Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Update

We had a chance to meet with BioWare at the ongoing Game Developers Conference to get an updated look at Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, its upcoming RPG set 4,000 years prior to the events seen in Star Wars: Episode I. The game has come quite a ways since our last look at it. The team has managed to refine the graphics and general presentation, as well as tighten up several elements of the gameplay. While Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is still a few months from release, we're quite pleased by how the game is coming together.

Knights of the Old Republic gives you a wide range of combat options, allowing you to choose between real-time and turn-based combat.

During our earlier experiences with the game, Knights of the Old Republic's combat system was still in a very embryonic form and a bit difficult to properly gauge. The build we saw at the GDC featured a fully realized combat system that should be accessible to a wide variety of players. The core of the combat system is rules-based and should be familiar to fans of the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars game. If you aren't familiar with these rules, don't fret--the game offers plenty of help in the form of in-game cues and instructional text in the menus. But you'll actually have several ways to experience combat. Your primary choice is in real time, which is fairly self-explanatory--you'll simply deal with your foes in a real-time battle by selecting your attack commands from a context-sensitive menu. The options available on the menu will vary according to your character's ability and your proximity to your foe. Your second option is tied to your ability to pause the game at any time during a battle, which gives you time to choose your method of attack more carefully. The final option is a variation on the aforementioned pause method but brings the game closer to the standard turn-based structure seen in traditional console RPGs. While you'll be able to customize the pause options in a number of ways, you'll basically be able to have the game pause between the actions of the combatants. This option actually changes the dynamics of a fight considerably, turning battles into more-strategic experiences. The option to think things through a bit more carefully affords you a better chance of making it through a fight without sustaining as much damage as you would by wading into one in real time.

KOTOR's item system will let you enhance your lightsaber, among other things.

Another component of the game that is now more fully realized is the robust item system, which will offer more than 300 items to use such as weapons, armor, and support items. We also got a look at the workbench in the Ebon Hawke--your ship and base of operations in the game--where you can customize and upgrade your weapons using various crystals you'll collect in the game. Besides offering the expected stat upgrades, the crystals also let you customize the appearance of weapons, such as the blade on your lightsaber.