Lightsabers. Check

Wookiees. Check.

Millennium Falcon-like spaceship. Check.

Compelling story. Check.

In covering those four bases, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is not only providing one of the very best interactive Star Wars experiences, but it's tapped into the very soul of the Star Wars universe that drew hundreds of millions of fans to the franchise in the first place. Developed by Bioware, Knights of the Old Republic is stronger with The Force than any George Lucas-powered movie that's come out in the last 20 years and lands on the Xbox as one of the very best titles the system has to offer.

There's tons of character development, a combat probability system and a giant inventory to manage, so I guess KOTOR gets clearance as a role-playing game. But as both an RPG and a Star Wars title, it strikes a marvelous balance of hardcore authenticity and accessibility for the uninitiated. Pen and paper players can check the log of dice rolls used to calculate the success rate of every trigger pull or lightsaber swing. Freddy Fanboy can geek out for hours at how well the Jawa language has been adapted for a videogame. And even the coolest of the cool hip kids will be able to see the appeal of swinging double lightsabers and choking fools from across the room.

It all begins with a rock solid story that really does begin a long long time ago....

Strategy Guide Available! Embrace your destiny with the most in-depth KOTOR guide available! Everything you need to become the next Dark Lord of the Sith or the savior of the Republic! Character creation, leveling up, how to choose your path to Light or Darkness, weapons, items, the art of conversation, and mini-games explained! The perfect starter!

This is Star Wars

Normally setting a Star Wars game 4000 years before the events of the movies we all know, would be a recipe for mediocrity. How many times have we seen a LucasArts game where the adventure is set somewhere "just next door" to what we know from the films, so we're getting to see what Lando or Obi Wan does when he's not hanging out with the superstars of the galaxy like Vader, Leia or that Hoth medical droid. But you've got to hand it to Bioware for mimicking the entire feel of the first Star Wars movie but with original characters and an original storyline.

All of the standards and paradigms of the Star Wars universe --Jedi vs Sith, bureaucracy and politics-- are present in this game and both the gameplay and storyline work within those guidelines. You begin the game as a soldier who simply happens to be strong with The Force and throughout the game you're developing your skills as a Jedi, making decisions that not only affect your leanings to the Dark Side or the Light Side of the force but will also determine how your game's story unfolds. We could tell you exactly how the story for our created characters went and still not ruin the majority of your experience because stories branch and spread all over the place before coming back to a handful of very specific and critical crossroads, but it all fits within the Star Wars universe that we all know and love. We figured we'd just give you a few highlights.

Before you're done with KOTOR, you will:

train at the Jedi Academy which includes learning the Jedi Code and the meaning behind a lightsaber's color.

walk into a cantina on Tattoine where the bartender won't like you...and the bounty hunters won't like you either!

find somebody's lack of faith disturbing.

explore the forest world of Kashyyk and see what "Return of the Jedi" was supposed to look like if we'd had Wookiees instead of Ewoks in treetop villages

face your former master again after all these years.

space-walk on the surface of a battleship

There are multiple side missions that will help expand your understanding of the story as well. So in Knights you may: