January 28, 2005 - The Star Wars franchise has flabbergastingly high potential when it comes to video games. With a bucket of creativity, a lot of elbow grease, and a keen sense of what makes the fiction so appealing, BioWare reached that potential with the original Knights of the Old Republic. That game was amazing from quite a few perspectives, but largely because of the mature story and careful handling of the universe. It was a superb realization and something that nearly everybody here at IGN was going ga-ga over. The announcement of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords wasn't a surprise. With all of the awards and good feeling toward the original, it was a forgone conclusion. Perhaps what was strange to some people was that BioWare passed on the project leaving LucasArts to choose Obsidian Entertainment, a new development house made up of industry veterans.

The question was if Obsidian would be able to hold up the same brilliance of story and vision that Bioware showed in the first. The Xbox guys say yes. They loved it quite a bit. It was close enough to how much they loved the first one, that it's been hard not to get excited about seeing the game finally hit the PC. After months of waiting for playable code, it finally showed up onto our doorstep a couple of days ago. We've been diligently fighting our way through rampaging droids, and fighting charges that I had blown up an asteroid space station... nevermind if it was the truth.

The experience begins in much the same way that the first one did. The main character awakens in a strange place with little memory of what events led to this particular situation. The main difference in the memory loss is that this character at least remembers who he/she is and a bit of her/his history. But before anything can truly start, the character has to be created. The process is pretty much the same as it was in the first Knights of the Old Republic. Pick a gender, expertise from the three Jedi types (this time you don't start out as one of the regular folk, just whether you want to be a Consular, Sentinel, or Guardian), skills, attributes, feats, and force powers. Lastly, choose a name and you're ready to go.

The story immediately drops the main character into a pot of poop again. The opening cutscene shows a familiar Ebon Hawk limping through space with you on a bed and a body in the hold. At this point, an optional tutorial/intro sequence begins where T3 is the only playable character and has to repair the ship. It's a good place to start for those trying to familiarize themselves with the controls.

BERJAYA

Soon, the Ebon Hawk is repaired enough to flap its smoking wings into the loving nest on Peragus II. This nasty hole is a mining station for fuel and a very important one at that. This asteroid was once a large chunk of the original Peragus. But thanks to some jackhole that lit a cig in the wrong place, the whole planet went up in a brilliant explosion that created a giant asteroid field. While dangerous, this planet was still considered viable enough for mining and is therefore still in use. Only desperation lands travelers on a place like this.

As the main character wakes up (in this case, a she, because I played as a man in the first KoTOR) she finds herself surrounded by dead miners in medic tanks along with a nearly deserted station. Only Kreia, an old and cryptic bag of a Jedi, is there to keep up conversation. This opening area sets the stage for the overall story and allows players to become accustomed to the first members of the party.

Before too long, the adventure to get off of the rock begins with solving mysterious disappearance of the mining population on Peragus II. Like the first game, it takes a few hours of gameplay to even get off of the first planet. The pace is pretty slow and the lightsaber is noticeably absent, but at least force powers are an option and make battle more enjoyable.