Planetary Analysis: Citadel Station [KOTOR II]

Fresh from the tutorial of Peragus, The Exile find themselves within a vast span of machinery intended to be ever so slightly unnerving. Citadel Station, the title a homage to one of the most ingenious horror environments ever devised stands out in KOTOR II’s quest to make Star Wars’s traditional settings a little oppressive and uncomfortable, for the RPG dungeon crawler of exploration, combat and dialogue to keep the player curious and guessing.

The sheet of metal over a planet is nerve wracking, but wholly positive and welcome at first. What is the iconic first visual of Return of the Jedi? Death Star II, and it is replaced by imposing machinery used to restore the habitability of a world rather than destroy it. A home to potentially many thousands of different alien beings, although used for good Citadel Station is stagnant, corrupt and overreaching, a metaphor for The Republic itself.

I find a nice reversal, and an example of KOTOR I being darker than II in this case is an Ithorian representing Czerka in Kashjishk, and Chodo Habat being their opponent in Citadel Station. Nuance is given to an alien race characterised as peaceful, the first game subverting this trope, the second posing an interesting lesson in how helping altruistic organisations causes a donator to risk themselves for no reward, the organisation itself capable of almost nothing with the promise of future investment. In opposition to this Czerka is a clever and better written ‘evil’ option than most. It shows how the monopolistic corporate behemoth does reward people, that it enforces cruel politics, but ultimately that self-satisfied tyrants are as vulnerable as any other.

It’s perhaps a blunt and cynical thought; but obvious that where the environment is machine and an evil corporation in control, clearly the natural law and hope for sentient beings is dead and dying.

It takes intense effort to a restore a world, and should be said that this is greater than the vast mechanical machines within this setting being used for superweapons, or to hold the courts of either a criminal ecumenopolis, or be the seat to galactic politics also rotten to the core.

Citadel is an effective opener, giving the nascent party room to breathe, and a good forerunner to other isolated, cold environments both natural and artificial that will follow. The reward for aiding others in the Station is an unambiguously beautiful moment, to walk upon the perhaps the only world in a setting with ‘Wars’ in the title being healed, not split apart, or defended, or fermenting before its people’s very eyes.

References:

Knights of the Old Republic. BioWare. 2003.

Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Obsidian Entertainment. 2004.