What I Am Reading: "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" by Alex Kane

This book, about my favorite video game, isn't quite what I expected. What it is, and what the back cover clearly told me it would be, is an oral history of the game's development. It is not an in-depth or analytical book about the game itself. This makes it an interesting story with some interesting anecdotes; it would have made a good long-form article, but I was hoping for a bit more.

Let's back up. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic came out when I was 11. I remember talking to my friends about it in my 6th-grade classroom. It has been my favorite video game (or more accurately: its series has been my favorite video game series) ever since. I'm not a very hardcore gamer now and wasn't then, but I consumed a lot of Star Wars media around the late-elementary and middle school years. KOTOR broke ground in a few different ways: it was the first Star Wars RPG, and it was the a foray into the ancient Star Wars universe, previously explored only in a few comic series.

The book, part of a project of kickstarted books on video games by Boss Fight Books, is mainly about the game’s development process. As such, it does well to situate the game in the larger context of Star Wars games made by Lucasarts: many of the games directly preceding it were hacked-out tie-ins, and the games coming after it were like Battlefront, intended for the mass market. Unfortunately for my purposes, the book doesn't take much of a look at the game within the Star Wars canon as it stood at the time. A few Star Wars novels mentioned the events and activities of the ancient Jedi, and in the '90s this topic was fleshed out in the Tales of the Jedi comics by Dark Horse. These were set 4,000 years before the original films. Knights of the Old Republic is set in this same time period, and in many ways is a re imagining of them. The comics portray the ancient Star Wars universe as sort of primitive, with characters dressed in leather and spaceships looking almost like they are made of rocks, bone, and wood. KOTOR brings the aesthetic closer to the Star Wars norm, with sleek, elegant art design somewhat reminiscent of the prequel films that were coming out at the same time.

I have a lot to say about Knights of the Old Republic. I could probably write an entire book about it myself, in fact. I'll try to restrict myself to only an overview. I re-play it every few years, and took the opportunity to do so in connection with this book. The game largely hits the same beats as the Star Wars films: there is a ship, a pilot, a Wookiee, a mentor (lost mid-way when the enemy captures the ship), a superweapon, a final battle, a hero learning to be a Jedi. This is transposed into an RPG format, where the player must visit 8 total planets (5 of which can be arranged in any order) and can bring two of nine party members along with them at any given time. Each member has their own backstory and many of them have their own sidequests to complete. KOTOR is especially interesting when viewed in conjunction with its sequel, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Once KOTOR had recreated the Star Wars story, KOTOR 2 set about deconstructing it. It has an evil mentor, an evil scoundrel pilot, even an evil Wookiee. The relationship of the character to the Force, and the Jedi to the galaxy, is much more ambiguous. But the book isn't about that game.

The story is separate from that of the Tales of the Jedi comics, though containing many references and acknowledgements. In this story, in the wake of a Mandalorian crusade, the Jedi have split in two, with many Dark Jedi and Sith leading a new Sith army in conquest of the Republic. These Sith are the second iteration of the Sith, chronologically, the namesake only of the original Sith species led against the Jedi in the comics (and not the same iteration as the Sith shown in the films). After escaping a besieged planet, the player character is trained as a Jedi, and sent by the Jedi Council on a quest to uncover the Star Forge, an ancient weapon being used by the Sith to fuel their war machine. This is accomplished by piecing together star maps spread across several different planets. The character has the choice of staying on the light side with the Jedi, or falling to the dark side and working for their own megalomanic purposes. There is also a famous plot twist involving the character's identity: they are Revan, the Sith leader in the backstory who had been replaced by his apprentice, Darth Malak, prior to the game's commencement. The book covers how important the player's connection to Revan is, as they are allowed to shape the character's actions in entirety, and take ownership of the character.

As a child, I was interested in history and in archaeology. The game's setting in "ancient Star Wars" appealed to me inherently, and this is compounded by the fact that the game's story revolves around even older Star Wars antiquity. The book talks also about how the creators had a rather blank slate in the setting, since it is so far apart from the films. They took advantage of this to do things like include a hidden creation story for Tatooine and for the Wookiee planet Kashyyyk, and other deep backstory. This is in addition to the connections to the Tales of the Jedi comics, mostly told orally through reminisces of characters like Jolee Bindo and the hidden, PC-only Suvam Tan. Even now, many years divorced from my Star Wars fandom, I find myself being drawn back into this fictional universe as I play.

Replaying the game is always interesting, as it triggers a lot of nostalgic grinning, but also leads to new assessments each playthrough. I liked the macho warrior characters when I was a kid: Carth the Republic soldier and Canderous the Mandalorian veteran (as a fan of living history, I loved hearing their war stories). Nowadays I have more appreciation for characters like Mission Vao, the street-kid who is a very well-executed plucky teenage urchin character, and provides a lot of underappreciated moral support (and comes across as an authentic teen without crossing over into purposeful obnoxiousness). Jolee Bindo is still the best character, due to both his humor and (in my eyes) his connections to the preexisting comic stories. As is common in Star Wars, some of the characters and backstory are interesting and dignified, and some are cartoonish and bathetic. To KOTOR’s credit, characters of both types can be enjoyed as companions. The book had a note or two on each of these characters, as well as fan-favorite HK-47, psychotic assassin droid, modeled (which I never realized) as C-3PO with a snake head, and who was originally supposed to be played straight, before the humor was added on the fly. Character notes like these are interesting, but without an overview of the entire game, would be lost on anyone who hadn’t played it (admittedly not the book’s intended audience).

As noted, the book is based on interviews with the creators. A lot of the information imparted is similar to things that could be found elsewhere, or probably could have been synthesized in a long-form article instead of a short (less than 100-page) book. People have written plenty about the game, it is a classic. Someone more interested in game design than I could probably get more out of that aspect, though I appreciate the scale of the game’s accomplishment, compared to the size and scope of other games at the time. The book has a few interesting stories, but most of it’s content can be summarized fairly quickly: the creators tried to stay true to the spirit and aesthetics of Star Wars, while putting their own stamp on it. It was hard, grueling work, but everyone who worked on it was great at their job, and they are all proud of the product. I was most interested in the stories of cut content and rerouted ideas, but without any concept art (or any pictures of any kind, presumably copyright) these few sections must be relayed through quotes alone.

The Star Wars fan wiki Wookieepedia has a lot of similar information on the game, and a lot more information overall, in many of its articles’ “Behind the Scenes” sections, researched by trawling through old magazines for interviews and piecing together the real-life history of Star Wars as it builds or feeds off itself and grows in overlapping layers. That is a topic I would be interested in reading more about: the intellectual history of Star Wars. This book does have its strengths, including a lot of nice information on the game's descendants in the new Star Wars canon, which I have not kept up with. However, with so much to say about KOTOR that is left unsaid, I think it is more of a complementary than an essential resource on the topic, though I was happy to be re-immersed in the milieu for a time while reading/playing.