First Encounter:

Not Your Evil Father's Old Republic

By Danny Chihdo

Think you know Star Wars? Think again. A whole new take on "the galaxy far, far away" is now yours to explore. Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™, from publisher Lucasarts (naturally) and the talented roleplaying game developers at BioWare, has finally arrived on the Xbox—and only on Xbox.

You want some of this?

This One, Long Time Have I Watched
In this addictive and polished roleplaying game, you'll start out in one of three character classes. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic gives us a medieval (sort of) Star Wars galaxy torn apart by war, where an enemy is as likely to pull a longsword on you as they are to whip out a lightsaber.

The game is set 4000 years before the prequels (even four millennia is only about a fifth the age of the Old Republic). That gives BioWare the opportunity to craft a world fill with the intermingling of archaic and not-so-archaic versions of the Star Wars technology we all know and, if you've read this so far, love. Droids, for example, are almost pathologically constructed to resemble the more "modern" look of C-3PO and R2-D2, but they have a much more primitive, gears-and-parts-showing look, with sprockets and gaskets to spare. A lot of the tech is also upgradeable, meaning you can tinker with droids, computers, guns, and armor to amplify performance.

Weapons, equipment, ships, and vehicles are all designed along similar lines. Instead of Podracers, you've got suped-up hovering snowmobiles (called Swoops) that run short drag races instead of Ben-Hur marathons. In place of the Millennium Falcon, the heroes of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic hop in a sleek freighter equally worthy of love and devotion, the Ebon Hawk. Familiar aliens like Ithorians ("hammerheads") and Twi'leks (you know, tentatcles, dancing girls … ) mix with new alien species that are on their way out at this point in time. And, even though this is even longer ago than usual, this is still an interplanetary society 20,000 years of age, meaning even the most well-to-do worlds have a lived-in look and a palpable sense of history.

In short, pure Star Wars, but you've never seen it quite this way before.

An adventure of new proportions.

That's How the Wookiee Rumbles
You will start the game as a male or female human with a choice of three classes: scoundrel (big on shady dealings and breaking security and computer systems), soldier (this title's version of the tried-and-true roleplaying game combat specialist), and scout (an explorer whose skills fall somewhere in between the other two). Even characters of the same class can have wildly different skills and feature sets. No worries if you're low in a particular skill or area of expertise—the support team you'll assemble are also customizable, so you can tweak them to best complement your own abilities.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic boasts a cast of fully playable supporting characters every bit as compelling as those in the original movies, with deep back stories, comedic dialog (that's actually comedic), opinions and views on the world that will often clash with your own, and stunningly crafted character models that take full advantage of the third-person perspective. You can control only three characters at once (one of which is your central hero), but you can switch party members with relative ease, changing the team's skills and behavioral dynamics for better or for worse.

Taris is just crawling with these things.

Darth-ness and Light
Torn apart by the recent Mandalorian Wars, the Republic now faces a threat from within its own ranks—the Jedi leaders who defeated the Mandalorian warriors somehow crossed over to the Dark Side. Declaring themselves Lords of the Sith, they seized ultimate control of their star fleets and declared war on their former masters. Now, a new war has broken out between the Jedi and the Sith, a war that you're caught smack in the middle of.

The story begins in a situation that (perhaps intentionally) evokes the "escape from the dying ship" sequence that opens Halo. Soon, you'll set down on the seedy, declining hub world Taris, where you must find Bastila, a Jedi Knight whose escape pod crashed somewhere in the planet-sized city and whose powers may hold the key to a Republic victory in the war.

Your role in all this is unclear at first. But, when it soon becomes evident you have a connection to the Force, you'll get a shot at Jedi Knight-hood. Whether you ultimately side with Good or Evil depends on your actions throughout the game and makes this title truly replayable—a quality all-too-rare in roleplaying games.

Star Wars fans, if you haven't yet picked up an Xbox, here's your reason to. Welcome to the Golden Age.