PCG Article Knights of the Old Republic remake is 'delayed indefinitely,' according to report

It sounds like there's trouble at developer Aspyr Media.

According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Aspyr completed a vertical slice demo of the remake at the end of June to show to executives at Lucasfilm and Sony. The following week art director Jason Minor and design director Brad Prince were both fired from the studio.

That must have been one awful demo. Sad story all around.
 
Oh wow, not sure what to feel, either sad or annoyed.

that said, I found a typo @ZedClampet
For now the full status of the KOTOR remake is unclear, but employees at Aspyr have reportedly been told that the company is seeking new projects, and the remake could be moved to a different develope—possibly Aspyr's parent company Saber Interactive, which is a subsidiary of Embracer Group. I've reached out to Aspyr, Embracer, and Lucasfilm Games for more information, and will update if I receive a reply.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ZedClampet
Aug 2, 2022
3
8
15
Visit site
In honesty I'm kinda glad it got canned. I loved the original, and while dated, it's still a phenomenal game. I'd rather see new (good) Star Wars content rather than the current model of "Let's take something everyone already loves and defecate all over it and claim it's for 'modern audiences'!"

When the rumors broke the original word was that there was a "new Knights of the Old Republic project" in the works. A new game (hundreds of years after or before the original KOTOR) with fresh characters, new enemies (even if it's just the Sith again) and a new cast of characters would have been an infinitely better idea than remaking the classic.
 
I'd rather see new (good) Star Wars content rather than the current model of "Let's take something everyone already loves and defecate all over it and claim it's for 'modern audiences'!"
While I would love to see a new (and good) RPG in the Star Wars Universe (Star Wars Jedi-Fallen Order just didn't do it for me), I think the majority of remakes/remasters/and enhanced editions are well done. And I don't believe that the game developers focus is for "modern audiences", but more to make older classics look and run better (especially higher resolutions) on modern systems (as well as OS's).

Beam Dog did some excellent work with Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, by making those games look better and run better on newer hardware, all without changing the original characters, the dialogue, or the story. Failed remasters/remakes/ & EEs are rare, but do happen, as was the case with Nightdives remaster of the original Blade Runner adventure game.
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
The first Knights of the Old Republic could have used some help. IF I remember right (and it has been a mighty long time), you eventually had to go through three different planets and got to pick the order you did them. The big problem was that they didn't seem to scale very well, so the first planet was kinda hard, the second was kinda easy, and the final one was a cakewalk. I don't remember the planets depending on each other at all, so the choice didn't even matter in the end. They would have been a lot better off taking the choice away and making balancing the difficulty properly.

I liked the second one a lot better.
 
@Zloth - It's been years since I've played either game, as I only own the boxed CD/DVD versions, and I haven't installed a game from a disc of any kind in at least 15 years or more. I have a lot of memories of those games, but I think the memories of those games have kind of merged together, so I'm not always sure which memory goes with which game (if that makes sense?). I do remember the ending of the 2nd game feeling rushed and/or incomplete, as my ship slowly flew off into the distance. I remember thinking, "What? That's it?".

I know there's a mod or community patch that restores a lot of cut content, but I've yet to use it. I really need to pick those games up in digital format, probably on GOG, so I can experience them again.
 
I've always meant to play the second game with the mods that unlock it and fix it. I never finished it, but I remember thinking there was a lot more stuff around the force and the nature of dark and light compared to the first, and I like that kind of philosohical nonsense.

First game was probably my favourite twist in a video game though, was there something about the late nineties early 00's and twists? Fight Club, Memento, and the early M Night Shyamalam stuff all around then.
 
So maybe the situation isn't as dire as originally thought:

A new PCG article
Thanks for that article link, I never saw that one. It's certainly encouraging that the project is still alive, but when a game is pulled from one developer and plopped down in a different developer studio, I have to wonder how smooth that transition really is. The new studio is handed a project in an unfinished state and told to fix it, or make it better. Do they try to salvage what's there, or do they start from scratch? I don't know enough about game development to really know, but hopefully it will be a quality remake/remaster, and not just duck taped together and shoved out the door.

A couple of statements in that article were a bit confusing to me, but it could also just be me misinterpreting the content (which isn't uncommon for me):

Despite a recent Bloomberg report (opens in new tab)that the Knights of the Old Republic remake was "delayed indefinitely," the game might still be on its way this year.

And:
As a result, developers at the studio told Bloomberg they didn't expect it to come out until 2025.

So I have to assume that the "latter this year" is just speculation by the article's author, and that "didn't expect it to come out until 2025" was from the original developer, not the current one(?).
 
Thanks for that article link, I never saw that one. It's certainly encouraging that the project is still alive, but when a game is pulled from one developer and plopped down in a different developer studio, I have to wonder how smooth that transition really is. The new studio is handed a project in an unfinished state and told to fix it, or make it better. Do they try to salvage what's there, or do they start from scratch? I don't know enough about game development to really know, but hopefully it will be a quality remake/remaster, and not just duck taped together and shoved out the door.

A couple of statements in that article were a bit confusing to me, but it could also just be me misinterpreting the content (which isn't uncommon for me):

Despite a recent Bloomberg report (opens in new tab)that the Knights of the Old Republic remake was "delayed indefinitely," the game might still be on its way this year.

And:
As a result, developers at the studio told Bloomberg they didn't expect it to come out until 2025.

So I have to assume that the "latter this year" is just speculation by the article's author, and that "didn't expect it to come out until 2025" was from the original developer, not the current one(?).
Yeah, I wondered about the release speculation and thought the reasoning was basically that we don't know for sure so it could still be this year, but that seems extremely unlikely.

My biggest takeaway from this is that, and I'm just reading between the lines, the Embracer Group already knew it was going to take the game away from Aspyr before the demo was presented because Embracer had brought Saber in to work with Aspyr in May, which sounds like an orderly transition, although apparently Aspyr didn't realize what was happening. I won't add speculation to speculation by guessing why Embracer wanted the move, but having Saber work for a couple of months with Aspyr before taking full charge of the project probably helped Saber quite a bit. This may be why Embracer doesn't seem to be expecting a long delay, although Aspyr devs, who might be considered disgruntled and therefore unreliable, claimed otherwise.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mainer and Pifanjr

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts