I first played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in the summer of 2006 on the original Xbox. Obviously, I was late to the party. The only reason I did so was because of the recommendation of it from a very good friend of mine who was the biggest Revan fanboy I had known and will ever know. To be honest? I played the first five minutes and got bored (Taris seems to have that effect). I tried it again two years later, AFTER playing through KOTOR II. KOTOR II was such a fantastic game, that I felt that it's predecessor had to have something that I'd missed. So I played through KOTOR I at last, and I discovered the world of Revan fanboyism. I loved his story so much, and I couldn't really explain why. Some time later, after getting into the culture of Star Wars prequel criticism, I realized the answer: When we all saw the OT and were introduced to to Darth Vader's backstory from an anecdotal perspective, we had assumed that Anakin Skywalker had been a military leader who had been turned to the dark side through the horrors of war, not through the fear of losing his wife in childbirth. When the prequel trilogy contradicted this assumed origin, we felt cheated. Revan offered the equivalent of the Vader backstory that we'd all wanted. He was a heroic and charismatic Jedi Knight who had been turned to the dark side (at least before Kreia's explanation and SWTOR's contradiction of Revan's supposed backstory) by the horrors of war. In short, Revan offered us, at the time of KOTOR I's release, the Darth Vader that we all remembered from our childhoods. But now, of course, TOR has changed all of that - hence the Revan fanboys' disillusionment with the Revan from the novel and TOR's story.