Over the last several days there has been quite a bit of information coming out about the potential of a game set in the Knights of the Old Republic currently in the works. The curious thing about these rumors is the fact that according to Jason Schreier the Dev Whisperer… it is supposedly being worked on outside of the greater EA/Bioware hegemony. Which leaves a whole bunch of questions about who and where and what. I almost tacked this bit of conversation onto yesterdays blog post but I also did not want to make that one span thirty pages of rambling. So this morning I am going to talk a bit about where we have been and where we are going.
While Darth Malak is the big baddie of Knights of the Old Republic, really for me it is the story of Darth Revan and his redemption arc. I say “his” because thanks to Star Wars the Old Republic we have a Canon Male Revan right or wrong. The first game legitimately changed so many things I thought a game like this could be and will likely always have a special place in my top games of all time. This represented the transition from Neverwinter Nights style top down isometric roleplaying games that I so regularly consumed and the later Mass Effect/Dragon Age style of third person environmental narrative driven experience. As I have been back playing KOTOR2 I have realized just how much of a period of transition these games truly were and as such were the heralds of so many things to come.
While I have not completed the game and there is a new big baddie in a cool mask, I would very much say that Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is STILL the story of Revan. The entirety of the game so far is effectively an epilogue to the first experience. You see the damage wrought by Revan on the galaxy and the fact that it isn’t doing too well on its own. The power vacuum of Revan going off into deep space to find his destiny left the Republic and Jedi Order without a charismatic leader to guide them into a new era. Generally speaking when a vacuum is formed someone else steps in to take the place but between the Mandalorian crusades and the Jedi Civil War… all larger forces that COULD step in were wiped out meaning what happens instead is a slow inevitable collapse of the galaxy.
There is some heavy debate about whether or not Star Wars the Old Republic the MMORPG counts as being part of the cycle of Knights of the Old Republic tales. I personally believe so and that is largely because it sets the ground work for the conflict to come and also reveals to us where exactly Revan went and what he was doing. Revan sensed something and went out to find it, and his struggle against that presence ultimately dominates much of the back story of Star Wars the Old Republic whether or not it is apparent and clear from the start. For me at least the true continuation of the KOTOR storyline would be the Jedi Knight story arc because it seems to deal the most directly with the Evil that Revan was trying to guard us from.
So ultimately the question is where do we go from here? As I stated before, I still firmly believe that Knights of the Old Republic is the story arc of Revan, and I think were they to continue the story it would need to take place after the events that have already played out in Star Wars the Old Republic. This causes a bit of a problem of bookending the story of a live service… but also it isn’t as though a lot of content is being delivered. There is also the option of setting the story in that time between the end of the Shadow of Revan expansion and the beginning of Knights of the Fallen Empire. There is a high likelihood of KOTFE and KOTET being washed away by the giant eraser of “Legends” as well.
Who Will Build It?
The first candidate that my friend Storm threw out there was Larian Studios. I absolutely think that they would do an amazing job with the franchise. However I also think this is a bit of a long shot given that they are already currently in active development of Baldur’s Gate III which expects to still have another year or so of incubation before release. Then after release I fully expect to see expansion content and more games in the D&D realm from this studio. Basically I think they are overcommitted at the moment given the size of the studio.
We already know that there is a deal in the works for the Massive division of UbiSoft to create an open world Star Wars game. However Massive is the studio behind The Division 1 and 2 and given the way that UbiSoft loves to make formulaic games I am fully expecting the Star Wars adventure to be in that model. I’ve said this before but I am expecting a single city setting like Nar Shaddaa or Coruscant where the entirety of the game takes place but also gives the player plenty of room to explore different environments. Hell I might be wrong here but I am expecting this one to also be off the table.
I personally would love to see what Spiders could do with the franchise given how phenomenal of a game Greedfall was. The problem with Spiders is that they have come really close to greatness a number of times but never quite pushed across the finish line. I think maybe with a high profile franchise like KOTOR, they might have the attention needed to make sure the final product was perfectly fine tuned. Again however this is a pipe dream because they were recently purchased by Nacon and duringa reveal show announced the next game they are working on. Steelrising looks awesome but is this baroque automata French revolution game that seems to be nothing like Knights of the Old Republic. They are a small studio and as such I think fairly single threaded so we can push them off the list.
Right now at this very moment I am playing a Knights of the Old Republic game built by Obsidian Entertainment. While they are now owned by Microsoft they have also been shown to not necessarily be building exclusive content. It would not be outside of the realm of reality for them to take over the franchise. To add fuel to the fire, Casey Hudson just left Bioware to join Microsoft Studios as Creative Director. He was the director on Knights of the Old Republic so maybe the cards are aligning in such a way as to have the franchise return to its Microsoft roots. If you remember KOTOR was originally an Xbox exclusive that later got a Windows release.
So in a bit of a dark horse pick, I want to throw out ArcheType Entertainment. This studio is backed by Wizards of the Coast and seems to be made up of a bunch of Ex-Bioware folks. One very key player would be Drew Karpyshyn the writer of KOTOR and some of the SWTOR content. Additionally James Ohlen and Chad Roberston were both in leadership roles over Star Wars the Old Republic and represent the Head of the Studio and General Manager respectively. The only thing that does not align is that when the studio was spun up in February of 2020 it was announced that they would be working on a brand new Science Fiction IP. Maybe fates shifted and the break up of the EA Star Wars license opened up other opportunities to pivot what they were working on into the Old Republic setting.
Another studio that I would not rule out either is InXile entertainment. These are the folks the modern Wasteland and Bards Tale games as well as Torment: Tides of Numenera. As a studio their jam seems to be really good isometric roleplaying games. However they would also have the same Microsoft connection that Obsidian has. I think this is a really long shot however because the wealth of their experience is in modernizing the isometric genre and creating games that feel like we remember the classic PC RPG era feeling. It is because of this nostalgia based approach that I am not really certain they would be screwing with the formula just yet, that is unless they themselves are feeling like the isometric thing is getting a bit stale.
It’s All Rumors
The problem with all of this is the fact that right now none of it is tangible. For all we know it could be Aspyr working on remastering and modernizing Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2. Excitement is getting the better of games media and myself included. I would love to see a new Knights of the Old Republic game, but also I know it is probably two or three years out there if it even ends up happening. So friends, what are your thoughts? Who do you think might be developing this game and what sort of game are you expecting it to be? Do you think it will be a continuation of the KOTOR lineage or just something new set in the same Old Republic era setting? Drop me a line below, because I am curious about your thoughts.
1 thought on “Knights of the Old Republic Rumors”
Comments are closed.