My Journey Towards the Dark Side

With the exception of the Sega Genesis (which I still don't know why my parents bought), I had always had Nintendo systems. I’d never wanted a PlayStation, a PS2, or an Xbox, and I didn’t really want any other Sega systems. I was under the impression that all high-quality games were put out by Nintendo. I still believe most are. But early in my sophomore year of high school, my friend Kabir suggested to me that, being a huge Star Wars fan and an RPG gamer, I would love Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I figured he was probably right, but the problem, as I told him, was that I didn’t own an Xbox, my home computer wasn’t a gaming machine, and the game wasn’t available for any other systems. To my astonishment, without my asking, Kabir said that I could borrow his Xbox to play the game. I was ecstatic. I promised to take good care of it, and I quickly became addicted to the game.

Knights of the Old Republic is unique among RPGs and Star Wars games in several ways. Its setting is different from those of most other Star Wars games—four thousand years before the time of the movies. The technology is basically the same as that seen in the movies for whatever reason (it’s never really explained, so my only conclusion can be that once a civilization reaches a certain level of advancement, technology basically stands still), including starfighters, space cruisers, lightsabers, blasters, and droids; however, all of the characters are different—after all, even Yoda only lived 900 years. One of the things that sets Knights of the Old Republic apart from a lot of other video games is that the player can choose whether to be good or evil (whereas in most video games the player must be good by default). The main character is created by the player, who chooses what the character’s gender is, what he/she looks like, and what physical and mental abilities he/she has, among other things. The player also chooses from among several possible conversational responses when he/she talks to other characters in the game, and different responses often lead to different outcomes for events in the game. Between the dialogue options, the character design options, and the morality option, the game has enormous replay value. You could play the game 36 different times and never do it the same way twice—no exaggeration. I know because I’ve played it approximately that many times.

Of course, after my first time, I gave the Xbox back to Kabir—I would’ve felt bad about keeping it much longer. I ended up buying my own Xbox and my own copy of the game, along with the sequel. I also got myself Star Wars: Battlefront (essentially a Star Wars-themed large-scale shooting game) and its sequel, which also weren’t available on Nintendo systems. In so doing, I expanded my horizons a bit and opened my mind up to the possibility of gaming on other systems.