Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Remake Confirmed

The legend is coming to your brand-new hardware. KOTOR Remake has finally been confirmed. The studio working on it is no other than Aspyr!

After about an year of heavy rumors one of the worst-kept secrets in the Galaxy has finally been confirmed. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) is being remade. The studio responsible for this is Aspyr in cooperation with Lucasfilm Games.

Unlike the KOTOR fan remake that was forced to shut down soon after it became popular, this is an official remake.

What is KOTOR? Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic is a single player role-playing game from a third-person perspective in which you can control one main character and their companions. The narrative takes you about four thousand years before the Star Wars movies. With completely new heroes, events and stories it tells.

This is an incredibly heavy burden on any team, but the guys from Aspyr are probably one of the best choices for that. With classics such as Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy they firmly established themselves on the Star Wars video games scene. More about Aspyr – further down in this article.

KOTOR was originally developed by BioWare and released in 2003. Today it is one of the most critically acclaimed video games ever. Not just in the Star Wars franchise, but over all.

KOTOR now belongs to what Disney calls “Star Wars Legends” – tales that may or may not have happened. Since Disney took over the license we have seen them digging a bit into the Legends and borrowing content from there, but whatever they touched, was never the same as we knew it from the original source. Something was always familiar, but also very different.

KOTOR is massively responsible for a large branch of the comic books that have been released since the early 2000s. It influenced a lot of books too.

Star Wars The Old Republic, the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG (MMORPG) is a direct descendant of KOTOR. The events in SWTOR take place quite some time after the ending of KOTOR, but it is exactly the same Legends universe and the game continues to build on the lore KOTOR has already established.

I think it would be unwise to reveal KOTOR’s plot here, because a whole generation that loves Star Wars today has probably never played this title when it released, nearly twenty years ago.

If you are or have previously played SWTOR, you will be familiar with some of the events from KOTOR since they are included in one way or another in SWTOR’s lore. You may even recognize some of the characters’ names.

When will KOTOR Remake release? There’s no information at this point when Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic Remake will be released. The official announcement from September 9 only confirmed that the game is in (early) development. More details are yet to be revealed and you know that I won’t stop digging for news.

To ne honest with you, I tried replaying KOTOR in early 2019 (I think it was). I had major troubles with the game’s settings and could not make it run properly on high resolution and such.

After having gone through yet another Jedi Knight and then Sith Warrior storylines in SWTOR, I got a big rush of inspiration to replay KOTOR. After I went through a major hassle to make the game run smoothly on my PC, I realized how dated the gameplay mechanics were.

Yeah, I know. It’s sometimes hard to acknowledge that something everyone thought was pure perfection, now seems weird and uncomfortable. Well, I personally never really loved the gameplay in KOTOR, but the game’s narrative absolutely outshined this minor inconvenience. Kind of like the controls in The Witcher (the first game) were terrible, but I liked the story very much).

For me KOTOR revolutionized the way a role-playing game should be made. With its voiceovers and perfect cast of actors it completely immersed me into its narrative. I remember a few occasions from all those years ago when I suddenly realize it’s morning, the sun is showing up outside, and I am still playing the game since last night. Good memories!

I want to say that the KOTOR Remake confirmation announcement may be one of those “Where were you when you heard the news” moments. Well, it was yesterday late at night for me and I was just preparing to go to sleep after playing SWTOR and New World’s Open Beta after work.

The news hit me so hard that I started reading everything I could find – news articles, Twitter posts, videos.

What’s fun is that while reading Tweets, I started realizing how many old BioWare folks are now working at Aspyr and how many of them actually work on the KOTOR Remake.

So, how about a few more words on who and what Aspyr is?

As a company Aspyr exists since 1996. It was founded by Michael Rogers and Ted Staloch in Austin, Texas – same place where today’s BioWare Austin is located (the studio working on SWTOR).

In 2015 Aspyr released an iOS version of KOTOR and KOTOR II (originally developed by Obsidian) as well. Aspyr is also the publisher of Star Wars Republic Commando!

In February 2021, Aspyr was acquired by Embracer Group. The company was added as a studio under the Saber Interactive label within Embracer.

And for even bigger adrenaline rush, if you haven’t seen it yet, you absolutely must watch the KOTOR Remake reveal trailer!

Here is the text from the trailer, in case you are reading this in a moment or environment where you can’t listen to it as well:

Peace is a lie.

That is what the Sith believe.

They promise power.

Now they wield it.

We faced the greatest Sith in generations.

They must be stopped.

Did you listen to the voice? Did you recognize who it belongs to? This is Jennifer Hale. And you don’t have to rely on yours or my ability to recognize it by listening. Starwars.com confirmed it in their news/blog article about this announcement:

I can confirm that that is Jennifer Hale. We all think the world of Jennifer. She is an amazing talent and immediately slipped back into the role of Bastila when she came to help us with the teaser trailer. I do think that you’re going to see some other familiar voices return, but that’s probably as deep as we’re gonna go on that one right now.

Aspyr’s Ryan Treadwell told starwars.com

Jennifer Hale is a very popular name in the video games industry. She has given her voice to a number of memorable main and side characters in various games, including Bastila Shan in KOTOR and KOTOR II, Satele Shan and the female Republic Trooper character in SWTOR. But perhaps her most iconic role is the female Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect video game series.

KOTOR Remake is coming to both PC and PlayStation 5. I heard that Xbox port is coming as well, but at a later point. I was unable to find a confirmation at this moment for that.

Another important thing that is yet to be confirmed is what exactly is EA and BioWare’s involvement with this project. Are they participating in any way or form at all or did Disney and Lucasfilm Games completely took the game out of their hands?

Geoff Keighley talked to EA and asked them about their involvement and he shared the answer in a Tweet with a comment “I guess that’s a no”.

A day later BioWare tweeted a firm confirmation that the studio has no involvement at all with the KOTOR Remake project and they wish Aspyr best of luck.

BioWare owes big part of their Legacy and reputation as a great video games developer (despite what happened to Anthem and the unfortunate reputation of Mass Effect Andromeda) thanks to KOTOR, which is their own child. They along with EA brought it to life and to be completely excluded from the Remake, is a bit strange.

I personally am not against that decision and believe it to be in favor of the Remake. As the title states, this will not be a simple texture update and some more effects and lightning added here and there like the Mass Effect Legendary edition. It won’t be a Remaster, it’s a Remake.

On top of that BioWare already have a lot on their plate with the SWTOR live support and continuing development, Dragon Age 4 being worked on and Mass Effect 4 also in early development stage. They don’t need another game to worry about right now.

A fresh look from a completely different team of developers would be nice as they will catch and improve upon flaws the game had in its original state.

Earlier I did state that despite KOTOR’s outstanding reputation as one of the best games ever made, it had issues. Bugs have always been present, the clunky and strange combat mechanics (a form of turn-based model) were never to my taste.

It’s going to be hard or even impossible for Aspyr to do the Remake in a way that will please everyone. If they change the combat system to a more fluent modern action-oriented combat, the old-school KOTOR fans will likely claim it as a bad decision. Although… I am an old-school KOTOR fan and I would love to see the combat system totally reworked. How about you?