Yes, KOTOR has some weird parallels with the first Star Wars movie, but other than the plot outlines being roughly the same, KOTOR is all new. For example, the Jedi Knight you hook up with at the beginning of the game looks and sounds like Elizabeth Hurley rather than Alec Guinness, which is good from an eye-candy perspective if nothing else. Better still, KOTOR is extremely well written, and that helps familiar plots and plot devices (the main quest in the game involves finding five pieces of something) seem new and refreshing. BioWare, the developer of the game, was smart enough (or rich enough) to hire people to do nothing more than write dialogue, and the quality shows. In most role-playing games, if I’m curious about the ending at all, it’s to wonder how powerful the last boss might be, but with KOTOR I stayed up half the night just to see how the story would turn out.​