KotOR: My first foray into WRPGs

Well I'm done with school now, I should have more time on nights and weekends.  That means more gaming!  It also means that I can get back to writing this blog.  Right now, I want to talk about a game I played this January.  I was a little late to the party, but I played:

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC)

While all of my remarks are inherently biased by games I've recently or historically played, that particularly holds true here.  This was actually my first Western RPG.  I've played countless JRPGs, but I never really got around to playing any Western ones.  I've got Mass Effect queued up, so it certainly won't be my last either.  Nevertheless, some of my comments will likely apply to the genre in general as opposed to just this game specifically.

Role Playing Game

I found the morality system quite interesting.  Certainly not for its complexity, it's very guilty of the bake-cookies-for-grandma vs. burn-down-the-nursing-home type of morality.  But, as someone who hasn't really played WRPGs and encountered this genre trope before, I found my own psychology interesting.  I could not actually bring myself to commit any dark side acts.  I'm not saying I'm some sort of light-side-paragon in real life, but, whenever I hovered my cursor over a dark side option, I just couldn't click it, I felt like I was betraying myself.  It later occurred to me that perhaps the feelings weren't caused by my own moral stances in real life, or even feelings belonging to some sort of virtual persona (hell, I digitally murder thousands of innocents all the time).  But I think it was my character.  I had given her a personality, and I could not let her deviate from the principles I had decided she believed in, lest she betray her allies and be untrue to herself.  I plan to test this hypothesis in Mass Effect, let's try a touch of evil.  Prove whether I was attached to those virtual values for their own sake or because that's who I decided my character was.  But I think this effect is a huge win for the game.  Role playing game.  In all of the JRPGs I've played, I play the role of the character given to me in its presealed package.  In this game, and perhaps WRPGs in general, the character is determined by HOW I play.  Even beyond stat customization.  Even beyond the arbitrary light/dark scorekeeping.  But I was able to project values onto my character and play the game through those eyes.  And it was fantastic.

Let me wander

Linearity is not always a bad thing.  Many of my favorite games are linear point A to point B platformers.  But that's not all I like to do.  I need to be able to explore from time to time.  I'm not even referring to super non linear open world games.  A game can satisfy my cravings for exploration even if it has a linear backbone, if it lets me deviate from the path from time to time, to explore the world, to talk to the native NPCs.  Before I played this game, I was in a bit of a linear rut.  Below, on the left, I've listed some of the games which have done fantastic jobs at satisfying my craving for exploration.  And on the right, I've listed some of their newer incarnations that I've played recently.

Super Metroid, Metroid Prime	Metroid: Other M
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night	Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Donkey Kong 64	Donkey Kong Country Returns
Super Mario 64	Super Mario Galaxy 2
Final Fantasy VI/VII	Final Fantasy XIII

Before I get ambushed for this table, I realize that there were other linear entries in these series.  I realize that many of the games on the right are good.  But that's not the point.  The point is that I kind of had some hopes for games which would satisfy my inner explorer as well as the games on the left, but each greeted me with loads of linearity.  Minecraft helped this feeling a little bit, though, as fantastic as it is, exploring an infinite procedural world is a different feeling than exploring a contained, designed world.

I was thrilled when I played KotOR.  I could fly to different planets whenever I wanted.  I could interact with NPCs.  I could fill in the foggy sections of the map.  I could find interesting sidequests around every turn.  There was a linear backbone, there was a quest to be completed, but the freedom I had along the way was very satisfying.  One of the reasons this game sits so well with me is that it got my out of that rut where my inner explorer was alone and depressed.