Hello again everyone. First, I must apologize for the length of time it has taken me to finally bring this four part review to a close. If you have been following us here at LucasFiles, you’ve already heard me go on about Republic Commando, Lightspeed and Battlefront. Now, at long last, I am finally getting around to telling you all about Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords.

Before we get started, I must warn you all that my knowledge of the original Knights of the Old Republic game is rather limited, particular in comparison to many of yours. Though I do own the game and have somewhat of a feel for it, I am a long ways away from completing it. That said, you all are going to have to forgive me for my ignorance on what was hailed by many as the game of 2003. Well, enough of that, let’s get right into it, shall we?

Set five years after the events of its predecessor, The Sith Lords starts you off as a completely new character, a Jedi who is out of touch with the force and trying to unravel the secrets of his past. If that isn’t enough to make things interesting, the Old Republic is falling apart and the Outer Rim planets have fallen under the control of the Sith. Like the original, ultimately you will have the choice of pursuing the pure and righteous path or joining with the Dark Side of the force. Speaking of which, the developers implemented something that I find pretty damn cool. As you all know, most sequels to open-ended games simply choose one of the possible endings and select that one as what “really” happened (quite regardless of how you played it). As a refreshing change of pace, in The Sith Lords you will be subtly probed on how the first game played out. Your responses to these questions will change the state of the game, adding quite a bit of replay to the title.

Further tying the old game with the new, expect old characters to make cameos. In fact, some of the cast from the old game will even come back as part of your ten character entourage. Which characters will be returning was still being kept quiet, but you can all rest assured that the developers over at Obsidian are quite aware who the fan favorites are. While we are on the topic of party members, I should mention that your game choices will have an effect on who will end up joining your party. Furthermore, some of your party members will actually look up to you and will sway with you between the light and dark sides of the force. On the other side of the coin, however, there will be party members who are quite set in their ways and so might just up and leave you if your style comes too much into conflict with their own.

As I had mentioned in the E3 preview, the game’s developers are very much into leaving the good parts of the original game alone and only adding and expanding things where it had fallen a bit flat. In keeping with that idea, the new game is going to have a slew of new force powers, including confusion, sight and crush. Force Sight shows the player the force auras of the characters around him. These force auras will vary in appearance based on which side of the force the character is aligned with and how strong that alignment is. As an example, a member of the Sith would have a deep red force aura while a more neutral Jedi with some Dark Side tendencies would have a very mellow, muted red aura. While Sight has more of a defensive edge to it, Force Crush is quite the opposite. Starting off rather like Vader’s Force Choke, the Force Crush will lift an enemy off the floor. Instead of choking the victim into submission, however, the maneuver smashes them. As one might expect, a technique like that is probably going to be a lot of fun for the Dark Siders to play around with.