Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic sold 250,000 copies in its first four days on the Xbox. That made it the fastest-selling game the console had seen up to that point. The figure is striking for a game that did not feature a single character from the films. It began with a choice that LucasArts put in front of its developer: follow a movie, or travel somewhere the saga had barely touched. Other questions sit behind that decision. How do you turn a story of lightsabers and starships into a game ruled by dice? What does it take to record a script so large that the actors had to double up on roles? And why do so many players still talk about one revelation in the plot above everything else? The answers start with a name that was rejected before the game ever had its final title.

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• 2. A Choice of Eras

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  In July 2000, BioWare announced that it was working with LucasArts on a Star Wars role-playing game for the PC and for the next generation of consoles. Joint BioWare CEO Greg Zeschuk called it an opportunity to create a richly detailed new chapter in the Star Wars universe. LucasArts staffer Mike Gallo traced the first emails between the two companies to October or November of 1999. Serious work, he said, began at the start of 2000. The game was officially unveiled at E3 2001, when it had been in development for around six months.

  The team first called it Age of the Jedi. LucasArts rejected the name and proposed Knights of the Old Republic instead.

  The setting came from a fork in the road. BioWare CEO Raymond Muzyka described it this way: LucasArts offered an Episode II game, or the chance to go "4,000 years back, which is a period that's hardly been covered before." BioWare took the distant past because it promised more creative freedom. The goal was material that felt like the films yet was different enough to read as their precursor.

  Freedom still came with oversight. Concept work had to be sent to a place the team called "the ranch" for approval. Muzyka said very little was turned down, and most notes were small, such as asking for a character's head to be shaped a little differently. Concept art director John Gallagher met with Ralph McQuarrie during development. The look of Revan drew on African tribal ornaments from the 16th to 18th centuries. One request did meet a firm refusal: Lucasfilm declined BioWare's proposals to show more of the culture of the Tusken Raiders, because it did not want them developed beyond their film appearances.

  The team also set a target for length. Gallo noted that Baldur's Gate ran to 100 hours or more, and that the critical path through Baldur's Gate 2 alone took 75 hours. Knights of the Old Republic would be dramatically smaller, aiming for around 60 hours. The question left was how a story that long would actually play, and the answer lay in a rule set borrowed from tabletop games.

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• 3. Rounds and Dice

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  Project director Casey Hudson called the combat system one of the game's greatest achievements and one of its greatest risks. The team wanted the strategy of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, delivered through fast, cinematic 3D action. Hudson said that required "something that hadn't really been done before." The factors involved were many and hard to visualize, which made the task daunting.

  The result runs on Dungeons & Dragons rules, particularly the d20 System. Time divides into discrete rounds. Combatants attack and react at the same moment, though the screen shows the actions one after another. Each combatant can do only a limited number of things per round. Players can set the game to pause at certain events or at the end of every round. They can also turn pausing off entirely, which gives the feel of real-time fighting. The die rolls and modifiers never appear on screen by default, yet a menu will show the full breakdown of any action.

  Character creation begins with a choice of Scout, Soldier or Scoundrel. Later, a Jedi subclass must be picked from Guardian, Sentinel or Consular. Skills, tiered feats and tiered Force powers, which work much like spells in fantasy games, fill out the character. Skill points are handed out at every level.

  Up to two companions can join the player for much of the game. They can be commanded by hand or left to act on their own. Away from combat they strike up conversations with the player or with each other, and those exchanges sometimes unlock extra quests. Gallo compared some situations to Deus Ex, where several routes lead through an area and a particular skill may open one of them.

  Conversation runs through a menu of responses, and the options shift with the character's gender and skills. Every word choice and plot decision feeds the alignment system. Generosity and altruism pull toward the light side. Selfish or violent acts pull toward the dark side, which turns a character's eyes yellow and skin pale.

  Between the big fights come smaller diversions. Players can race swoops to earn money, man a turret against enemy starfighters during space travel, or gamble at pazaak, a card game that resembles blackjack. All of this unfolds across a galaxy that needs its own history.

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• 4. The Old Republic Cast

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  Revan and Malak were a pair of renegade Jedi Knights who insisted on leading a Republic force into the Mandalorian Wars. The Jedi had been hesitant to get involved. The Mandalorian warrior society had invaded the Republic in a pan-galactic conflict, and the two knights won it. Then they vanished into the Unknown Regions. A year later they came back with a Sith armada and attacked the Republic themselves.

  Malak was Revan's apprentice. He rose to become Dark Lord of the Sith after Revan was seemingly killed in an ambush by the Jedi. By the time the game begins, his aggression has left the Jedi scattered and vulnerable. Many have fallen, and others have sworn allegiance to him. The era follows the conclusion of the Tales of the Jedi comics, early in the life of the already ancient Republic.

  Players visit Tatooine, Dantooine, Kashyyyk, Korriban, Manaan, Rakata Prime and Taris. They also set foot on the Republic cruiser Endar Spire, on Saul Karath's ship Leviathan and on the Star Forge space station. The freighter Ebon Hawk carries the party between them and is itself a place to explore. A space station near Yavin is reachable in the PC, Mac OS X and mobile versions, and Xbox owners could download it from Xbox Live.

  The companions are a varied crew. They include the veteran Republic pilot Carth Onasi, the teenage Twi'lek Mission Vao and her Wookiee friend Zaalbar, and the Jedi Bastila Shan. The 'Gray' Jedi Jolee Bindo, the utility droid T3-M4 and the Mandalorian mercenary Canderous Ordo round out the party. The assassin droid HK-47 joins only if the player buys him. Another Jedi, Juhani, can join if the player spares her.

  Opposing them are crime boss Davik Kang, bounty hunter Calo Nord and Black Vulkar leader Brejik. Czerka Corporation, an unscrupulous company operating on several planets, sides with Malak's forces. Behind them all stands Malak himself, and the game's best-known surprise concerns how the player is tied to him.

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• 5. The Revelation

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  The game opens with the player waking aboard the Endar Spire, which is under attack by Malak's forces over the city world of Taris. The character's name, gender, appearance and background are all the player's to decide. Republic soldier Trask Ulgo arrives with orders to abandon ship. On the way to the escape pods they meet Sith Lord Darth Bandon, and Trask sacrifices himself so the player can keep going. In the pods the player meets Carth, and the two flee the doomed warship.

  The crash on Taris leaves the player unconscious until Carth drags them clear. Malak's forces hold the planet under martial law while they hunt for Bastila Shan, a Jedi known for her mastery of battle meditation. That Force technique strengthens allies and weakens enemies in a fight. The search brings in Mission and Zaalbar, and the group rescues Bastila from the Black Vulkar. With T3-M4 and Canderous Ordo helping, they escape aboard the Ebon Hawk. Malak's fleet then devastates the planet's surface in a vain attempt to kill Bastila.

  Safe at the Jedi Academy on Dantooine, the player trains as a Jedi and discovers a Star Map. It points to the Star Forge, the probable source of Malak's military resources. The hunt for more maps takes the party across Dantooine, Manaan, Tatooine, Kashyyyk and Korriban, and gathers Juhani, HK-47 and Jolee Bindo along the way. After the fourth map, Malak captures the party and brings them aboard his flagship.

  There he reveals the twist. The player character is an amnesiac Darth Revan. The Jedi Council wiped their memories after Revan's presumed death at Malak's hands. They hoped Bastila, through her bond with Revan, would lead them to the Star Forge. Bastila sacrifices herself so the player can escape, and Malak turns her to the dark side.

  What comes next depends on the choices the player has made. On the light side path, the player kills or redeems Bastila, defeats Malak and destroys the Star Forge, and is hailed as a hero. On the dark side path, the player allies with Bastila, overthrows and kills Malak, and seizes the Star Forge to reclaim the title of Dark Lord of the Sith. Bringing that story to the screen meant solving a different set of problems with machines and microphones.

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• 6. Sound and Machine

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  LucasArts and BioWare settled on the PC and the Xbox as the two platforms. BioWare came from PC development and knew the Xbox better than its rivals. Gallo said the team could do what it wanted on the Xbox without as much effort as the PS2 or GameCube would demand. The console's recent success and the chance to ship one of its first role-playing games also counted. BioWare had already made MDK2 for the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, and Hudson said that experience gave the team the right mindset.

  Hudson still flagged real challenges. Games with this much AI, scripting, character variety and sprawling environments stress hardware differently, so it was hard to predict how the game would run. The Odyssey Engine grew out of the Aurora Engine that BioWare built for Neverwinter Nights, but it was completely rewritten. Grass waves in the wind, dust blows across Tatooine, and puffs of sand rise as the player walks the seabed. Character animation was choreographed in 3DS Max.

  Consoles and PCs asked for different things. Hudson pointed out that people play console games on a TV across the room, but sit inches from a PC monitor. So the PC version supports resolutions up to 1600x1200 and sharper textures, and it adds an extra location along with more characters, items and weapons. Xbox players later received those additions through Xbox Live.

  Audio fell to LucasArts rather than BioWare. The game holds three hundred characters and fifteen thousand lines of speech. Voice department manager Darragh O'Farrell said one complete copy of the script fills 10 five-inch binders. Around a hundred actors took part, among them Ed Asner, Raphael Sbarge, Ethan Phillips, Jennifer Hale and Phil LaMarr. Actors played several roles, scattered so players would not notice the repeats.

  Recording began six months before the beta, with the script about 90 percent complete. A game this size would normally take seven weeks to record. Two weeks of all-day and all-night sessions got LucasArts done in five. Actors were taped one at a time, because a non-linear game made group sessions too complicated and expensive.

  About a tenth of the script was in Huttese. Gallo translated English into it using Ben Burtt's Star Wars: Galactic Phrase Book and Travel Guide. O'Farrell said some actors took to Huttese "like a fish to water." Others needed him to line-read more than 150 lines before the performance worked.

  Jeremy Soule wrote the score under a technical limit: an 8 megabit per second MIDI system. In his words, "I had to fool people into thinking they were hearing a full orchestra." He did it by mixing woodwinds and drums, or strings, drums and brass, since the whole orchestra could never play at once. Gallo expected the Force themes to endure. The finished work still had to survive a schedule that kept slipping.

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• 7. Delays and Sales

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  At E3 2001 the game was slated for late 2002. A demo appeared at E3 in 2002. In August of that year, a post on the game's forums announced a delay: the Xbox version would come in spring 2003 and the PC version in summer. A second delay arrived in January 2003, pushing both to fall. Zeschuk blamed BioWare's focus on quality, saying the team kept tackling each issue until it had accomplished something special.

  The Xbox version went gold on the 9th of July 2003 and reached stores on the 16th. Free downloadable content was promised through Xbox Live for the end of the year. The PC version went gold on the 11th of November 2003.

  The Xbox game sold 270,000 copies in its first two weeks, and The NPD Group ranked it the second best-selling console game of its debut month across all platforms. It fell to eighth for August and was gone from the chart by September. Worldwide sales reached 600,000 by October. By July 2006 the Xbox version had sold 1.3 million copies in the United States and earned $44 million. In the United Kingdom it won a Silver sales award for at least 100,000 copies.

  The PC version opened as the third-best-selling computer game of its first week, according to NPD. It finished November in sixth place and December in ninth, and NPD later called it the 17th-best-selling computer game of 2004. By August 2006 it had sold 470,000 copies and earned $14.7 million in the United States. Combined Xbox and PC sales passed 2 million by February 2005, and the game stood at 3.2 million units as of 2007.

  The game kept finding new platforms. Aspyr brought it to Mac OS X on the 20th of September 2004. It reached Steam in May 2012 and the iPad in May 2013. GoG.com offered a DRM-free download in October 2014, and Android followed in December 2014. In October 2017 Microsoft made the Xbox version playable on the Xbox One, and a Nintendo Switch version arrived on the 11th of November 2021.

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• 8. Acclaim and Afterlife

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  Metacritic recorded "universal acclaim" for the game. It took the Game Developers Choice Awards' 2004 Game of the Year and the BAFTA Games Awards' best Xbox game of the year. At the same Choice Awards, HK-47 won Original Game Character of the Year. At the 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the game won Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development, Console Role-Playing Game of the Year and Computer Role-Playing Game of the Year. It was nominated for seven other awards there.

  Publications piled on. Computer Games Magazine named it the best computer game of 2003, with awards for Best Original Music and Best Writing. Its editors wrote that the elegance and accessibility BioWare built into the game "should be the future standard for this genre." IGN named it Overall Game of the Year 2003 across all platforms. Later lists kept it high: IGN placed it at number 3 among the best games of 2000-2009, behind Shadow of the Colossus and Half-Life 2. Game Informer ranked its plot twist number two among the top ten video game plot twists of all time in 2007. Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games in November 2012.

  The story kept going in other games. The Sith Lords, developed by Obsidian Entertainment at BioWare's suggestion, came out in 2004. The massively multiplayer Star Wars: The Old Republic followed in 2011. A remake announced in September 2021 for Windows and PlayStation 5 was first led by Aspyr, and Saber Interactive took over in August 2022. Several original developers returned, and Jennifer Hale again voices Bastila. Tom Kane retired for medical reasons, and John Cygan and Ed Asner died in 2017 and 2021.

  The game's influence shows up elsewhere in Star Wars. A scene for the third season of The Clone Wars would have used Darth Revan as an influence on the Son. It was cut before animation finished, and the partial scene was released in 2021. Star Wars Rebels referenced the Mandalorian Wars and the Sith planet Malachor in early 2017. A legion of Palpatine's Final Order is named for Revan in the official guide to The Rise of Skywalker. LEGO gave away a Darth Revan minifigure in its 2014 May the Fourth promotion. In April 2019, Kathleen Kennedy told MTV News that Lucasfilm was developing something to look at, though she had no idea where it might fall.

  In December 2025, Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic was announced as an action role-playing game from Arcanaut Studios, published by Lucasfilm Games. Its game director is Casey Hudson, the man who led the original.

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