KOTOR Knights of the Old Republic (2003)

Doing a KOTOR and sequel playthrough now that KOTOR 2 is backward compatible on XBONE. God damn, does this game hold up. Granted, I know I am looking at it through nostalgic lenses, but it's a really solid game with subpar combat but AMAZING characters. I just had the big plot twist reveal and it's so good. Even if it's not groundbreaking 15+ years later.

I can't wait to replay KOTOR 2. I haven't played that game in probably 8-10 years, so I'm really excited that it's finally backward compatible.

Some musings for KOTOR:
* HK is still great, but I remember him being a little more exciting than he actually is.
* UGH. Carth. SHUT. UP. CARTH.
* Juhani is a hidden gem who doesn't nearly as much credit as she deserves. She's really great, although her "fall to the dark side" is a little laughable when compared to Malak's ACTUAL fall to the dark side.
* Zalbaar plays a little fast and loose with the life debt, huh? I understand why it makes sense narratively. Mission and Zalbaar need to have a reason to come with you, but I'm sure there are other ways to make that happen. If anything he should have been giving HER the life debt. She'd saved his hide several times by then.
* Canderous is a total throw away character, especially in a light side playthrough.
* There are so many more logic puzzles in this game compared to the current gen ones. They need to go back to that. Less pew pew action and more logic and thinking please!
* God damn are the jedi robes hideous in this game.
* Similarly, the Revan faces are dated af. I typically pick the guy with the soul patch. And I don't believe there is a more dated sentence than "I typically pick the guy with the soul patch".......

KOTOR is confidently and without a doubt my favorite game of all time.

There have always been some amazing fan made stories and art about the Bioware games. I miss the "kotorfanmedia" site. There were some great stories and lots of humorous threads about the game. I recall a thread about "1001 things KOTOR characters won't say or do" where people went crazy with the hilarious ideas. Tried searching it recently with the Wayback machine and such, but the separate pages, sadly, are not archived. Should have saved them when I could.

That rumor has been going around for at least 5 years now. Could be just making the rounds again.

Or the success of Fallen Order showed some EA execs that "omg, there's money to be made with SP Star Wars games. Who would have thought..."

There is a multimedia project called Project Luminous at Lucastart set in the High Republic (a few hundred of years before the movies) and it's apparently getting a video game along comics and novels. This is probably what sparked the latest rumors as people seems to confuse the High Republic era with the Old Republic era...despite the ~3000 years in-between them.

Not related to the remake

As far as I am aware, Aspyr is remaking both games into one. Perhaps with only Revan and no Exile this time? Because it would be jarring to just start from a level 1 character, mid game.

That's me, right there.

IMO, you get all the feats you need, all the Force powers you need, you have enough skills for problem-solving, AND you're not lacking in either HP or FP.

That, and Sentinels get the best class feature.
Being immune to the most debilitating effects is wondrous.
Again, not resistant, IMMUNE.

I have the same exact story for how I became a BioWare fan.

On my first playthrough of KotOR I was all over the place. I didn't understand the combat, I didn't understand the mechanics, and didn't understand a lot of the terminology. What was a saving throw?, why did my attacks keep on missing? Why couldn't I hit anything? Why did everything take so long to die? Why did I keep getting annihilated by groups of Black Vulkars? The game has very little handholding, and in-game explanations for mechanics and stats are sparse.

I concluded that I just really sucked at the game, was likely overlooking something fundamental, and just turned the difficulty down to easy.

Even now, on my third complete playthrough, when I have a better understanding of the game's mechanics from having read detailed guides it can be a struggle - killing Bendak Starkiller, even at level 7 was still really sodding difficult, and I still ended up turning it down to easy for that fight and doing my usual trick of spamming the crap out of grenades.

Yesterday I encounted the Mandalorian leader Sherruk on Dantoine, who whupped my ass so hard that my entire party ended up flying through the air at 50,000,000 light-years-per-second, and landed upside down somewhere in Morrowind.

Beat him after around four tries using the same classic 'grenade spam' method, but didn't need to turn the difficulty down this time. Even that albino Kath Hound was super hard to defeat.

But that's kind of the fun of playing an unapologetic, un dumned-down old school RPG based on dice roll mechanics. You have to get it right. If your original stat choice when creating the character is off, or poorly optimised then you're going to struggle through the entire game, and there are no respec options available to correct your early mistakes. This game is unforgiving.

Even now I suspect I put too many points into agility, and not enough into strength for my Jedi Sentinel - but I'll just roll with the punches.

The story is still compelling-as-hell and I still get really drawn in and immersed into it.

I could never play it without the Restored Content Mod, but yeah it's a fine game that completely deconstructs the Star Wars lore.

My only real criticism is that there are a few too many points of no return that lock you out of certain side quests - as an example I forgot to go to the Hutt guy's enclave in Nar Shadaa first and overhear the conversation in stealth that launches the quest to get his secret cache, and chose the option to dance for him in advance, meaning I can now never get the side quest. I get it, it's an unforgiving game that forces you to think things through and if you don't do so... tough! But that can also be frustrating.

Also some quests seem unfinishable, not sure if it's a TSLRCM or not - another one on Nar Shadaa is like that - the trade war between the two merchants seems uncompletable. Also could never work out how to bring down the smuggling operation on Telos. You find a modified blaster, show it to the bad merchant guy, he confesses to being a smuggler, you then speak to the security chief who tells you to help the smuggler and do what he asks so as to catch them in the act... but doing his smuggling quests just gives me a bunch of darkside points and ultimately culminates in me having to murder an innocent guard. There's never an option to speak to the security chief about it again.