We live in a society, er, we live in a video game community where certain things have become “prevalent” over the years. One of them is that if a title from console or PC generations past was beloved enough, it could be greenlit for a remaster or remake, depending on the developer or publisher. At The Game Awards recently, we saw a huge wave of those being announced by SEGA, and that’s only one company doing such things; there are many more doing the same. But with the Knights Of The Old Republic remake that was announced years ago, things are nothing but murky.
The remake announcement set the internet on fire because the original Knights Of The Old Republic from Bioware is hailed as one of the best RPGs ever made, not to mention one of the best Star Wars video games ever. The title helped launch Bioware into the stratosphere, and many have wondered what the remake would be like and play like. However, in recent times, all news about the game has been bad. There were rumors that the team working on it, as it’s not Bioware this time, wasn’t doing well, it was way over budget, and there was a chance it was outright canceled.
While that hasn’t been officially confirmed, it doesn’t look good for the game. Things only get murkier when you look at Axios’ talk with Disney’s head of gaming, Sean Shoptaw. He was asked about the remake and said:
“Not a lot I can say on that point for some hopefully obvious reasons.”
Obvious indeed! He likely didn’t want to spill whether it was still in the works or not. But he did not that the original was “obviously an incredibly popular game, one that we are incredibly proud of and think that there’s still a lot of demand for. I’ll leave it there.”
That might not be what fans of the remake hoped to hear, but it’s better than nothing. The game could still be worked on; it just might be going through some serious revisions and overhauls depending on its state.
There’s little doubt that the remake would need to be overhauled, not just in graphics but in gameplay, given the somewhat primitive systems that Bioware had to work with when they made the original. That might be why things are allegedly costing so much to get done.
No matter what, until official word that it’s canceled, we must trust in the Force.
