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Zeschuk said that "Overall, we were really happy with the results. |
We felt like we had enough freedom to truly create something wonderful." |
Gallo said that BioWare and LucasArts were aiming for a gameplay time of around sixty hours: ""Baldur's Gate" was 100 hours of gameplay or more. "" |
was 200 hours, and the critical-path play through "Baldur's Gate 2" was 75 hours... We're talking smaller than that [for "Knights of the Old Republic"], dramatically, but even if it's 60 percent smaller, then it's still 100 hours. |
So our goal for gameplay time is 60 hours. |
We have so many areas that we're building--worlds, spaceships, things like that to explore--so we have a ton of gameplay." |
Project director Casey Hudson said that one of the greatest achievements and one of the greatest risks was the combat system. |
"We wanted to create something that combined the strategic aspects of our "Baldur's Gate" series and "Neverwinter Nights" but which presented it through fast, cinematic 3D action," Hudson said. |
"That required us to make something that hadn't really been done before." |
Creating the system was a daunting task, because of the many factors to cover, which were difficult to visualize. |
The developers intended to make the game have more open-ended gameplay. |
Gallo compared some situations to "Deus Ex": "You have several ways to get through an area and you might need a character who has a specific skill to do that." |
LucasArts and BioWare settled on developing "Knights of the Old Republic" for the PC and Xbox. |
The Xbox was chosen over other consoles because of BioWare's background of developing PC games and greater familiarity with the Xbox than other consoles: "We could do the things we wanted to do on the Xbox without as much effort as we'd need to do it on the PS2 or GameCube," Gallo said. |
Other factors included the console's recent success and the opportunity to release one of the Xbox's first RPGs. |
BioWare had previously developed "MDK2" for the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. |
Hudson said that "Having experience in developing for other consoles gave us the proper mindset for implementing this game on the Xbox, and, by comparison, the Xbox was relatively easy to develop for." |
Hudson did, however, note that there were some challenges during development. |
One of the difficulties was in deciding how much graphical detail to provide. |
"Since our games generally have a lot of AI and scripting, numerous character models, and huge environments, we stress the hardware in a very different way than most games," Hudson said. |
This made it difficult to predict how well the game would run. |
The game uses the Odyssey Engine, based on the Aurora Engine (previously developed by BioWare for use in "Neverwinter Nights") but completely rewritten for "Knights of the Old Republic". |
It was highly detailed for its time: grass waves in the wind, dust blows across Tatooine and puffs of sand rise as the player walks across the seabed. |
The choreography for the character animations was done using 3DS Max. |
Hudson noted that the differences between consoles and PCs mean that the graphics would have to be modified. |
"You typically play console games on a TV across the room while PC games are played on a monitor only inches away." |
Console games put effort into close-up action and overall render quality; PC games emphasize what can be done with high resolutions and super-sharp textures. |
Hudson also noted that the difference between a game controller and mouse-and-keyboard setup influenced some design decisions. |
The PC version features an additional location the player can visit and more NPCs, items, and weapons; these additions were later made available on the Xbox version through Xbox Live. |
The PC version supports higher display resolutions (up to 1600x1200) and has higher-resolution textures. |
While the main game, graphics engine and story were developed by BioWare, LucasArts worked on the game's audio. |
"Knights of the Old Republic" contains three hundred different characters and fifteen thousand lines of speech. |
"One complete copy of the "Knights of the Old Republic" script fills up 10 5-inch binders," voice department manager Darragh O'Farrell noted. |
A cast of around a hundred voice actors, including Ed Asner, Raphael Sbarge, Ethan Phillips, Jennifer Hale, and Phil LaMarr was assembled. |
"Fortunately, with a game this size, it's easy to have an actor play a few different characters and scatter those parts throughout the game so you'll never notice it's the same actor you heard earlier," O'Farrell said. |
Voice production started six months before the game's beta release. |
The voice production team were given the script 90% complete to work with. |
"There were a few changes made during recording, but most of the remaining 10 percent will be dealt with in our pickup session," O'Farrell said, "The pickup session is right at the end of the project, where we catch performance issues, tutorial lines, verbal hints, and anything else that we might have overlooked." |
A game the size of "Knights of the Old Republic" would typically take seven weeks to record; two weeks of recording all-day and all-night meant LucasArts was able to record all voices in five weeks. |
Actors were recorded one at a time, as the non-linear nature of the game meant it was too complicated and expensive to record more than one actor at a time. |
Most of the dialogue recorded was spoken in Galactic Basic (represented by English); however, around a tenth of the script was written in Huttese. |
Mike Gallo used Ben Burtt's "Star Wars: Galactic Phrase Book & Travel Guide" to translate English into Huttese. |
"The key to recording alien dialogue is casting the right actor for the part," O'Farrell said, "Over the years I've had actors take to Huttese like a fish to water, but the opposite is also true. |
In the past I've had to line-read (when an actor copies my performance) 150-plus Huttese lines to an actor in order to make it work." |
Award-winning composer Jeremy Soule was signed to compose the game's score. |
"It will be a "Star Wars" score, but it will all be original, and probably the things that will remain will be the Force themes and things like that," Gallo said. |
Soule was unable to write a full orchestral score for "Knights of the Old Republic" due to technical limitations: "At the time we only had an 8 megabit per second MIDI system. |
That was state of the art... |
I had to fool people into thinking they were hearing a full orchestra. |
I'd write woodwinds and drums, or woodwinds, horns and drums, or strings and drums and brass. |
I couldn't run the whole orchestra at once, it was impossible." |
When announced at E3 2001, "Knights of the Old Republic" was initially scheduled for a late 2002 release. |
In August 2002 it was announced on the game's forums that its release had been delayed: the Xbox version was to be released in spring 2003 and the PC version in summer 2003. |
A further delay was announced in January 2003, with both versions of the game expected to be released in fall 2003. |
Zeschuk attributed the delay to BioWare's focus on quality: "Our goal is to always deliver a top-notch gameplay experience, and sometimes it can be very difficult to excel in all areas. |
We keep working on tackling each individual issue until we feel we've accomplished something special." |
The Xbox version of "Knights of the Old Republic" went gold on July 9, 2003, with a release date of July 15. |
It sold 250,000 copies in the first four days of its release, making "Knights of the Old Republic" the fastest-selling Xbox title at the time of its release. |
Following the game's release, it was announced that free downloadable content would be available through Xbox Live at the end of the year. |
The PC version of the game went gold on November 11, 2003, and was released on November 18. |
It was re-released as part of the "" collection in 2006. |
The game was released on Steam on May 14, 2012, for Mac OS X. |
The game was released for the iPad on May 30, 2013. |
The iPad version includes the Yavin Station DLC that was previously released for Xbox and PC. |
The game was released as DRM-free download on GoG.com in October 2014. |
The game was also launched on Android's Google Play Store on December 22, 2014. |
In October 2017, Microsoft made the Xbox One console backward compatible with the Xbox version of the game, as part of a 13-game curated catalogue. |
After its release on July 15, 2003, the first Xbox shipment of "Knights of the Old Republic" sold out within four days on shelves, which amounted to 250,000 sales during that period. |
This made it the console's fastest-ever seller at the time of its launch. |
The game ultimately sold 270,000 copies in its initial two weeks and was ranked by The NPD Group as the #2 best-selling console game of its debut month across all platforms. |
It fell to the 8th position on NPD's sales chart for August and was absent by September. |
Worldwide sales reached 600,000 copies by October. |
In the United States alone, the Xbox version of "Knights of the Old Republic" sold 1.3 million copies and earned $44 million by July 2006. |
It also received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom. |
Following its launch in November 2003, the computer version of "Knights" became the third-best-selling computer title of its debut week, according to NPD. |
Although it dropped out of NPD's weekly top 10 by its third week, it claimed sixth place in computer game sales for November overall, and ninth for December. |
It returned to the weekly top 10 during the December 28 – January 3 period but was absent again on the next week's chart. |
NPD ultimately declared it the 17th-best-selling computer game of 2004. |
By August 2006, the computer version had sold 470,000 copies and earned $14.7 million in the United States alone. |
"Edge" ranked it as the country's 32nd-best-selling computer game released between January 2000 and August 2006. |
Total sales of the game's Xbox and computer releases surpassed 2 million copies by February 2005 and 2.5 million by May and reached nearly 3 million by March 2006. |
As of 2007, "Knights of the Old Republic" had sold 3.2 million units. |
"Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" received "universal acclaim" according to review aggregator Metacritic, and won numerous awards, including Game Developers Choice Awards' 2004 game of the year, BAFTA Games Awards' best Xbox game of the year, and Interactive Achievement Awards for best console RPG and best computer RPG. |
"Knights of the Old Republic" has seen success as the game of the year from many sources including IGN, Computer Gaming World, PC Gamer, "GMR", The Game Developers Choice Awards, "Xbox Magazine", and G4. |
"Computer Games Magazine" named it the best computer game of 2003, and presented it with awards for "Best Original Music" and "Best Writing." |
The editors wrote, "The elegance and accessibility that BioWare made part-and-parcel of this game should be the future standard for this genre." |
According to the review aggregator Metacritic, the PC version received an average score of 93 based on 33 reviews. |
In total, the game has won over 40 game of the year awards from various publications. |
Interactive Achievement Awards awarded it for Best Story and Best Character Development. |
IGN gave "KotOR" additional awards in Best Sound (Xbox category), Best Story (PC category), Xbox RPG of the Year 2003, PC RPG of the Year 2003, Xbox Game of the Year 2003, PC Game of the Year 2003, and Overall Game of the Year 2003 across all platforms. |
In 2007, IGN listed it at #27 on its list of the Top 100 Games of All-Time. |
In 2010, IGN placed the game at #3 on its Best games of the Decade (2000–2009), beaten by "Shadow of the Colossus" and "Half-Life 2". |
At the 2004 Game Developers Choice Awards, HK-47 won the category of "Original Game Character of the Year." |
In 2007, the plot twist in "KotOR" was ranked number two in "Game Informer" list of the top ten video game plot twists of all time and number 10 on ScrewAttack's "Top 10 OMGWTF Moments." |
The game is also part of The Xbox Platinum Series/Classics for sales in excess of 1 million units. |
The "Los Angeles Times" listed "Knights of the Old Republic" as one of the most influential works of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. |
In 2010, "Game Informer" named the game the 54th best game on their Top 200 Games of All Time list. |
In November 2012, "Time" named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time. |
In early 2017, plot elements from the game were referenced in the animated TV series "Star Wars Rebels" such as the Mandalorian Wars and the ancient Sith planet Malachor. |
Additionally, Darth Revan was set to appear in the "Ghost of Mortis" arc in "" but this was cut though a deleted scene of it does exist. |
Subsets and Splits