HOLA, MEATBAGS! Welcome to another instalment of Out of Character, wherein I typically deconstruct the life and/or times of a noteworthy denizen from the gaming universe. Unfortunately, OUT OF CHARACTER will be on a month long break, but keep your eyes peeled for the next issue; it'll be twice as long and nine times as boner. This week, though, I'm taking a long, hard, sexy look at my favourite gaming robot of all time.
HK-47 - KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC
Knights of the Old Republic just happens to be one of the greatest games of all time. Not content with residing within the rich, sexy and bafflingly layered Star Wars universe, it also happens to house a cast of the most compellingly written characters ever to grace computer games. Which sounds hyperbolic, but go ahead, play KOTOR and disagree with me. It's set thousands of years before the events from the film series, and you play as an amnesiac waking up on a spaceship being shelled into a fine paste. Fuse together the scope and grandeur of Star Wars with the protagonist of The Bourne Identity (or Flashback, if you're a proper gamer), and you're beginning to approach the tone of the series. Oh, and throw in some Blade Runner for good measure; the world of KOTOR is cold, ruthless and dystopian at times.
The villain of this piece (at least at the beginning) is Darth Malak, pictured above, whose jaw appears to have been replaced with A BIGGER AWESOMER ROBOTIC JAW. Malak used to be the right hand of Darth Revan, whose brutal actions ignited the Jedi Civil Wars. Millions of lives had been claimed until Revan disappeared. You wake up in the middle of a pivotal battle in the war, and are quickly forced to band together with a soldier named Carth Onasi (I'll be doing a piece on him down the line, don't worry), who seems to harbour some disdain towards you. The two of you crash on a sprawling megalopolis, where you're tasked with tracking down a Jedi named Bastilla. Things proceed in an unexpectedly epic fashion, and eventually, you procure a superb ship: the Ebon Hawk.
On it, you and your
ever-growing crew have adventures so well plotted and conceived that they make the prequel trilogy look like a series of chewable, waterproof books about a puppy named Ben. Friendships are forged, alliances are broken, and you can literally kill hours of time simply talking with your crew; prodding them in one direction or another with either brusqueness or kindness will shape their fate by the end of the game. There's also romance, which is handled in such a way that saying the wrong thing can ruin things forever. Which means you might not get to hit this.
BOOOOO. Anyway, your crew are like delicate plants; you need to cultivate them just right, otherwise they'll wither, die, and never talk to you again. Possibly the most interesting character you can dive into dealing with, however, isn't even human. Enter HK-47, possibly the most raucously brutal and deadpan assassination droid you'll ever meet. He's also funny. Observe! Oh, and it goes without saying that this video includes spoilers.
You'll have noticed two clear things from what you just saw. Firstly, HK-47 prefaces statements with a word explaining what said statement will be. Example: This is actually a good example. Secondly, he refers to anyone not made of metal as a meatbag, a term which I now use to describe particularly fatuous shopkeepers who, based on their mannerisms, I assume will get the reference and therefore be both insulted and immunised against said verbal assault by a bubble of smugness, which will then burst loudly, embarrassing them. At least that's how it's meant to go down.
HK-47 belonged to Darth Revan, and if you earn his loyalty (in painstaking increments), you'll be able to repair the necessary parts of his memory and his hardware. This means that by getting to know him, you simultaneously improve the plot by way of drip-down exposition, AND you unlock extra assassination procedures, techniques and protocols. It's rare that an evolving friendship makes said friend a deadlier killer, but it's a testament to HK that his increasingly able sociopathic side only serves to make him MORE endearing.
At the end of KOTOR, your character heads off into the unknown to deal with a nameless threat, but before doing so, he wipes HK's memory, presumably so nobody can deconstruct just where it was he was headed (I say 'he' because, canonically, the hero/villain you play on KOTOR is male, whereas in KOTOR 2, the lead is canonically female). When KOTOR 2 begins, you play as the Jedi Exile, and you gain possession of the derelict Ebon Hawk. On board is the deactivated HK-47, who joins you and helps you eliminate meatbags, all the while allowing you to embark upon a similar repair/befriend journey with him.
HK-47 also went on to appear in Star Wars: Galaxies, the tragically stupid but nevertheless significant MMORPG which only recently finished, but the less said about that, the better (he led a small army of droids to purge all meatbags from the planet Mustafar). However, if you're a fan, Bioware (who've neglected, sadly, to make a KOTOR 3) are almost ready to release The Old Republic, an MMO set 300 odd years after the events from the previous two games in the series. Initially, I was pissed; how much could I possibly care about a sequel which didn't contain any of my favourite characters? Then, I saw this.
HNNNNNNNG.
You see, the appeal of HK-47 wasn't just that he was ruthlessly, wonderfully violent; it was that he wasn't human. If you had a human companion talking the way HK did, you'd find them repellant, but for some reason having HK ponder the joys of eviscerating Sand People is... oddly soothing. It's like watching bemusedly as your toaster comes to life and shanks the repairman.
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See you all in a month.