Knights of the Old Republic changed my life. There isn't any other way to say it.

This was more or less the first video game I ever played -- and by "played", I mean I watched while my dad played. He worked long hours at the office and I was starting school, so it took us almost a year to reach the end credits, finding time here and there to fight a few enemies or finish a conversation or two until someone else wanted the TV. My dad printed out one of those giant GamesFAQ walkthroughs in its entirety on hundreds of pages of printer paper. While he manned the controller, I would flip through the walkthrough to offer my advice. My dad was not a "gamer" in any sense, so he died a lot, but we didn't care. Towards the end of the game, I actually took the controller a few times, and I died a lot too. We would quote HK-47 and shout "For the order!" like Juhani around the house as an inside joke. When we reached that big reveal, we were both floored.

I can trace my life in a direct line back to those days. If I hadn't played this game, I probably wouldn't have developed my love for video games. I probably wouldn't have majored in Computer Science. I probably wouldn't work on gamedev in my free time. I've replayed other games from my youth and found they don't hold up, but this one I replay every few years without fail. It really doesn't get better than this.

Thank you, Knights of the Old Republic.