points you're currently carrying: saying nice things to people only carries a very low "goodness strength" so it'll won't be able to raise your "good score" very high, no matter how much you do it. IOW, if you've killed an innocent in cold blood and want to expiate, just being nice to puppies won't cut it; you'd have to, for example, save an innocent at great personal cost to yourself. And you'd be constantly struggling to raise that score further, because of the weight of the evil points you're carrying.

(I would probably add a few opportunities to genuinely expiate evil or forfeit good; rare events that cancel out some or all points you're carrying. A bit like the final conversation before heading off to the Star Forge in KOTOR, only not quite so blunt.)

This probably wouldn't go down too well with the average gamer, though, so I'm not expecting BW to pick up on the idea or anything.

sege said:

I would love to play a game that really tempted me to make bad, wicked decisions for my own benefit, but just haven't found one.

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I'd like to encounter the opposite.

A game that forces me to play an evil character (kind of an Overlord), but making me unwillingly drift towards "good" instead.

Not in the (same) way you distribed, but rather differently ... An evil force which does bad deeds, but of which the outcome is actually kind of good for the in-game world ...

It's a bit like burning a field upon which the crops grow faster the following year because of the ashes serving as fertilizer/fertiliser.


About Nietzsche: You must always keep in mind that his work might be distorted through his sister, who took total control over his works in the end. She is said to have possibly sympathised with Nazis, so we can't really say whether she might have "changed" some of his works in favour to them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Förster-Nietzsche

We have a similar problem with Edgar Allan Poe and with Socrates: Griswold tried to distord the public view of Poe, and Platon might have distorted Socrates' concepts to a higher extend, utilising him for his own "needs". Only Xenophon is the other reliable source, which might not have distorted what is left of Socrates.

PatrickWeekes said:

That may be the difference between Obsidian and BioWare in a nutshell.

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Yes, I think KOTOR 1 and 2 do a good job of illustrating what makes each team so different from the other and so great in its own right. Bioware tends to focus on playability, coherence, and polish. As these are "games" we play and not mini-novels, the play is the thing and it is important that gamers have fun and don't pull out their hair in frustration at poor design choices, poor design implementation, and unfinished plot-lines. With Bioware, you get the complete package, wrapped up with a nice bow at the end.

In baseball terminology, Bioware is a steady career-.400 hitter (ala Ted Williams). They don't necessarily swing for "downtown," but instead choose to get on base, over and over again. They don't strike out very often and they are solid gold in the outfield, never missing a fly ball and rarely pitching a bad game. They are solid, consistent, and professional.

Maintaining the baseball analogy, Obsidian are the classic slightly-overweight, slightly-disheveled but extremely talented home-run hitter. They stroll up to the plate with one "Great Bambino" thought on their minds: to knock this thing out of the park. Because of this, we fans can attend some really disappointing games when Obsidian is playing (full of errors, strike-outs, etc.), but when they connect and drive that ball into the parking lot, it is a sight to behold, and makes it all worth it in the end.

If you ask me which one I like, I'm definitely more in the Babe Ruth camp. I don't mind the occasional strike-out, if I can get to see the occasional rocket into the cheap seats. In fact, as a gamer I live for those moments, as rare as they can be. But, I also really, REALLY enjoy a good, polished, and endlessly playable Bioware game. And, like Williams, they can rocket one into the stands occasionally as well (BG2).

I played KOTOR 1 twice and once did the all glowy good guy and the second the all red/black evil guy. Both are rather poorly done as the choices are mostly either silly or blatant. Somehow I doubt Darth Vader and the Emperor went around kicking widows and stealing lollypops from kids but that's the kind of thing you do to become evil in the game. Oh, and killing everyone right and left.

I only played KOTOR 2 once because the whole end sequence is just so lame and the very end was "WTF JUST HAPPENED?!?!"

Maylander said:

I never said Kreia as a character was based on Nietzsche, but her teachings most certainly are (or more specifically, Daybreak). Kreia is not evil; she merely questions the current perception of "good" and "evil". I also read somewhere that some of her dialogues might've been based on Übermensch (existentialism if I recall correctly), but I haven't read it yet, so I wouldn't know.

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Übermensch is existentialism yes. Basically it means taking control over who you are, think about who you are and decide where you want to go, rather than being a follower who just act according to what other expects from you. There are those who confuse it with nazi-germanys ideas of the superior race, but that's the direct opposite as existentialism is based on extreme individualism, rejecting all conformity (including nationalism/national socialism).

Alrik Fassbauer said:

About Nietzsche: You must always keep in mind that his work might be distorted through his sister, who took total control over his works in the end. She is said to have possibly sympathised with Nazis, so we can't really say whether she might have "changed" some of his works in favour to them.

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And yet, it is clear that Nietzsche was not an anti-Semite. I do not believe his sister was able to distort much of his work: although Nietzsche was not that very popular during his most active years, he did publish most of his books before his sister could put her corrupting hand to them. Several of his letters describe how he broke with his sister because of her anti-Semitism and how he was disgusted by the whole concept.