Today I started re-replaying Knights of the Old Republic again. (What can I say? It's a favorite I can always come back to.) I've been thinking about it, specifically the differences between the first game and the second. One of the big, but subtle differences between the two is the methodology of storytelling. (This is kind of a long entry, with some stuff for different tastes. Some parts are for people who are into games and/or have played these two games, and some parts are for people into storytelling, and some is just about the movies)

I suppose I should explain something for those unacquainted with the game. You create a character; you choose their gender, their face, their class, you get to choose the items they use and wear, the powers they have, what they do, and what they say. Both games are roleplaying games where you choose your character, and the story revolves around that character. It makes everything more personal for the events of the story to not just relate to some guy you're controlling, but to the character you created, and by extension, are.

Big Differences

You see, in the first game, the player is the main character. You see what they see, they don't see things they can't see. There are only a small selection of scenes that you witness that the character you play isn't present at. In KOTOR II, they went beyond that, and there are many scenes that the character that represents the player can't see. Very many. There are even segments of the game where you don't control your character at all, only your party members.

I realized this the first time I played the second game, but I didn't begin to think deeply about it until now. The thing about the first game is that virtually every scene that the player sees but the character does not is centered around the villain. Every one of those scenes moves the plot forward in a critical way, but the fact that we get to see Darth Malak up close without being near him is significant.

He's the villain. We have to hate him, or fear him, or anything, as long as we know him and have emotions one way or another towards him. Every time we get to see him, something is revealed about who he is, how he acts, and what he believes. And every one of those scenes centers around the villain. It seems so obvious in retrospect. How else could we get to know him before the climactic encounter? I'm impressed that so much was done in those few scenes. I'm even more impressed that so much managed to go on in those crucial scenes without anything seeming to be obviously shoved down our throats.

Knights of the Old Republic II didn't stick to that method at all. I wonder how casually they did that, if they really contemplated the effect it would have on the game. The game had a strong theme of subterfuge going on all around, and you got to see a lot of it directly through cutscenes the main character wasn't present for. If they had managed to convey that through the eyes of one character, it would have been really powerful. But instead there's a lot of cutaways to people plotting and talking about the Exile (your character).

I realize now just how much that cut off the player's connection to the character. In the first game, both the character and the player were isolated from pivotal information, information that many of the people around you know, and when that information if finally revealed, the betrayal isn't a plot point, it's an emotion that you feel towards the characters in the game. It's impossible to feel that in the second game, where you watch your character get manipulated and lied to, to the point where you pity their ignorance.

I'm not saying this feature in KOTOR II was necessarily bad. I'll be the first to admit that without a couple of those scenes, the plot would make even less sense than it already did. And there are certainly opportunities to be had in revealing information in that way, but I am far more impressed with the subtlety of the first game than the clumsiness of the second.

As a Matter of Gameplay...

As a game, which approach is better? The first game definitely ties you to your character in a much more significant way, which allows the events of the game to affect you, not your character, and that's the best a game can aspire to do.

...As a matter of Movie

What I'm interested to consider is how this storytelling relates to the movies. So let's look at the movies.
Episode IV- We follow the droids to Luke, and get to see some Leia and Vader on the side.
Episode V- We've got separate, concurrent stories of Luke, the rest of the gang, and Darth Vader, until they all converge.
Episode VI- The group coalesces together in the beginning, then it's just two stories: the good guys and the bad guys, splitting up into space and ground at the end.
Episode I- We pretty much only see one plot progress, save some tidbits of the Sith, until the final battle.
Episode II- Anakin and Obi-Wan split up! Then rejoin.
Episode III- Pretty jumbled, but we're pretty much focusing on Obi-Wan, Anakin, or eventually Yoda, with a lot of other scenes going on elsewhere.

So with the exception of ROTS, all the movies focus on relatively few simultaneous plotlines. In the OT, it's always a pretty clear good guy/bad guy dichotomy of who we're watching. In the PT, not so much, interestingly. Maybe that's worthy of another blog itself.

But how does this relate back to KOTOR? I would characterize the first game's story as a distilled version of the methodology used in the movies. Because it is a game, it has to focus on one person, and one villain. It works great, and I guess that's why KOTOR felt so natural in the saga.
Meanwhile the second game is diluted. As a game, it is more complex and long than a two hour movie. You can't just get away with slipping in a quick scene here and there in a game without more serious consequences. KOTOR II fails too keep its numerous extra scenes relevant and critical to advancing the story. They merely serve to deliver a mood of deception to the game, without doing anything truly important on their own.

I think the lesson to be learned hear is that jumping around between stories, and showing things from many perspectives, is something that works better in movies, and even better in books, than it does in games. It takes an experienced hand to make scattered stories work, and in a game, it's an even deeper challenge.



Those are my thoughts. What do you think? What do you think about the storytelling device of focusing on one point of view, and what do you think of the tool of revealing only the villain? Do you think Star Wars is a good example of this kind of storytelling, or am I grasping at straws? Do you think it was this kind of thing that hurt KOTOR II? Please share.