Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Message Board

In May of this year, one of the greatest Star Wars stories ever told made the jump from PC and old consoles to the iPad. Today Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic finally went universal, with a host of new features to welcome iPhone and iPod Touch players into the fold. Read more...

Like Darth Maul moments after angering Liam Neeson, the price attached to the iOS version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has been sliced in half.

Originally $10, the surprisingly faithful remake of the classic BioWare roleplaying game will now set you back $5. The only caveat being that you must have an iPad 2 (or a later model) and at least 2.5GB of free storage space.

Neither Apple nor publisher EA has offered a reason for the app's discount.

Apple's celebration of the iOS App Store's five year anniversary continues with more free/discounted games with which to smudge up that capacitive touchscreen. In addition to the stuff that was made free yesterday, Chopper, Peggle, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Flight Control and Angry Birds Star Wars are now available at no cost.

Moreover, the iPad version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has been discounted to $5, though its mysterious monetary adjustment may not be directly related to Apple's festivities. As a result, there's no telling how long that particular discount will last. Jump past the break for all the applicable iTunes links.

This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is the kind of game that's almost too big to be playing on the iPad. It's easily 30 hours long, with extensive attribute, skill, and combat systems, and it has some of the best storytelling BioWare's ever done, all set in the epic pre-film Star Wars universe. This is a monster of a classic game, and like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Baldur's Gate before it, it seems like cheating to play this game on Apple's touchscreen tablet, like you're somehow breaking the laws of mobile gaming physics, if such a school even exists.

And yet, it works. Aspyr Media is the company responsible here. It's been porting games to the Mac for a long time, and with Knights of the Old Republic has decided to start bringing what it calls "catalog Mac experiences" to iOS. Presumably, the rights were snagged from BioWare and LucasArts, and now there's a very well-made $9.99 port of one of the best Star Wars games ever assembled, running on the iPad.

It's the 10th anniversary of one of the greatest Star Wars video games ever made, and BioWare has teamed up with Aspyr Media to bring Knights of the Old Republic to the iPad, a gift to the series' devoted fans. Well, a gift to the series' most devoted fans who also own an iPad — the rest of them may have just been gifted with the desperate urge to give Apple several hundred dollars. It may not coerce many of the mouse and keyboard Jedi, currently enjoying the similarly low price of $9.99 for the Steam version of Knights of the Old Republic, but for me there may be no going back. I've tried to really get into the game since my initial play-throughs way back in 2003 on the original Xbox, but I've not felt that original compulsion until I could hold the game in my hands, navigating Sara "Randomly Generated" Starcrod and friends with a flick of my fingers. This is the full version of the original game. The only tweaks made were with the controls, because touchscreen. The graphics might look a bit sharper, but that's just because older games always look better on a smaller screen. It's an illusion I gladly accept. This is BioWare at its best, or at least its best in the early 2000's. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a feast of compelling characters, heavy moral decisions that make a real impact, and the old emotional engagement. While the visuals and animations aren't all that impressive in the face of ten years of progress, the voice acting and story is just as amazing as it was when the game still had that wonderful freshly-opened game case scent. I had almost completely forgotten how much I missed some of these characters... ...and detested others. I play Light Side of the Force generally, but if I ever go dark, you can be sure Carth Onasi is to blame. Call me by a pet name one more time, Carth, and see how many innocents I kill. So yes, this is Knights of the Old Republic, a classic piece of interactive Star Wars that launched an entirely new era for the franchise. I am not here to review the original classic — you should have played it already, at least enough to know the big twist at the end — you are really Chewbacca. No, I am here to review the iPad port, and aside from a little clumsiness with the movement controls, I'm having more fun with Knights of the Old Republic than I have in years. Branching dialogues are handled via numbered responses, with choices appearing on the right side of the screen, convenient to your thumb, should you have one. When enemies come into view the game pauses, giving the player time to pick a target and select a series of actions. Hit go, and your character will perform those actions, after which you can add more or just let auto-attack sort things out. It works quite well. In fact, most of the game mechanics work incredibly well, with the exceptions of movement. Movement is handled by using your thumb to move the camera, and then pushing forward to make your character move in that direction. In wide open spaces it's not too back, but in cramped quarters I found myself getting stuck behind Mission, Zaalbar and Carth quite often. I suspect Carth was doing it on purpose, because Carth is an ass. The biggest boon of the touchscreen version of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is definitely menu navigation. Adding touch to these tweaked versions of the original menus gives the whole affair a sci-fi datapad feeling. Makes me want to play wearing a Lobot headset. Playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on the iPad is like curling up with a dog-eared copy of a beloved book. It's a more personal and immediate means of tripping through a galaxy far away a long, long, long, long time ago. While the overall experience is largely unchanged, those tiny moments between you, Mission Vao, and a raging Rancor beast are much more intimate when you can touch the screen sadly before searching for a FAQ on the internet to aid your failing memory. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Genre: Role-PlayingDeveloper: BioWare, Aspyr Media Platform: iPadPrice: $9.99 Get Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in iTunes

Classic BioWare RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is coming to iPad, as revealed by a review that came seemingly out of nowhere on IGN. The site mentions the pause-and-play combat works great, while character movement is clunky.

No price or release date is mentioned. We're awaiting more details from our bothan spy team, but we're afraid they've been lost. Our second option is details from publisher Electronic Arts.

Speaking with RockPaperShotgun, Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart said that the studio is lobbying to develop a new Star Wars game for LucasArts, now wholly owned by Disney. The game the studio is pitching wouldn't take place in the same time period as Knights of the Old Republic, though, as Urquhart views this as a bad pitch since The Old Republic didn't perform exceedingly well.

Obsidian’s legendary/notorious Star Wars RPG is currently on a daily deal sale 75% at £1.74/$2.49 off until Friday 6pm GMT/Saturday 10am PST, likely the cheapest it’ll ever be on Steam. For that reason, today I’ll be providing a guide to getting the Steam edition of Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords working well on modern machines.

Widescreen resolutions, extra content, crash-dodging – this will make the infamously unfinished but ambitious and wonderfully-written RPG look and play far better than it did upon release.(more…)

In the early 2000s, two Western role-playing games grabbed the genre and shoved it into new and surprisingly popular directions. Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002) and BioWare's Knights Of The Old Republic (2003) modernized RPGs' technology, expanded the audience, and created the two most popular models for the genre moving forward.

Before these two games were released, the term Computer Role-Playing Game (CRPG) was commonly used to describe the games in this column. Ultima, Wizardry, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, these all came out on computers (at least initially), with DOS/Windows becoming the computer platform of choice as the decade progressed. But Morrowind and KOTOR were designed and released for the Xbox - and they succeeded there. The realm of console RPGs was opened to very different styles of game from the Final Fantasies which had dominated. This successful move opened entirely new modes of money-making, allowing BioWare and Bethesda to become some of the biggest developers in gaming overall.

He is the droid you're looking for.

Much like a fine wine and some sort of stinky cheese, Stiq Flicks takes a look at a recent video game release and pairs it with a film.

We're entering the doldrums in the yearly video game release schedule, when the waters have calmed and the wind has stopped blowing. It's all in preparation for the busy holiday gaming season that appears to have spilled over into August, with games like Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders 2, Guild Wars 2, and more brightening the end of summer.

With that in mind, we're taking a look at something a little different this week. In case you never experienced the goodness of a Star Wars game done well, the Knights of the Old Republic I and II PC Bundle Pack is out now, providing two classic games in one $19.99 package. Sure, they aren't new, but both games provide a classic experience that still holds up today.

Since the light game season inspired us to go retro for the game, let's dip into the archives for the accompanying movie. Our movie pairing to accompany this retro release might not hold up as well as a KOTOR title, but it's a classic nonetheless. Video game movies are nothing new, and over the course we'll hit on some of the best from years past (including Joysticks, a personal favorite that is a terrible blend of Porky's and video games) but what we've chosen to accompany this double-pack is the 1984 classic film Cloak & Dagger.

It appears an as-yet-unannounced Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Collection will launch on July 17, according to a GameStop listing. We called a store representative and confirmed that a KOTOR collection is in their system, and is listed as a PC-exclusive title for $20.

The first game in the series (developed by BioWare) was released to critical acclaim in July 2003 for Xbox, and later for PC. KOTOR came to Mac via Steam just a few months ago. Obsidian developed the game's sequel, which launched on Xbox in December 2004.

We've reached out to LucasArts for more details on the collection.

[Thanks, Josh!]

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