Games - HK-47

	Games - HK-47

HK-47 is an assassin droid from the 2003 video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, its sequel, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion pack to the massively popular multiplayer online game Star Wars: Galaxies.

Bio

NB: In the game, Revan may be either male or female. He is canonically considered male, so will be referred to as such.

HK-47 was originally created by Darth Revan to be the quintessential assassin. While he is completely loyal - friendly, even - to those he identifies as "master," he has virtually no regard for any form of life, and is driven by an unquenchable thirst for blood. He characteristically uses the term "meatbag" when speaking of organic lifeforms, especially humans. This insult was originally used in passing by HK when insulting Revan's apprentice, Darth Malak. Revan found the insult (as well as Malak's annoyance) amusing enough to order HK to consider all organics as "meatbags."

He is a high-performance assassin droid who excels and delights in all manner of violence. Despite his inherently menacing appearance, he is often mistaken for a protocol droid by a number of characters in the game, and has used this to his advantage on more than one occasion, hiding his true nature. He actually has a number of protocol functions in addition to his less legal ones, and is fluent in Galactic Basic, a Tusken dialect, the beeps and whistles of astromech droids, and many other forms of communication, as is standard. In The Sith Lords, HK-47 claims to be able to double as a protocol droid.

Knights of the Old Republic

HK-47 is first encountered in a droid shop on the planet Tatooine, where he is available for sale as a protocol droid, and advertised for his skills in the language of the Tusken Raiders. If the player chooses to purchase him, his true purpose and intentions shortly become clear, though he is unable to recall much of his past due to a problem with his behavior core. However, if the player has the proper skills, repairs can be conducted to reconstruct HK-47's memory. The resulting stories detail HK's exploits concerning former owners. In all cases, he directly or indirectly kills his employer, still doing exactly what is asked of him, and shuts down until he is obtained by another unfortunate person (his programming prevents him from killing his master except by accident; if his master is killed, he shuts down automatically until manually restarted). The final narrative — the revelation that HK-47 is, in fact, the work of Darth Revan himself — is relayed only after the player realizes his own true identity as the former Dark Lord.

Knights of the Old Republic II

HK-47 is found in a compartment on the Ebon Hawk in a state of disrepair. With the addition of four missing vital parts, HK can come back to life and serve the party once more. Also in the sequel game there are droids that the Jedi Exile encounters that resemble HK-47 that call themselves the "HK series droids" or the HK-50s that seem to have been hired to hunt Jedi (including the Jedi Exile). Their existence in the game was also supposed to include a HK factory that manufactured them, but that was cut from the game. Gamesave modders found the factory in KotOR II's game code and made it available for download to gamesave devices.

In The Sith Lords, a great deal of information is learned about HK-47, if the player is willing to gain influence with the droid. HK-47 explains that his creation was inspired, however indirectly, from the actions of the Jedi Exile. The Exile's experiences using the mass shadow generator caused Revan to believe that, instead of mass slaughter, isolated and specific assassinations would be more effective for his goals.

It is also learned that those Revan ordered HK-47 to kill were not killed out of hatred: every being Revan used HK-47 to kill was a destablizer, a sentient who intentionally worked to weaken the galaxy as a whole. While The Sith Lords goes far to reveal that most of Revan's actions were strangely noble, HK's use as a galaxy-stabilizing tool is most remarkable.

Comic relief

It is ironic to note that while HK is an insatiably violent and bloodthirsty killer, especially by droid standards, he stands out as one of the biggest sources of comic relief in the game. He often makes sadistic or insulting remarks while perpetually retaining an almost-aristocratic tone in his voice. At one point, HK informs the main character that the most optimal way of defeating a group of enemies is to simply toss grenades in every direction. The droid does not even care that the fight is taking place in a fully loaded bar. Some also assume that his usage of the word "meatbag" was inspired by Bender from Futurama, who is also a major provider of comic relief.

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