For 20 years, fans of the Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic (KOTOR or SW:KOTOR) video game have longed for a continuation of this epic story. KOTOR is not a George Lucas creation; however, it would have been given his green light as it was written long before Disney purchased the franchise.
Knights Of The Old Republic launched the Old Republic Era which takes place around 4,000 years before the time of the Skywalker Saga. The stories surrounding the Old Republic are the best in the entire Star Wars Universe, in my opinion. This all began with BioWare and lead writer Drew Karpyshan, who would go on to write many stories surrounding the Old Republic and influence the stories in BioWare’s MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Star Wars: The Old Republic and he wrote the Darth Bane trilogy, which connects the Old Republic directly to the Skywalker Saga.
So in 2021, when a full-fledged remake of the title was announced, fans of the title, such as myself, were thrown into a frenzy of excitement. Only to be bitterly disappointed to find out first that the title would come out on Sony’s PlayStation a whole year before other platforms got access to it. Second, it wasn’t being produced by the title's original creator BioWare, nor was it being written by original writer Drew Karpyshan.
Instead, it was being made by Aspyr, a company known for porting games to other consoles and platforms. Currently, the title is in the hands of Saber Interactive, and it's in limbo with no news on what’s happening with it. It is currently on hold, which is a tad annoying, given the teaser trailer that Aspyr released.
Without a doubt, KOTOR is a masterpiece and is still ranked as the best Star Wars video game ever made by many. So the remake must be appropriately handled whilst remaining true to the original story, gameplay etc whilst expanding upon them. More than just giving us a straight-up remake done in the UnReal 5 engine, enhancements to all aspects of the game must be made.
Personally, I would want Bioware, Ubisoft, Activision, Bethesda or Obsidian to take control of the remake from Saber Interactive, and it's not that I am questioning their ability to create good video games.
But all the publishers I have just mentioned have a long history of creating some of, if not the best story-driven roleplaying games or RPGs the world has ever seen. I will not name those titles because I will be here forever, but I can encourage you to seek them out and enjoy them.
Then, I would want the original writers bought back either as advisors or project managers. Plus, it should go without saying that the game should be available on all consoles with none of this exclusivity crap.
Throughout Knights of the Old Republic, we hear about what happened to Revan before and after he became Darth Revan, but we never got to experience those stories we had to imagine them.
What I would want the remake to include is whenever Revan’s history is mentioned, I would like the player to be given a flashback to those key moments from Revan's history so that they can interact with and experience them. Because, spoiler alert, the character you’re playing in the game is Revan, but they don’t know it, so it would be a fun way of unlocking his memory and fleshing out the story making an already compelling.
Starting with Revan getting his mask for the first time, beating Maladore and the incident that led to Malak losing his jaw. This would all add to the story and further it, and then you can throw in memories of Kreia from KOTOR 2, who trained Revan as a Jedi this would link the two titles together quite nicely.
Overall, it would be cool if the remastered title included the original story while finding fun ways to expand the story and the stories of the supporting cast HK47, Jole Bindo, Bastila, Juhani, Canderous etc.
I hope you have enjoyed my thoughts on how the KOTOR Remake could be handled. If you’re a fan of the title, please leave your comments down below.
