Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords Retrospective

Total Xbox has published a retrospective article about Obsidian’s sequel to BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic. Here’s a snippet concerning the game’s character writing:

KOTOR 2 lives in the uncomfortable middle ground. One major character, Kreia, is a neutral Jedi, neither dark side nor light, who will criticise you for kindness or cruelty alike. In a way, her middle-ground reasoning is as contrived as the old binary, but the subtle writing presents it as her personal philosophy rather than a law of the universe. The NPCs of KOTOR 2 are full of contradictions, even the hunky Han Solo stand-in the Sith use as a Jedi-killer.

The player character is similarly between two worlds, a Jedi who followed the first KOTOR’s Darth Revan to war, but didn’t fall to the dark side with him. You are constantly asked why you did it. You can tell them you should never have gone to war, that you should’ve stuck with Revan and gone dark or, more interestingly, that you’re still in the middle.

The characters of KOTOR 2 know more than you do, you see, and they’re not sharing. Instead, conversations happen naturally, dropping little hints of a greater truth. When you meet Boa-Dur, he calls you General, but doesn’t explain why. He also alludes to something that happened during the war, back on Malachor V. That’s where it all starts to fall apart.