Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the game that put BioWare on the map for people who thought Baldur’s Gate was the thing that kept Baldur’s dog in Baldur’s yard, has an incredible twist. Unfortunately, I knew about it ahead of time because of the internet, but if you haven’t played it yet—it’s an old game, but young people exist and not everyone has time for everything—then this is me warning you to play it before somebody spoils it for you.
(If you just want to know what it is, you can spoil it for yourself by reading the fourth slide in this article about PC gaming’s greatest twists.)
Jennifer Hale, the voice actor playing Jedi Master Bastila Shan in Knights of the Old Republic, did not know the twist in advance. As is often the case in videogame recording, she didn’t get to see the script until she was in the booth. “We never got our scripts ahead of time”, Hale recently told Buzzfeed. “Most of the games I’ve ever done have been cold reading. I walk in, and I see the line. I do the line, and it goes to market.”
And so she got to be as shocked as most players were when she got to the end. “I did not see the twist coming!” she said. “Knights of the Old Republic really showed me the level of writing, storytelling, and surprise that was possible in games. It was so adventurous and forward-thinking and incredible. It completely shocked me. I remember just being gobsmacked by this game so many times because I didn’t see it ahead of time.”
The other thing she didn’t know is that her character could turn to the dark side. “This was my first experience with the light side and dark side”, she said. “I first did all the light-side story, and I got to feel fantastic. I got to feel like the big hero, and it was so much fun. Then I came back in, and I was a little bit confused. I wasn’t exactly sure what we were doing.”
As would later be the case with Mass Effect’s paragon and renegade paths, Hale essentially had to play two different characters so players had the freedom to choose how things would go. But unlike Mass Effect’s tough-cop renegade, Bastila Shan can be a full-on villain. “Ginny McSwain and Darragh O’Farrell were our voice directors, and they told me, ‘It’s the same stuff, but you’re doing it this way now.’ I went, ‘What? She what?’ I almost felt personally betrayed.”
In 2021, Aspyr announced it was working on a KOTOR remake. A year later, we heard it was indefinitely delayed, though as recently as March of 2025 there were signs of life. Fortunately, the original remains entirely playable today, though if you want to run it widescreen you can download Steam Superheater to help with that.
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