Branson Greer

UWRT 1102
October, 2014
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic:
The Evolution of the Modern RPG
Introduction
The role-playing game (RPG) is one of the most popular genres of video games to date,
and this credit is not undeserved. The brutal grind of killing a hundred monsters, turning in a
quest, and watching that little experience meter go up a bit is thrilling to fans of the genre. But
why? Well, when that experience bar gets full, the screen flashes and the player levels up! It
took hours, even days, of grinding his/her way to the top, but it was all worth it when a hundred
hours (and a hundred Mountain Dew cans) later, the guy/gal hit max level and got all the cool
loot. Leveling up refers to a gamers intention of completing difficult tasks to gain experience
points, which then causes the players level number to increase by one unit every time the
experience meter is filled (Cowlishaw, 1). This is the life of an RPG gamer today, but the roleplaying genre has changed significantly over the years.
Many years ago, before video games were a part of popular culture, people that enjoyed
fantasy would play tabletop fantasy role-playing games (TFRPG). Versions of TFRPGs were
played as early as the 1800s in the form of war games in which players fought it out using
miniature figurine armies. Then, during the 1960s and 70s, gamers became interested in the idea
of personalizing the figurines roles, thus changing the perspective of the player from a military

commander to a particular character (Williams et al 2006, 3). This change in the genre also
changed what players used to play the game. Game boards, dice, pens, and paper were all tools
used to play games like Dungeons and Dragons, one of the first modern TFRPGs (Vorhees et al
2012, 70). As technology advanced and video games came about, programmers got the idea to
take these table-top games and virtualize them. Fast forward 30 years or so and you have video
game consoles that allow gamers to enjoy the same sort of fantastic story, but on the television
with a game pad. Of course many people still enjoy the old-fashioned role-playing game, but
more have chosen to put down the pen and paper (or in most cases never pick them up in the first
place) and pick up the console game pad. As the popularity of the modern RPG has risen over
the past decade, developers have been forced to be more innovative with every title. From early
console RPGs such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) to more recent titles
such as the Mass Effect series, developers have advanced not only the graphical quality, but also
the gameplay mechanics and story/character development that players so desperately crave. I
would include myself in this category as well.
Ive been a console gamer for more than a decade, and Ive played RPGs since near the
beginning of my gaming history. The very first game I bought for my original Xbox console was
KOTOR. I remember the simultaneous feeling of awe as I turned on the machine, and the
excitement of playing a Star Wars game (I was a Star Wars geek as a kid). The nostalgia is still
fresh every time I play KOTOR, as it is one of my favorite RPGs (and games) of all time. As a
much older gamer, and a Software and Information Systems major in college, I am fascinated
with the way games are coded and developed in general. After researching the development
history of RPGs, Ive discovered that they are an ever-evolving genre of video game, and that
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was at the forefront of a new age of this genre.

Literature Review
As mentioned previously, the role-playing game began as a table top experience. These
games did not require computers, but instead relied on pens, paper, cards, dice etc. Table top
RPGs have been around for a long time, but it wasnt until the 1970s when computer
programmers took them to the next level by virtualization. The earliest of RPGs were very
limited and required a lot of computer processing power and storage space to play (Herz 2002,
171). However, this didnt stop the personal computer (PC) from changing the way fantasy
games are were played. Both the development of the RPG and the audience have changed over
time.
Its easy to say that fantasy games were changed by the PC, but transferring the table top
game to the virtual world presents its own challenges. Although not necessarily a challenge of
this conversion, the reader must first realize that RPGs are not linear games like Mario and Tomb
Raider (Herz 2002, 185). Whereas these games have players run from place to place and kill
enemies along the way, RPGs encourage player decision making and exploration. This ability to
make choices and explore makes and RPG that much more complicated to create. That being
said, there are five main differences between the table top RPG and the virtual RPG: restrictions
placed on the actions available to players, a change in the significance of each player relative to
the game world and to one another, the ability to change the game world or lack thereof, the
passing of time relative to events that take place, and pre-scripted non-playable characters
(NPCs) and their artificial intelligence (Osaki, 2). A lot of factors play into how each of these
challenges will be approached. KOTOR, for example, has turned-based combat, meaning that
the player and his/her enemies take turns attacking one another. In contrast, Mass Effect has a
more open combat system that allows players to attack and hide without taking turns in combat.

This is an example of how two well-made games approached player restrictions within the
games combat system. In one way or another, games must deal with each of these issues before
a game finishes development. Developers must also take care to consider their audience when
making these decisions.
The audience of the RPG genre has been evolving along with the games themselves, and
it also varies based on region. For instance, in the late 1990s the United States had a relatively
low demand for the RPG, whereas Japan had a much higher demand for the genre (Loguidice et
al 2009, 79). Why this is true is uncertain, but it is reasonable to assume that the two different
cultures may have different impacts on gaming tastes. As the demand for RPGs increased in the
United States, gamers were more attracted to the open-world style gameplay offered by
Bethesdas Elder Scrolls series rather than story-driven games such as Final Fantasy. Japanese
audiences were just the opposite. The linear, story-driven gameplay was the popular style.
Keeping these differences in mind allows developers tailor their games in such a way that will
appease their target audience.

Entering the Conversation

At its conception, the role-playing game wasnt the virtual, PC experience that it is today.
It was a wholly imaginative experience. With the dawn of video games came a new era of the
RPG, a virtual one. Now, players no longer have to imagine dragons, knights, wizards, etc. All
of these characters and the game world are right there before the player on a screen. The Xbox
game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is one title that influenced the direction of the
modern RPG. KOTOR is a game that emphasizes story, graphical quality, and gameplay

mechanics that established the unofficial standard for the contents of a modern RPG.
Many games that are released today are highly criticized or praised based primarily on
the quality of the stories in them. Players want to feel captivated and drawn into the tale, much
like the reader of a book. KOTOR tapped into this desire gamers have for story, and presented a
very well told Star Wars tale. The story was finite, and it was linear, but it allowed players to
make a plethora of choices, including the determination of life or death of characters. The player
could even build relationships with certain characters. Within my own observation notes of
KOTOR, I spent an hour and a half on just the first planetary destination, and didnt even finish
it (Greer 2014, 5-7). There was so much to do and talk about that it takes time to explore even a
small portion of the game, even for an experienced KOTOR player such as myself. In fact,
KOTOR and games since have provided players with so many choices in action and dialogue
that developers are having a hard time meeting the growing demand for content (Reed et al 2011,
182). Nevertheless, the gaming community is brutal, and when developers fail to meet this
demand they are inevitably reminded of the success of games like KOTOR.
Also contributing to its success, KOTOR provided gamers with outstanding graphical
quality for its time. It is the hope that every generation of consoles will raise the bar of graphical
quality. The Xbox certainly did this when it was released in 2001. KOTOR was released in
2003, and I picked up my copy in 2004. It was without a doubt the best-looking game Id ever
played, and I remember telling my friends, The characters look like real people! And they did
look like real people, or as much as they could at the time. Combined with incredible acting
from the voice artists, the graphics made the realism of KOTOR unmatched. KOTOR was a
peak in game visuals and as computer hardware becomes more advanced, the acceptable
standard for graphical quality also increases. Great stories and graphics go so far, but gameplay

is the final piece of the puzzle.

Gameplay mechanics are extremely important when considering the quality of a game.
The story and graphics, though important, are overshadowed when the gameplay is really good
or bad. For example, Minecraft is a game in which players build structures with blocks. I wont
over simplify the game, but my point is that there isnt an in-depth story built into the game and
the graphics are purposefully not realistic. However, the game is built such that players have a
very fun time just building. The controls are well-done, and there is enough stuff to do to
entertain people for hours. KOTOR is much the same way with its gameplay such that it made
running around and fighting an enjoyable experience something that developers strive for.
KOTOR is a turn-based video game. This means that after the player attacks an enemy,
the enemy is given a turn to attack the player. The player must know how to build his/her
character such that it can withstand enemy attacks, and do enough damage to defeat the foe.
This constant upgrading, or leveling, of characters is extremely attractive to players of RPGs
because they are given the tools to make a character how they wish. Not every RPG is turnbased, and rightly so gamers like variety in play-style. But ever since KOTOR was released,
most every RPG is going to have some sort of leveling system that lets players upgrade their
characters.
Conclusion
Role-playing games have a long history beginning as a table top experience, and evolving
into the video game experience that it is today. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic helped to
define the modern RPG by setting an unofficial standard for storyline, graphical quality, and
gameplay mechanics. While the history, development, and reception of RPGs is discussed quite

often, KOTORs contribution to the modern RPG genre is outstanding. The RPG genre is filled
with great games, and many are worth noting and playing. However, none have impacted the
modern RPG as much as KOTOR has in the past decade. Hopefully, the reader understands just
how important KOTOR was to the RPG genre. It certainly impacted the rest of Biowares
games. Without this game, Bioware Corp. would not have made their other series such as Mass
Effect and Dragon Age. Furthermore, if you wish to be informed about popular culture, you
must be aware of the RPG genre. Role-playing games, although they are made for a specific
subset of people that play video games, are certainly an influential part of popular culture. Its
not uncommon to see television commercials of the latest and greatest video games and RPGs,
but many people wont know anything about what their watching. Some people may even think
its a movie because the graphics look so realistic. Im not saying we need to make T-Shirts and
raise awareness for the RPG, but for those that take the time to understand where these games
came from and why they are so popular, an appreciation for the games and the people that play
them will be the result. Because the RPG genre is so extensive, its impossible to do it justice in
one read. What other games have had an impact on the genre? Since KOTOR was made 11
years ago, what else has changed about the genre since then and what games helped change it?
These two questions are just two areas of research that havent been extensively tampered with.

Annotated Bibliography
J.C., Herz. Gaming the System: What Higher Education Can Learn from Multiplayer Online
Worlds. EDUCAUSE (2002): 185-186.
Herz describes the dynamics of RPG gameplay as being based on character progression rather
than scores and point systems. Herz explains that RPGs are not linear games such as Mario or
Tomb Raider, where the goal is to get somewhere and kill anything that gets in the way, but the
goal here is to complete tasks, gain experience points to level up, and gain loot as a reward for
completing activities. Finally, Herz touches on the players connection to his/her character and
how that differs from traditional point-based games. One of the most intriguing characteristics
of the role-playing game is the emphasis on character progression and story, rather than a score.
Voorhees, Gerald, Joshua Call, Katie Whitlock. Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens: The
Digital Role-Playing Game. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012.
The authors describe the evolution and history of the RPG from table top games with pens and
paper, to the video games that are enjoyed today. The authors describe the relationship between
advancements in computer hardware and evolutions in narrative and gameplay within the RPG
genre. The book lists Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic as one of the most well-known
early RPGs. The modern RPG was born out of the table top games with pens and paper. To
have a real appreciation for how the modern RPG has evolved one must take a brief look at its
ancestors such as Dungeons and Dragons, and an even closer look at its closer relatives such as
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Reed, Aaron, Ben Samuel, Anne Sullivan, Ricky Grant, April Grow, Justin Lazaro, Jennifer
Mahal, Sri Kurniawan, Marilyn Walker, Noah Wardrip-Fruin. A Step Towards the Future of
Role-Playing Games: The SpyFeet Mobile RPG Project. AAAI (2011): 182.
The authors tell of the difficulty developers have with the story-driven RPG genre. As RPGs
advance and players hunger for more content increases, it becomes exponentially more difficult
to meet demand. The amount of scripted material that has to be created grows rapidly as the
game allows for more choices to be made. The authors mention a particular flaw with Star
Wars: Knights of the Old Republic that caused players to interact with characters in one instance
in which they were arguing, and then find themselves in a subsequent encounter in which the
character treats the player as if they had just met. These sorts of development problems were
very common in the early RPG development world, and have impacted the way developers must
approach game logic.
Cowlishaw, Brian. The Narrowing Experience of Experience in Video Role-Playing Games.
Intelligent Agent 4: 1.

In this article, the author focuses a lot of attention on leveling up in RPGs. According to the
author, leveling up, though seemingly dull, is actually one of the most addictive features in an
RPG. With leveling up comes more skills, armor, and loot that the player can use in his/her
adventures. Leveling a character in an RPG is one of the most fundamental and important
aspects of gameplay, and developers have been trying to perfect the leveling system of RPGs for
years.
Williams, Patrick, Sean Hendricks, W. Wrinkler. Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity
and Experience in Fantasy Games. North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2006.
These authors address the distinction between the table-top RPG and the video RPG. A brief
description is given of what is characterizes each type of game and what is required to play them
(ie. Pens, paper, dice, or a computer). The focus is primarily on what makes a video RPG
different from the table-top ancestor. The importance of understanding that the modern RPG is
rooted in the table-top ancestor is unmatched within the context of the development of the genre
because the genre as we know it today would not exist had it not been for the predecessors.
Loguidice, Bill, Matt Barton. Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft
Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential games of All Time. Burlington: Elsevier. 2009.
The section examined within book discusses the differences in the types of video games played
in the U.S. and Japan. The authors argue that the Americans for a long time were primarily
attracted to simple fighting and shooting games. They argued that the Japanese were more
attracted to the narrative based RPG style gameplay, and that it wasnt until the Final Fantasy
series hit the United States that RPG became mainstream here. The cultural impact of the RPG
must be considered when discussing the development of the modern RPG because the cultures
reception of the genre plays the primary role in how much effort is put into the genres
advancement.
Harrison Osaki, From Diablo to Gate: Differences in Computer RPG Theory(STS 145,
Stanford University), 2-3.
The author talks extensively about the conversion of the tabletop RPG to the video game world.
Listed are 5 factors to be considered when making such a conversion. These factors are:
restrictions placed on the actions available to players, a change in the significance of each player
relative to the game world and to one another, the ability to change the game world or lack
thereof, the passing of time relative to events that take place, and pre-scripted non-playable
characters (NPCs) and their artificial intelligence. Its important to consider the differences
between the tabletop RPG and the computer RPG because, although the computer RPG is the
virtualization of its predecessor, the two are incredibly distinct in gameplay style and audience.

Branson Greer, Assignment One Observation Notes: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
(UWRT 1102, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2014), 1-9.

The author observed gameplay in KOTOR for three, 30-minute time spans and recorded what
happened in-game by writing summaries of 5-minute gameplay increments. The summaries
were detailed enough to allow the reader to visualize/follow the player through each gameplay
session. Before the observations themselves, the author wrote definitions for terms related to the
research, and gave examples of each from the game. Finally, a mock interview was written that
was between the author and one of the characters.