Knights of the Old Republic

[prog]

Have played a little of Knights of the Old Republic, which garnered all the game-of-the-year accoladates a couple of years ago. It's OK, but contains many patterns familiar to anyone who's played NWN (which was produced by the same folks). I mean, I haven't bothered following through on certain conversations because "Hey, I remember this NPC from NWN; if you agree with her proposal she takes your money and skips town. Fool me once, etc." It makes for an interesting meta-game, but.

Also like NWN, they took the trouble to implement an alignment system; you start out neutral and earn dark-side or light-side points depending upon how you handle encounters and the routes you take to solve quests. (Do you give the serum to the clinic doctor, or sell it to the crime boss?) That's good, but (again like NWN) breaking into peoples' homes, killing them and taking their loot doesn't count in either direction.

To be fair, the homes I'm breaking into are full of bad "gang members", yucky-looking aliens who attack you on sight. This doesn't change the fact that I'm systematically going door-to-door in an apartment building, clearing out every room, and the game is rewarding me with experience points and treasure, and not punishing me at all. The result is that I feel I'm not playing the game right unless I act like an utter psychopath. It doesn't seem very Jedi to me, but maybe it's so irrational that it doesn't even fall on the dark/light axis.

I hate to say it, but I can only think of a half-kidding-RPG I once read. First, in the game system of their choice, the players happen across a dungeon infested with families of kobolds and goblins and what have you. After they clean it out, the GM takes their character sheets and, in a clinical tone, pronounces a diagnosis over each: the PC is actually a modern sociopath with delusions that he or she is this heroic fantasy character. It's quickly revelaed that the players had actually rampaged through a slummy housing project and mass-murdered its inhabitants, and were now in lockdown for the criminally insane. Ha ha ha, the end!

Oh well. All that said, the swordfighting looks really badass.

Comments

[cramerica.livejournal.com]

Ya, there's a lot of the consequence-free RPG pillaging going around. It reminds me of when, in Ultima III, the creators found that lots of players were advancing by annihilating the peaceful druid colony (several times). So, Ultima IV was all about gaining virtue (the game tracked and rewarded/punished just about every move and item).

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

PowerKill, which I recall finding heavy-handed and kind of loathsome, but then, I don't play D&D as a kill-loot-pillage game. KotOR does sound very much like it though.

[misuba.livejournal.com]

In a similar vein, and either more successful as satire or more loathsome, are Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed, by Greg Costikyan Designer X, and of course Kill Puppies For Satan.