The last we heard of the attempt to remake Bioware’s classic Star Wars RPG Knights Of The Old Republic, two of the game’s lead developers had been fired and a game originally hoping for a 2022 release was now looking at 2025. A fresh report now paints an even bleaker picture.
A story on Bloomberg says that development on the game, having already been paused, has now been taken away from Austin-based Aspyr entirely, and moved to “one of Saber Interactive’s Eastern European studios” (The Embracer Group owns both Aspyr and the Saber studio in question).
In a financial report released by The Embracer Group last week, it was announced that:
One of the Group’s AAA projects has transitioned to another studio within the Group. This was done to ensure the quality bar is where we need it to be for the title. We are not expecting any material delays for the title based on this transition.
It was speculated at the time that this project could have been KOTOR, and Bloomberg’s report—which also says that Sony and Disney, “both of whom have financial interests in the game, were displeased with progress under Aspyr”— certainly makes this seem likely.
Saber had actually already been involved in the project in an assistive capacity, with CEO Mathew Karch telling investors earlier in the year:
We’re fully confident that the game is going to be fantastic, but it’s a massive, massive product and massive products require a lot of effort and a lot of time to make good. And especially when you’re talking about a game [that’s] already old—very old—we’ve basically had to remake that game from scratch.
While this certainly doesn’t bode well for the game—or at least its hopes of coming out any time soon—let’s not forget that the original was released in 2003. It’s not like we can’t wait another year or two for a remake.