By now you may have seen a rumour floating around about BioWare Austin developing a new Knights of the Old Republic game. Don’t get your hopes up too much: It’s based on old info. If BioWare ever does make a new KOTOR, it won’t be for a very long time.
The rumours originated from Liam Robertson, who helps operate the channel Unseen64 and said on a podcast last week that he’d heard BioWare’s Austin-based studio was making a new version of the classic Star Wars RPG. As transcribed by a Star Wars fan site, Robertson said: “I’ve learned now that [BioWare Austin is] pretty much now exclusively working on Star Wars games and they’re going to be doing that for the indefinite future. What they’re currently working on right now — and I have this on good authority — is a sort of remake/revival of Knights of the Old Republic. I don’t know when this is set to come out, but it has been in development for a little while now.”
Rumours like this pop up all the time, often fizzling just as quickly, but this one saw traction, making its way to the front of r/games as well as major video game websites like PC Gamer and GameSpot. Those sites combined Robertson’s rumour with a vague tweet from BioWare writer Drew Karpyshyn and voila: News. By now the internet regurgitation machine shouldn’t be too shocking:
Problem is, this is old info. What I’ve heard separately, from people familiar with goings-on at the studio, is that BioWare Austin did indeed play around with a Knights of the Old Republic prototype, but that it hasn’t been greenlit and is not currently in development. I’ve also heard that the majority of BioWare Austin is working on the company’s new IP, which is headed up by BioWare’s Edmonton studio and should be officially announced at E3. That new IP is a Destiny-ish game code-named Dylan, as Liam Robertson correctly reported in a separate Patreon post.
I reached out to Robertson this morning to clear things up and he sent over the following email:
Going to hold my hands up here – I think I just misheard some of the Austin stuff when I was talking on Skype, so I may have misspoke there. There’s also the element that I had no notes in front of me and just sort of rambled on from memory. I did not expect these few select statements to blow up (oops). I’m used to having the opportunity to just release follow-up notices on the Patreon with any updates and corrections. My bad there.
Let me clarify that I don’t think KOTOR’s a current project. From the same people I learned about Dylan from, I did hear that they prototyped a KOTOR revival at Austin a while back. I believe it may have evolved into something else since then or fizzled out since then. I’m still confident Austin is doing something Star Wars related though and I’m confident in that. I actually did know that they were contributing towards Dylan since I originally found out about it when I was researching Austin’s Shadow Realms, so if I said exclusively, then that was admittedly a mistake.
BioWare didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment. Don’t let the headlines get your hopes up too much, though. And, yes, I apologise for delaying this game.
Comments
8 responses to “That Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic Rumour Isn’t Quite True”
I think you’ve just got to answer the question, Why would there be a new Knights of the Old Republic game?
Disney has kind of made it clear that KOTOR exists within the Legends alternative universe. Making a new one would just be silly. A new Star Wars RPG maybe, but KOTOR is over.
You’re right, but still sad. The story had so much potential to continue going. I mean the Revan book answered questions left by the games, but it felt like a setup for The Old Republic MMO. Personally, I’d love to write a KOTOR 3 story. And actually spent months writing an outline haha
It doesn’t necessarily, at least not yet — a large amount of the fandom is choosing to deal with old republic stuff as main canon at least until any/parts of it are retconned.
But I think Legends is probably going to stick around, at least for a while; it’s incredibly popular and has a real big legacy. If you haven’t read the Legacy and Legacy War comic series I highly suggest you do, it’s amazing.
IIRC there have been snippets in Rebels and TCW that relate to the Mandalorian Wars and/or Characters directly involved in KOTOR. And those two TV-Series have been confirmed as being Canon, so… Who knows.
Regardless of it being Canon or not, a KOTOR reboot has incredible potential.
HK47 and Darth Nihilus appear in Star Wars: Heroes which is Disney as well
Revan appears in a cut scene from The Clone Wars series as a vision. So I think that counts haha
This may be late to reply to this old comment but the game isn’t dead it’s EA that makes people hate the game and gives people a bad taste in their mouth. If Bioware picked up where they left off and used the same Game Engine the game would be a killer and many would still buy the game if it had the old graphics but new story line. The game is still alive it’s just being ruined by EA and Disney.
Let CD Projekt Red have the license. Problem solved.
They would make an absolute fortune.
Whatever Drew Karpyshyn is writing – I am buying it.