thoughts about Knights of the Old Republic

Yes, that’s the original Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR), not the new MMO, The Old Republic (SWTOR).

From Games

Some of you may know that KotOR was an influential game in steering me to become a PhD student looking at cooperation collaboration and teamwork in (online) games. Anyway, I decided to reinstall it, throw in some mods, and check it out, now that I’ve played SWTOR for a while. Here’s some really brief notes:

  • Low poly count and textures. The extent of this surprised me. I remembered it being much more detailed, but that was back then… It’s not as bad as playing Deus Ex these days, at least.
  • Sparsely populated, so… no change, really.
  • You can actually talk to everyone and get a line of banter, it seems. There’s even just people who’ll engage in a one-line dialog with you. Nice flavor.
  • I like that it isn’t clear who are quest givers.
  • I love how NPCs appear as recurring characters who you just sort of chance upon at first, like Cordo, the bountyhunter, or Mission Vao. You see them in a scene but then have hardly any interaction with them until later in the game. Lots of foreshadowing or “here’s some info and set-ups, which we won’t tell you when they come together for something bigger or if they’re just flavor.” I like the unpredictable nature of it… uncertain nature of it.

 

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