Hey everyone! Today I wanted to talk about a series within the Star Wars universe that I have loved growing up, known as Kotor (Knights of the Old Republic) and the mystery surrounding the release of games and the direction the series has taken and maybe…. a new hope?
Back in 2003, Bioware (Where art thou?) released a game in collaboration with Lucas Arts that would bring Star Wars into a new light and adding a new dimension to the lore of the series.
Kotor (I’m not spelling this out everytime xD) introduced a new storyline that held it’s own but also was still intertwined in the original Star Wars story and also allowed players to alter the course of the game to have different endings (Spoilers ahead…)
In the first game you played as Revan, a jedi turned sith lord turned… jedi? Well you get to decide what path Revan takes but the point is you are a jedi with a LOT of influence in this universe and the character will set the tone for a lot of the game’s story in later installments.
Throughout the game you met many memorable crew members and made choices that were considered good or evil in a sense and would determine what your team thought of you as well as the world around you.
Your choice of weapons and armor were surprisingly not just jedi robes and lightsabers which allowed for some cool ideas when creating your own idea of a jedi, which makes this game great for replaying under different play styles.
But enough of the game itself, let’s continue with the mystery surrounding the series.
A little over a year later, Obsidian took the reigns on the sequel to Kotor, dubbing it “The Sith Lords”. In my humble opinion, I LOVED the direction the game took after the first game and actually enjoyed it gameplay wise a lot more.
The sequel transitioned the events after the first game to a post world ravaged by war of the jedi, sith, republic, the mandalorians and even some other groups of people not mentioned in the previous game. While this game gives you more of a blank slate character, you are still following in the footsteps of Revan and finding out as to the reasons Revan did what they did, which you choose what that was exactly, while being hunted by the Sith and finding aid to eventually take them down.
The biggest quarrel I had with this game however, as well as a possible big reason as to why the series slowed to a halt afterwards, was the missing content that made a lot of strange plot holes and raised questions about the story.
At the time, when Kotor 2 released on the original Xbox there was mentions of a level that could only be accessed by HK-47 and some hints at dialogue for future story that was never fully translated… thankfully once this game hit PC there was a mod that changed everything.
This piece of work adds many dialogue options and cutscenes not previously in the original game including the HK factory level and some interesting dialogue that helps clarify the story and add much more depth. Particularly the final scene with Trayus where she talks about your character going to find Revan and helping stop the true Sith Empire… that would’ve been a cool sequel right?
NOPE
The series more or less stopped and then many years later, this emerged.
In 2011, Bioware, under the EA flag… blegh, released Star Wars The Old Republic, an MMORPG that was set to take the place of the Kotor series. Now to be fair, I didn’t really get into this game but from what I have researched, the story of this game takes about a few hundred years after the events of the first two games.
While there are many branching stories to pick from based on different classes; the story touches on aspects of the Kotor universe, but I didn’t see too much in there about the events of Revan and the wars mentioned in the first two games.
I wanted to see the continuation of the first two games and after playing Kotor 2 with the content mod it REALLY made me upset knowing all of the potential content that could’ve been used for a third game.
Regardless, this game was the answer for many, many years and while it did well for a game… the original story remained untold.
HOWEVER IT IS THE YEAR 2020
Thankfully some new articles and rumors have begun appearing that might spell the return of our hero/villain.
Around April last year, an interview with Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucas Films, foretold a Kotor project slated to hit the big screen.
While this isn’t a game necessarily, this production of the Kotor story could help catapult the idea of a new game back on the market. To add to this oncoming surge, there was a recent leak of information near the end of January this year:
A leak from Cineleaks hints that there is talk of a “reimagining” of Kotor
It would be a Knights of the Old Republic project that would integrate elements from the first two games in order to bring certain things into the current Star Wars canon. Not necessarily a remake, so much as a re-imagining.
Jordan Maison, January 2020.
Some might be a bit hesitant at the word re-imagining, however at this point it would feel like a long lost dream if this were to lead to a third game being made as a result of the movie and this remake coming to fruition… I can only hope that this will be the Kotor game we are looking for.
As always,
Brother Ghesh out~
