It's been awhile since I posted. That's a common thing to say when I'm posting on one of my blogs, actually. But anyways, that's, thankfully, not what I'm here to talk about. I think the topic of how I don't add onto my blogs often would get boring pretty quick. My actual topic is going to be about Knights of the Old Republic and the different characters I have created in it. There will however be spoilers for the KotOR in this entry, so you have been warned. I'll try not to give too much away, though, since the games can have some pretty awesome plot twists. I'll start with a brief history of when I first played KotOR.

I used to be a skeptic of the KotOR series. Back when I wasn't nearly as big of an RPG fan, I thought it looked like a fairly boring and really overhyped game. I was also annoyed with the Expanded Universe of Star Wars at the time, so the plot and setting of KotOR also didn't interest me. It didn't look like Star Wars to me, I mean, it didn't even use John William's score! (Actually, it turned out it didn't feel that much like Star Wars anyways, but it's an excellent game all the same. I was also really tired of how Jedi seemed to be taking over everything Star Wars, and it looked like KotOR was really big on that as well. Overall, I just wasn't very interested in the game. However, one day I decided I might as well try it out and see what I thought about it all. I'm sure glad I did.

Once I tried the game I got hooked on it, and played it non-stop except for sleeping at eating for around 3 days. It turned out to be far better than I had expected, and the characters and story were some of the best I've seen in gaming. Well... I guess that wasn't very brief after all, but either way, I'll actually move on to the point of this entry now, which is talking about the different characters I created in the game. Starting with the first character I created:

Phil Skylighter

This is still my favorite since it was my first. The last name was created by fusing "Darklighter" and "Skywalker" I believe. As for the first name... it just sounds good. The basis for this character was a light side character, since I wanted to go through the game the first time basically being good. I had planned to make him a Han Solo type smuggler at first, and not be all that ethical or honorable, and have him progress as more of a hero as the story progressed. But everytime I ran across one of the moral delimmas in the game I always found myself choosing the heroic option, since I just couldn't let Phil commit the evil acts. So... he never really went through the Han Solo phase after all.

One of the more interesting aspects of Phil Skylighter was his reluctence to even be a Jedi in the first place. At the beginning, before I even knew you would become a Jedi in the game, I was looking forward to actually not playing as a Jedi in a game for once. So, I guess it got put into his character how he didn't want to be a Jedi either. It made it very interesting for the first meeting with the Jedi council. Phil Skylighter was also an extremely weak character, since I never used the force and rarely a lightsaber. That made things slightly problematic, and the final boss next to impossible. But I suppose this is going a bit long for one character, so I 'll try to summerize him real quick: Phil Skylighter was a light-hearted and heroic smuggler and scout who eventually became a reluctant Jedi. He resisted the lure of the Dark side easier than most, but the cost he paid was being pretty useless in a fight. He basically stayed at the top of the light/dark side meter the entire game.

Vicinic Robotine

Don't even ask how that name for this guy came around... he's a fusion of alot of characters, so that name is the result of the fusion. Some of the different characters used a basis for Viccinic, who was my character for the second playthrough of KotOR, were Paplatine and Dr. Robotnik (AKA Eggman) from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. (I'm a huge Sonic fan by the way. Just thought I'd mention that.) The third character he's based after is a much less well-known character... the character is "Vicini", from a movie called "The Princess Bride". You might be able to patch the name together by now. Maybe it's not the most original name ever, but I've gotten to like it.

Vicinic was my first Dark Side character for KotOR. It was a very different playing style then I had used before, and there was so much new stuff to do playing as Dark instead of Light, it was quite impressive. Viccinic started out as a smuggler who was tired of the petty and boring life he was living. He yearned for something bigger than what he was doing. He knew that there must have been something else out there... something beyond the struggles of a lowly smuggler. He found this out when he came upon the Force. When he saw it first-hand he began to get interested, and as he learned he was force-sensitive he started to believe that this could've been what he was looking for all along.

His first interest in the Dark side came when he fought against his first Sith, and ever since that meeting he went steadily towards the ways of the Sith, and finally truly became a servant of the Dark when he went to Korriban. He was a very interesting character to play as. He had a large lack of conscience, and when he did evil, he didn't really acknowledge it as evil, or really much care. It was very interesting seeing how much more powerful you could become using the Dark side, and how much easier everything was to do. It's a nice touch of KotOR, not just balancing out both the Dark and the Light for gameplay reasons. They truly made the Dark side much easier to use, and the Light much harder, and it's your choice if your character will take the easy or hard choice. I could go on quite awhile about Vicinic and his adventures, since I did play as him for 40 hours or more, but due to wanting to avoid spoilers and wanting to keep this fairly brief, I'll go onto my final character I've made for KotOR.

Zehlm Starwalker

The last name for this character shouldn't be hard to figure out how I came to it. The first name just sounded cool. Zehlm Starwalker is basically Anakin in reverse. Instead of starting good and turning evil, he's starting evil and... well... we'll see. He started out as a smuggler and solider, and basically an enforcer for the criminals of Taris. While he wasn't an evil man, he wasn't very compassionite either, and did a fair amount of ruthless deeds. Until he joined the Jedi. Once he became a Jedi he made an attempt to change from his evil ways, although he still falls prey to his violent ambitions and need for credits now and then. Also like Anakin, he's fiercely loyal to his companions, and promises to have Malak killed for what he's done.

I'm actually currently playing as Zehlm now however, so I'm not sure how his story will turn out. He has yet to face some of his greatest challenges awaiting him, such as the Sith Academy on Korriban. I have yet to see whether he will defeat the Sith or join them. Currently I'm on Tatooine, and haven't completed found any of the Star Maps yet except the one on Dantooine. I look forward to seeing how it'll turn out, though.


Well.... that's all I'll do for now. Perhaps I'll write about the characters I've made in KotOR II in my next entry. Hopefully this was fairly entertaining to read. I'll probably go play KotOR now. MTFBWY..... A.