KotOR remake in crisis: Star Wars project put on hold, according to insiders
Almost a year ago there was the solemn news that Studio Aspyr is working on a remake of the Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic. Industry insider Jason Schreier has now revealed that the release is no longer certain and development is anything but good.
If a game or studio is the subject of a Bloomberg article, then you know by now: Ouch, what’s going on now? Because gaming journalist Jason Schreier, thanks to good connections to the games industry, repeatedly reveals what would otherwise remain hidden from the public. For example, he reported on the bumpy developments of Cyberpunk 2077, chaos surrounding Dragon Age 4 and the torpedoing of Warcraft 3: Reforged. His latest article is – unfortunately – about the announced remake of Knights of the Old Republic. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes here, too.
KotOR remake “postponed indefinitely”
According to Schreier’s sources the team at Aspyr is currently in crisis. Within a month, the art director and design director were fired. The whole project has been postponed indefinitely. In two internal meetings, it was made clear that Aspyr was looking for “new orders and development opportunities” since the KotOR remake was put on hold.
There has not been more than a teaser with the infamous Darth Revan for the remake of Knights of the Old Republic.
Source: Lucasfilm Games
Development was much too slow
An internal demo of the game was shown to representatives at Lucasfilm and Sony, Aspyr’s partners in developing the KotOR remake. The developers were actually very impressed by this demo – the dismissal of the two directors (only a week later!) came as a shock. However, sources from Schreier emphasize that the development had progressed much too slowly. Aspyr has been working on the remake for three years – while there was talk of a release at the end of 2022, a realistic goal was more like 2025.
The studio Aspyr brought the two parts of KotOR (part 2 in the picture) to mobile devices – accordingly, some fans had doubts whether the developers would be the right choice for a full-fledged remake.
Source: Aspyr
Game not pulped yet, could end up at Saber Interactive
Actually, the new version of KotOR was supposed to herald a new era of Star Wars games: For years, the license rights for Jedi, Sith, Republic, Empire & Co. games were held by Electronic Arts (Battlefront, Rogue Squadron, Fallen Order). This deal ends in 2023. Accordingly, Ubisoft, Quantic Dream and, so far, Aspyr have already been working on Star Wars projects for Sony. What exactly will become of the remake plans for the old republic is currently unclear. According to some Aspyr employees, it’s possible that the project could be fully handed over to Saber Interactive (World War Z, Evil Dead: The Game). This studio had previously done mostly outsourcing work for the remake.
Reference-www.buffed.de