By The Stratos Group
Design by Katie Bush

The Star Wars saga has seen incarnations in a remarkably broad number of gaming genres: even if we restrict ourselves to discussing console titles, there have been side-scrollers, arcade rail shooters, fighting games, first-person shooters, space-flight sims, and even a kart racer or two in there. Star Wars fans have had the opportunity to indulge their interest in a series of games whose breadth of scope and quality are unmatched by any other major license.

The one exception to this smorgasbord of Star Wars genre-mining has been the role-playing game, which is odd, considering both that role-playing games have a deep fan base, and that Star Wars, with its richly imagined universe and compelling sci-fi archetypes, seems like a natural choice to be the basis for such a game. For whatever reason, though, Star Wars and role-playing games have never come together--until now.

Enter Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, an epic new Xbox-exclusive (for now) RPG from BioWare, creators of such RPG masterpieces as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, and LucasArts. In case you had any doubts: when you marry the RPG creation skills of BioWare with the world's most powerful license, you wind up with a game of stunning quality that shatters sales records as soon as it hits the shelves. KOTOR is a game that no Xbox owner will want to be without.

And speaking of things you can't live without, GameSpot is proud to present the biggest and best strategy guide that's available for Knights of the Old Republic. In the following pages, you will find:

• An insanely detailed walk-through, covering all of the main and optional quests on each of the game's seven massive planets
• A thorough overview of character creation, from the first level to the last, including detailed analysis of all of the skills, feats, and special Force powers that you'll use throughout your adventure
• Special strategies for mini-games, like Pazaak and swoop racing

As well as the proverbial "much, much more." Many Bothans died to bring us this information, so put it to good use. You'd be surprised at how much torture those little guys can take before they finally crack.

GameSpot paid subscribers have the privilege of downloading a searchable and printable version of our game guides. Our guides are in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format, and they're laid out so you can print them out and have them at your fingertips as you're playing.