KOTOR Progression

I have made it past the two starting locations in KOTOR. After blowing up the asteroid world and escaping to Telos, I have reacquired the Ebon Hawk and journeyed to Nar Shadaa. I have fully committed myself to the ways of the Dark Side, killing as many innocents as I can. After playing for many hours, I have also finally acquired a light saber. Took long enough.

I’m enjoying the game so far, though aside from one tank droid on Telos, I’ve not had any trouble in combat. It has all been to easy. I’m thinking about moving up to the harder difficulty level. This is all without even really gearing up my characters. I’ve bought no items, built no upgrades, just used whatever I’ve found. And then I haven’t even really paid to much attention to if it is the best item for the job. It is kind of disappointing in that sense.

The quests and interactions with NPC’s are fun, but compared to a pen and paper RPG, it’s pretty limiting. I like that you have a fair range of responses you can usually give. It is usually more than 2 which makes it feel like there is variety. I even once had a chance to convince two thugs to go throw themselves off a balcony on Nar Shadaa. That was fun.

But at the same time, to go dark side, I usually have to be a jerk. That makes a certain amount of sense, but I can’t be an unfeeling bastard, I have to be petty. There was one recent encounter, where I had to choose between helping two merchants. I could either help this one Gran or a Rodian female. The Gran annoyed me and my dark side thought was to kill him. Unfortunately, that didn’t appear to be an option. By going with the option to help the Rodian, for purely greedy and vengeful purposes, I got light side points.

That raises a concern for the fate of SWTOR. It sounds like it will operate on the same basic principle. Now, the story and acting will be better, and hopefully more nuanced, but it still a black and white question for the game. It will probably be a choice between ‘Jerk’ and ‘Goody To Shoes’. It is hard to capture a charismatic bad guy or a rude good guy in these kind of games.

We’ll see where the story goes. It is interesting, though it entirely rests on you having the desire to hunt down the Sith, even though I feel no urgency to do so. That might work better if I was playing a good guy. As a bad guy, I just want power, and going after a galactic threat just places me in danger.