69: Taris Pt. 1 (Knights of the Old Republic 01)

Listen to this episode from A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast on Spotify. An even longer time ago, in a galaxy approximately the same level of far, far away, there was Knights of the Old Republic, a Computer Role-Playing Game based on D&D's D20 system. Natalie and Rob never heard the story of Darth Malak, probably because it is not a story the Jedi would tell you. But Bioware, back in 2003, told everyone this story and along the way invented the kind of RPG the game studio would be known and renowned for across the next two decades. It is unintentionally sad but unsurprising that on the week we start our playthrough of KOTOR, BioWare had another round of layoffs that pushed some of the people who made this game and many others out of a company they did so much to build, and our thoughts and well-wishes are with those folks and we hope we can do their contributions some justice as we play through KOTOR. As for this episode, we discuss the opening tutorial and the characters we created, as well as the party's initial crash landing on the planet Taris. We cover some of the early missions and people you meet, but stop short of descending to the lower levels. We haven't picked out a walkthrough we would recommend for folks but DO NOT CONSULT WOOKIEEPEDIA. For some reason every article touching on the contents of this game contains major plot spoilers upfront.