Knights of the Old Republic was a four-star achievement in role playing games, but I do agree with Richard Naik at GameCritics. The choices you faced - even in the dialogue - lacked a lot of subtlety as to what they said about your character. It might have been a lot to ask of a game at the time, but you were still presented with a binary good/evil character, and games still have not evolved much more into shades of gray since then.

Naik brings inFamous, KOTOR, BioShock Mass Effect and Fallout 3, all of them acclaimed games, in for some criticism. The choices in inFamous were simply about power acquisition, he argues. Mass Effect let you be either a paragon of virtue or a belligerent jerk. And he even says the choice outcomes in BioShock "barely change the game at all," although I disagree with that. Fallout 3 is the most open ended, but it leaves Naik wondering when, or if, a game will allow true open-ended decision making, and then react to that. Or has one already?

Decisions, Decisions [GameCritics, Sept. 16, 2009.]

The original Knights of the Old Republic is, as of the time of this writing, my favorite product of the Star Wars franchise. And its choice system generally serves the game well, but even a well-done implementation of choices such as this still leaves a somewhat odd aftertaste. To go down the evil path I have to make many choices throughout the game that lead me to the dark side, eventually leading to me becoming a cold, cruel, and calculating Sith Lord. But here's the thing-would such an intelligent Sith Lord (as dictated by the game) really waste his/her time with senseless acts of brutality such as common mugging? I would imagine that an up-and-coming Sith Lord would try to use his victims to their fullest extent, then dispose of them when they no longer had value. Instead I found myself being a run-of-the-mill asshole, and that somehow led to me conquering the galaxy. The moral extremes of sainthood and belligerent sadism were extremely stark and awkward despite the quality of the story, leaving me to wonder how the ideal choice system would actually work.

Mass Effect (which has been getting lots of discussion time on this site lately) does a better job here, but the problem of moral extremes is still evident. Most of the time the evil choice is represented by a simple act of aggression instead of a more subtle cruelty or self-serving action. Now to be fair, such acts are more believably associated with the character of Commander Shepard rather than my character in Knights of the Old Republic. However, the basic problem still exists-I can't be the scoundrel with a golden heart, only a universally loved hero. I can't be the insidious mastermind, only an arrogant bully. While Mass Effect does present a better moral middle ground than many of its ilk, that path is largely dull and uninteresting. In order to access more conversation options I have to go towards one extreme or the other, meaning I have no real reason to toe the line in the middle. So now that we have an area between the two extremes, what next?

[...]Where does the evolution of player choices go from here? Someday I'd like to see a game where I can make virtually any choice in any situation within the bounds of the game world's reason, and be rewarded or punished appropriately for it. Am I being too greedy? Is this impossible with currently existing technology?
- Richard Naik

Weekend Reader is Kotaku's look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #43... Written by John Jackson Miller; Art by Bong Dazo

Summary via publisher Dark Horse Comics: "Reaping": An unprecedented new adventure begins — leaving former Padawan Zayne Carrick clinging to the side of a comet! When Zayne and crew infiltrate a comet mine, his partner Gryph believes it's another clever con to capture some quick cash. Little does Gryph know, Zayne and Jarael have other intentions — like rescuing the miners enslaved by this ruthless mining operation. Of course, the noble intentions of the team will all be for naught if their plot is discovered. Swimming through stardust is no place to be when enemy ships open fire! (More info.)

World of Warcraft #21... Written by Walter Simonson and Louise Simonson; Art by Mike Bowden and Tony Washington

Summary via publisher Wildstorm/DC Comics: King Varian is so focused on The Lich King and the recent Scourge attacks that he fails to notice Cho'Gall's power and threat continue to grow. Plus, Maraad has kidnapped Garona – but to what nefarious end? (More info.)

Starcraft: Frontline Volume 3 (208-page manga)... Written by Various; Art by Various

Summary via publisher Tokyopop: Revel in the brutal, menacing and sublime world of StarCraft in this collection of world-expanding adventures....

In "War-Torn, "Senator Corbin Phash used his power and influence to hide his young son Colin's psionic abilities from the Dominion, but their secret has finally been exposed!

In "Do No Harm," the sadistic "Butcher of Korhal," Dr. Burgess, gets his bloody hands on Muadun, a recently captured protoss high templar and goes dissecting for clues on how to mass-produce horrifying protoss-terran soldiers...

In "Last Call," a lounge singer on the backwater mining post of Meteor Station finds herself at the center of diplomatic intrigue...

And in "Twilight Archon," the griving head instructor of a protoss templar school discovers what she'll have to sacrifice just to be whole again.
! (More info.)

So here’s what we don’t know:
—The level cap
—The release date
—The type or total number of classes (so far, only Jedi and Sith have been officially announced)
—If or what kind of vehicles and spaceships users will be able to own/access/build
—If or which races will be faction-specific
—What kind of business models the MMO will employ (subscription, micro transactions, etc.)

As for what we do know, you’ll have to hit the jump to find out.

1) The lightsabers in the screenshots will shrink – but not by much.

Art Director Jeff Dobson says that Old Republic will not have a totally realistic art style; but neither will it be too cartoon-y. The idea here, he says, is that they want a distinct look for the MMO that sets it apart from all others – one that will run on as many machines as possible without sacrificing the quality of the graphics.

2) They really, really, really mean it when they say that there is story in this game and it is what sets Old Republic apart from every MMO out there.

I’m skeptical about this – how many times have we heard it before? Argue Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, or Age of Conan until you’re blue in the face; it didn’t do it for me as far as “story” went and BioWare doesn’t think it did it at all.

The difference in Old Republic that I can see so far is we’re hearing it from BioWare, a heavy-hitter in the story department. According to Lead Writer Daniel Erickson, there will be no “Darth Vader saves someone’s cat” quests or “go collect 18 rat butts,” and other stuff you associate with the paper-thin plots in other MMOs that tout their “stories.”

The stories in Old Republic are set by class. Each class will have its own unique story that can play out in tons of different ways (they don’t want any two people to have the exact same experience, although they weren’t entirely confident that this would be 100% true). The idea is that you could roll a Jedi, play the whole way through and then go back and play a Sith and never see the same content/cutscene/choices.

Everything will be epic all of the time, says Erickson. The K’lor slug you see below – you fight that thing at level one on the path of the Sith. Things don’t get any smaller, in scope, size or difficulty than that. Erickson says that all of the choices your character makes are on the grand scale of saving the galaxy. You can’t just go into a cantina and poke some guy to give you some task so you can earn money. You’re supposed to be asking yourself: I’m out saving/destroying the galaxy; do I really have time for this?

Also, your companion character will matter in a big way. You can collect more than one, but you can only keep one with you at a time. This character will grow based on the choices you make – you might even form a romance with them (or maybe kill them…?). They’ll react to your choices, either encouraging a behavior or freaking out when you do something bad like force-choking someone. They’ll also have companion-specific quests that you can play out to strengthen (or destroy) your bond to your companion.

Oh, and we will see stuff in Old Republic that ties up loose KOTOR ends from the game – if we look for it. BioWare doesn’t want to rub these plot points in the face of MMO gamers and Star Wars fans who never got around to playing it. And maybe we’ll see some influences from the comics and stuff…? I’d totally dig having a Nomi Sunrider NPC…

3) You don’t pick good or evil right off the bat

I was so happy to hear this – they were having a hard time explaining it. But somewhere between Erickson and Designers Jake Neri, Gordon Walton, Rich Vogel and James Ohlen’s Q&A, it was made clear that you choose a faction from the get-go (Sith or Republic). Your good or evil status evolves through the choices you make, which is true to the KOTOR standard.

Mind you, choosing Sith means something in this galaxy. The timeline is set only 300 years after the events in KOTOR, so it’s still very upsetting and somewhat “bad” to be a Sith. However, Old Republic is out to challenge what “Sith” means. The story goes that after KOTOR, two Jedi got exiled into deep space, ran into the Sith, shit hit the fan, and then they were sent back to the Republic as Sith emissaries. The Sith then kicked the shit out of the Republic, abruptly backed off and said “Give us these random worlds for no specific reason, and we’ll call it even.” And the Republic says “Deal,” so now we’ve got these two factions sitting uneasily in a divided galaxy.

Erickson went on some huge tangent about the evolution of the Sith from a real race (like with a different skin color and stuff) breeding with humans and influencing the philosophy of the Jedi such that a new thinking arose. This new thinking took on the name of the race (Sith), and then apparently shit hit the fan (that happens a lot in the galaxy far, far away), so “Sith” started to mean “evil.”

This made me squee inside because I’m a fangirl who’s read all the fanfiction Expanded Universe books and the best thing I took away from them was Vergere’s challenge to Luke Skywalker that there is no Dark or Light Side. There was also something in those books about Sith not defaulting to evil. I think this point got totally ret-conned in the last Legacy book…

4) There will be crafting, there will probably be guilds, there will definitely be PvP and there won’t be a whole lot of instancing

The bottom line is that BioWare knows what makes an MMO good – they’ve played World of Warcraft, they’ve at least heard of Warhammer (y’know, being a new EA partner and all). They want to put the stuff in there that will attract MMO gamers.

But they also want to keep KOTOR fans interested and maintain the integrity of the “epic-ness” of the game. So that means that they won’t necessarily rely on instancing (not everyone can blow up the Death Star, I guess), and the crafting won’t be some mundane thing where you find some thread and some crystals and viola – you have shoes!

Of course they won’t say what the crafting will be, how the guilds will work or what PvP will play like (yet). I asked about moisture farming and they said no. But in that trailer, we saw a Jedi putting together a lightsaber, and Ohlen did come out and say you wouldn’t end the game with the lightsaber you started with, so…

5) Star Wars: Galaxies is not getting shut down

As for what will happen to it, no one seemed ready to say. Clearly, BioWare used it as a learning experience for crafting the KOTOR MMO – which means I might get to play a Sith Twi’lek stripper if I play my cards right. But I have to ask myself if LucasArts really needs (or wants) to run two Star Wars MMOs at once.

If I had to guess, I think LucasArts will wait and see how well Old Republic does. If it sells like hotcakes the cost of maintaining Galaxies is too high, logically, they’d phase it out and concentrate all their resources on Old Republic content.

6) “You can’t ruin Star Wars.”

This is what Daniel Erickson declared at the end of the night after “adult refreshments” were served. I had to think real hard about it (and consider the question of whether or not Jar Jar Binks counts as “ruining” or “irritating”); but then I saw what Erickson was getting at.

Star Wars is a franchise that has survived everything from Jar Jar to the Christmas Special which shall not be seen again on network television. There are toys, toothpastes, Lego sets, and yet another animated series running on Cartoon Network. How can an MMO – made by BioWare, no less – possibly make anything worse? If anything, we can have reasonable hope that Old Republic will make Star Wars better – because the BioWare folks understand the meaning of canon (even if I can’t spell the word consistently :p), and have done their homework.

So, love MMOs or hate them, love KOTOR, or hate it, LucasArts is going balls-out on this. And it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

P.S. Another revelation of Erickson: Modesto, CA = Tatooine; Tatooine = the cradle of galactic civilization, ergo Modest = the cradle of civilization…? I don’t think he had it all quite worked out, but he had a point about Tatooine and Modesto sharing some similarities. Namely being boring, says Erickson.

"We've got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development," said Riccitiello. The first title, based on the Warhammer property, will launch soon. "And the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about — in partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare, which is, I think, quite possibly the most anticipated game, full stop, for the industry at the point when we get closer to telling you about it."

Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online? "Yes," he said.

Watch out World of Warcraft, you just might have some serious competition here.

EA to Play in Knights of the Old Republic [Portfolio]

Yesterday Luke posted about a slide from an Electronic Arts analyst presentation which seemed to indicated that BioWare was working on a new Knights of the Old Republic title. Electronic Arts contacted us today to request a correction on the rumor we posted.

The slide from the EA presentation was titled "Best Creative Talent", EA said, and it "addresses future and past titles."

KOTOR, Black, Boogie, Skate and some other titles on the slide speak to past portfolio releases and the pedigree of the studio but do not specifically address future sequels. The MMO in development at Bioware Austin is listed a "New MMO". We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Great so now we know that the slide may or may not mean that a new KOTOR is being developed by Bioware. The public relations folks haven't responded to our email asking specifically if Bioware is working on a new Knights of the Old Republic game.

Bioware at Work on a New KOTOR [Kotaku]

Despite how wonderfully good (and logical) such a project would be, consider it rumor for now until we hear more.

BioWare's Upcoming MMO Based in KOTOR Universe [Primotech - thanks, Omega88!]

Known for their work on both Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords and Neverwinter Nights 2, Obsidian will hopefully get a chance to kick off something good, instead of being saddled with following up someone else's megahit. Michael McWhertor

SEGA SIGNS OBSIDIAN ENTERTAINMENT TO DEVELOP ALIEN TITLE FOR NEXT-GENERATION SYSTEMS

Role-Playing Game to be Based on Critically-Acclaimed Motion Picture Franchise

LONDON & SAN FRANCISCO (December 13, 2006) - SEGA of America Inc. and SEGA Europe Ltd. today announced that Obsidian Entertainment will create a role-playing game based on the Alien film franchise with license from Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising. This title will be developed for the next-generation systems and the PC.

Obsidian Entertainment draws upon their wealth of design knowledge creating successful games such as the best-selling Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: Sith Lords and the award-winning Neverwinter Nights 2 to bring the Alien franchise to role-playing gamers for the first time. The role playing game will build upon the distinctive look and feel of the original films while utilizing next-generation technology to create an entirely different and unique Alien experience.

"With Obsidian Entertainment's development pedigree, they were our first choice to bring the Alien franchise to the RPG universe," said Simon Jeffery, President and COO, SEGA of America, Inc. "They are the only developer for us that could effectively combine the Alien mythology with compelling RPG gameplay to create the ultimate Alien experience."

"We are thrilled to be working with the great production and publishing teams at Sega to deliver the ultimate in-depth Alien experience to gamers worldwide," said Feargus Urquhart, CEO of Obsidian Entertainment. "Building an epic RPG with a license as heralded as the Alien franchise is truly a great honor."

Since its 1979 debut, Alien and its three sequels have grossed more than $557 million worldwide, garnering numerous awards, including two Academy Awards . In 2002, Alien was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. For more information, please visit www.sega.com/aliens

About SEGA of America, Inc.
SEGA of America, Inc. is the American Publishing arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA Corporation, a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

About SEGA Europe Ltd.
SEGA Europe, Ltd. is the European Publishing arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA Corporation, and a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. The SEGA Europe, Ltd. Web Site is located at www.sega-europe.com.

About Obsidian Entertainment
Obsidian Entertainment is an entertainment software development company passionately dedicated to making high quality, next generation games for PC and console systems. Obsidian was founded in 2003 by five game development veterans who've produced, programmed, and/or designed award-winning role playing games for a variety of platforms over the last 15 years. The five founders are: Feargus Urquhart, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, Chris Avellone and Chris Jones. Many of Obsidian's talented employees have worked on award winning products for organizations such as Black Isle Studios, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Neversoft, and others. Obsidian Entertainment's Web site is located at www.obsidian.net.

About Twentieth Century Fox
A recognized industry leader, Twentieth Century Fox Licensing and Merchandising licenses and markets properties worldwide on behalf of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Twentieth Television and Fox Broadcasting Company, as well as third party lines. The division is aligned with Twentieth Century Fox Television, one of the top suppliers of primetime entertainment programming to the broadcast networks.

The Sith Lords Restoration Project is an attempt by mod collective Team Gizka to create KOTOR2 as it was meant to be played.

If you're here, you probably know that KOTOR2 had a lot of cut content, including some very important scenes near the end. If you didn't know: KOTOR2 had a lot of cut content, including some very important scenes near the end. You can read a lot of it and listen to some sound clips here.

We're adding back in as much of the cut content as is possible. We are dedicated to forming a coherent story out of these sound clips and occasionally-ambiguous action descriptions, so unfortunately, we cannot include every single cool thing that was cut. But, we will still have plenty of coolness, including:

* The long-lost HK Droid Factory! (not the same as the Droid Planet M4-78)
* Several ways to murder Visas!
* A whole new group of people who want to kill you!
* Multiple endings! (no, really, actual endings)
* Various ways to be responsible for the deaths of all your party members!

With good humor and high spirits, Gizka is releasing semi-regular progress updates, and claim to have all the help they need and are generally optimistic. There's no public patch quite yet, but checking in every once in a while seems like a good idea at this point. I'm sure Kotaku will hear of it when the first patches are released, so stay tuned. Eliza Gauger

The Sith Lords Restoration Project [Team Gizka, via Joystiq]