KOTOR

**Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic,** more commonly known as **KOTOR**, is a game made by BioWare, and is an RPG based on the purest, most objectively good franchise of all time, Star Wars. Although the game will forever be no more canon than a fanfic thanks to Disney, it remains as a staple of the LBG mythos. Incredibly, it is one of the only single player games to have been played and completed by all five members of the LBG.

An important term to remember while reading this article is the infamous *Taris Effect*. When someone experiences the Taris Effect, that means they are stuck on a specific area for an absurd amount of time due to a lack of drive and momentum. For a real life example, Gene has a uniquely constant Taris Effect with Breaking Bad's spinoff prequel *Better Call Saul*, and leading scientists and psychologists will likely never figure out why.

## The Rich History of KOTOR

#### **Youngling Gene**

Before he sold his soul to the Paradoxian God of Maps, there was a time where young Gene knew nothing of video games. As a young lass his only glimpse into the world of gaming was going on point and click adventures with Scooby Doo, and immersing himself in the expansive lore of Adiboo. But all of that changed in the year 2003, when young Gene stumbled upon KOTOR. When he first found it, he realized that it had some very complex and advanced mechanics and narratives for a kid of his age, so it would be quite a jump from Adiboo. While young Gene couldn't understand the last five words of KOTOR's title, the words "Star Wars" struck out to him. After all, such an impeccably perfect franchise could have no flaws, he figured, and as such he deemed the game worthy of playing.

He then proceeded to play through it dozens of times, memorizing the layouts of the levels and uncovering the deepest secrets held within. His favorite part was the famous twist where you are revealed to be the Sith Lord Darth Revan. Upon the founding of the LBG, Gene made it his mission to convert the entire LBG into the ways of KOTOR, no matter how long it may take. Why? Because, above all else, he thirsted for their reactions to the game's story and twist.

#### **I'm Not Revan, I'm Beecher!**

The first to succumb to Gene's teachings was Beecher. But it was not an easy conversion. Early on, Beecher started experiencing the Taris Effect. He experienced it so deeply that Gene had to Skype him through the majority of Taris before he finally got something resembling drive. Unfortunately for Gene, Beecher provided a flat 0 on the reaction scale, as he had been spoiled to the twist by some random "top 5 twists in video games" YouTube video years prior.

However, to this day Beecher is the only one besides Gene to have played KOTOR 2, a vastly inferior but still respectable sequel. Apathy is death.

#### **The Jedi Who Could Not Love**

The next to succumb was Jack. Years before the LBG, in between his hourly visit to his personal shrine dedicated to all things Star Wars, Jack was informed by Gene that there was a Star Wars game called KOTOR. Jack immediately jumped at the chance, but then experienced the Taris Effect almost immediately, refusing to complete the Endar Spire tutorial mission. Eventually, Beecher and Gene peer pressured him to progress further, and he became the third member to complete the game. But like Beecher, he had also been spoiled to the twist, leaving Gene's desire for reactions still unfulfilled.

However, he made one mistake, one crucial mistake, that followed one of the laws of his very being. Forgetting that he could talk to his crewmates, Jack completely missed the entire subplot where you romance Bastila, being oblivious to it until he was informed by the others. Because of this, depending on your point of view, you could argue that Jack was either the best Jedi of the LBG for being the only one to follow the Jedi's idiotic abstinence rule, or the worst Jedi for being a dense fool.

#### **Chewybacca**

After The Gelocity Race, it was deemed by a joint Beecher/Gene term that Chewy had to play KOTOR. Chewy actually managed to make good progress overall, but had significant setbacks in some strange places. He had some sort of confusion aboard the Leviathan right before the twist, which likely killed his immersion before the big reveal. While he wasn't spoiled to it, he did not give much of a reaction to the twist, leaving Gene 0 for 3. Chewy got stuck in another strange place, at the Star Forge during the final mission of the game. Dealing with endlessly spawning waves of enemies, he got so stuck that he didn't finish the game until **69 days** after the initial Gelocity deadline. But this amount of time would pale in comparison to what followed...

#### **Star John: The Final Chapter**

Finally, after Gelocity Race II, it was decided that John, the newest member of the LBG, had to play KOTOR with another joint Beecher/Gene term. At first, the Taris Effect made it a horribly slow crawl. John procastinated playing KOTOR for the entirety of the summer, and only started playing once he was in college, where he had the convenient excuse of having very little free time. And for some strange reason, he only felt like playing after gam. It got to the point where KOTOR 2 was a made a punishment term if he did not beat it quickly enough. But in the final days, he had a crazy surge of inspiration and momentum: whereas Taris, Dantooine, Kashyyyk, and Tatooine each took several weeks, he beat the rest of the game in a mere few days. He ended up finishing the game **133 days** after the initial deadline.

But this embarrassing showing of irresponsibility did have some silver linings. First, John now has to experience some LBG hallmark games and shows, specifically Undertale, Gurren Lagann, and FMA Brotherhood. And second, Gene finally got some reactions. It was rough at first, as he was led to believe John had spoiled himself to the twist, but it all came to pass as John finally gave Gene what he had wanted all along - an actual, legitimate reaction to the famous twist.

## KOTOR Logs

Below are detailed logs by each member of the LBG regarding their own experiences playing the best game of all time KOTOR from the best franchise of all time Star Wars.

#### **The Gene Logs**

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is without a doubt one of if not my favorite video games, nay pieces of media of all time. The game and I go way back, I was gifted it at the age of 6 or 7, someone in my family must have seen the Star Wars in big lettering and thought “Gee, Gene David sure loves a Star Wars, he’ll love this” Not knowing they gave a T 13+ dark and gritty war game to a wee child. Nevertheless, being 6 I installed the game and forgot about it for a month, then came back and beat the Endar Spire numerous times and not knowing how to save, restarted every time. Eventually I figured out the wonders of saving and was rewarded with not having to restart over and over, still though for months I couldn’t figure out how to leave the upper city, those uniforms were just too illusive! When I finally reached the lower city, again figuring out the way to progress was difficult for my now 7 year old brain. One could make the argument that this was the first Tarris effect, although from a lack of critical thinking rather than force of will.

Eventually I got to the lower city and all bets were off, I quickly powered my way through Taris and onto the rest of the game. Of course I went lightside the entire time, not grasping the implications of the moral questions being presented, such as in the Star Map of the Wookie planet. My 7 year old mind could not yet grasp the philosophical questioning behind utilitarianism because killing are bad. Except when it's a bad guy of course because I murdered Juhani on my first playthrough as well. I even managed to romance Bastila, because come on it's just so obvious, who could even miss such an easy to obtain subplot and backstory? Definitely not anyone who its over the age of 14 and in numerous AP classes i’m sure. This was all over the course of a few months of course, can’t be playing too quickly when there's Adiboo, Jurassic Park and StarCraft to play!

But then it happened, my 7 year old mind was bombarded with one of the greatest twists in videogame history, that my character ‘insert randomized name here’ was actually the evil Sith lord Darth Revan!!! I was astounded, how could this be? I was such a good boy. I even named of my saves after it. I’m Malik?!!?! Yesnoyesno. You’ll notice it says Malik and not Revan, this is because my 7 year old mind did not know the names of the characters and confused the two, something I never do today. But I carried on with the game, beating that cool Sith planet but still too afraid to go Dark Side. I powered through the rest of the game, redeemed Bastila and defeated the Dark Lord of the Sith. After I was named the Prodigal Knight, the music swelled and finally cut to the credits I was left having played one of the greatest games of all time. The game would spur my involvement in RPGs until today, allowing me to experience other titles like Mass Effect and Skyrim. I replay KOTOR every year or so and it never loses its appeal, even in this era of super hyper realistic graphics and cgi mice I still find emotion in the blocky polygones of KOTOR’s characters. Even after experiencing it over 15 times the dialogue still affects me in ways I can’t describe. In many ways a game like KOTOR can never come again for me. It is, for lack of a better word, perfect.

#### **The Beecher Logs**

When I think of the game KOTOR, I think of another time. KOTOR was from a time when BioWare actually had good endings, a time before cutscenes had to fill up the entire screen, a time before good lip syncing, and a time when games could still get away with stopping everything any time an enemy showed up. But that is not all KOTOR is famous for. Everyone's favorite side character Gendar was the most compelling character in all of fiction, and I have complete faith that he survived the Taris bombings to go on to be the ancestor of the Skywalkers.

Setting a swoop racing world record, only to have it beaten moments later, was an unforgettable moment of well-executed narrative design. The best squad will always be Carth and Bastila, and then using Jolee on Korriban. And last but certainly not least, the bald Revan is the best, most canonical Revan of all.

#### **The Jack Logs**

When Jack was a wee little lad living abroad in the boroughs of London, his dad used to take him to his office twice a year or so. Whenever he went in, all the workers would stop working for thirty minutes or so and play Counter-Strike 1.6 on their own private server. They would always go easy on Jack because he was just 4 or 5 years old at the time (a bit too young for M rated games, but his republican father disagreed). One day, everyone was either too busy or too frustrated with Jack's immense skill over them (somehow he always killed them and never died) but nobody wanted to play CS that day. However, the man who worked at the desk across from my father claimed he had a gift for me; it was STAR WARS: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC on the PC. It was 4 or 5 discs or so, an immense amount for a game less than four gigabytes. After waiting hours to install the first few discs, finally, Jack had popped in the last one and was eager to become a Jedi.

Then it crashed.

Jack was too devastated he didn't put it in again (phrasing) and went home, defeated. He tried installing it on his home computer, but no dice. Years would pass and Jack would forget about KOTOR until meeting a young boy named Eugene on THE BEST DAY EVER in the third grade. After a few years of friendship, Gene mentioned KOTOR to Jack and he knew it struck a bell, but couldn't remember what it was. He looked up the box art, and was astonished. This was the game that Jack remembered from his childhood. For some reason, a man with a purple lightsaber has always stuck out to Jack on the back of the game box and to this day he doesn't know why. Jack didn't get around to buying it until July 16th, 2012 for a mere $5.99. Jack started playing, much to Gene's delight, eager to undergo the best Star Wars gaming experience of his life.

However, the TARIS EFFECT would set in immediately. For some reason, the gameplay of KOTOR was too archaic for his 14 year old mind to find pleasure in, as FPS' were the name of the game in 2012. So he stopped playing.

It would take TWO WHOLE YEARS for Jack to finally pick it up again. Upon discovering Jack would be abroad travelling Europe in a whole six weeks, he was desperate to find things to entertain him as he was sure to have much downtime at night without internet or girl access. After playing one game with Gene and Beecher in the whole six weeks (finishing a game of Castle Crashers) due to shitty internet, he discovered a game in his game library he thought he had forgotten; KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC. It was finally time for Jack to play this universally acclaimed game.

So he played it, and beat it in a span of probably around two weeks. It was fantastic. Even though he forgot to romance Bastilla, knew the Revan twist, and didn't do many sidequests, he still had an immense amount of fun playing this game in the purest franchise to ever exist.

#### **The** **Chewy Logs**

o.o

(These logs were lost to time, and will likely never be recovered.)