Yet 2003 holds an even larger prize for Xbox and PC gamers, a game so significant that its developer has called it one of most involved titles it’s ever undertaken (especially in the audio category). And coming from BioWare, the team behind Neverwinter Nights and the Baldur’s Gate series, those statements are not to be taken lightly.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is huge, whether you choose to look at it in scope, ambition or genre-altering ways. The first-ever Star Wars role-playing game, Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is currently set to release in Spring 2003 for Xbox and Summer 2003 for PC. Taking place on nearly a dozen unique worlds on which players will encounter Sith, scoundrels and side quests, the game’s producers estimate the game will take 40 to 60 hours to complete. And that’s just playing it through on one side of the Force.

But before we get ahead of ourselves – and that’s easy to do with a game of this magnitude — it’s imperative to back up, explore the game’s individual elements and discuss the pieces that will likely make KOTOR the game that rebuilds gamers’ faith that Star Wars can move, immerse and entertain them in a galaxy far, far away.

The Story
KOTOR takes place 4,000 years before the rise of the Galactic Empire, at a time when the Republic is at its most vulnerable state. Facing brutal attacks by the Mandalorians, the Republic sought the help of the Jedi Council, which sent two young Jedi, Revan and Malak, to assist. After a long, bloody war, the forces under Revan and Malak’s command sealed victory for the Republic, and all appeared balanced once again.

Yet Revan and Malak themselves had lost their balance, finding in the Outer Rim the secrets of the Sith and the tempting power of the Dark Side. Succumbing to this power, Revan and Malak built a grand Sith army from young Republic mutineers, sacking dozens of the Republic’s most distant territories. Though Republic forces succeeded in killing Darth Revan, Malak managed to escape and vowed revenge on the people responsible for his master’s death.

And so the story begins. The game starts in the Core Worlds, the planets farthest from Malak’s reign of terror and closest to the training you’ll need before encountering dark Sith masters. As the game progresses, Malak’s forces will make their way closer to the core while your character and party make their way toward their confrontation with evil.

It’s a classic Star Wars storyline, one that takes you from planet to planet and lets you develop your character from innocent bystander to seasoned warrior. Yet it’s also a storyline that will present gamers with scenarios that test their mettle, their dedication to the Republic, and, ultimately, their will to reject (or embrace) the Dark Side of the Force.

The Characters
As you’d expect from any substantial RPG, Knights of the Old Republic features a veritable quandary of character-customization when you start your game. You can alternately choose to have the game “recommend” a character for you, letting you jump straight into the action with appropriate class and ability statistics determined for you.

The first customization option you’ll face is which character class you’d like to be: Scoundrel, Scout and Soldier. In each case, your primary character is always human.

Scoundrels are physically weak but small, fast and stealthy. Due to their weakness, scoundrels have the least amount of vitality points (health/hit points) but compensate for this with the best defense class (armor) in the game. They also have access to the most skill points in the game, which you can assign to various attributes upon leveling up.

Scouts are technical experts and quite capable in computers and demolition. They can also use surgical implants to enhance their abilities, which is a definite bonus given that their combat skills are average, at best.

Soldiers are, as you’d expect, the game’s toughest class (most vitality points), have the best combat abilities and can accumulate the most feats (special abilities) of any of the three classes. Soldiers also have the most vitality points and grow most quickly in combat proficiency.

With class in hand, you’re then able to determine the appearance of your character, from slight build, medium build and large build all the way down to race/ethnicity, armor, weapon preference and clothing style.

As you progress through the game you’ll be able to assign your experience points to eight different skills: Awareness (your perception of your surroundings and danger), Computer Programming (your ability to hack), Demolitions (disarming mines and making things go boom), Persuasion (a good ol’ Force trick when you’re low on blasters), Repair (technical prowess to fix droids and equipment), Security (need to pick a lock?), Stealth (just like Old Ben behind the reactor in Episode IV), and Treat Injury (an impromptu, from-the-fingers med kit).

Any successful Star Wars story (and RPG, for that matter) relies on a cohesive team to make its way through the game, and KOTOR is no exception. As you visit different worlds and encounter various life forms, you’ll be able to recruit two additional non-playable characters to join your party. These characters all bring with them their own unique sets of traits and abilities, meaning the composition of your three-person party can have a significant effect on your success or failure.

Your entire party will be fully realized, meaning they can form friendships or develop a romance with your character, argue among themselves and, if the going gets really tough, turn on the party altogether. Generally speaking, though, you’ll have complete control over these characters, including how you assign their experience points when they level up.

Two of the characters presumably at your disposal as NPC party members are Jolee Bindo and Bastila Shan. Jolee Bindo may appear ready for retirement, but his smuggling past and rumors of Jedi training make him a formidable ally for your adventure. Bastila Shan, on the other hand, is a spry young Jedi who can, through sheer will, influence the outcome of an encounter. Extremely powerful, she can be a very helpful party member – presuming her youthful ambition doesn’t draw her to the power of the Dark Side.

The Battles
Combat in Knights of the Old Republic has been perhaps one of the most misunderstood elements of the game, and it’s one that both LucasArts and BioWare have been struggling to explain since the game was first announced. This is due, in part, to the fact that this specific combat system was honed specifically for use in KOTOR.

Battles will be a unique combination of rules-based and real-time fighting. As you enter a fight, you will determine the main actions you want your primary character and entire party to undertake. When the battle gets underway, they will perform those actions to the best of their rules-based abilities. You can also choose to micromanage individual members of your party or let the capable AI do the work for you.

Given the large number of Force powers, weapons and items at your disposal, plus the need to control a party of three characters, battles in KOTOR will not only be strategic, but also quite frantic despite the lack of any literal control over the individual swings of a lightsaber.

Given that KOTOR gives players control over the camera, gamers will be able to pan around the battle as it takes place, making it will take on a cinematic quality that wouldn’t be possible had players needed to concentrate on each shot of the blaster or slash of the saber. With all the parrying, flips and blaster-bolt deflection going on (all based on abilities and rules, of course), KOTOR battles promise to rival those of the original trilogy and prequel films.

The Weapons
OK, so everyone will probably want to slice and dice with the lightsaber and do little else in the weapons department. If you count yourself among that party, you can rest assured that you’ll not only have access to two-bladed sabers and be able to wield two at once, but you’ll also be able to customize your lightsaber to your heart’s content.

Each lightsaber has three different slots for crystals, one of which determines the saber’s color, the other two of which control various power-related upgrades: the ability to slice through metal and therefore droids, the ability to widen the beam and better deflect blaster shots, or the overall ability to increase energy output and make a stronger all-purpose saber.

If lightsabers aren’t your bag of tea, you’ll also be able to choose from a wide variety of Star Wars friendly weapons, including blaster rifles, vibroblades, gaffi sticks, grenades and, if we’re lucky, a bowcaster or two.

The Force
Of course, no discussion of a Star Wars arsenal would be complete without mentioning Force powers, and Knights of the Old Republic has more than 40 of them. KOTOR’s plethora of Force powers ranges from offensive powers like Choke, Whirlwind and Lightning to defensive powers such as Force Shield, Energy Resistance and Heal.

Still other Force Powers simply enhance your abilities, such as Knight Speed and Master Focus, the latter of which presumably resembles Bullet Time on Max Payne (and the similar slow-motion power from Obi-Wan on the Xbox).

Naturally, some Force powers lend themselves better to characters closer to the Dark Side than the Light (choke, anyone?), but that’s not to say only Dark Jedi can constrict a man’s esophagus. Quite the contrary, all Force powers are available to everyone (presuming you have attained the appropriate level and received the necessary training), but certain powers work more efficiently if the character is of the proper alignment.

Choke, for example, consumes fewer of your character’s Force points if you’re aligned with the Dark Side. If you’re on the Light Side, you’ll still be able to take an enemy’s breath away, but the move will use more of your Force points. Using such a power will also bump you one step closer to the Dark Side, which has noticeable consequences on the subquests available to you and the people who will speak with you.

Every action you take and conversation you have in the game has an affect on your specific experience, and using Force Powers is clearly no exception to that rule. Use them wisely. And watch out for enemy Jedi; they’ll use the Force against you, too, and if you’re not appropriately leveled-up, prepare for one heck of a ride.

The Worlds
If ever a game was to let players explore the Star Wars universe, Knights of the Old Republic is that game. Although the game will maintain a distinct plot with your character at the center of it all, the subquests and expansive worlds will encourage gamers to explore the game’s 10 different worlds as much or as little as they want.

This exploration will of course involve some travel through hyperspace, so while traveling through your KOTOR itinerary, you’ll not only become fast friends with the map in your spacecraft, you’ll become extremely familiar with the craft itself.

The Ebon Hawk serves as your homebase in KOTOR, as well as a storage facility, training ground, minigame headquarters and, on occasion, love chamber (OK, so the latter is just a guess. But there’s got to be a quiet room somewhere).

Using their ship’s navigation computer (similar to the onboard map in the PC game Sea Dogs), players will choose which planet is next on their journey. While most of the time between planets will be illustrated through the use of movies, on occasion you can expect to pass some of the time by honing your abilities with the onboard training droid or playing a minigame or two.

One minigame that’s sure to make an appearance puts you in the Ebon Hawk’s turrets and requires you to shoot down incoming craft a la the Millennium Falcon scene from Episode IV: A New Hope. Although BioWare once commented that the development team had mentioned the chess game played by R2D2 and Chewbacca, there’s been no official word whether that minigame will make it into KOTOR (we can only hope).

The worlds on your journey will vary widely, from the forested Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk to the former Sith stronghold of Korriban. On Kashyyk, ancient forests reach for the sky, with villages and entire bases gathered among, above and within the towering trees. On Korriban, an entirely different environment awaits, with desolate shack-like spaceports and imposing Sith apprentices wandering the Valley of the Dark Lords.

Other worlds include Manaan, a small planet whose surface is entirely covered by water; Dantooine, home to the Jedi Academy; and Tatooine, the familiar arid planet of Star Wars movie fame. Taken with the two worlds mentioned above, these diverse planetscapes comprise just half of the environments you’ll encounter throughout the game, and the enemies and NPCs you’ll find on each will vary just as widely.

The Outlook
With all of the above elements woven into the immense, immersive storyline that BioWare delivers best, KOTOR is set to be not only one of the best RPGs on any platform, but one of the best Star Wars titles ever. For hardcore Star Wars fans, the game will even answer an important, as-yet-unrevealed question related to the origin of the Sith army.

Though Xbox Live support has not been announced, we have a sneaking suspicion that BioWare has something up its sleeve. The game’s producers have confirmed that KOTOR will have no multiplayer options, but both BioWare and LucasArts remain deafeningly quiet on the downloadable-level, -character or -weaponry front. The only response: “Xbox Live support is certainly an interesting idea, but we haven't announced anything as of yet.”

Only time will tell if the game will include any online functionality, but one thing’s for certain: rest up now, boys and girls, because when spring and summer 2003 roll around, you’re going to lose a lot of sleep to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.