Please do not read this post if you intend to play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR). There's a fantastic moment of game narrative that caught me completely by surprise, and I would hate to spoil it for you. Click here to skip to the previous post.

However, if you have played KOTOR, please read on and feel free to share your own thoughts.


On a seemingly average Tuesday, I had an hour or two to kill before class. Too restless for TV, I turned to my favorite pastime: gaming. I booted up KOTOR with the goal of getting through a lengthy quest on Korriban.

An hour later, I was deeply engrossed in the game. The seemingly ordinary task on Korriban had turned into a rather interesting quest concerning multiple tombs in the Valley of the Dark Lords. By the time I left Korriban, I had met a host of interesting characters, from the ghost of a Sith lord to a droid that was hyper-sensitive to sounds.

As I flew to the next planet, I was shocked to find my ship pulled into a tractor beam. Suddenly, we had been captured and our entire fate was dependent on one character. I had to play solo to free my fellow adventurers. This new quest sounded quite fun, so I decided to play a little longer, foregoing my usual makeup routine.

No sooner had I rescued my characters than further developments unfolded, and I found myself bargaining for more time. I resolved to buy food instead of taking the time to make a sandwich. I worked my way through the level, searching each room and taking out the enemies. I had just beaten a boss and was running to my ship. Nearly home free, I was convinced I would stop once I had reached that safe point.

Then it hit me. It was possibly the biggest OMG moment in the entire game. Darth Malak had stopped me and mocked me with a grave truth: I was Darth Revan, the other half of the sinister pair that I had been fighting the entire game. My mouth dropped open in shock. It was simply brilliant.

I continued through the conversation, clicking through the dialogue with a stupid grin on my face. The writers had fooled me with one incredibly clever twist. I was thrilled.

Riding on this high, I suddenly noticed the time and had to race out the door and drive to school, still in shock. I ran into horrible traffic and was late to class, but I didn't care. I had just experienced one of my greatest moments in gaming. Fortunately, I was driving to a game design class full of people who would understand, or so I thought.

"I saw it coming," claimed one of my friends. How could it seem so simple to him and yet so brilliantly hidden to me? As I talked with him, I began to see how I had assumed that Revan was a male from the beginning, so it never occurred to me that my female character could be the same person. Even though Revan was carefully hidden in cloaks, my assumption had allowed me to be taken completely by surprise. He had played as a male character in the presence of roommates who dropped hints now and then.

Fantastic OMG moments in games can seem like pure genius when set up properly, but games aren't played in a vacuum. Gamers form a community that seems to thrive on rumors of the latest game and fans love to drool over the newest trailer. In a game development setting, some employees pick up games as soon as they come out and avidly discuss the finer points the next day. If you wait until the price drops, you will likely overhear gossip that spoils the delicate secrets of a game.

KOTOR's big reveal was incredibly satisfying for me because it caught me completely by surprise. Playing a game long past its prime kept me shielded from the spoilers and blissfully ignorant of its amazing twist. In a culture that thrives on the rapid spread of knowledge, I hope that writers continue to weave in twists that catch players off guard. It's the OMG moments that make the other 10-30 hours worthwhile.  

When I tell people how much I've been enjoying Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO), they often stare and me in shock and say, "But there's no PvP!" Well, yes and no. There is no PvP in the normal play modes. You can challenge other players to a duel, but that's about it. However, there is a light PvP mode called Monster Play.

I'm not the type of player that thrives on PvP experiences, but I'm always curious about them. LotRO had a particularly interesting system with Monster Play, a separate mode where you begin as a max-level monster. You can fight against max-level player characters from the normal mode of the game in a special area (Ettenmoors). Originally, I expected a system that would be balanced in my favor (I would win easily against a max-level character from the normal mode). Unfortunately, I found that I was at a disadvantage. While my morale (health points) and power (mana/magic points) were equal to the stats of other players, my opponents had spent hours acquiring a vast array of skills they had mastered. As an Uruk-hai, I began with a handful of skills that were relatively weak and I couldn't heal myself. While I was familiar with the game and controls, I felt clumsy compared to my opponents. Also, I couldn't boost my stats through armor and other upgrades.

The odd thing about Monster Play is how closely it resembles normal play. It uses the same UI, just covered with a new skin. You can follow a single-player path by going on quests given out by NPCs. Some of these quests were very easy, but others seemed quite difficult without companions. I went on one quest to steal food from hobbits. I thought, as a giant Uruk-hai, I could easily take on one or two hobbits. I snuck into the camp, defeated one max-level hobbit who put up a stong fight, and set my sights on a stack of food. It was surrounded by a couple hobbits. My plan was to run in, fight a bit, grab the food, and run out. To my surprise, as soon as I ran in, I was surrounded by a crowd of hobbits within 10 seconds. I watched my "powerful" monster die mercilessly at the chubby little hands of NPCs that looked like children compared to him.

My major issue with watching myself get killed by hobbits was the fact that, as a monster, I expected to feel powerful. I wanted the game to be balanced in my favor and I didn't want to get bested by a bunch of measly NPC hobbits. I didn't expect the game to be easy, but it seems ridiculous to require you to group as a monster. That the game implies that PvP should be a bunch of monsters grouping to fight against strong NPCs or against groups of players from the normal mode. Probably the strangest aspect of Monster Play was how few player-controlled opponents I saw in the area. This meant that there were mainly groups of monsters going up against ridiculously powerful NPCs (such as a Captain with 137,000 morale) to capture forts on the map. I really didn't see the point.

Even more pointless than capturing points over and over again was the fact that I could gain no experience from those difficult quests. Instead, I could gain traits, deeds, titles, and destiny points. I understand that it my be an incentive for some people, but I would much rather take the time to earn those achievements on a character I really enjoy playing, such as my elf lore-master. Perhaps I'm just non competitive enough to enjoy this mode. Whether or not that's true, it seems that the PvP mode is the one area of the game where Turbine faltered. They set the standard too high in the normal mode, and I was expecting something better.